FAQ
This is an in-progress FAQ regarding this website, my music, my software, and myself. It’s slowly growing; feel free to make suggestions!
What’s with all of this software?
Help! I can’t get this to work!
Why does this site look so different?
How can I track your site for changes?
Who are you? What do you do?
What do you use to make your music?
What’s with all of this software?
All of the software offered on my website, I’ve had a part in handling; either it’s one my own creations, offers my custom modifications to existing software, or is otherwise a “special” build. You’ll note that many of them are for Mac OS X – my current OS of choice. My development projects are primarily MacOS X, Linux, or FreeBSD based, but I’ve been known to dabble on various other platforms. All of this software is either BSD or GPL code – where applicable, I’ve offered my modified code base. When not only offered in a “do it yourself” source form, I’ve got binary packages, precompiled and ready to run on your system!
Help! I can’t get this to work!
Try visiting my forum; I check there often, and will leave ‘sticky’ notes regarding various software I’ve created and worked on, pitfalls, and known problems. If this doesn’t solve your issue, feel free to send me mail; there’s a contact link at the upmost right in the navigation bar; just remove the uppercase letters in the address.
Why does this site look so different?
This website is powered by my own software, Rollator. All content is dynamic, rendered with a PHP based frontend from a SQL database. This system manages my entire website: from entries and file administration, user-watchable RSS feed generation, to file downloading and my “I’m listening to” music list.
I’ve tried to make it ascetically appealing, whist keeping light on the graphics for those on slower connections, hence my lack of elaborate design.
I’ve tried to make this site easy to navigate with the aptly-named ‘navigation menubar’ at the head of the page. It’s possible to navigate virtually anywhere throughout my site with a single click, however, I’ve added a “search” box throughout various places – on the front page, on my diary, and whenever there’s a ‘404’ (not found) error. This search box will allow you to search all of my articles, and even on a few rather useful external websites.
How can I track this site for changes?
There is a rhyme and reason to my layout – I swear! I’ll generally post software and site updates in the root page, aka ‘home’, with notices, notes, small little ‘working’ subroutines, and personal notes, e.g. within ‘my diary’. Both of these will be given with a brief synopsis in my encapsulated RSS feed. What this means is with a program like AmphetaDesk, Feedreader, NetNewsWire, Radio Userland, spaces, Syndirella, and numerous other tools can provide you with ‘updates’ whenever I add an article to my site.
The easiest way to track these change is to add the following URI to your RSS Newsreader:
http://www.holwegner.com/rss.php. Note that most web browsers don’t like XML encapsulated RSS, and will give you a page of gibberish – it’s not meant to be viewed by a web browser.
I’m Shawn Holwegner, a System Consultant, Technician, Programmer, and all-about geek. I’m a jack of all trades, with a diverse background in system and network security, programming, and computer generated music.
I’ve been employed in the computer field for over a decade; as a System Administrator, System Architect, Security Engineer, Software Engineer, Network Architect, Software Designer, among several other hats – I’ve even worked with OEM hardware design and development! If you’ve ever eaten a commercially sold food product, chances are roughly 97% that this food has been processed on machines running my code.
I’ve been programming since I was rather young; first upon an Apple ][, eventually migrating to a quirky Apple ///, my first computer that I outright owned – a Commodore VIC-20, PCs & Amiga, eventually migrating to my current UNIX based platforms of choice – however, I’m not afraid of Windows.
What did you use to make your music?
I use quite a few different tools; but the ones I use most often at this point in time are PlayerPro, a modfile editor for the Macintosh, and SndSampler for minor post-processing. I have been known to create music with my Amiga in the past, but the MOD format is quite a limited format and it’s rather showing it’s age. I have used other tools, such as Boodler for background effects, and for a few rare tests in ambient sound. I invariably end up encoding the end result into MP3 format, which is widely supported on virtually all platforms.