Got it and verified it: I can be seen from the outside. Loopbacks were the problem.

So it turned out that my server didn't support loopback and that once I worked out port forwarding I was on the web but that I couldn't see myself from inside the network.

I verified this by using a proxy server:

http://anonymouse.org/anonwww.html

which was sent to the external address given by Google to the query "what is my IP address".

I tried again with the web address that I had forwarded to the computer using an A record and it worked again where it hadn't worked before.  I'm live!

Port Forwarding

http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Trendnet/TEW-432BRP/Apache.htm

The link above, along with specific information on logging into my router, gave me what I needed.

I've now verified

1. That I can use port 80 to see the website on my internal network from another computer, and
2.  That port 80 is seen as open from the external network.  (Nice tool for that at http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/ .  I saw that it was closed, and then changed my router settings to match the target server's IP address, and watched as port 80 was opened.

Unfortunately, apparently you can't connect to your own external IP through most routers.  (http://forum.teamspeak.com/showthread.php/88287-cant-connect-to-my-server-using-own-external-IP  See post 5.)

IP settings in Ubuntu

Two nice articles from sudojuice, one to use the default Ubuntu UI and one to use the terminal (hint: you have to disable the UI first!!) to configure IP settings in Ubuntu.

A useful find there is nm-tool, which is alike a superior ifconfig.

Here they are:
http://www.sudo-juice.com/how-to-a-set-static-ip-in-ubuntu/
http://www.sudo-juice.com/how-to-set-a-static-ip-in-ubuntu-the-proper-way/

Trendnet router reset: This makes me feel safer

http://portforward.com/networking/forgot-router-password.htm

Basically, if you ever were to lose the username and password associated with your router, you can put it back to factory settings using the reset pinhole.  On my Trendnet that pinhole is on the front right below the power jack.

For most TrendNet routers, the reset leads to
username=admin
password=admin

See the portforward link up top for more details if this doesn't work.

Getting the internal IP of your router

ifconfig is good for finding your internal IP number and other information, but to set up port forwarding you need to find your router internal IP number.

If you see an IP number that is referred to as "default gateway" or just "gateway," that's your router's IP number.

If you're connected by ethernet, you can find that number using the following command:

$ nmcli dev list iface eth0 | grep IP4

See askUbuntu.

Okay, I just found a better way for out-of-the-box ubuntu on sudo juice:
$ nm-tool

This will give you your router IP, which it calls "Gateway."

Ubuntu, tasksel, and the carot

Nice find by Shantanu on the caret and tasksel:

If you have come across a tutorial or just someone on a forum who tells you to install something in Debian/Ubuntu that involves using apt-get, it is ok for you but when they tell you that you need to use a caret symbol (^) at the end, that’s where you become curious. What is even more weird is that when you search for the name of the package that the given command seems to install cannot be found using apt-cache search. e.g. You will see this used most often when someone tells you how to install LAMP server setup (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) by using the command “sudo apt-get install lamp-server^”. If you miss the caret at the end or try to search for lamp-server, it just doesn’t work.

Well, the answer is that the caret symbol is a short form for performing a task that otherwise the program “tasksel” would have done with the given package name. tasksel is a program to ease the installation of commonly used things that go together for a particular use. e.g. In the above instance of LAMP, the four packages and their dependencies are always used together, so tasksel provides a sort of a meta-package or meta-task that can be run by the user with a single command and then tasksel will take it upon itself to install all of them and set them up correctly for your use. Now, apt-get provides a way to perform that same task by itself without you having to install tasksel first and all you have to do is to give that same package name to apt-get but just append a caret at the end to tell apt-get that it is a tasksel package/task identifier and not a regular package name in debian/ubuntu repositories.

The Bights Plan

Yard by yard, it's hard.  Inch by inch it's a cinch.--Anon

by small and simple things are great things brought to pass--Alma 37:6

Yesterday I felt like I was throwing myself in every direction and getting little done.  I have a monolithic task to work on, and it seems to grow and divide as I stare at it.  So in the evening I went to sleep after praying for help in figuring out how to work effectively.  This morning I couldn't sleep and finally went on a walk a little before 5:00 am. It was truly beautiful, with sweet cool air and a dark sky with stars.  The result of all this is the beginning of a plan, which I will refer to as my bights plan.

Basically, bights are very small and concrete accomplishments.  You want to get in a lot of bights in a day, perhaps 15.  An idea for a bight might be to learn something.  But learning something doesn't produce a concrete result.  And it doesn't, in and of itself, make the world any better.  So if your bight is to be to learn something, then you can give it a concrete output by documenting what you have learned.

A bight has to have an objective output, and you have to determine what that output will be before you begin working on the bight.  The objective should be simple to describe and you should try for bights that don't take longer than 20 minutes to achieve.

Another bight might be to write tests for a function.  The concrete result is that you have tests.  You commit them and describe them.

The more people a bight can potentially help, the better the bight.  The more you learn or grow in capability from taking the bight, the better the bight.

Often when I'm working I face a decision or I need to answer a question.  Sometimes, these decisions and questions are too large for a single bight and need to be broken down.  But usually what I've done in the past is I have researched the question and learned what I needed and then acted accordingly.  This has had two problems.  One is that in acting this way I only really helped myself.  The other is that I myself can easily forget what I learn.  So it was clear to me as I was walking this morning that I needed to start documenting what I learn.  And that it would be even better if I were to publish the things that I learn so that other people can benefit.

So that's the plan.

Cyclopeptide hunting: two resources

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3242011/
http://www.cybase.org.au/
http://proteomics.ucsd.edu/