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Following up on this article about the most annoying Facebook habits, I decided to put my views forward on this in the safe environment of my own website.

I think that if we go deeply into the psychology of online behaviour, we'll only end up becoming paranoid, and there's enough of that in the world already.  While some of them may be true in a funny way, it can scare some sensitive people like myself, since it could easily reflect on the kind of person you are in real life. 

I've often wondered if some people think they know the kind of person you are, say, if you know them from school, and think it's weird if you're not the sort of person they expect you to be, and that's the sort of thing I think is weird.  Obviously I've been through a lot since school, and I've changed, I've become more confident and I know how to stick up for myself (most of the time).  I think a lot of comes down to personality clashes – people might just not be suited to each other. 

The point about Facebook statuses is that people could feel intimidated if they're classed into a certain category, like in the article linked to above.  I'm a really honest person, and sometimes can't help posting how I feel, like last night, when I said I could do with a shoulder to cry on.  People who know me will know I'm very stressed out, while looking for work, and people who I don't see that often, well, don't.  It's logical really. 

Another issue, and something I think is a very good point, is annoying people who have hundreds of Facebook applications and annoy everyone with quiz updates.  I think this is fine for one or two, but not to do it every hour.  The applications I mainly have on display are:

• What I'm Listening To
• Star Trek Quotes
• weRead (Books iRead)
• Which Star Trek Voyager Character Are You
• Twitter
• Notes

The Star Trek applications are obvious, since I'm a serious Trekkie, and often think of Star Trek was reality, that I'd be an Ensign or Liutenant on a Starship by now.  Or maybe a engineer in the Temporal Mechanics Department.  Oh, before I leave the subject, it says my Star Trek Voyager character is Captain Kathryn Janeway, and she is my favourite character! I think the What I'm Listening To is obvious as well, since I studied classical music, and people can see I'm listening to respectable stuff.  My point is that everything is personal, like this website. 

If you define various status updates to annoying people, then it kind of spoils things.  Anyway, I just think we should stop analyzing things too much and enjoy what we have in life.  It's fine to analyze things like music, and politics, but that's about all I would do outside of work. 

Just my thoughts on the matter.

This is one of the big questions that's been playing on the mind of enthusiasts and skeptics for a long time.

Skeptics will say they don't exist, but what do they really mean when they say that?  UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object, just as Paranormal suggests something that's not normal.  Most people associate UFOs with flying saucers and little green men.  This can be attributed to reports from people who claim to have been abducted – a lot of these reports contain the same thing. 

Being a paranormal enthusiast myself, I have spoken to people who believe that humans are basically aliens are already here among us, walking the earth in disguise – this to me is people who have completely lost their minds.  Surely there would be physical evidence to prove it?  It sounds like a perfectly made up story, doesn't it!

Government cover ups of UFO sightings have long been of interest to enthusiasts.  If you think about it logically, what would be the point in the government doing this?  Why would the government hide such facts?  Is Area 51 really holding top secret information about supposed flying saucers that have crash landed?  

On the news today they touched on the subject of UFOs briefly, and said that the X-Files is partly responsible for what people think about UFOs today.  I've not seen the X-Files myself, but think it's most likely.  The fact of the government ignoring supposed UFO sightings simply indicates that they have better things to do with their time.  I'm very skeptical about Area 51 being used to hide flying saucers that have crash landed.  To put it simply, it's an area used to test out their latest technology, aircraft and the likes, so of course it's going to be heavily guarded. 

The most well known case of information about Area 51 securing information about UFOs comes from a guy called Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked there, and seen flying saucers, and little green men being diagnosed and probed.  It sounds sick to think about.  I'm not going to go into any more detail, however this article examines the claims by Bob Lazar – read this and make your own mind up. 

What interests me most is footage of unexplained lights in the sky, lights that move so fast without making any sound – it makes it more credible when there's no aircraft scheduled for that particular airspace, and when the lights appear on the radar.  YouTube has a lot of fascinating footage of these kind of lights.

Conclusion?  The scientific search for life in our universe is far more interesting and has far more credibility. 

After spending about at least a few days researching and implementing this topic, hard work has finally paid off.

Requirements for this tutorial:

• Intermediate knowledge of the HTTP Protocol
• Basic knowledge of Windows XP (e.g. how to navigate folder directories)
• Java Runtime Environment 5.0 (JRE)
• A glass of water, cup of tea, cider, or whatever floats your boat
• About an hour to spare

 Since there isn't a tutorial out there that deals specifically with Apache 2.2 and Tomcat 6.0 on Windows XP, I thought I would do the honours.  First of all, download and install Apache – I prefer AppServ – and download and install Tomcat.  Check it works by browsing to localhost and localhost:8080 respectively.  If so, we are ready to follow the next steps.

• Download mod_jk (the file name should be mod_jk-1.2.28-httpd-2.2.3.so)

• Copy to C:\AppServ\Apache2.2\modules and rename to mod_jk.so
• Open the Apache httpd.conf file (found in C:\AppServ\Apache2.2\conf) and add the following line:

LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.so

• Open Tomcat's server configuration file (C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\conf\Server.xml)
• Look for the line that says:

<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN" debug="0">

• Add the following line directly after it:

<Listener className="org.apache.jk.config.ApacheConfig" modJk="c:/
AppServ/Apache2.2/modules/mod_jk.so" workersConfig="C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Tomcat 6.0/conf/workers.properties" />

• Just below this line:

<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true"
autoDeploy="true" xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">

• Add this:

        <Listener className="org.apache.jk.config.ApacheConfig" append="true" forwardAll="false" modJk="c:/AppServ/Apache2.2/modules/mod_jk.so" />

• Restart the Tomcat service
• If all goes well, you should find that a new directory has been added – C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\conf\auto with a file called mod_jk.config in it
• Edit the Apache httpd.conf file.  Add the following

Include "C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Tomcat 6.0/conf/auto//mod_jk.conf"

• Create a file called workers.properties in tomcat/conf/jk, and add the following lines to it:

# BEGIN workers.properties
# Definition for Ajp13 worker
worker.list=ajp13
worker.ajp13.port=8009
worker.ajp13.host=localhost
worker.ajp13.type=ajp13
# END workers.properties

 

Restart the Tomcat service and Apache service.  You may need to reboot in Apache's case – it seems fussy about that on Windows XP.  I still needed to make a few modifications to my setup in order for it to work properly.  The first time I restarted Apache I got a message saying:

Useless use of AllowOverride

In order to solve this error, I had to create a custom mod_jk.conf file, and delete all the AllowOverride None statements.  After doing this, you will no longer be able to use the auto generated file.  Rename the file to mod_jkCustom.conf and save it to C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\conf.  Update your Apache httpd.conf file as follows:

Include "C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Tomcat 6.0/conf/mod_jkCustom.conf"

Restart Apache and reboot Windows.  Now navigate to localhost and localhost:8080 to check that both servers are running.  If all is well, navigate to localhost/examples.  You should get error 403, forbidden.  This is far better than a 404 error, at least it's working. 

In order to fix this, look for the following in the Apache httpd.conf file:

<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order deny,allow
Satisfy all
Deny from all
</Directory>

Change "Deny from all" to "Allow from all".  This seems to be the only thing that works.  Restart Apache and restart Windows.  Navigate to localhost/examples.  You should get a surprise.  It works!

I hope this has helped someone out there.  I had previously tried unsuccessfully to do this on IIS, which seems slightly more complicated, but considering I'm using Windows XP Home Edition, I won't be using IIS for the near future.  Apache seems to serve all my needs for the time being.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!