This should be the first entry in the new journal system. I’m going
\n“high-tech” with my journal. I send an e-mail to rksjournal@rnsmith.com. A
\nprogram on my home computer extracts the journal entry and places it in a
\ndatabase. From there the entry can be displayed on-line or printed, or
\nwhatever else can happen with an electronic entry. I looked at several other
\npieces of software, but none of them had the ability to take an e-mail and
\nturn it into a journal entry.\n<\/p>\n
\nExactly how this will appear on-line is still to be determined. I’m not even
\nsure I’m ready to have my journal available on-line. One of my options is to
\nmake it available several months after-the-fact. Time will tell what will
\nreally happen. I think that journals are intended to be somewhat private and
\nonly become more public a long time after they are written, perhaps even
\nafter the writer is dead.<\/p>\n
But, for right now, the process is to write the journal entry in an e-mail
\nand send it to the home computer. I will also build an ability to send the
\nentries in HTML format as well as in the database format to a CD-ROM so that
\nthe contents are somewhat preserved in case of computer problems at home.
\nIt’s been known to happen….\n<\/p>\n
\nThis change comes about in part because the journal that I’ve been keeping
\nis almost full. I’ve bought a new book, but haven’t started it yet. Also,
\nmost of the entries in my journal happen as I’m on an airplane as that’s
\nwhen I have the time to write. My handwriting has gotten so bad that I think
\nthe written journal is fast becoming unreadable. With this system I can
\nwrite entries anywhere. All I need is some kind of a mail client, either
\nbrowser based or otherwise. The risk is that since these entries will exist
\nas computer bits rather than as ink on a page, they somehow disappear, or
\ntechnology changes so quickly that the format in which the data is created
\ncan no longer be processed, or that the entries get altered somehow. Paper
\nseems to be a fairly universal media. So, the system will definitely include
\nthe ability to print these journal entries, one per page (or set of pages),
\nand put them into a notebook. So, the entries will be preserved on paper as
\nwell as on a CD-ROM.\n<\/p>\n
\nSince this is the first entry, perhaps I should describe the home computer
\nsystem. We have a wireless broadband connection to the internet from Sprint
\nBroadband. Their antenna is on top of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs
\nand I have a corresponding antenna on the top of our house. Their modem
\nprovides me an RJ-45 ethernet jack. That jack is plugged into a small HP
\nPentium 90 (circa 1996) computer running Linux and a Linux firewall. The
\nfirewall is currently compromised and I’m working on a replacement which
\nisn’t being very cooperative.\n<\/p>\n
\nOn the other side of the firewall we have four other computers. One is a
\ngeneric Pentium II computer, named Bradica, running Linux as the operating
\nsystem, Apache as a web server, Sendmail as the Mail Transfer Agent, PHP as
\nthe scripting language, and MySQL as the database server. It is also running
\nSamba to provide file and print services. I have my own computer, a Dell
\nPentium III computer running Windows 2000 and a bunch of other stuff. This
\nis my primary computer at home. Nina has an IBM Thinkpad Notebook computer
\nas her primary computer. I often bring my office notebook computer home and
\nplug it into the home network as well.\n<\/p>\n
\nI have another Linux computer on the network that I use as a kind of a test
\nbed as I’m developing software or capability. This system is named Heather.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe journal system is running on Bradica. It is written in PHP and the data
\nis stored in a MySQL database. Over the next several months the system will
\nprobably grow and change significantly. Meanwhile, from time to time I’ll
\nmail in another journal entry!\n<\/p>\n
This entry was transferred from an older journal system into this program on 29 November 2002.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This should be the first entry in the new journal system. I’m going “high-tech” with my journal. I send an e-mail to rksjournal@rnsmith.com. A program on my home computer extracts the journal entry and places it in a database. From there the entry can be displayed on-line or printed, or whatever else can happen with … Continue reading <\/span>