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Thursday, December 2, 2010
New Server/Host – Superb Internet

Once again, I have switched hosting companies. I am in the process of migrating all the accounts on my server over to the new one, but I did mine first. Mostly to make sure it works and wouldn’t cause any problems. I saw a great deal on FatWallet that’s basically going to cut my yearly server cost in half, for the same setup. Plus, this place seems to know what they’re doing a whole lot better than the old one.

Using an internet service provider (ISP) for web hosting is an external hosting solution where the ISP is responsible for ensuring that your website is connected to the internet 24/7. With dedicated hosting, your website is the only one hosted on a particular server. This option suits large websites with high user traffic, or those requiring special software or particularly high levels of security. Merchant service providers will also make it easier for you to set up payments. Enhance your customer experience with the services provided by reputable merchant services.

While this approach offers the most powerful and secure solution, it is more expensive. You place your own server that you own or rent at the premises of the ISP to take advantage of their better technical infrastructure, learn more by reading this post about type of wifi solutions. With this option, you are generally responsible for maintaining the actual data and the website components.

Right now, they’re having a 50-70% off anniversary sale on dedicated servers. It was too good to pass up. The sale goes through December 15, and then you keep that price as long as you have your server.

Superb Internet

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Posted by alan to [geek, meta] at 7:00 pm PT | Link | Comments (2)
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Miami Beach, 9/24/09

A day off! No baseball today, which was pretty sad. I had been to games for 6 days in a row. Instead, I woke up early, and drove back to Fort Lauderdale for a Windows 7 launch event. Yes, I’m serious, and I’m typing this from a computer now running Windows 7. It was basically a couple hour developer session about programming for Windows 7, and at the end a free copy of it.

Windows 7 Ultimate

I spent the rest of the day at the pool or on the beach. I walked from the hotel about two miles down the beach to South Beach, and then part of the way back before deciding just to grab a bus the rest of the way. In case you missed the picture in the last post, here’s a reminder of how it looked. 🙂

South Beach

Santa Barbara’s beaches are nice, but they’re really just not the same. I will have to start going to the beach at home more often, though.

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Posted by alan to [geek, travel] at 8:58 pm PT | Link | Comments (1)
Monday, June 8, 2009
Welcome Back, Palm

Two and a half years ago, I switched from a long line of Treos (180, 270, 600, 650, over 5 years) to a Blackberry Pearl. When I first got it, I loved it. I did for about a year and a half, and then things started to go downhill. An operating system memory leak would cause it to slow down to almost unusable speed. T-Mobile’s coverage in my area seemingly got worse, somehow (all my Treos were also on T-Mobile). An OS update temporarily fixed the memory problem and made it usable again for a while, but then it came back. It would sit there for several minutes at a time with just a spinning hourglass, accepting no user input.

Finally, on Saturday, I made the switch back to Palm, though it’s a brand new operating system. I got to the Sprint store at 6am, and was second in line. The store opened at 8, and by 8:30 I was all set up with my number ported to Sprint. I now own a Palm Pre. At the moment, I’m thrilled with it. Let’s see if I still feel that way in a year and a half…

There are only a few applications available for it at the moment, and I’m still waiting on the SDK, but it can do most of what I want. The web browser is phenomenal. Far better than Safari on my iPod touch. The Touchstone inductive charger is neat. The battery life is crap, but that was to be expected. At least I can carry around a second battery with me if I need to, because it’s user replaceable.

With Classic, I am able to finally use Frames on my phone again, and don’t need to keep an extra Palm (Z22, which I will probably sell) at the bowling alley. My iPod touch (or an iPhone) is capable of doing this, but Apple won’t allow the software to be released. Just another reason I was convinced not to get an iPhone.

It’s better than the iPod touch as a photo viewer, because it gives me more control over the size and display of the images. If only it had more storage space, I might be able to replace my iPod touch as well. I might anyway, thanks to Pandora. I might just listen to that most of the time now, anyway. I’ll probably go through my music library and put a bunch of stuff on the Pre, though.

The Sporting News Pro Baseball app added all the Mets games to my Pre calendar. Supposedly, it will give me in game notifications during the games. I’ll find out tomorrow how well that works. The application does make it easy to check scores and see current game situations without notifications, as well.

The device also comes with Sprint Navigation, which gives me full turn by turn voice navigation. I’ve already used it once (though I knew where I was going) to try it, and it works very well.

Oh yeah, it works pretty well as a phone, too. Overall, very happy with my decision to switch back to Palm, even after today’s announcements from Apple about new iPhone features.

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Posted by alan to geek at 9:29 pm PT | Link | Comments (2)
Monday, January 12, 2009
Arrogant Linux Elitist

Arrogant Linux Elitist

Today’s picture comes from the webcam on my laptop, which I’ve never used before. My alarm clock didn’t go off this morning, probably because I hit the wrong button to turn it on last night. I was in hurry to get out of the house, and this was the quickest way to take the picture.

Purchase location: Jinx
Purchase date: Jan 25, 2008.

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Posted by alan to [geek, t-shirts] at 3:54 pm PT | Link | Comments (1)
Sunday, January 4, 2009
xkcd

Today’s shirt:

xkcd

xkcd is an awesome web comic. If you’re not reading it, you should be. Its tagline is “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” How can it not be good?

My favorite xkcd: (maybe. so many of them are so good.)

Duty Calls

Don’t forget to mouseover the comic image for the additional text. Also, do that on every xkcd comic you ever read.

Purchased from: xkcd store
Purchase date: Jan 2, 2008.

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Posted by alan to [geek, t-shirts] at 1:41 pm PT | Link | Comments (0)
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
LEDs

LEDs

Finally got my order from Futurlec. Got a large assortment of things from their Value Packs page, including 300 LEDs.

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Posted by alan to [geek, photography] at 1:39 am PT | Link | Comments (0)
My First Bag of Crap

It showed up a few days ago. Pictures have been up since the day I got it, but I’ve been too lazy to post about it. I can’t sleep, so I’m fixing that. Here’s my first Bag of Crap!

amp_40D_081224_7072

amp_40D_081224_7076

Four little stick on flashlights. One of them is small enough to fit in my wallet, so I will always have a flashlight on me now. Not something I’d have gone out and bought, but not useless.

amp_40D_081224_7078 amp_40D_081224_7079

I can always use an extra iPod charger. Nice.

amp_40D_081224_7082

You’d think I’d be able to use a camera bag, but this one is too big for my point and shoot, and too small for my DSLR. Don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but I’ll figure something out.

amp_40D_081224_7086

I can always use extra outlets, too. These things seem decent enough.

Overall, a pretty damn good bag of crap. Definitely worth the $8.

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Posted by alan to geek at 1:28 am PT | Link | Comments (5)
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Woot!

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Posted by alan to geek at 2:30 am PT | Link | Comments (1)
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Bag of Crap!

apenner@haydn:~/bin$ php wootoff.php
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………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………http://www.woot.com/…crap!

metsfan,

Thank you for your purchase.

Your order number [removed] for 1 Random Crap has been received by Woot on 12/11/2008 and your credit card has been charged $8.00.
Your order will typically ship within 5 business days. To check your order status, go to the Your Account tab at www.woot.com, log in and check your order history.

Please review the information above and report any discrepancy immediately to service@woot.com. Make sure your user name and order number are included in all correspondence related to this order.

Here is a link to the discussion of this product on the Woot Community Forums:
http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2855075

Thanks again for shopping at Woot. Please visit us again at www.woot.com.

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Posted by alan to geek at 2:30 pm PT | Link | Comments (4)
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Red-eye

Tonight, I fly from SBA to JFK. I have a fairly long layover in LAX, and my total travel time will be around 9 hours. I get into New York just before 6 am. I’m not really looking forward to all the time on the plane(s), but I can’t wait to get there. It’ll be nice to see the family again. I think July was the last time.

I’ve been playing with EAGLE PCB Cad software, to create the schematic and printed circuit board to finish off my timer project. There’s a bit of a learning curve to it, but I think I’m starting to get it figured out. It’s pretty cool. Below is an unfinished schematic. I haven’t yet figured out how to tell it to connect pins to power and ground, and I haven’t put in a bunch of other stuff that will be necessary to finish. I’ll get there.

unfinished schematic

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Posted by alan to geek at 3:54 pm PT | Link | Comments (0)
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