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Server move successful

Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Servers designed for Linux
Image via Wikipedia

On February 2, 2010 I finally completed the server move to the new co-location facility. I had, in the prior weeks, backup all data and files, did a clean install of the operating system and restored all functionality to the server. The new facility will not only help achieve faster load times, but a much better environment for the server than sitting at my house under my desk. With this move you all should notice faster page load, better usability and the RSS feeds hopefully will load and refresh across the Net faster.

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Posted in Apache, Blogging, General Tech, Linux, MySQL, Off-Topic, Servers, Uncategorized, Web Design | No Comments »

Overly Complicated?

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
It's Complicated
Image by Or Hiltch via Flickr

Is it really as complicated as you think?

Sometimes we see things from the wrong perspective.  We think they are complex, complicated and wicked to learn, use to do.  We see them as something unattainable, something that will always be either just out of reach, or a million miles away.  Sometimes we stop and think to ourselves, “That will never happen…”, or “I could never do that…”  Is it really that complex, that complicated or that wicked?  Many times they are not, and we all need to learn that about ourselves, the things we do, the thing we would like to accomplish, use or do.

I think we all sometimes just need to step back and re-evaluate how we are peering into our path.  How we perceive the obstacles on that path, and where we ultimately want that path to take us (whether it involves a turn, a new path or more).  Sometimes, we have to brave where the is no visible path – and with the right support behind us – our group of people, whether online or offline, that are our backing, the pushers pushing us to excel – we can build a path.  Our own path.

Does it need to be complicated?

Sometimes, and being a web programmer by trade I see this alot (and have even been guilty of it myself), we over complicate things.  We make them harder than it should be.  It’s nothing with our perspective or outlook, but in our natural habits.  We add steps, layers and side trails – not out of the fear of failure or other things pertaining to our paths and such, but out of a necessity to be thorough to the point of complications.

Why?  We all have off moments, and sometimes that is all it is.  A moment of clouded clarity, or no clarity at all.  Other times it’s the best we know at the time, and we just haven’t honed out skills to work, create and be lean, mean machines at what we are doing.  Finally, sometimes we just do it to see if we can – which can work against us, or for us, depending on what the outcome should be and what the outcome ends up being.

How about we make things uncomplicated?

Let’s face our fears, let’s build that new path, let’s learn about who we are, what we can do, should do and want to do.  Then, let’s get out there and do it.  No more complications from us not pushing forward, okay.  How about we try to maintain clarity – yes sometimes we just need to slow down or stop to gain that clarity – and that’s okay.  Your competitors (if your applying to a business mentality) aren’t going to get that far ahead of you if you stop or slow down to renew the clarity.  Think about it, they won’t get any farther ahead than you staying in a cloudy state for a longer period of time, now will they.  And that clarity may give your business just the edge it needs.

In our personal lives – let’s slow down and find that clarity – to interact well, live well and take more moments to cherish those around us.  Those who are helping us on our paths deserve nothing but our best in return for what they do for us.  Let’s give them that, shall we?

Why not.

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First Post of New Year (2010)

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
Sydney New Years Eve Fireworks 2007
Image by Christopher Chan via Flickr

It’s 2010?  Already? 4 days ago?

Yeah, Yeah I know, it’s already January 4th and I am just now posting my first post.  Get over, I have – :-)

I was extremely ill last week with a stomach bug, and was in bed most of the day January 1, worked everyday since and as I write this at 11:20pm I have just finished working for the day.

Pertaining to Work

Speaking of work, we recently debuted the updated Live Event Center at the Professional Bull Riders – much smoother user interface, much better updates and runs much faster than before.  It will be bringing live updates this weekend as the PBR invades New York City!

In additional working news, I am working with the fine photographers from Bull Stock Media, the official photographers to the PBR.  I am helping them update and maintain their web site, which is going to be pretty fun considering what great guys Andy and Matt are.

Nikon D5000 Digital SLR with AF-S DX VR Zoom-N...
Image via Wikipedia

Did someone say photography?

My awesome wife, knowing how hard it is to decide on items for me for Christmas, went out on a limb this year and simply gave me a Visa Gift Card.  How cool is that?  So cool that I am in the process of listing a bunch of items on eBay that I have had laying around for far too many years so that others can enjoy watching them collect dust as I have these years.  Why?  My next goal is to get me a beginner to intermediate Digital SLR camera and begin taking more and better photos.  I have always wanted one, and it appears I may be able to see that dream happen – so yeah, my wife ROCKS!  I am leaning towards a Nikon – either a used D40 or a new D5000 – yes big price difference, but we will have to see how fast and how much I can earn on eBay, which if you click the eBay link you can see what I am trying to sell ;0)

Speaking of photography I think I will be starting a photoblog to go along with the camera once it has arrived.  Yes I know I hardly update this one (or any of the other 4-5 blogs I write on), but hey, lofty ideas sometimes come to fruition, right?  Right.

If you didn’t know….

In case you didn’t know, I launched a new blog some time ago.  Yes it only has one post, but I believe it will become part of the photoblog and will become a more personal blog – for posts much as these.  You can find it at: billynab.com – pretty easy to remember since it’s my name.  It launched November 27, 2009 and has one post, another one going up tonight and maybe more soon.  Or….maybe in a month….my blogging schedule is low priority right now.

If that wasn’t good enough to know that you can still find my occasional tweets on Twitter – @southplatte – where I send a few tweets here and there.  I used to tweet much more, of course that was before I got extremely busy making the Interwebz work.

Speaking of making the Interwebz work

One of my goals for 2010 is to get some “industry” certifications. You know the piece of paper I can use to claim I know what I am doing on making the web work.  Actually I nearly have my B.S. degree finished so I may finish that as well.  However, in the mean time (simply because time permits quick study and quick tests) I will be trying to obtain my ColdFusion certification, PHP certification and possibly my Java certification this year.  I could be real lofty and try for my C# as well, but we’ll wait and see how many of the three I get done first, okay.

For many of you that might read this, you may not remember the prank I pulled on April Fool’s day last year.  It was one of the biggest traffic days I had all year – so be on the look out in a few months for something else fun, mimicking, or full of gimmickry.  Why?  Because we all need a laugh, and we all need some fun in life.

Laughter? How about the final laugh?

One of the goals I have for 2010 is to laugh more.  I feel it is a gatekeeper of all that is good, and can mend many things that drag us down in our daily life.  Often I am so serious, so intense on what I am working on my sense of humor is fading and failing.  No more of that.  My sense of humor is actually rather dry – so I try not to joke to much because so many people think I am serious – but oh well, if they truly know me, then they know me.  So lets laugh this year, share a joke or two.  Let’s take some photographs, work on some web sites that kick ass and get together on social networking, shall we?

Why not.

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Entitlement Reaction

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Social Media Landscape
Image by fredcavazza via Flickr

Jason Tryfon, a swell guy and app developer, writes on his blog about Entitlement and questions whether or not Social Media is furthering this mentality.  You can read his full post here:  The Culture of Entitlement, Is It Forming Thanks to Social Media Sites?

The sense of entitlement isn’t just confined to the Internet and Social Media.  More over, especially American society, has gained a perspective of it is for me, my benefit and you need to make sure you do what ever it takes to make sure I stay happy.  To the point that legal action gets taken, smearing across several avenues takes place, and generally ill will and the perception that it is okay to do whatever it takes to cause any type of harm because something did not work out as planned.

Far too often I think people feel that they have ownership in these services, products, companies, and even other people.  That somehow by providing content, value, or time they have a vested “ownership” that is merited a return on investment.  As the original article points out, most of the sites and services that are being questioned in creating a Culture of Entitlement are free and/or “freemium” services.  In other words there generally is no cost, save with some advertising being shown.

That brings me to another point that was discussed in the comments over on Jason’s site.  Fullbirdmusic states if people spend all this time creating content on these sites, putting time and sweat equity, there should be some form of return.  Randy stats that members on these are not just membership numbers in a database, but are partners in these networks or apps.  Which stands to reason – put something, get something out.  Is that true of life in general?

If we voluntarily use a service, without paying for it save viewing some advertisements and the time we “opt” to put into it, should we have any expectations of return on it?  When we go to work for the day, we expect that we will give an honest days work for an honest days pay.  When we volunteer in our community, we expect that we will see betterment of that community.  When we create content on a service or site of someone else, is it reasonable that we “expect” a return from that, even when they are providing us, the user, with the tools for free or next to free? Are we entitled to expect anything from a free tool when there are plenty of alternatives in any variety of locations, contexts to which we could still publish and push our content?

I used to always take advantage of the $4.95/month hosting specials.  Hey, you got a free domain name, they setup all the DNS, MX mail records and everything.  They even gave you a control panel so you could control any aspect of your account, your site, your email your everything online.  Yet, frequently in the early years of doing web development I constantly found myself persuing open source scripts to speed up development time and to learn from and unfortunately many times this allowed me to find limitations on the hosting provider.  Maybe I needed shell access, or root access.  Maybe I needed a special Apache configuration.  On these shared hosts, it just was not feasible.  My solution?  Instead of expecting them to fix my problem to better my return, I created my own solution and since 2004 have owned and operated my own web, email, dns and database servers.  Sure I could have purchased a dedicated server from the same hosting company – well leased it – but now I own the hardware and pay for a certain amount of bandwidth and IP address, to which monetary value is exchanged for a certain guarantee of service.

So if you are not getting the expected return from what ever tool you are using, maybe it’s time to find a new tool, make your own tool or change what you are doing.  Quite simply, you are getting a return – you are getting a free tool to use, free search traffic, free analytics, advertisement supported applications, services and more.  If there are issues with any of these services, to which you are not paying for a dedicated service level, use a different one, make your own or stop all together.

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Posted in General Tech, Internet Tools, Off-Topic, Servers, Social Media | Comments Off

It’s All In A Week

Monday, April 20th, 2009

The past 7 days, yes week, have been simply incredible, strange, exciting, changing, and all around crazy.

It started last Wednesday with an email about a job interview. I had interviewed twice before with the company, and their needs have now changed so they brought me back in. I will find out in a day or two if I am the candidate selected. So tonight I have been brain dumping ideas, sorting and preparing in case my life changes tomorrow. If not, I needed to do the brain dump anyway.

A few other things have happened this past week. I started a “social” experiment on Twitter. I was going to start testing the “celebrities” to see which ones truly care and interact with people. Pointless, I know. But still I think they represent a very interesting part of Twitter. I have tried to interact with @moonfrye without a reply. Yes, she is up nearing 300,000 followers, but I started when she was at less than 5,000 followers, and never a response. Expected.

The next “celebrity” I tried to interact with literally shocked me out of my stupor. @kathyireland not only responded, but then went on to carry a conversation on Twitter with me. Interacting, asking questions, responding to my questions. She even started following my wife, @raekaye, and I both. Asking questions, sending DMs and generally being very proactive and very engaging. You can’t fake this stuff people, and if you look at her Twitter stream, you will notice she interacts with quite a few people. That is powerful. Why?

Take a look at what happened during the @aplusk and @cnnbrk saga. The push to hit 1,000,000 followers. Sure there is interaction, but most people think “snob”. Use something other than Twitter. Some have gone so far as to say @aplusk and other “celebrities” (see @oprah) have ruined Twitter. Not so fast – if nothing else they need to be there to protect their personal brand, just as companies need to be there to protect their brand. If either side interacts – it opens a whole new world for them and their supporters.

That brings me to today. Job interview is over – I feel it went very well. I will know in less than 24 hours what the outcome is. It also brings me to today where I did a complete brain dump to my wife of so many thoughts, ideas and just simple things that have been crowding my brain for a while now. This not only helped get them out of my main thought process to be clear for the interview, but also sort them and organize them to start creating forward motion.

So – what about you? What are your thoughts on Twitter celebrities? The job market and interviews? Do you do brain dumps to others, paper, voice or something else to organize? Chime in the comments and let us all know!

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