Recently I installed CGI::IRC to provide basic IRC access to those who wish to contact me for use by those that might not be familiar with IRC clients. It uses a very well thought out interface that runs in nearly all browsers (including Opera, which is why I chose it). Here is a brief overview of how I configured it:

     Have you ever performed a 'whois' on a domain name to see what name servers are authoritative for it? Did you know that this information is not the information that is used when your domain name is actually resolved to an IP address? The authoritative name servers for a domain are actually stored in the Internet's DNS root servers. The data you receive from performing a whois on a domain is for convenience only, and may not always be accurate. In this article we will examine the roll of the DNS root servers, and the basics of domain resolution.

Recently I have heard the idea spread around that MacroMedia's ColdFusion is a great development platform. I personally have never heard anything good about the product. Thinking that perhaps what I had heard was unfounded I decided to do some research into what could be so bad that the words "ColdFusion" have frost-bitten my ears more than once. Perhaps the people I have heard this from were mistaken about the quality of the product, but perhaps they weren't.

In order to ease the management of RyanSimpkins.com I have moved it to Drupal instead of Mambo/Joomla. I have also chosen a stock template. Drupal is not nearly as complex and featureful as Mambo, but loosing the complexity will hopefully let me more easily manage the simple content I have. So far I have been mostly impressed with Drupal. Only a few minor issues stand out, such as the organization of the settings, and missing options like new line filtering in the content creation and edit windows. I have enjoyed the ease in deploying new content in to the site. Nearly all of the content from Mamo was easily moved in to Drupal with a few copy/pastes.

Nutshell: The content control in Drupal isn't as exacting as Mambo, and that makes it easier to use and mantain small amounts of content.