Archive for 'random thoughts'
So the question floated around in my head the majority of the day, aside from being excited about the new season of Heroes, it came down to a bit in my brain going on and on about a new hosting promotion, package, offering, special, etc. trying to build up the finances, and in some regard I want to do it quickly, it’d be nice to have a infusion of a few thousand dollars, but growth one day at a time.
So it leads me to my question, what do YOU web visitor want to see in a hosting package? I already have had folks say “Windows Hosting!” well that’s all fine and dandy, but even then - what functionality do you need to make it a sale, and have you sign-up today? That’s the question I am trying to get answered, so if you get a minute, please take a second and post a comment about what you feel would be the best bet for hosting in your mind, it can be SSH access, it can be a full-on server, but please take 2 seconds out of your busy day, and post what you need in the realm of hosting, and what you’d be willing to pay.
In other quick news, Wordpress 2.3 is pretty slick 
- so far so good, even has Tags support via Textmate (use Keywords) - pretty slick indeed! More later.
Weekends are always… well uneventful, mainly I use them for sleep, or getting into trouble (muwhahaha) but this weekend was nice, got to hang out with some friends and have some food (which they paid for, thank you Noah & Rosie) - heck they even bought me ice cream - total score 
but also got to have some good times hangin with the kMan at his new temporary office which is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from me down the freeway, which is pretty cool, even got a key!
But the new week is coming, and I am actually pretty excited about it, get some more money coming in - tomorrow I find out about some server services, which could infuse the business a bit more, which is nice, also helps me pay some bills, not to mention get one step closer to an apartment, so pretty jazzed indeed, already increased the monthly revenue about $350 a month, just need to keep it rolling and keep the side work flowing aside from hosting, I really want to try and wing it before years end for real this year, so some work this week as well on the hosting front’s finishing up a re-vamped/re-tooled TN and get a new special/touch-up the FH site which just had it’s back-end all updated to all the newer security patches, went very smoothly.
Keep me in your prayers, while I know not a TON of you read this daily (heck I don’t post daily) - I know some of you check in on this now and again, and I’d appreciate some prayers, really working hard to find a good balance in life between work / family / friends / and most importantly faith - so hopefully as things level out these next few weeks I can really make a good effort to get things taken care of in that respect, not to mention finding a nice apartment in a good area, already have 2 places picked out from online, I need to go out and see what they are like aside from what the monitor shows me already have had several friends in town offer help in moving, so very grateful for that.
Anywhoo - thanks for stopping by, thanks for taking a minute to read this ol fart’s blog of thoughts, hopefully this week will turn out as good as last week! Take care all, have a good week!
Well my old old old old (insert additional old’s) keyboard was having some issues, just seemed to take more and more to get the thing to type, things like oh I don’t know “spacebar” decided on occasion not to work, or the E key would simply not work either - so after thinking about it and watching CompUSA (wanted to see it first) I decided to venture down and give the new Apple keyboard a demo, the feel is actually rather nice, I saw the new iMac’s and I must say - still not impressed, Apple makes nice stuff, but at the same time its the iMac, I had hoped for some innovation in the all-in-one design, but at least it had the keyboard attached for demo.
It is very nice, still haven’t done the apple keyboard update, requires me to reboot, and I have things running for a while, so I can’t really shut down just yet, but probably tomorrow - but all in all, it is a nice feel, sleek look, and things plug in really nicely. Now I just need a Mac Pro and 2 big monitors, and I am set!
Tomorrow flags a new day, some things on the todo include - some CSS, working to make a little “Client Preview” app to replace the ol static HTML, everything will run off a txt file and let me do updates a LOT faster vs. by hand editing some HTML code, all formatting will just work, once it’s done, its easy to update and then some - also the more pressing project is to finish the first run of the sign-up app, still fiddling with AJAX to do dynamic username lookups, but I may ditch that and do a secondary screen after failure that says “Your name was taken” and have them choose another, or simply pick the username first before they re-enter passwords and such 30 times.
So! I am going to wrap it up and call it a night, as much as I’d love to stay up I want to try and keep a semi-regular sleep schedule, granted it’ll be ruined tomorrow with the eclipse, and mars, but hey such is life but tomorrow I have a lot to get done, and more fun playing with the new billing system which I think will become the new backend for billing/support on FH - and soon will do the same for TN - joy joy
Anywhoo - have a good week folks, thanks for the prayers, im’s and kind donations - who hopefully this week will go well, and who knows, in time that ol iPod may be mine again. Night!
Social Party. Lately thats what it feels like online, social bookmarks, social networking, social music (go Zune!), and of course the bit growing with some steam Social Notes (or so I call it) - a small site called Twitter picked up steam asking the question “What are you doing?” originally starting as a status app so to speak, you could tell folks “doing my laundry, out of fresh underwear” - people posted things, some things they shouldn’t have
So things have evolved - and folks now really just sort of Micro-blog I suppose, but really it tends to be a Note they are sending out like Post-It’s on acid, with a world wide audience, the system has grown, and a newer player has entered the arena, named Pownce which is invite only right now - but it comes to the table with features that Twitter hasn’t got, but at the same time, that doesn’t rule Twitter out.
The Client
Pownce offers a client with their system, using Adobe Air to package the app, it is available for Mac and Windows respectively:
And of course, since Twitter has a current open API, there are an assortment of clients for both Mac/Windows/Linux, I use Twitterrific:
The Victor: Twitter - with a open-api, which is forthcoming with Pownce, this may change, but as it stands now you have more variety with Twitter, and an assortment of Applications for both your desktop & website to integrate with.
The Website
By far Twitter has gone the simplistic route, with users really pushing forward with features like using the format “@username” to reply to Tweets, the site has evolved over time, but for the most part, it is simplistic in nature, as it only has one question to ask:
Pownce is the hype of “web 2.0″ and then some, but it has more beef to include, it throws in a extra features like Send Events, Send Link, Send Message and the Send File (10mb free, 100mb pro membership) - so they’ve spiced it up a notch:
The Victor: Pownce - With extra organization, they have added message groups, different styles of alerts, and a nice system of reply/communication.
The Update Methods
Having already covered the clients above, the biggest factor left is of course use of a API, Twitter has hands down got this corner covered, with companies like Woot, Dell, and various other Blogs/Events using Twitter for “live-ish” coverage of sales, events, postings on a main site, it has opened the door for content systems to really interact with another community without even trying hard.
Secondly Twitter has their SMS gateway as well as Mobile page to get your Tweet on while on the go.
The Victor: Twitter.
Overall Winner
Twitter is the more robust in overall features, mainly due to their API and existing community including Musicians, Actors/Actresses, famous nerds,etc. but Pownce has some features which if smoothed out a bit, and other functionality + API was added, would quickly surpass the functionality of Twitter.
For me, my day-to-day short of the occasional banter with Jake, is Twitter, but I say keep your eyes on Pownce, one that API opens up, I imagine you’ll see a few black-out days on their site as they have to adjust to new load from visitors, buy them pro memberships now
My Twitter [link]
My Pownce [link]
Who knows what the heck is going on in my life anymore lol - not even I do! One day it’s major up up up - then the next it’s mellow, then it’s low - for a while there it was a nice middle of the road patch ah how I miss those days
I have started to re-think my AUP/TOS when it comes to sites getting hacked, some clients are awesome, they understand that their site is offline, they didn’t keep the software up, so it’s their fault - I love those clients. Then you have the other batch, who feel their hacked version of phpBB 0.1alpha was my bad, I should of somehow provided protection for that - I had one customer recently get on me a little upset because their software was broke after a hack, and they wanted the database, well for me to re-install the DB meant I needed to go over it a bit, search for rouge usernames in their forum, check access - basically security test a database. Not my job - I have been hired to do it, but this is just general support I have done it on, for some customers I am happy to do it, heck one even said thank you and kicked me down $25 via PayPal - now that client is my buddy
I dunno, just one of those days today I guess, things started out good, then just some of the same ol bunk waiting on my doorstep, but, here it is coming up on a new day, a fresh start, and hopefully a nice warm shower here shortly to take the layer of the day and wash it down the drain - of course since its still a little warm/humid, I’ll finish off the shower in freezing cold water to drop my core temp a bit
Lot’s to do, but I can’t seem to get ahead on it at all, design job looks like it fell thru, trying to salvage the hosting bit, few projects are wrapped up now, and working on a project off and on, just deployed it’s flash highlight widget which will scroll thru highlighted articles, pretty nice, some more CSS/Image work needed to spruce up the look and make a stand-alone article page so things can start rolling soon - and the usual billing backlog, server upgrades, and new server hardware, anyone want to come work for a hosting company for free?
Anywhoo - that’s my bit, 2m till Thursday - have a good one folks. Take Care.
Now and again I help out a friend or two with PHP code, today I was given a good little challenge to help on, the issue was a event calendar, one side displayed the text title/date/time of the event, the other side showed a thumbnail of the event’s flyer, the task was simple:
- When you click the TEXT link it would change the side picture template (already working)
- Data for Events/Info pulled from database (already working)
- When you click thumbnail, have it popup the full-sized image (not working)
So #3 is where I came in, to find a solution for the code bit to make it dynamically load the pop-up code instead of the one static image it was doing, so I got to thinking, and what I came up with was tweaking the existing javascript in the PHP end of things - I made a function that set one of the variables needed in the javascript popup code “imageURL” so when you clicked the link and it went to change the image thumbnail, it set a variable that was the image location the popup needed.
Was pretty cool, I realize that seems maybe trivial at some level, but it was a fun challenge to tackle with a hybrid of php & javascript,it was a nice stretch of the ol brain as javascript is not one of my languages of choice, but in this case my knowledge cut it and I made a few other tweaks to the code - came out really nice.
Well busy night tonight, Denny’s, Server Migration, Sleep - I personally after the in-and-out heat today could go for “sleep” but the migration should go pretty smooth - so on with the evening - have a good weekend folks!
Well yesterday was funny, had a list of things to do, was sort of well rested, then suddenly I felt the need to goto sleep, was just really tired around 2, and I went for a “nap” and woke up to pain, which proceeded to a need to goto the bathroom, after that I moved around a bit, only to return to bed, and sleep another 8 hours, and thus I woke up an hour or so ago, still a tad achy and shooting pain in my head, but thoughts clearer than they have been in 2 days.
So I got my todo pile done in record time, got things tuned up for a few customers, cleared a site which had been hacked and was doing a spoof bank site, customer is going to start from scratch, was very sorry for the trouble he felt he caused, while I could complain that he should of kept his programs up to date, he gave me no rude comments, was very happy to work with my suggestions, was ready to go when I was, every step of the way asked if he could help in any way - just awesome.
Anywhoo - I could write a bit more, but I think I am either going to go find something easy for breakfast, take a hot bath, or try to go back to sleep - CS3 get’s here Friday, so pretty pumped about that, need to check in with the client about the proof I sent to her on Monday, and need to get a migration price/plan sent to a server customer. So a busy day ahead, have a good one folks!
