This Site

The name

This site now has two names: bitstring.org and cobe.dyndns.org.
bitstring.org
Chances are that if you're visiting my site then you're technically inclined and probably understand what a bit string is. Just in case you're not: a bit string is a sequence of ones and zeros (e.g. 1011000110101).
cobe.dyndns.org
The site's name 'cobe' comes from the Cosmic Origin Background Explorer probe launched by NASA to study the background radiation from the big bang. For pretty pictures look here (select images from the COBE menu).

What does this server do?

As you have probably noticed the server hosts several projects on the web. It holds a combination of regular websites and webapps (in a JSP/Servlet container). It also hosts a few different subversion repositories.

How does it work?

This site is running Apache 2 with the mod_jk2 plugin to Tomcat 5.

I build the site using a set of scripts written in bash, right now the site does not need a complex content management system. For that matter the scripts are really overkill considering how infrequently these pages change.

If you're curious there are three scripts: bp.sh, mkSite and mkClean. bp.sh generates a single page by filling in menu and content sections in a template. mkSite just traverses my directory, giving my pages names and calling bp.sh. mkClean simply removes all my automatically generated pages.

Site maintained by Aly Merchant
Link to main page http://bitstring.org