BjoKib – Photography & Music

When I move websites around and between different hosts it some times create strange problems. This time I had an issue getting the WordPress plugin Jetpack working. I got the error message as written in the title of this post. (Jetpack site_inaccessible [HTTP 404] error).

I Googled around and found a lot of suggestions I could try but none of them worked for me. My solution was that the permissions on the xmlrpc.php file was wrong. It had probably happended when I moved the site and files around. I changed the permissions to 644 and after that the JetPack plugin could connect again.

I wont guarantee this works for you, but it did for me!

I have produced a new track and I think this is one of the better ones I have made up until now. It is called BjoKib – Orion. The track is a melodic trance track made with Propellerheads Reason 6.5. Please share it or comment if you like it. Thanks!

I have started tagging all photos I put online here with the name of the camera model I used to shoot the photo. I also write the model name in the short description I have with each photo. The main reason for doing it is to show you what it is possible to get out from a camera + software. I am no expert myself but I like to play with software and the RAW file to create something the sensor didn’t see. I don’t really care that a photo should look like this or that. If I can get a cool result out of Lightroom or Aperture by playing with the controls and I think it looks alright I am more than happy about that!

This is also the reason i shoot RAW instead of JPEG. I get much more control and can squeeze out more details from a photo in post processing. The file size isn’t any problem for me and hard drive storage is cheap today. I can even fit my entire library on a 512GB SSD (because I delete a lot of bad photos). If you don’t want to do this yourself and fiddle with controls you should shoot in JPEG and use the built-in features in the camera. They are often really good.

• Here are photos shot with my first DSLR Nikon D40. The images was shot in 2007, 6 years ago. I think they are alright.

Sometimes I look back on older photos and realize that new gear is not the solution for getting better photos. Learning what you already have to its fullest potential is more useful. In the end it isn’t the camera taking the photo it is you. The camera is just a tool for your own creativity.

With all this said why did I buy the Nikon D600 with the 50mm 1.8 lens in the first place? if my other camera (D40, D5100) was good enough? I have a hard time explaining it for myself but it is probably the gadget interest and that I thought I really needed FX format when it now was “affordable”

I recommend you buy books if you are serious to learn more. Amazon have a lot of good ones and they are instantly obtainable because a lot of them come in kindle versions. I have done so and it helps tremendously in understanding this field. Nikon D600: From Snapshots to Great Shots this one is good for beginners and it shows you how to get going quite fast. The Nikon D600 Digital Field Guide a bit more technical one of the two books here. Nevertheless highly recommended reading both of them!

I got my very first camera when I was quite young. I dont remember what type it was but I do remember that it had flash cubes that you had to throw away when they got used up. Not very environmentally friendly perhaps but, it was a few years ago. Since then photography have always been something I like to do on a hobby basis. Especially when my computer interest took off and digital cameras got more affordable. If you want to view my photos check out the Photos category where I upload stuff I feel is worth showing to others.

Getting The Right Camera?

Technology have gotten so far today and to come up with new ways of using that tech and processing power we now simulate older cameras! Instagram anyone? Mobile phones are today the most used cameras online. At least according to statistics on Flickrs most popular brands.

I have the iPhone 4S myself and it produce alright photos considering its a phone. Nevertheless I want something that gives me higher quality pictures and you just dont get that type of quality in a small camera (yet). When we got our first child around 2005 I invested in our first DSLR: Nikon D40. A very nice and robust camera that we used for about 5 years. I managed to get some great photos out from it and I even sold a photo to a publisher here in Norway. Proving that if you get the right motive it doesnt really matter what type of camera you have. Its all about the image and end result.

This is the image I sold to the publisher. It was featured on the front page of a Norwegian bicycle guide book.

I made a HDR version of the image shown above, and it sold. I didnt even market it. I had it in a folder somewhere online and someone found it through the Google image search just by filename!

Nikon D5100

The Nikon D40 was in trusty service for about five years. It was good but the 6 megapixels it provided was somewhat low. Especially when you want to crop images and make prints of them. After some thought the Nikon D5100 was purchased with the 18-55mm kit lens and soon after I got the extremely nice 35mm 1.8G lens from Nikon. If Nikon hadn’t released the somewhat affordable full-frame D600 I would have kept this kit longer.

Nikon D600

The D5100 was in trusty service for 1 year and then I got some GAS. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome).

Now I have gone full frame with the Nikon D600 and Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.8G lens and I love it (after some cleaning).

After Propellerheads released the ability to buy plugins I have gone back and started to use Reason again. Once in a while some nice rack extensions is released in the store and they sound pretty good. The first one i bought was Predator from Rob Papen. I use it in almost every track I produce. Second instrument is something called Antidote from Synapse Audio also a good sounding synth.

I for one like this closed system from Propellerheads. Also I like Apple products.

Here is the track. Its a pretty standard Melodic Trance.

I am writing this guide mainly for my own use so I have a place to look at when I want to install Ubuntu Server and WordPress from scratch again with some basic settings. I have a habit of breaking things with my servers when playing around. I also want to have automatic updates to work flawlessly, permalinks and things like that. I do not take credit for all this information, a lot have been found by googling around. Checking forums etc. I am just placing it here for easy access for myself and others.

Install Ubuntu Server

First I downloaded Ubuntu Server and installed it with the following selections: LAMP Server (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) and Open SSH Server so I could remote into the computer with Putty from my Windows computer or with the included ssh client on my Mac. Somewhere in this install you will be asked to create a password for MySQL. Do that and make sure to remember it.

I wont go into networking setup, I assume we have Internet and networking working, logged in and ready to go!

Now I update the system with:

sudo apt-get update

and

sudo apt-get upgrade

This ensures that the system is up to date and you are getting the latest software.

Download WordPress and set permissions

Now download wordpress using this link: http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz this ensures you are getting the latest stable version available at this time. Wget is good enough to use downloading this. Like so:

sudo wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

To unpack this file I use something called Midnight Commander. It is a graphical file manager for the command line. Install it with this command:

sudo apt-get install mc

Unpack the wordpress files to: /var/www/

When using WordPress it is important to keep it and any plugins up to date. To get this auto-update working apache (the webserver) needs write access to the WordPress installation. To make this happen is easy in Ubuntu Server 12.04, just type:

sudo chown -R www-data /var/www/ (or the folder where your WordPress installation lives)

MySQL Database

To manage my database I like to use phpmyadmin. Install it with the following command and select apache2 when it asks which webserver you are going to use:

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

I know it is possible to create a database using the command line but some times a GUI is just nicer. Navigate to http://yoursite.com/phpmyadmin and log in with username root and your password. Create a database for your WordPress install.

WordPress Permalinks

This is not really needed to get everything up and running but, enabling permalinks makes the URLs from WordPress look a lot better. It is said that it may have some slight impact on SEO but I am not the one to claim to know anything about that.

Enough talk, to get this working you will have to enable the rewrite module in apache. Do this by executing the following command:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Now you have to edit this configuration file: /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default and change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All.

Restart Apache:

sudo service apache2 restart

Ready to Go!

Now you can install WordPress by loading up the URL to your server in your favourite browser. Then enable permalinks in Settings -> Permalinks in the admin dashboard menu to the left. Automatic updates should work fine and your blog is ready to go. If this guide helped you that’s great! If you found something wrong or really bad practices here please let me know in the comments.

Hi there,

I just re-installed the server but I will get the music and other content online as soon as possible. At the moment I am a bit busy in WoW Mists of Pandaria and playing with the kids

In the mean time you can listen to some of my tracks. Check in the navbar.

I tried to make something after recently installing Reason again. The idea was to make a Trance track but it didn’t really turn out that way. That is why I named it ”Not Really”..

You can listen to the track in the player to the right. There you also have the opportunity to listen to other tracks ive made during the years.