The Linux Loopback Encrypted Filesystem HOWTO is an old article I wrote in college.

It was cool in 1999. Really, it was. There weren't very many commercial encryption products for Linux, and the freely available open-source options were difficult to implement.

After being published online by the LDP (Linux Documentation Project), it was translated into Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish by volunteers from the respective nations. I always thought that was the most rewarding part of the project -- I have no idea how many people used the "howto" to encrypt their data, but I do know it was happening all around the globe. I wonder how many secrets have been hidden?

The aim of the Ruby on Rails (with FastCGI) Howto is to provide the info needed to get the Ruby/Rails framework installed on a shared (or "virtual") Linux-based web host. As a bonus, the article discusses how to speed things up with FastCGI under Apache.

If you don't know why you'd ever need Rails, you might want to read more here.