How To Create A Certificate Signing Request (CSR) For SSL With GoDaddy

When I do sideline work, I always use Apache HTTP Server as the web server and PHP as the programming language. This, together with MySQL are totally free and you do not have to worry about money and legal issues and other annoying extra modules needed to be downloaded (say .NET if the PC does not have the framework installed). Especially in Windows, setting these up is pretty easy (unlike unix based operating systems which is so much of a hassle). Anyway, if you plan to have your site use SSL for secure transactions, you only need 3 files (as this was my experience where the site is hosted with GoDaddy’s).

You need to do the following …

- Generate a KEY file
- Generate the CSR file.

To generate a KEY and a CSR file, you can use OpenSSL to generate them. But you first need to create a KEY file in order to create a CSR file. To generate a KEY file, do this …

openssl genrsa -out domainname.key 1024

There is also an option that will encrypt the KEY file although I did not opt to encrypt it because it is not supported in Windows. At least that was the error that I got in Apache server’s logs.

To generate a CSR file, do this …

openssl req -new -key domainname.key -out domainname.csr

To avoid confusion, it is best to use your domain name as the name of the files. Although this is not really important since the content of the files are what is really important. Once you have the CSR file, you can then send the contents of that file to GoDaddy so they can generate you the SSL certificate file with the extension CRT. Note that you must not delete the KEY file as it is needed when you will configure your web server to use SSL. Upon creating a CSR file, you will be asked some questions. Please take note of the following.

Common Name - this is not the owner’s name whatsoever. The correct value for this is your domain url e.g. www.domain.com
Organization Name - The exact legal name of your organization. Do not abbreviate
Organization Unit - Section of the organization (not really important. up to you)
City or Locality - The city where your organization is located. Do not abbreviate
State or Province - The state or province where your organization is legally located.
Country - The two-letter country code.

A Mystery At Work

One thing that always baffles me is that barely does a software developer get a lot of love. If he does get some, then he is extremely lucky. Let us see now … software developers need powerful units to develop their tasks. By powerful units, I mean computers with the latest specifications. And I do not mean it for gaming purposes :P. However, it is quite often that people whose jobs require fast and powerful desktops for their work get pathetic and slow ones instead. Whereas people who have non-software development type of job specs get them. and ironically, only use Microsoft Office related applications 90% of the time.

If they so as much can justify that they need powerful laptops (get this, they are not even desktops), how much more for people involved with software development and say, perhaps quality assurance as well? Or perhaps you might want to request the latest laptop of a Macbook (I think the PRO has a powerful set of feauires than the ordinary Macbook) but you are only offered an older model because your company is not planning to buy any new ones for you. Then, you find out later on, some not even higher-up staff has one and all that person does has nothing to do with I.T development and/or maintenance related work. Hmmm, I guess the only thing I can comment regarding this is … That’s Life! haha. tsk. Life is cruel.

Convert WMA to MP3 In Mac OS

WMA (Windows Media Audio) is a Microsoft proprietary format for audio which means, it cannot be played natively within Mac OS. There are such softwares that convert WMA files to MP3. The one that I tried out is EasyWMA. The user interface is pretty simple. Just drag a WMA file on to the EasyWMA user interface and it will start converting it to the desired format. By default, the format is M4A so you may want to change that option in the drop down list to MP3 so that the resulting conversion will be done in MP3 format.

If you do not care about specific quality, dragging the file to the EasyWMA program will convert it right away and without any additional settings and tweaks. Just wait till the conversion is finished and your MP3 file is good to go. EasyWMA does not have a shareware version for people to test it out though. You would have to pay them right away, and they will email you the download link to get the full version of EasyWMA. At least that is what I saw in their website. I did a little Googling and saw some search results offering trial versions though I did not check the links out. You may want to check them first and see if you can get a trial version first before opting to purchase the full version.

Smartie Computers

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Smartie Computers is not just any ordinary full service IT firm. Their clients include both startup and huge corporate firms so this tells a lot about them. They have even partnered with reputable well known companies like Microsoft, Intuit and GenaWeb. All services are given at affordable prices. You can call them up for any troubles, concerns and requests anytime since they are up 24/7 everyday. Smartie Computers Minnesotas Computer Repair, for all your IT services needs.