I admit. I use Godaddy for my domain and ssl cert purchases. Mainly because I’ve been using them for years and the price they offered long before anyone else was in the discount domain game. However, I would never use them for a hosting company. They always seemed to offer slimmed down hosting packages. They probably appealed to most and met their needs, but it always came up short for my tinkering.

I now have another reason to never use them for hosting. Enter “customer service”. Or should I say lack thereof. I still stand by my unwillingness to use them as a hosting provider, but sometimes you have to use what the client purchased. Here’s the scenerio:

My client has a virtual box there, godaddy calls them Virtual Dedicated Servers. They give you the option to install a couple of different control panels including plesk or you could choose to not install one. Before I entered the picture, the client had chosen a Plesk control panel. Now, I didn’t care. I found the ssh login and started setting up the server as I saw fit. Installed the default virtualhost for apache and then hit the IP. I found myself redirected to the plesk control panel. So I started looking through the apache configs and Include directives to see where this was coming from. Possibly an alias somewhere that I had missed? I couldn’t come up with anything, nor did I have a lot of time to waste. I thought it would be a good idea to use that live chat button that I keep seeing upon login to the server admin. BAD IDEA! Less than helpful tech support.

Let me Tarentino back a little bit. I started setting up the server, installing certs, setting up apache, provisioning the databases and virtualhosts, etc… I had asked for the root password from the client earlier in the day. They’re not tech savvy. They’ve just been left holding the bag. They don’t even know what I’m talking about when I ask for root. So they call up Godaddy. Godaddy doesn’t help them find the password. They don’t say, “hey, look in your intro email”, or even so much as point them in the right direction. They do walk them through the steps to re-provision the server. They just told them to wipe all my work without so much as a warning as what this means.

Strike one.

I suck it up, knowing full well that I’m still charging for this, and start setting up the newly provisioned server. And we’re back. So I’m stuck with the Plesk Control Panel as my default site on port 80. WTF? That conversation goes like this

Nathan S. – Server Concierge: Please note: All Live Chat sessions are logged and may be monitored for security and quality assurance purposes.

Thank you for contacting Live Chat support for Virtual and Dedicated Servers. This is Nathan. How can I help you?

Evil Buck: I have a Virtual dedicated Server. I’m trying to change the default website. Somewhere there is a setting that keeps plesk as the default vhost. Where can I change that?

Nathan S. – Server Concierge: You can change this in Plesk by: Login to Plesk > Settings > IP Addresses. Here you will need to click the number under the domains column next to the IP address to change the default website use on this IP.

Evil Buck: can’t access plesk

Evil Buck: ERROR: PleskFatalException

Unable to connect to database: saved admin password is incorrect.

0: common_func.php3:108

psaerror(string ‘Unable to connect to database: saved admin password is incorrect.’)

1: auth.php3:93

Evil Buck: personally I don’t want to either. It’s a piece of shit

Evil Buck: I want to know what is overriding my default vhosts?

Nathan S. – Server Concierge: Are you setting the server up via SSH?

Evil Buck: yes

Nathan S. – Server Concierge: As you have purchased Plesk for your server you would need to setup the site in Plesk. Setting it up via SSH or making changes to vhosts/apache configuration will cause issues with the server such as those you are experiencing as Plesk setups the server in a proprietary way. If you are familiar with using SSH I would recommend removing the control panel off the server and reprovision the server to remove Plesk.

Evil Buck: ok, thanks

Nathan S. – Server Concierge: Your welcome. Do you know how to Upgrade/Downgrade your server plan to remove Plesk?

Evil Buck: no, but I have to ask. Is there anything I can do to salvage the server without re-provisioning it?

Nathan S. – Server Concierge: You can try to remove Plesk via SSH. The service name for Plesk is “psa”. Unfortunately, I do not know what all would be removed on the server by removing Plesk.

Evil Buck: ok, proceed at my own risk I’m sure

Evil Buck: thanks for your help

Nathan S. – Server Concierge: Your welcome. Thanks again for using Live Chat, have a good day. ?

Strike 2.

I personally didn’t have the time, nor did I want to discover some crap with godaddy’s instances and repercussions from removing Plesk. I looked around a bit and then decided to hit up Godaddy’s craptaculous customer service again. Who knows, I may get someone intellegent.

More transcripts:

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: Please note: All Live Chat sessions are logged and may be monitored for security and quality assurance purposes.

Thank you for contacting Live Chat support for Virtual and Dedicated Servers. This is Nathan. How can I help you?

Evil Buck: I’m getting errors try to access Plesk, what can I do? ERROR: PleskFatalException

Unable to connect to database: saved admin password is incorrect.

0: common_func.php3:108

psaerror(string ‘Unable to connect to database: saved admin password is incorrect.’)

1: auth.php3:93

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: You would be able to reset any passwords via SSH in order to resolve this issue. I would recommend checking the Plesk help site or searching online for more information.

Evil Buck: which password? Root?

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: This would be the Plesk database password.

Evil Buck: is that stored in a mysql database?

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: Yes

Evil Buck: and what would the godaddy stored plesk password be?

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: There is no Godaddy stored Plesk password. This would be the password that you selected when setting up the server. If you have made changes to your server that modified this password, you would need to change this. I would recommend searching online for more information regarding the specific error message received.

Evil Buck: jesus man, can you avoid doing any more work?

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: With the non-assisted server, you are the admin and would be responsible for all management and configuration of the server.

Evil Buck: ahh, but godaddy has put on a plesk intsall that I “must” use that is failing even after a fresh re-provision from yesterday

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: No, you added the Plesk control panel during the server purchase. You do not need to use this, but as it is installed, we would recommend this as it can cause issues with the server configuration if you make changes in SSH. You can remove the control panel at any time.

Evil Buck: how do I do this?

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: You can request the Plesk control panel be removed from within your customer account. You can click on the Account Name from the Servers section followed by the Upgrade/Downgrade and Other Addons option.

Nathan A. – Server Concierge: You can then choose the None option from the control panel dropdown and click continue. This will require a reprovision of your server that will remove all content and reset the server to the default configuration.

37signals Product Blog: Basecamp becomes more finger friendly.

Here is a good example of not to do. 37signals is a great company, and I agree with most of what they have to say about usability and KISS. Not everyone get’s it right all of the time. Please don’t tout your new iOS interface then put up a video of the demonstration in a format [flash] that I can’t even watch on my iPad or iPhone. #fail!

Aside from the video not being accessible from the target audience, the new features were much needed and look really slick. Why did it take 3 years to get these core features is my question.

Along with many of our customers, we’re iPhone/iPad users here at 37signals. We wanted to make sure Basecamp worked well on those devices. With that in mind, we just launched a new feature which makes Basecamp more finger friendly for the iPhone and iPad.

Should we ever put up with hacking bad code to make it work for right now? Is there such a thing as a temporary solution? Every so often I fight this mentality at work to just patch the code and make it work for right now. The “we need this yesterday” solution without ever thinking about the future consequences of our actions.
As much as I fight against, sometimes I have to do it. I hate, hate, hate hacking something up. I preach the fact that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution. I know it’s going to come back to bite me in the ass. The very second a change is wanted it will.
Why do I hate patching the code? I hate it because the blame will later get placed on me for bugs in the software due to design decisions out of my control. I guess I wouldn’t mind making the quick patch as much if later, when bugs are introduced because the code is so very unmaintainable and bugs are introduced with ease, they would take the blame for the issues. But no, it’s now my job to stay late and work harder for shitty decisions made by someone else who was unwilling to take advice, or forced the issue of not worrying about maintenance. God knows I hate more work, tedious work at that, for something that could have been avoided. Should have been avoided, was foreseen and cautions ignored.
You know the kind of code I’m talking about. The kind where you need intimate knowledge of every working part because all the code is so tightly coupled that making one modification means accounting for it in 15 different places or it will break. The kind where we decide that writing out javascript inside a string, passing it into a function, later to eval it is a good thing. See example -> http://club.cmstheme.com/demo100/Interface/templates/Interface/effects.php
So back to the original question. Should we hack it up? I say no. It will come back to bite you in the ass. Almost no one that is asking you to do it understands the implications. They don’t understand that writing bad code is a future of longer development times and is a ticking time bomb. But they will likely blame you when it does break. Of course there will be times when this is unavoidable, but make the best of it and rewrite small sections at a time. Or make the change, but make sure the next time you touch the code that it is understood that re-factoring time is mandatory.

I was moving the location of the mysql databases on my Ubuntu EC2 instance to an EBS volume. I had a little trouble. Small problem, but eventually found the solution. Did the normal things:

1. Shutdown mysql
2. copied the data files
3. Double checked and fixed as needed the permissions
4. edited the my.cnf to point at the new data location
5. edited the apparmour mysql cnf
6. (the part I forgot) restart apparmour
7. then start up mysql server

I had edited all the proper files. Poured over the permissions. Read the syslog a million times wondering why mysql couldn’t write the file. Finally restarted the apparmour service and voila! Mysql started up without a hitch.

I am constantly using Expose` on my MacBook Pro. When I started working on Ubuntu at work I couldn’t remember what the setting was called that emulated expose` (at least a little bit).

It’s called scale. Alt+Shift+up is the default key combo.

I finally upgraded to a VPS. No more slugishness. Bought a slice at linode.com. Now I can finally have a decent solution for my rails and merb apps.

Can a coder have too high of standards?

I overheard someone say they dislike someone with too high of coding standards. As if this is a major problem!

The reasoning behind this thought process was this: They usually aren’t pragmatic enough to be goal oriented to meet deadlines and are more concerned with technology.

I say, “Bullshit”! These are not mutually exclusive.

• Well written code can help meet deadlines.
• Code that is easier to read always takes less time to add features to.
• Code that is well designed saves time modifying and/or adding features
• Fixing bugs is always easier in well designed code

I’ll concede that the first time something is developed, writing it to be modular and not one off takes a good programmer a little longer. The second time around though that time is made up and then some. Of course this is not an issue if you never have any changes, scope creep, or a boss/client that knows exactly what he wants and specs it out perfectly the first time.

I’ve been in many projects that are rushed and shortcuts were taken. The code is unbearable by all but the original coder. Even he takes awhile to get things done. Not that it’s ever my job, but I always spend the time rewriting reusable, elegant code then documenting it. I always spend more time than I would have if I had just patched it, but I save time for me next time and anyone who must maintain it.

Sometimes the rewriting is pieces at a time. This means making everything backward compatible with what is currently written and being used at the time of being written. As I replace parts of the code, I go back and remove the code that was made backward compatible for the pieces being replaced. Eventually the old unmaintainable code is replaced by lean, easy to read, documented code.

Almost as soon as I announce that I was going to stop working on Hellaphone, I start using newsgroups again and start on the project. Partly because I keep getting emailed how to set it up. I didn’t spend any time creating an installer when I released it. In fact I hacked it up real quick to be a single user system.

I always planned on releasing it as a service, but became dis-interested and open sourced it. So now I’m concentrating on bringing the service up again. The project is still open and located at http://code.google.com/p/hellaphone . Check it out, contribute, or just use it.

(Update) There is a newer git repository at http://github.com/buck2769/hellaphone/. This is being actively developed.

I dug this old post up from a blogspot blog that I have and never use anymore. This was from circa 2004, but still holds true.

I can’t tell you how annoying it is to have advertisements that play any kind of sound when the page loads. These are usually flash advertisements. This is very rude, this is like talking to someone while they are trying to read the newspaper. This gets even worse when the noise coming from the advertisement is some voice over speaking. Please, I did not come to the page to view all the ads, so only speak when asked to. Mute the damn thing by default. Let me un-mute it if I’m interested.
This is a new form of popup, and if your not careful, you’re advertisements, like pop-ups will be disabled with browser plugins or extensions that are already available but not widely used… yet. If such ads were to become annoying enough and numerous enough then you might see browsers including flash and/or ad blocking technology built in. Be cautious with the annoyingness factor of your ads. Be courteous of how you’re perceived or you may be shut off altogether. This goes beyond sound at startup, this advice should be taken for all annoying assuming aspects of the ads. Please don’t pop up floating divs, or expanded flash viewports that must be closed manually. These are other annoying aspects that may be turned off if it persists further. This would mean a shut down of valid browser features for webmasters that deliver wanted content.

In your face sales is annoying. No one likes it.

Webmasters – Demand that your ads adhere to a set of non-annoying guidelines to avoid people leaving your site or blocking your ads altogether.

Marketing guys behind the ads – Adhere to the same guidelines, else you may find yourselves getting blocked completely.

The whole online advertising industry has been changing quickly. It was based on Cost Per (M)Thousand Impressions (CPM). Then it was based on Cost Per Clicks (CPC). Now it seems that everything is moving toward (if not already) Cost Per Aquisition (CPA).

Paying publishers based on CPM as a metric was flawed. Flawed for the ultimate task at hand… To get an online aquisition. Conversion rates were all over the place, barely any targeted placement was being done. Relevant data, what is that? We didn’t even know how many people were actually following the ads.

Along comes CPC. We start paying out by the actual clicks, it’s a little easier to track the conversions than CPM. Of course this was not perfect and seems to be on it’s way out as of this writing.

So where are we at right now? Well, everyone is sporting CPA as if it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread (why is this so great anyways?). Pretty easy equation to figure out. If the goal is to sell something directly through an online ad, then measuring the success directly through the sale seems the only way to go. Why in the world would we have done it any other way? Seems simple, right? The advertiser needs to acquire something in order to be successful, be it payment or an email address, or an opinion (survey). If this is the final goal, why would we measure it any other way?

I’ll tell you why, it’s not the way or manner in which the product is marketed that brings it a sale. A bad product will have a bad conversion rate. On the other hand, a good product will have a bad conversion rate if marketed in a poor manner. The current state of industry is this, we must rely on hard acquisition numbers for our payouts because no one knows how to value an certain spot at any certain time on any certain website with any certain product… yet!

I believe this metric can be found, and it’s worth being proven. We do this for television commercials already. Prime time commercials are worth more. Women’s products are worth even more to the hypnotized Oprah crowd. Men’s products are not advertised during Oprah. We seemed to have cracked the code for television. Television, like the web is always changing and so are the advertisements.

Granted, the web is more complicated, more fickle. The users are starting to expect more, but we have the ability to change the ads per user, and on the fly at the last minute. We have oodles of practically free computing power to inference products, services, or whatever to target the end user at that time. We have instant access to his web browsing history, or past purchases, we even have access to the services and content of the email at times. Think gmail is completely free? Those targeted ads don’t come from nowhere.

So why should we sit back and let someone else’s product tell us how much we should make for something that has an unknown conversion? We should know how much our advertising spots are worth. At that time, for that user’s demographic, based on past purchases and inquiries. We should be able to calculate the optimum product for purchase at that time and deliver a much higher conversion percentage. If you give us a crap product, guess what, you’ll get a crap conversion.

The other side of CPM. Why does an acquisition need to be made for the Ad to be successful? I’ve never once tried to click on the commercial in the TV to buy any product. Is branding completely dead? We need to offer to build ads just for branding purposes. Stop charging for the ad, start charging for the space. Radio stations do this already. Let’s catch up to radio for God’s sake!!!

The real problem here is that no one has come up with the formula for how much an ad should be. You can bet Google is throwing a shit ton of money at finding this solution. I will be right there trying to find out how to cash in on the CPM train.

I love the new Apple TV updates. I wrote about how it may change the HD world. It really bodes well for HD and VOD. There are a few of us that were early adopters and bought mac mini’s for their Home Theater PC (HTPC), and some of us that wanted the extra juice to play their 720P 30 fps or 1080 material.Whatever the reason for owning a mac mini as opposed to an Apple TV, it seems that we are left out in the cold.

Yes, while the Apple TV was busy getting it’s update on, front row users are left with yesteryear’s interface. Of course it’s a computer and I can switch over to iTunes, but let’s face it. When you’re listening to music with friends and want to quickly browse and buy a song you’re all talking about. Breaking out a keyboard is the equivalent of the VISA check commercials when that person breaks out a check. It certainly doesn’t create a one click buying experience, putting more obstacles between me and the check-out lane. That’s the whole point of this, Apple wants to sell rentals and music. The easier they make it to buy, the more they’ll sell, period.

I hope this is on their to-do list. It would certainly encourage me to buy more from them.

The following was a post from apcmag.com

1. 80GB iPod hard drive being used as a system drive. It’s 4200 RPM slow and after years of encouraging people to amass a horde of digital media, how can Apple really expect people to fit their iTunes library, digital videos and so on onto 80GB? With notebook hard drive capacities topping 500GB in a single 2.5″ drive, surely Apple’s customers would have preferred a slightly thicker form factor with a beefier drive?

Really, most people get by on less. Apple’s customers already have this sort of form factor, the MacBook and MacBook pro have been about 1 in thick for years and the lightest available. You want speed, get a SSD drive.

2. Non-expandable memory: 2GB of RAM soldered onto the motherboard… sure, that’s a lot of RAM today, but if I were buying a notebook worth between $2500 and $4300,

Hmmmmm, I looked at the Apple site, says starts from $1799.

(update) Whoops – I saw in the comments of his page that he was talking about Australian dollars.

I’d sure as hell want the ability to add some extra RAM in later to cater for future Mac OS X upgrades, virtualisation and memory hungry apps like the Adobe suite. (To be fair, other subnotebooks also have soldered RAM, and sometimes have only 1GB, but still… looking at this from the perspective of someone looking for a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro, this is a significant limitation.)

If you start with the wrong expectations you will be disappointed.

3. 64GB flash-memory as an option in place of the hard drive is nice, but for $1400 more, it seems unlikely many people will take it up. (Update: reader Jeff Singleton points out that the SSD drive is more than “just a flash drive” — SSD disks offer greatly enhanced reliability and much faster throughput than mechanical media can, which is a fair point.)

Apple fans are notorious early adopters, if they weren’t they would buy Dells with Windows for less.

4. One USB port: not only is the MacBook Air expansion-limited on the inside, it can’t connect to many things at once on the outside, unless, of course, you carry a USB hub with you, which kinda defeats the purpose of having an ultraportable notebook to begin with. And since it’s a recessed design (a flap on the side of the notebook has to pop open for you to access the port), quite a few USB accessories aren’t going to be able to plug in there without the use of a USB extension cord.

Carrying a USB hub would defeat the purchase of an ultra portable, but so would carrying the accessories that would connect to it.

5. No wireless broadband: if anyone’s going to buy this notebook, it’s the regular traveller who is tired of toting 3KG of extra cabin baggage everywhere. These people are also exactly the same people who find wireless broadband really, really useful. But despite the fact that HSDPA modules can be manufactured as small as a postage stamp, Apple didn’t include one. Guess what you’ll be using that one USB port for? A soap-on-a-rope style wireless broadband dongle, or a fat broadband stick. It’s not a very elegant accompaniment to the world’s thinnest notebook.

Guess what you’ll be connecting to your Bluetooth [phone] device for?

6. Underpowered, last-gen processor: despite Apple claiming the MacBook Air has the ‘latest’ processor in it, it’s actually a slow old 65nm version of the Core 2 Duo, topping out at 1.8GHz. Presumably Apple’s legal eagles would argue that since Intel made a special version of the processor that has a smaller chip casing than others, it is literally using the “latest” release from Intel. But in this case, “latest” certainly doesn’t mean “better”.

This is a small definition of better. Faster doesn’t necessarily mean better, but latest is defined by release date. In fact the whole chip industry is moving toward less power. Most individuals don’t need the kind of speed that even apple’s cheapest laptop puts out.

7. No microphone port: sure, it’s not the most essential feature given the proliferation of USB microphones, but again, I’ll point out: one … USB … port.

Bluetooth, bluetooth, bluetooth.

8. Non-replaceable battery: you have to send the entire notebook back to Apple for replacement of the battery. Which will have attrocious battery life within about two years. Note to Steve Jobs: this is not an iPod.

I actually agree, but when the time comes I’m sure there will be a plethora of services to replace/upgrade the battery. (update) The time is now $129 battery replacement includes install. That’s what a normal battery costs.

9. Thin but not that thin: Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is thinner at its thickest point than competing notebooks. But the Fujitsu Q2010 is only 19.9mm thick at its thickest point, and that’s 0.5mm — yes half a millimetre — thicker. However, in the Lifebook, you get integrated HSDPA/3G/GPRS, an ExpressCard slot (34/54), SD card slot, two USB ports, inbuilt VGA out, Ethernet, Firewire, fingerprint sensor. I’d say that functionality is worth an extra half millimetre.

I must take a look at the Q2010, but using Windows is not worth it. I have never missed Windows since the move.

10. Oh, and no Ethernet port: yeah, OK, you can order the optional USB Ethernet adaptor, but that one time your router stops working wirelessly and you really need to log in via Ethernet to fix the configuration… hope you’ve got that USB adaptor with you.

Spoken like a person who has owned many a faulty PC’s. I have never had an ethernet port stop working on any of my Macs. I have also found my 802.11 N faster than my old 10/100 ethernet. You can also login via bluetooth.

Post mortem: Yes, there are some really nice features of the MacBook Air: the multi-touch trackpad, the fact that it doesn’t have a tiny, cramped keyboard like many ultraportables, some clever workarounds for the fact that it doesn’t have an optical drive — the ability to comandeer another Mac’s drive over a network, and so on.
But the fact is, apart from the screen and keyboard size, everything else in the MacBook Air is a big compromise.
People who were looking for a viable “pro” upgrade path for their PowerBook G4 12″ will be disappointed, as will anyone who wanted a lighter version of the MacBook Pro.
Will it be a success? I’m willing to bet that there will be an initial rush of sales from people who want the hottest, latest, slimmest thing in the airport gate lounge, but for the rest of us, who are balancing the specs with the portability, the MacBook Air will ultimately turn out to be a sales dud.

I disagree with the sales dud comment. I do believe that sales will be lower than that of the other MacBook lines. But the entire ultra portable market is smaller – it’s to be expected. I do believe it will pave the way for the rest of the MacBook line. If Apple were to release a 17 inch ultra portable I would pick it up. I don’t use wires, and I don’t use the optical drive.

This is definitely an early adopter product, and Apple may be on the cutting edge, but that means they have more room to grow rather than to play catch up.

I logged into Zecco yesterday and noticed the site was broke. I was using Safari. The layout looked a little different (Most of it was broke), so I tried opening it in Firefox. Aha! It works, and it had been changed. I sent a nice email off to a contact person listed on the Zecco.com site.

The new layout is horrible for Safari. I haven’t tried it on my iphone yet, but it’s probably pretty similar.

Ok, so maybe not terribly nice, but as you can see from the screenshots, not un-truthful either. The following reply I received surprised the hell out of me.

Hello Buckley,

Let me start with the short answer: Zecco does not support Safari. The reason is this:

Zecco supports the following four dominant OS/Browser combinations:
Windows + IE6
Windows + IE7
Windows + Firefox
Mac + Firefox

We have tried to also support other (Mac) browsers, like Safari and Camino for instance. However, optimizing HTML code for these often means sub optimization for the four dominant OS/Browser combinations.

So please switch to Mac + Firefox.

Hope that helps. Thanks,

Zecco Editor

PS: I am a Mac and iPhone user too.

What really surprises me is that this is a fairly large broker who depends on it’s website for it’s business. We’re not talking about some small, short sighted “web development” house that is just ignoring a large portion of mac users.

It’s really a shame these days to not be cross browser. It’s one thing to not support some weird, hardly used browser, but Safari makes up most of the Mac users. The worst part is that it easier to develop for Safari and Firefox and gracefully degrade for IE. They support Firefox, but can’t make the layout work with Safari?

On the mobile front it’s worse now the iPhone is out. This is the most capable browser on a mobile phone. Before you Google geeks scoff, android uses webkit, as does Nokia highends.

It also says they support the four dominant browsers [used on their site]. Of course Safari will not show up there, it doesn’t work! How about, use web standards that degrade gracefully for stupid browsers (IE) instead of “optimizing” (whatever that means in his terms).

With that same type of thinking we as a society would not have anything new. Could you see any would be car company at the turn of the 20th century creating a new product and investing the time and money to sell it when no one was using cars. Of course no one was using cars, there weren’t any available yet.

It’s this kinda of reasoning that should be illegal for accessibility’s sake. It’s this sort of reasoning that keeps a 6 year old browser in the mainstream. No one wants to switch to a better browser when developers aren’t whole-heartedly supporting newer technologies. When I say newer, I mean 3-4 years old. When moron web developers who don’t know how to create a cross browser site, they encourage moron, Microsoft Systems Admins to discourage anything other than IE for their users just because they like to use a site made by inept web developers.

I’m surprised by this attitude mainly because the company runs like a web 2.0 company. They don’t charge for standard trades and they make their money on advertising and premium services. Hell, they even have a social networking section with an investing twist. Maybe I can help make enough waves to change this deficiency in the Zecco.com website.

HellaPhone 

I currently use hellanzb for all of my usenet downloads. It’s much simpler than anything I have used before and is a simple install. Very simple if you are on a Debian (Ubuntu), or Darwin System (Mac OS X).I developed this interface for my own personal use and nothing more. That being said, there is very little error checking if any, and even less error reporting in the interface. I planned on releasing this when it is more complete, but I have not had the time to spend on it due to other projects that put food on my table. The app does work pretty well for a quick newzbin search and download to your existing hellanzb install. It just doesn’t monitor the downloads or report an error if the download doesn’t initiate. I planned on rectifying that at some future date.The requirements are:

•  php5
• cakephp 1.2.x
• allow_url_open – (maybe, I may have changed it to curl, can’t remember, don’t care)
• hellanzb install with allowed network access
• newzbin account

If enough people show interest I may make time to work on it some more. Please, if you are interested in upgrading or continuing work on this project, Leave it in the comments. And of course donations are always welcome. Download from the HellaPhone page  Some screenshots   

Mark Liyanage created a command line tool for Core Image in OS X. This make it possible for scripting languages to use this. I’m a PHP and Ruby programmer and I could definitely find use for this. Core Image is ultra fast on recent hardware with a supported video card. The fact that the filters are chained together in one command makes it terribly efficient to run a series of filters on an image. I will definitely find use for this one.

I have extra space on my reseller hosting account that I’ve had forever. I’m tired of not utilizing all of my space and/or bandwidth allotted. So I’m offering free hosting accounts until I’m out of space and/or bandwidth. They cannot be used for porn and/or any other illegal hosting such as copyrighted material. Anyone abusing this will be deleted imediately. Email me with your domain name and contact information and I’ll setup a new account for you. All I ask is that you link back to me. But if you’re feeling good feel free to drop me a donation

Each account includes:

• php
• unlimited mysql DB’s
• 20 MB of space
• 40 MB of bandwidth
• Fantastico
• 3 email accounts

Plus a bunch of other stuff.

I’m testing WordPress Multi User for release. I would like to allow a free customizable wordpress blog for everyone. I haven’t been able to get it running properly yet, but it’s coming along. As soon as I have it under control I’ll release it to the public on one of my domains. I have a mild interest coming from certain art communities to own a personal online newsletter (aka – a blog).

I love the new OS X (Tiger). I am just now getting rid of my habbits of organizing my mail the old way. You know with folders that I have to manage myself. I now only have two folders: Personal and Work. Spotlight will do it’s job to find everything else for me. I am starting to slowly get this way for the rest of the file system too. I probably will never make this full conversion on my home machine as I have to access it by the command line constantly. Having spotlight doesn’t do me any good when I’m on the command line. Unless I want to learn regex… and I don’t. I can’t stress how much I love spotlight. It’s a whole new way to organize. A lazier, more efficient way.

My big complaint is Safari. Now don’t get me wrong. Safari is a great browser and Mark Hyatt and the gang over there have been busting their hump to bring safari up to and surpass current web standards. I congratulate them on passing the Acid 2 test, but Where is the Spotlight integration? This is a big deal. If Jobs and company wants us to rethink the way we organize wouldn’t we have to be able to utilize this new tool (Spotlight) in the application that is used most? I would dare to say that the web browser is one of the most used apps on a computer. That being said, how come Safari has a weak at best search feature for bookmarks? The bookmark organization is still one of the best, but it does not have the advanced “new way of being organized” search capabilities.

Features:
I would like to see safari be able to search through bookmarks using metadata from history. Also search my history the same way. Give advanced users a way to change how much history is saved for meta searching. The bookmarks should also be updated automatically in the background if I so choose. Give advanced users the ability to change the frequency of auto-updating of bookmarks. I would like to search for xcode through my bookmarks and if a article on xcode was on slashdot two weeks ago. I want slashdot with that particular URI to show in my results list with a date of course. Now I realize that when I click the result it would probably pull up slashdot and that article would be long gone, but I then know that slashdot had it and I can search XCode in slashdot to find it. This is much quicker than searching google and would also allow me to limit my sources to my hand picked trusted sites through bookmarks.

So Mr. Jobs and Mr. Hyatt, are you listening? Give me a way of utilizing your revolutionary tool in one of your most used apps that is on every one of your systems.

The project OpenRico looks like it has a lot of promise, but with one major thing missing from it – DOCUMENTATION. So as I figure it out. I will document it here. In the coming weeks I will have a few of the more interesting components (read – the ones I’m using for my project) documented with a walk through tutorial. So stay tuned.