Google Plus – Shorter URLs of your own

Google+ is here, and its great! the only problem is passing out the link to your profile… its huge!
Mine looks like this https://plus.google.com/u/0/114228869493885222559/

However, with some small html i have now made it this http://velofille.com/g+

If you have your own domain, this is fairly easy to do. Open a notepad or html editor, paste in something like this

<html>
        <meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=https://plus.google.com/u/0/114228869493885222559/">
</html>

 

Change the url= part to match the URL you have on google+ . Once done, upload that page then go to http://yourdomain.com/pagename.html . Most servers have modules which allow you to drop the .html so you can go to http://yourdomain.com/pagename and it will assume the .html and just work (pays to test this, each server is different).

For another way, you can use PHP also. I entered into my text editor

<?php
header("Location: https://plus.google.com/u/0/114228869493885222559/");
?>

 

I named this g+.php and uploaded to my webserver, this allows me to just link to http://velofille.com/g+ (it checks for the suffix and assumes the .php).

In case none of these work, try using any other URL shortening service, some let you choose the name you give your link. http://is.gd/velofille works for mine also. To be noted, there is a google+ short linker which has been setup here http://gplus.to

 

Linux and I

Okay, most people probably realize that Linux and I have this thing going on.

My first computer was a 486 dx100 with 16mb ram and 150mb HDD. The dude who made it for me installed windows 98 Beta and absolutly no drivers. His Win 95 cd had stopped working apparently.

So the hard drive was double spaced to fit it so 300mb. I had about 20mb free at any one time and spent hours removing temporary files a day. I had a single mp3, because there simply wasnt room for more. My modem was my sisters 14.4 i think (or was it 9600?).

Everything i saw was in 16 colours until one day i right clicked on the desktop to change wallpaper and realized i could change it!.

debian_logo.gifSo within 9 months later i had mastered IRC and starting programming mIRC. I loved the idea of code and being able to program everything. A dude i knew with the nickname theGeek (its now steviant) took time out to come over and install redhat linux once. By this point I think I had upgraded to a low end Pentium machine with everything on-board.
I promptly lost my root password, and three weeks later managed to dialup from it, get another friend to rootkit me and change my password to 819P3N15 (thanks nitro- , always loved big penis!).
Anyway i got the hang of it pretty quick. Moved onto Slackware 4.0 when it was released.
About the same time i met Paul (who is now, 7 years later, my husband) who also used Linux, though not to the extent i did (i totally ditched windows fairly early on).
He tought me a fair bit as well, and eventually due to time constraints and children i moved on to using Debian.
Ive worked in the IT industry since pretty much 6 months of touching linux installing servers, setting up a couple of ISPs, and doing mostly server work.
slackwareLogo.JPGAbout 4 years ago i got sick of the hours doing servers and moved back into programming side. I do mostly web based code now (php, perl, etc), though I still maintain my own servers and fix others on occasion.

Ive been apparently owning #NZLinux on undernet, an IRC channel for about 7 years also, though its generally everyone has access and there are rarely fights or arguments.

Umm all the kids are familiar with linux, mac, and windows. None appear to have much preference other than the oldest who plays games.

My bestest friend Miriam uses linux and shes most definatly not a geek, but it suits her and the boys as they cant break it and it rarely needs a reinstall 🙂