# Friday, June 20, 2008

To my fellow nerds... Server collocation

A few of us have talked about renting some dedicated hosting. Primarily collocation hosting. It'd mean upfront purchase and ownership of server, and only a monthly cost for rack space, power, internets, bandwidth.

Personally, I'm very tired for getting pw3nd by shared hosting providers. I do understand that it can't be perfect, but you still have to have a decent uptime, and you can't lie. I'd go into detail about how 1and1 has screwed with me over the years but I'll be brief (tried to cancel webhosting but keep Exchange, but told me I had to get a different Exchange account and transfer my mail, or else it would be lost since the Exchange was 'attached' to the webhosting. Seems like a billing problem, not MY problem. Also, if I call you to tell you your server has been down for 30 minutes, and I call and you fix it while I'm on hold, don't passively treat me like I'm bothering you because everything is working)

Also, their .net app restrictions are not the best.

Okay, it wasn't too brief. But I've played out the numbers assuming I purchase the server, and it'll cost you less than good meal per month.

Update: +1 BJ +1 SP +1PS

Check out http://ntsource.com/web-hosting/colocation-web-hosting.html

Update: BJ and PeterS have brought up cloud hosting options like Amazon's EC2 and GoGrid. I am not very familiar with these, and they seem to charged based on application. But if it were possible to have a single app running windows server 2008 VM, I could see it working.

#    Friday, June 20, 2008 8:52:28 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |
# Thursday, June 19, 2008

Netflix discontinuing profiles (blogging at a ball game... )


I'm at the Sox game. Great game! My sister caught a foul ball and the White Sox are winning.

Onto the nerdy stuff. Just got an email from Netflix. They're discontinuing profiles. They never worked well, so at least they're going away. The main problem was that different profiles couldn't watch instant material. Sox scored. I can understand their hesitation since it could lead to abuse, but this could be avoided with limitations on the number of profiles and length of viewing allowed.
Sox scored. Thome almost had a heart attack.

Sent from my Windows MobileĀ® phone.

Update: Photo added, was supposed to be email-to-blog, but 1and1 blocks sockets.... ftl. Looking for new hosting provider.
#    Thursday, June 19, 2008 9:50:21 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |
# Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Getfirefox.com gets hammered as people look for FF3 - Servers die in process



I eventually got through and Firefox 3 wasn't even on the site at the appropriate time (maybe they took it down to limit downloads? nothing listed on their blog status). The site keeps going down. Hope they bring it up soon, they were putting a lot of marketing into the whole world record download within 24 hours.
As a partial defense to Mozilla, they did mention that you cannot use the self update as it won't count towards their record keeping. But it probably still shouldn't crash, eh.

Update: Finally got it downloading @ 2:00 PM CST (12:00 PDT). 2 hours late, but at least they still have 22 hours to go. Good luck!

#    Tuesday, June 17, 2008 12:20:51 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |
# Monday, June 16, 2008

Battlestar Galactica vs Star Trek Voyager

Short but nerdy post.
Want a reason why Battlestar Galactica is better than Voyager? The series didn't suddenly end when they entered the orbit of Earth.
Those who know me, know I've complained about this before. BSG didn't make me start jumping wildly,"You've got to be kidding me?!!?!". People tried to calm me with the prospect of a follow-up movie, but wait.. what's that next Star Trek movie? That's right.... set way waaay before Voyager.

#    Monday, June 16, 2008 8:41:26 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |

Firefox 3

As Sam pointed out, hell has frozen over. I've practically changed over to Firefox and impatiently waiting for version 3 to come out tomorrow. I am one of the many who pledged to download tomorrow.
Compared to IE7, it supports my CSS much better. Which can be a problem. I make a site look perfect in FF, but looks horrible when many others pull it up in IE. No need to rant, but that's the way of the world. When developing, you must make it cross-browser. But this is also where the FF plugin for IE come in. I can easily change between browers within an IE tab to test a page. Also works well for site that require IE (OWA).
Another plugin is Ad-Block. I feel a bit guilty taking away ad content from sites, but most of the time I only do it for sites with HORRIBLE advertising. Example: Facebook. Advertisement are based on your personal status in your profile. I am listed as single, so they throw up singles ads. Makes sense right? Why is it that the majority of the ads sporting gay men? And yes, I know I opened myself up for jokes. Facebook is making a judgement, but they only looked as far as me being single. They didn't go the rest of the way to see what sex I listed as "interested in". *click* ads gone.
The plugin management, and autoupdate for each plugin is fantastic. I don't have to go back to the addon page to seek an update, it pops up and notifies me. Hooray. To be fair, FF3 RC3 has been a memory behemoth. I use it heavily @ work, and most of the time I cannot leave it running over night. It will typically crash once a day. Perhaps tomorrow will show improvement. Is that decent enough of a reason, Sam.

#    Monday, June 16, 2008 5:19:10 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |

Amazon's Kindle

I've seen lots of blogs talking about the Kindle, but I've never seen one in person.  It actually didn't look that awkward or out of place.

Screw Starbucks or other hipster hangouts, KFC/A&W FTW.

Edit: Thanks for pointing it out, Chris!

#    Monday, June 16, 2008 12:20:10 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |
# Friday, June 13, 2008

Another dead Hauppauge card

Two Hauppauge cards(HVR-1600 and HVR-1800) that will not tune QAM or OTA Digital. Now, the chances would seem to be slim, but what else could it be? When I take the coax from my tv (that tunes clear QAM), and plug it into my Hauppauge card, it fails. It was also a clean install of Vista. So now I RMA it again, at least they'll cover the shipping for an additional RMA

#    Friday, June 13, 2008 10:28:50 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |
# Tuesday, June 10, 2008

QAM in Media Center - Painful

I've always been a fan of Media Center, even in its infancy.  But with ways to integrate Blu-ray, HD-dvd, Netflix, into a networked DVR on steroids, it makes Media Center a great choice for an all-in-one solution.

Fantastics aside, it's still plagued with problems that it should not have.  In order to get most of these features, you need to have t3h nerd skills which brings me to QAM.

Sweet (biblical reference), clear QAM support should be in Media Center!!!! Most cards support QAM now, but you need to use their application to tune it to QAM channels.

Many card manufacturers like Hauppauge,WinTV products, have taken to the task of creating ways to trick media center into tuning QAM. The Beta driver has you setup an OTA as if you're using an antenna.  Then you launch a separate application to map those channels to actual QAM channels from your cable service.
Put simply, it's a good thing they call it beta, so no hard feelings. They were driven to this horrid option.  Even talking to an employee of Hauppauge, he/she was not able to get it to work.  In addition to that, there was a report that after installation, it hosed *something* and QAM wouldn't even work in the WinTV app. Eeeek!

Nevertheless, I'm doing a clean install of Vista, prepping a disk image, and will be reporting back some findings!
 

Edit: go see a newer post of mine

#    Tuesday, June 10, 2008 8:22:35 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |
# Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Hello Internets

This is my first post on my revived blog. I haven't blogged since my college days.  I've realized how important sharing of knowledge is, hence why I've dived back in.  Doing many nerdy things, I typically run into different blogs of people trying to do the similar tasks.  Sometimes, something has not been done before, and the knowledge stays with me once I complete it. So here we go!

For example, dasBlog 2.1.8102.813 so far seems to be a powerful, yet simple application not requiring an SQL backend.  There were not any specific write ups on a 1and1 install, so here you go:
Step 1: Upload files from dasblogce to a dir of your choice.
Step 2: Modify
web.config
comment <trust level="Medium" originUrl=".*" />
uncomment <httpCookies httpOnlyCookies="false"/>
SiteConfig\site.config
Modify obvious settings until <!-- END OF SUGGESTED SETTINGS -->
SiteConfig\siteSecurity.config
DO NOT CHANGE ADMIN PW.  It is encrypted. Log in and change it.
Step 3: Use WebFiles to modify permissions on the following directories: content, siteconfig, and logs.  Give NETWORK SERVICE full read/write/modify permissions
Step 4: Use WebFiles to create the WebApplicaion. Just point it to your subdir of your blog. Mine is /blog.
Step 5: Navigate to your blog, change your pw&options, and you're done!

#    Tuesday, May 27, 2008 9:48:15 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | |