So I have an IPv6 class tomorrow so I decided to study by dinking around with setting up IPv6 on my home network. I was disappointed to find out that Ubuntu (even the current revision), still doesn't ship with ISC's DHCPD v4 server, so I couldn't with DHCPv6, but other than that it was a blast.

On Saturday I went on a treasure hunt for a UPnP / DLNA server that would work with Deena’s iPhone, the XBox 360, and my Nokia N900.  I wanted to be able to get our large music collection to every device in the house without any fuss, and I figured out how to do that with FUPPES.  Here is a copy and paste style install guide for getting everything setup and running using Ubuntu Linux as the media server (FUPPES supports other operating systems as well).

Today I released version 2.2.0 of Formunculous.  Check out the release notes or download it by going to the Formunculous Website.  This release was primarily bug fixes and interface improvements.

Just finished a bugfix release for Formunculous. So feel free to go grab it. Or install it straight from the command line with:

easy_install formunculous

now that it is in the cheese shop.

Here is the small list of changes:

• Now fully compatible with both Django 1.1 and 1.2 (any bugfix release)
• Word fixes (replacing "Application" with "Form" - legacy problem)
• Minor HTML and CSS fixes
• Completed form sorting and paging fixes

Recently my VPS provider was doing some power maintenance and recommended backing up data.  I realized I hadn't made a backup of that system in very long time, and hadn't worked up a backup strategy.  This caused me to whip up a backup solution using my two favorite things; ssh and rsync.

In the past I had used tar and scp to do remote backups, but this painfully slow, and I don't have a requirement to do moment in time backups, so the amazing efficiency of rsync.  The only trick was that this server has subversion and MySQL databases, and doing a straight copy of the data for these apps is extremely dangerous.  So with a couple remote ssh commands run from the backup machine I ended up with a slick, simple, fast, and reliable backup script:

#!/bin/bash

# Individually backup relevant etc configurations using rsync
# with the archive and compressions flags set
rsync -az -e "ssh -i path/to/ssh/key" backup_user@example.org:/etc/apache2 /data/backup/etc/
.
.
rsync -az -e "ssh -i path/to/ssh/key" backup_user@example.org:/etc/ssl /data/backup/etc/

# Use remote commands to trigger app specific backups for MySQL and subversion

# Run safe backup of all MySQL databases to a location that gets rsynced later
ssh -i path/to/ssh/key backup_user@example.org "mysqldump -u root -pPassword --all-databases > /opt/backup/mysql-current.sql"

# Run safe backup of subversion using svnadmin dump to a directory that gets rsynced
ssh -i path/to/ssh/key backup_user@example.org "svnadmin dump --quiet /opt/repos/svn > /opt/backup/svn.current.dump"

# Sync /opt.  Backup everything.  This will grab the remote MySQL and subversion backups
# we just made.
rsync -az -e "ssh -i path/to/ssh/key" backup_user@cexample.org:/opt/ /data/backup/opt/

That is it. I get a safe backup of my databases and svn plus all of my file data ~8 GiB total, and after the initial backup it all happens in less than 5 minutes.

Attach it all to crontab like:

0 * * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.py

and you get an hourly synchronized copy of the remote server.

I have been somewhat feverishly working on the design and implementation of a project Website for Formunculous, and I am really quite happy with the results.  I've really been focusing on a visual design and illustration skills as of late, and I thought I would be fun to show off some of those results using a Website I've wanted to create for quite some time.  Let me know what you think.

This is a new feature release that adds several graphical statistics, CSV export, and form history views among many others. This release focused on increasing usability and user interface design.

Features and Bugs Fixes

New features:

• Graphical statistics for showing responses over time.
• Pie charts for showing percentage choices for drop down type fields.
• Improved notification e-mail with direct links to related areas of the app.
• Interface improvements on form index page--tab with forms available for review.
• New review tab shows the number of complete and incomplete forms for each form.
• Incomplete forms are now shown on the reviewing view along with the completion percentage.
• There are now print links on the completion page and review page for forms.
• Link to download all of the files associated with a form definition as a single zip file.
• There is a link to export all form submission data as a single CSV.
• Restyle of form building view to make it more compact.
• The accordion expansion handle for form building is now available in a larger area.
• In the builder index, inactive forms are now greyed out.
• Each column in the builder index is now sortable.
• Input errors for the end user have an improved look and feel
• If you have an authenticated multi-use form, the user can now view each form that they have previously filled out.

Bug Fixes:

• Sorting on the review index has been improved to include fields with the special "None" value.
• Searching forms in the review index now properly cases and trims the search terms.
• The preview form no longer shows the submit/save buttons.
• Copying a form definition now properly performs a deep copy of dropdown selections and sub-forms.
• Copying a form definition now properly copies the site status and list of reviewers.
• Notification for non-authenticated forms no longer sends multiple e-mail notifications if the user refreshes the page.
• Verification of whether the requested form is a parent or child is now working properly.

I love python and Django is probably the best Web application framework I have ever worked with, but it isn't without its issues.  It has an absolutely great built-in, auto-generated admin interface for directly modifying database objects.  It is incredibly convenient and takes care of most common Web application administration needs for the vast majority of applications.  That being said, if it doesn't work for your application it can be painful to shim extended admin interfaces into it.  

For example it doesn't really fit with Formunculous or File Manager than it is pretty much the exact opposite of convenient.  I have wrestled with integrating other application's admin interfaces into the Django admin with out much success.  The look and feel is easy thanks to template extensions, but just creating a simple link to your extended admin views is just not there, and there isn't really a recommended way to do it.

I just released a new version of formunculous to the Internets.  It has

a bunch of new features for managing database or email backed Web forms.  It offers a lot of new functionality, and continues to bring easy form creation and processing.  Check it out at the Formunculous Source Forge page.

Here are the release notes:

I just finished designing and rolling out a Website for my brother in-law Alan.  I didn't really need to do it, nor was I asked too, but as I am currently working on my design skills and thought it would be a good Christmas present.  He gets a site, and I get to play around with design and try out using a new CMS.