It's almost time to set up a box for AudioMan development, likely next week. I have a very old but sturdy Pentium 166Mhz box (the first computer I owned myself) begging to be used. We'll see how it holds up to these tools:

RedHat 9
Apache
mySQL
CVS
Bugzilla
Wiki

Should be OK but maybe a little slow. A wiki should make communicating a lot easier. Since I'm the only one with access to this site usually I just write stuff and people call me an idiot until I change it. With a Wiki we can all be idiots at the same time. ;)

Where to put the box? Yeah, that's a tricky one. Here we have Bell Sympatico High Speed DSL and the IP address changes quite a bit, though I could use DynDNS.org. Anyone have experience with this? I'm going to delay putting MoveableType on that box until we can figure this out (doesn't make sense to have an unreliable news site). Until then I can just host an AudioMan news blog, when the need arises, on ryanlowe.ca.

When I get a job and move I'll consider getting Roger's Hi-Speed Internet access instead and get a static IP address. I probably won't use a land-line phone and I watch cable TV anyway, even though it melts my brain.

Backing up the project data will be a big deal, so I have to keep that in mind when I set stuff up. That machine doesn't have a CD burner but I suppose I could get one (and learn to use it at the Linux command line? yikes). I should also make daily ZIP'd backups of everything and send them over the network to another, more reliable, machine. You only need to keep seven of these backups: one for each day of the week and write over last week's copy of that day. Then every week (yeah, right) back up the seven days to CD. Wow, playing IT is fun! :|

I should also remember to write down how I installed everything so I can rebuild the box quickly in case of a hardware failure or some other disaster. Backed up data is good, but without the same software configuration it's a lot harder to get things back to the way they used to be. Keeping the procedure up to date over time is a probably good idea too.

I'm also waiting for Roy and Andrew to tell me about their experiences with Subversion. What's the dilly, yo?

Update 4:32PM: Not that you guys care that much :) but I'm going to wait until I get my PII-266Mhz back from my step-mom to set this stuff up, her laptop is in the shop. It's a much better machine (USB, serial keyboard/mouse, 20GB hard drive, 64MB RAM). I've already had Red Hat 9 on it and it runs well, even with a gooey. Roy has a good point about the new box and less problems -- if development really starts swinging I'll invest money in one (another good reason to keep track of how the software is set up). Right now I'm trying to stay as cheap as possible. :)