Steve Montaño

Want to use anywhere VoIP on your iPhone but feeling stuck because Skype's current iPhone app still only allows voice on a WIFI network? Well, it's time to show Skype who is boss and make this happen with TeamSpeak instead! Let's connect the dots. TeamSpeak uses the Speex audio codec which rocks for low bandwidth VoIP. There is also a great iPhone TeamSpeak client app called, "PhoneSpeex" and guess what... it's not limited to WIFI. It plays very nicely with EDGE and 3G. :) Yes, I tested it and it works, even on EDGE! The next step is therefore an obvious one. Build your own TeamSpeak server. So what does this all mean? Well now you can talk with family and friends internationally... for FREE... while you are MOBILE... on your iPhone!!! Anytime technology can be used to bring people closer together I believe there is real value in that. Your family/friends will need to connect to your TeamSpeak server too but that's easy. Here's how to make it all happen!

1) Go to: http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads Download and extract the latest teamspeak linux server tar.gz into your user home folder. Results in a folder called "tss2_rc2".
2) Open ports UDP 8767, TCP 14534 and TCP 51234 on the CentOS server and forward them on the router to the server's static local IP address.

That's right! It's time to upgrade from good old VNC to a super fast and encrypted FreeNX remote desktop solution on your CentOS server. Come on, you know you want to! Here's how.

(Bigtime kudos goes to my linux sensei master, Denis Savgir, for guiding me through this process!)

1) Go to http://www.nomachine.com and install the client software on your work station or laptop.
2) Also install the NoMachine rpm client on the CentOS server. Once downloaded, install it with:
rpm -Uvh filename.rpm
3) Then install the FreeNX server on the CentOS server.
yum install freenx
4) Reboot. If gnome is gone, fix it with:
yum install gnome-session
5) On the server, go to the file /etc/nxserver/client.id.dsa.key and copy/paste all the text into the client setup screen.

-----BEGIN DSA PRIVATE KEY-----
your actual key text would go here
-----END DSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Strap your helmets on because it's time to learn how to add keyword tags to Drupal blog posts. I'm sure there are much more thorough ways to accomplish this but here is the quick and dirty run down.

1) Get and install the nodewords module here: http://drupal.org/project/nodewords
2) Activate the nodewords module and also make sure the taxonomy module is activated.
3) Make sure you add the right user permissions so your account can access and administer the module.
4) Go to Administer / Content Management / Taxonomy.
5) Click the Add Vocabulary menu option.
6) Name it something along the lines of "Keyword Tags for Blog Posts".
7) Scroll down and check the, "Blog entry" check box.
8) Scroll farther down and check the, "Tags" check box.
9) Click Save!

Drupal rocks but to get comment work flows running smooth as silk like in Wordpress takes a bit of work. Some factors involved that you will have to build out:
* Email notification to site admin of unpublished comments awaiting approval.
* Making the comment form look much simpler and cleaner like in Wordpress.
* Notification to commenters when somebody else comments on the same thread.
* Adding the Mollom spam blocker so bots don't junk up your site.

Let's attack the email notifications first.
* This site has a perfect and very concise write up on how to make Drupal do this without having to hack code and just using the trigger feature already within Drupal. Kudos to Jason for the nice write up. http://www.jasonhooker.com/configure-drupal-notification-on-new-comments

Next, making the comment form look pretty.
* Grab and install the WordPress Comments module here. http://drupal.org/project/wp_comments

For those of you who are driven insane in the membrane by Safari's native behavior of opening links in new windows rather than new tabs, well... buckle up boys and girls because here is the fix! Due credit goes to David Alison over at his blog for the magnificent find. Open up a Terminal window and enter the following command.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Then restart Safari and BOOM, you're in there like swimwear with new tabs whenever Safari opens up a new link. No more new windows! Gosh this might actually be the tipping point to get me to switch to Safari from Firefox! =8^)

I'm not big on the word used, "Religion" since faith is really about a Relationship with God. But this video really hits the point home! :)

Brownsville Revival 1997 - Come home before dark from Steve Montano on Vimeo.

My wife Kristyna giving a message about intimacy with God, holiness and repentance. Sharing her experience at the Brownsville revival of the 1990's. I'm so proud of her!

Kristyna Montano - The Call of Temecula Valley 9-12-09 from Steve Montano on Vimeo.

This solution was originally meant to run on a Window server, but I wanted to go strictly OS X and Linux on my home network so that is what spawned this solution. I will post more specific steps in the near future but for now wanted to get the core concepts posted. This solution was built using CentOS 5.x. The goal of this is to provide a completely free and open source based remote desktop support solution that anybody can setup. It works from a client side initiated request so the client does not need to do any port forwarding. To them the experience is very seamless and easy.

After some initial troubleshooting, I found it is possible to embed Google Adsense code into a Drupal block and have the ads appear successfully. They key is to enable the Core Optional module called, "PHP Filter". This enables a new Input Format. Next, create a new block and instead of choosing, Full HTML as the input format, select, "PHP code" as the input format when you embed the adsense code into the block. After this, ads show up with no problems!