David Westerfield > News

Interactive Radar is Down

Apparently, NBC5i decided to change their interactive radar application and so now it doesn't work on my site anymore. I'm working on a different solution but it may take some time. Regardless, you can still go to the weather section of my site and open up the large radar to see what's going on weather-wise.

Apache Reverse Proxy Parameter Change

I have made a change to the configuration on my front-end reverse proxy server to see if performance is improved or hindered. Let me know if you see any issues.

Firefox 3.0 Westerfunk.net Certificate Issue

After installing Firefox 3.0, the latest version, you will experience an issue when connecting over the secure side of my websites. You will see the following message:

"Secure Connection Failed

www.westerfunk.net uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is only valid for www.secure.nsa.army.mil

(Error Code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)"

There's some more information after this, but to remedy the problem so it won't happen anymore, click the link on the same page that says, "Or you can add an exception..." then click the button that appears entitled, "Add Exception...".

After doing that, it will take you to a new window. In this window, make sure the address under the field "Location" is set to the root domain of my site "https://www.westerfunk.net/". Then click "Get Certificate". After that, a button will appear at the bottom of the window entitled, "Confirm Security Exception." Click that, and then it will take you to the secured page.

Let me know if you have any problems.

High Winds Caused Outage of Sites

I was not here for it, but apparently high winds from a storm that blew through this morning caused the power to blip, thus causing one of my firewalls to freeze up. Everything is back up now though.

Updated NBC5i WeatherPlus Stream

I just now realized that the WeatherPlus stream on Westerfunk.net was going somewhere else, so that is now updated with the proper address to stream from.

Upgraded Mod_Security from 2.5 to 2.5.4

Mod_Security has been upgraded on my front-end web proxy to address a few bug issues (none of which I have experienced) and to update the security rules set to prevent further possible cracking attempts. If there are any issues such as 500 errors, unresponsive pages, or sessions timing out too fast, just let me know ASAP and I'll look into it.

Upgraded to PHP 5.2.6 and EAccelerator 0.9.5.3

I have now completed upgrading my webservers with the latest versions of both of these applications. Let me know if you see any detrimental performance. Together they are supposed to increase performance, but you know how that goes.

FYI - Information Regarding the Church History Series

I contacted info@solidfoodmedia.com and asked if they had the notes available for the church history series currently being completed. I received a response back today saying the materials would be made available to the public after the series is complete in just a few more weeks. I'll keep everyone updated. Having the notes along with the audio will make the learning experience even better.

Theology Section Updated

I have gone through and updated the theology section of Westerfunk.net and added links, updated others, and added a new subsection with resources pertaining to church history. Good stuff! Check it out ... www.westerfunk.net/theology .

Changed News Summary Feed

I became discontent with the Yahoo! News feed. So I have switched over to using Breitbart.com for the News Summary on the front page of Westerfunk.net.

Church History Sermons and Lectures

I have created a new section under my sermons section (login required) on Westerfunk.net that features two series on church history. The first one is by Tommy Nelson, who did a series back in the 90's that focuses mostly on the historical developments. The second is a series of Sunday School lectures that focuses mostly on the theological development over the centuries. Good stuff! If you need a login, just email me @ https://www.westerfunk.net/contact/email/ .

John Piper Sermons

Since DesiringGod.org has all of Piper's sermons available at a faster rate at which to download, and in an effort to reduce the amount of traffic on my systems, I have now put a link directly to the sermons located on DesiringGod.org. They have all of them, so there is no reason to download them off of my site anymore.

Added a Testimony on Both Westerfunk.net and DavidWesterfield.net

Recently, I wrote out a testimony of my life so people can get to know me better and see where the Lord has brought me from, by His power alone. I have posted the testimony on the left-hand menu of Westerfunk.net and put it under the About link of DavidWesterfield.net. Check it out and may it encourage you.

Power Outages

The systems went down about 3:00 am - 3:15 due to power outages from the storms, but things are back up now. However, you may see continual outages of connectivity to my site until it has passed.

Two New Categories

I have added two new categories to my blog site, Weather and Health.

Added an About Page

It has been a long time coming, but I finally added a page explaining what Westerfunk.net actually is. Very basically, it is a centralized place where I can share all kinds of information with people. Check it out ... /about/.

Top Downloads Have Been Moved

For those of you using the links on the right-hand side, I have moved them to their own page, /topdownloads/.

Games Have Been Moved

I have moved the games links on the left-hand menu of Westerfunk.net to their own page @ http://www.westerfunk.net/games/. So if you're looking for them, just look to the left-hand menu and there is a link.

Westerfunk News Site on DavidWesterfield.net

Last night I moved my news site to DavidWesterfield.net and I formatted it with the new design of the blog site to make it consistent.

Sites were down earlier

For whatever reason, apparently the power turning off and on for a just a second, caused my servers to restart. But the bigger question is why Apache didn't come back up even though it is set to restart the service in the case of a service start failure. Well, it's back up now, so there you go.

New Design for DavidWesterfield.net!

Last night, I redesigned the layout for my blog site, DavidWesterfield.net. Check it out! www.davidwesterfield.net

Fixed John Piper Sermons Page

I just now realized the John Piper sermons were unavailable for downloading because I misspelled the folder name "downloadsermons" using "downloadsermoins". It's fixed.

Website(s) Optimization

I've gone through and added quite a few things to dramatically increase the speed at which all of the websites running on my systems process information, both at the file level and at the server level.

First of all, I added a PHP application optimization program called eAccelerator and which caches the PHP code for quicker use so it doesn't have to pull it every time it is hit at run time.

Next I setup reverse proxy caching (using memory instead of disk storage) to cache all static files such as images, html, css, etc, so the web server load is minimized.

The next thing I did was setup the MySQL server to cache all of the queries made so it doesn't have to run them every time a call is made (similar to eAccelerator), which is frequently. The last thing I did, which was very simple, was set the RSS feed calls for the feed headlines at the top of my pages to just pull a single feed in the entry instead of all 20 every time a call is made.

All of these things together have dramatically improved the performance of my web sites.

Past Versions of Westerfunk.net

The Wayback Machine is always a fun thing to mess around with. I went through and found older versions of the site here to show the progression. It has come along way from when I first started it (back before 2002 I believe), adding new features and better design. This is not really news, but I just thought it was cool to look back. Some of the content will not show up, but it at least shows you what it looked like.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.westerfunk.net

Nov. 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/200211240044 ... rfunk.net/
Feb. 2003: http://web.archive.org/web/200302100242 ... rfunk.net/
Feb. 2004: http://web.archive.org/web/200402200654 ... rfunk.net/
Apr. 2005: http://web.archive.org/web/200504220926 ... rfunk.net/
Jan. 2006: http://web.archive.org/web/200601081143 ... rfunk.net/
Mar. 2007: http://web.archive.org/web/200703260431 ... rfunk.net/

NEW!!! Interactive Radar!

On the main page, scroll down to the DFW weather section and you'll find a new interactive radar provided by NBC5i and MyWeather.net.

ModSecurity 2.5.0 Now in Place

I have now setup the latest version of ModSecurity. So if you experience any issues viewing content, posting on the contact page, or posting comments, please let me know ASAP via email @ webadminwesterfunk.net. I need to make sure this thing works well because I would prefer to have a web application firewall in front of the sites I host to keep bots and hackers out. However, sometimes, in order to get all the sites working as they did before without the app firewall in place, you have to tweak a few things. I have made a few adjustments on several rules that were set that I saw right off the bat in the error logs, but I can't monitor that continually to find every possible problem. So keep me informed.

MyWeather.net Flash Radar

MyWeather.net Flash Radar

I just recently found this on NBC5i.com's site. They have setup a new customizable radar and so I figured out how to just use the SWF file to display the radar in the full window of the browser. Just thought I would share it. Check it out!

Tomato 1.17 and Wireshark 0.99.8

New version of Tomato (WRT54x series Linksys router firmware) and Wireshark (traffic sniffing software) are now available from the right-hand menu.

Greg Koukl's Relativism Lecture

Added Greg Koukl's Relativism Lecture Video @ UCLA's Veritas Forum here: /theology/relativism/.

John Piper MP3 Calvinism Lectures

I have now updated the links to newer versions of the MP3 lectures on Calvinism @ DesiringGod.org. Get the lectures here /theology/calvinism/piper/

NEW!!! Automated National Weather Service Alerts

Using Weather Watcher and a little PHP programming, I now have automated national weather service alerts that will appear any time there is a major storm, weather event, or even amber alert. This makes it to where I now no longer have to manually edit alerts when they appear. Pretty sweet.

Adobe 8.1.2 Available for Download

Updated link on the right-hand menu.

Firefox 2.0.0.12 is Out

Updated the link on the right-hand side.

Comments Re-enabled on DavidWesterfield.net

To prevent spam attacks on my blog site, I have now required SSL for posting comments as well as emails through the contact page.

Comments Temporarily Disabled on DavidWesterfield.net

This morning in my email, there were quite a few spam messages that made it through the defenses within the blog software (some defenses). So, I have turned off the blog comments for now until I find a more secure way to add comments.

Douglas Wilson and Christopher Hitchens Debate

I have archived a debate off of ChristianityToday.com between theologian Douglas Wilson and vitriolic atheist Christopher Hitchens. Here is a link to the six part debate ... "Is Christianity Good for the World?".

Updated Weather Watcher to 5.6.25

I have installed and updated Weather Watcher to version 5.6.25, the program I use to keep real-time weather information updated on the hourly and daily forecast pages. This update fixes some holes that were allowing the program process to hang at times and use way too much CPU processing when downloading the updates. Seems to work well though, and as always, let me know if you see any problems.

Mod Security 2.1.4 Up and Running

I have setup and configured Mod Security 2.1.4, an open source application firewall, intrusion detection and prevention engine for Apache from ApacheLounge.com. The developer web site is www.modsecurity.org . This prevents against all forms of web-based attacks on my web servers (such as SQL injection attempts) from either bots, virus', trojans, or malicious users. Because I have put this in place on my web proxy, it is possible certain functions on my sites will not work. So if something gives you an error (like a 500 or 403 error) or if a page/resource hangs when accessing it, send me an email and let me know.

Tomato 1.15 and OpenVPN 2.0.9

Updated the tech download on the right-hand menu for Tomato to version 1.15 and have added OpenVPN 2.0.9 as a download option.

Apache 2.2.8 Now Running on Web Servers

With this new release, one of the main advantages is that they finally took care of some of the massive memory leaks in the Windows build, specifically when utilizing the reverse proxy and compression (gzip) modules. In addition, there were some security holes they patched up in the 2.2.7 release, but it had a fundamental failure on another function. So they fixed that issue and versioned it up to 2.2.8. Anyway, this new release now saves me memory overhead and from having to reboot the service automatically every night. I have now upgraded all my web servers with the newer version, so let me know if you see anything strange by going here and emailing me.

Also, I have updated the Apache link on the right-hand menu to point to the new download.