Back by popular demand we have our Geek of the Week post!

With another $50 on the line for the next 13 weeks I hope those people that voted for his will be more inclined to answer.

Congratulations to this weeks geek Marilyn and good luck to the other participants.

This weeks questions are…

1.  What iPhone application is this icon for?

2. What iPhone application is this icon for?

3. What iPhone application is this icon for?

4. What iPhone application is this icon for?

5. What iPhone application is this icon for?

If you haven’t noticed people like John Chow, Shoemoney and now us are starting to post questions on Twitter and then sharing the answers on our blog. This is a good way to bridge your community between twitter and your blog.

This week I will share with you how you can make your own twitter question post.

If you do not have twitter already then step one will be to sign-up. Then download a twitter tool and start following those you find interesting. Soon people will be following you.

Once you have a few people following you try posting a question. They will reply back with an @youruser name.

So now to get those replies in to your WordPress post. I have modified a script so it will look how I want. You can download this script and use it yourself on your own site. You just need to update your username, password and domain. The limitation of this script is 20 replies but I am working on another version which will allow for 100.

Open the page in your browser and highlight the replies. Copy (CTRL + C) and then go to your WordPress post and paste (CTRL + V) them in the Visual editor.

That’s it your done.

If you get stuck leave a note in the comments or catch me on twitter.

This week on twitter I asked what would you do for a free server?

Here is what was said…

	leedman @bluefur yo Gary… for a free server, let me build local community sites that will make a difference.
	jeremylatham @bluefur I’d put hosted by Bluefur at the bottom of each page on every site ;)
	danudey @bluefur Depends on how good the server is, really.
	leedman @bluefur I’d build a community site for a specific local cause and host it pro-bono in thanks for the free server.
	trishussey @bluefur for my own server? No public stunts, but advertising for sure.
	midspot @bluefur depends on what specs ;-)
	liamm @bluefur I’d eat a Klondike Bar! (infinitely recursive chatter ensues)
	brandingdavid @bluefur – I would record a video personally thanking everyone in the company that provided it to me. And Twitter about it every day!

So what would you do for a free server?

A cartoon created by artist Randy Glasbergen.

If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

Another week has come and gone. Some people may still have their Christmas lights adorning their roofs, but I think most of us have gotten past that point by now. Now you just have to see if you can keep up with your New Year’s resolutions for at least another week or two. Anyhow, you may be wondering what’s up with the title of today’s post. Well, the first article of this blogosphere whirlwind tour provides that inspiration. Enjoy!

Jonathan Morrow has noticed a very simple, but fascinating phenomenon. Whether it be at a trade show or a college lecture, the least interested people are usually slouching back in their seats with both butt cheeks making contact with the chair. However, those who are captivated by the material are more likely to be leaning to one side, shifting their weight to one butt cheek. You should blog from one butt cheek.

Tyler Ingram has been suffering through the crazy snow of Vancouver along with the rest of us, mushing through uncleared sidewalks and puddles of slush on the road. Going further, he has attempted to decipher the city bylaws on the matter, revealing that only those in the downtown peninsula really need to do anything.

Maeve takes a look back at the year that was and then describes the banished words of 2009. In 2008, we heard far too many people talk about mavericks, bailouts, and carbon footprints. We don’t want to hear that again. Are there any words that have gotten on your nerves?

Scott Young is a successful entrepreneur who understands a critical principle in making money. Steady incremental improvement is a myth. If you are looking to double your income this year, you probably won’t do it a little bit at a time. You’re more likely to see a sudden spike at some point.

Foximus sees that it’s January, so while the tinsel has been removed from the mall, its after-effects are still being felt. How is your Christmas credit card bill stacking up? Do you have enough liquidity to pay off the balance in full, avoiding those nasty interest charges, or did you spend a little too much over the holidays?

This week we’re still on the topic of SSH. Learning this thoroughly is very important if you’re going to be managing your server exclusively. Today we’ll be going over some basic (but vital) commands that will be mostly required when managing your server. But first, we need to learn some keyboard shortcut commands, which are also necessary to using SSH.

Keyboard Commands

Since there is no mouse control when using SSH, you will have to do everything with your keyboard. Most things can be done by typing commands, but if you’re editing a file via SSH, you have no way of typing in any commands, so this is where keyboard commands come into play. Luckily, there aren’t very many to remember.

These keyboard commands are the exact same in Windows, Mac OS X (yes, use Control, not Command for these) and Linux.

Control-X – Use this to exit out of an open file.

Control-C – Use this stop a running command immediately or to get the current line number in an open file.

Control-O – Use this to save an open file.

Arrow Keys – While not editing a file, use up/down to scroll through a list of previously issued commands. While editing a file, use up/down/left/right to navigate through the file.

Copy and Pasting – In PuTTY on Windows, simply selecting text with your mouse, and releasing your mouse button, will copy it to your clipboard. Right clicking will paste the text from your clipboard. On Mac OS X, use the normal Command-C and Command-V shortcuts. On Linux, it may either by the normal Control-C and Control-V, or it could also be Control-Shift-C and Control-Shift-V.

Commands

I should first note that when you login to your server via SSH, you’re placed into the /home directory.

Let’s go over some useful commands that you enter into your SSH windows. After typing a command, press enter/return to send it.

Changing Directories – You will use this command to navigate through directories on your server. The following example would get you to your /etc folder.

cd /etc

You basically type in the initial command name (in this case cd), followed by a space and then type in your desired location. Directory paths preceded by a forward slash are absolute to the very root of your server, while paths not preceded by a forward slash are relative to your current directory. If you want to go up a directory, you’d do this:

cd ..

Which will move up one directory level. To move up multiple directory levels, append /.. to the end of that command (once for every level you want to move up). To get to the very root of your server, just type in:

cd /

Editing Files – If you need to edit a file through SSH, you will use this command:

nano file.txt

You can use either absolute or relative paths to the file. If the file doesn’t already exist, it will open a blank editor.

Creating a File – If you just want to create a file without opening it, use this command:

touch newfile.txt

Listing the Contents of a Directory – Since your server lacks a graphical interface, telling what files and directories are in a folder can be tricky. However, learn this command and you’ll have no problem.

ls

Which will list the files and directories of your current working folder. If you want to list the contents of a different directory, format your command like this:

ls /path/to/other/directory

By default, hidden files and directories (any file or directory that starts with a period) are not listed with the ls command. You can change that by using the -a option. Like so:

ls -a

Or for a different directory:

ls -a /path/to/other/directory

Create a New Directory – You may often want to create a new directory, which you can do with this command:

mkdir newdirectory

Which will create a directory called “newdirectory” in the current working directory. You may also use absolute paths here to create a directory elsewhere.

Deleting a File or Directory – You can use this command to delete a file:

rm file-to-delete.txt

Which will immediately delete that file. If you would like to delete a directory, you need to add the options -rf:

rm -rf directory-to-delete

Again, you can use this with absolute or relative paths.

Change File Permissions (chmod) – Changing file’s (or folder’s) permissions is easy:

chmod 755 file.txt

Replace 755 with your desired chmod number, and file.txt with the file or folder you want to change.

Downloading a File from the Internet to Your Server – When you’re installing software on your server, you’ll often times have to download something to your server, this makes that easy:

wget http://example.com/example.tar.gz

Which would download that file (well, if it existed) into your current directory.

Unpacking an Archive – When installing software you’ll often times have to unpack archived files. If the file has an extension of .gz, you’ll first have to uncompress the archive:

gzip -d archive.tar.gz

Then you’ll have archive.tar in your directory, which we unpack like this:

tar -xvf archive.tar

Which will unpack the contents of archive.tar to your current working directory.

Next time

For next time I’ll try to make a PDF with all these commands in it (and any that I may have missed or more advanced commands that I didn’t think were vital, but are useful anyways), that you’ll be able to download (and print if you like) and use as a cheat-sheet when you’re plugging away in SSH.