windows live writer rocks!

i just discovered a nifty little tool: windows live writer, a blogging tool for multiple blogging systems.
it’s a desktop application which enables you to write posts offline, use WYSIWYG, upload pictures automatically and other stuff. setup is easy and it seems to work perfectly with wordpress.

  

in addition there is a windows live writer SDK which makes it possible to write custom plugins… there are already a few available.

although the tool is still beta, it looks really promising and the fast growing community of developers that is playing aroung with the SDK already let me expect a lot 🙂

now the only thing i am still searching is a blog-client for my windows mobile smartphone…

www.prueter.ch now SSL enabled

mostly for administrative purposes i enabled SSL for www.prueter.ch now (i don’t like people to see my wordpress password in cleartext via WLAN ;)).

just as a short instruction for everybody who wants to generate the SSL server-cert with windows certificate services and wants to use them with Apache running on Linux:

  • create server-cert keypair on linux-machine:
    openssl genrsa -out serverKey.pem -rand file1:file2:… 1024
  • create certificate request on linux-machine:
    openssl req -new -inkey serverKey.pem -out severReq.pem
  • process request on your windows CA and save SSL-server cert as base64 encoded version
  • copy SSL-server cert to your linux machine
  • convert it into PEM format:
    openssl x509 -in serverCert.cer -outform PEM -out serverCert.pem
  • copy your CA cert (base64 encoded) to your linux machine
  • convert it into PEM format:
    openssl x509 -in CACert.cer -outform PEM -out CACert.pem
  • rename serveryKey.pem to serverCert.key and copy it to to $(APACHE)/ssl.key dir
  • rename serverCert.pem to serverCert.crt and copy it to to $(APACHE)/ssl.crt dir
  • rename CACert.pem to CACert.crt and copy it to to $(APACHE)/ssl.crt dir
  • execute make in $(APACHE)/ssl.crt
  • now the certificates are correctly installed and can be referred to in your apache config (e.g. in your vhost file)

ping from the USA…

… we are still alive 🙂
currently i am sitting on a bed in a nice motel in Santa Barbara and uploading photos to my gallery.
our vacation is really cool, we have seen a lot of great (and not so great) places here in the US.

HPIM0232.JPG HPIM0425.JPG HPIM0436.JPG HPIM0137.JPG

today we will continue to San Diego and the last days before our departure next friday we’ll spend in Los Angeles.
i’ll write a longer blog entry when i’ll be back at home.