A2 Hosting review 2010: After using GoDaddy web hosting services for the last four years, I just started using the A2 Hosting web hosting services yesterday. Here are my impressions so far.
Buying the new domain name and paying for one year's hosting with A2 Hosting went normally. The nice A2 Hosting coupon (30% off with the phrase "JINGLE") was very nice, making the total price for the domain name and one year's hosting less than $70.
I've been trying to do a lot of things lately to make my "social networking" life easier, but technology keeps beating me down. Yesterday I created some Safari web clips so I could see Twitter, Facebook, and several other web pages on my Mac dashboard (dashboard widgets), but the Twitter and Facebook web clips kept crashing, so after several tries, I gave up.
A GoDaddy web hosting review: I've been a GoDaddy web hosting customer for more than three years now, but as I've been looking around for a private Git hosting service, my eyes were opened to another web hosting company named A2 Hosting. Based on my initial research, I just wrote an A2 Hosting v GoDaddy web hosting comparison/review.
While A2 Hosting looks like they might be more of a "developer friendly" web hosting service, I thought I'd take a few moments to offer my own review of the GoDaddy web hosting service, without taking A2 into consideration.
GoDaddy web hosting versus A2 Hosting: While looking around for a private Git hosting service, I ran across a company named A2 Hosting, and I have to say, their hosting services have opened my eyes. For the last few years I've been using GoDaddy web hosting services for most of my web hosting needs, but if A2 Hosting is anywhere near as good as their documentation and service plans, a year from now they'll probably have all my web hosting business.
Private Git hosting services FAQ: What companies offer Git hosting, in particular private Git hosting services?
I recently started looking for a private Git hosting service, and the obvious first place to look is GitHub. They provide free Git hosting for open source projects, and their service has been excellent. But when I looked at their private Git hosting service, I was really surprised by the cost of their plans. Their lowest price private Git hosting plan is $7/month, and that allows only five Git projects, and relatively little disk space. Since I want a private Git hosting service to store all my projects, I'd immediately need to go to one of their paid Git hosting plans, and their Git hosting prices go up quickly from there.
Update: Github has changed their policies significantly since I first wrote this article.
Drupal front page meta tags FAQ: How do I get meta tags to show up on the front page of my Drupal website?
After converting my website about living in Alaska to Drupal several months ago, I just realized that I made a mistake on the Drupal front page configuration, and forgot to specify any meta tags on the Drupal front page(!). Looking at it again now, front page meta tags aren't a really obvious configuration setting in Drupal, so I thought I'd briefly describe how to fix this problem.
Mac OS X debug FAQ: Help, I'm having a problem with [fill in the blank] on my Mac OS X system, how do I troubleshoot it?
I just ran into a problem when trying to create a Safari web clip dashboard widget, where the web clip isn't properly updating itself, and I stopped for a moment to think about how to troubleshoot/debug this Mac OS X problem. That's when I thought, "Okay, a Mac is a Unix system, check the log files." So I cracked open a Mac Terminal window, and checked the system log file:
With 2011 barreling around the corner, I've been busy putting things together to start a new web design, web hosting, and computer programming consulting business here in Alaska.
While my current website is as ugly as it gets, here's a link to my "coming soon" Mat-Su Valley Programming website. As you can tell, I've been giving myself a few minutes every night to get the website set up, as I have plenty more important things to do at the moment.
Mac dashboard widgets deleting FAQ: Help, how do I delete Mac dashboard widgets?
As I was investigating the process of how to create a custom Mac dashboard widget from a web page using Safari, I remembered that the process of how to delete a Mac dashboard widget is not obvious at all. So, here's a quick look at how to delete Mac dashboard widgets.
The process of deleting Mac dashboard widgets goes like this:
Mac dashboard widgets FAQ: How can I create a Mac dashboard widget from a web page?
Some time back, I don't remember exactly when, Apple introduced the ability to create Mac dashboard widgets from web pages with their Safari web browser. The process of creating a Mac dashboard widget from a web page is fairly simple, and I thought I'd share the steps in a short tutorial here.
I just created a Mac dashboard widget from an "aurora borealis" forecast web page, and these are the steps I followed:
After I posted on Twitter that the Google Chrome OS reminded me of the Tektronix X-Terminals we used at NASA around 1990, a friend tweeted the reply, "The network is the computer."
If you know anything about Unix history, you know "The network is the computer" was the slogan of Sun (nee Sun Microsystems) for many years. I remember reading an article one time where Sun executive said something like, "We don't really know what it means, but we like it", in regards to this slogan.
Oracle Apache JCP rift: "The Apache Software Foundation has resigned its seat on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee (EC). Apache has served on the EC for the past 10 years, winning the JCP 'Member of the Year' award 4 times, and recently was ratified for another term with support from 95% of the voting community."
That's how to the Apache Software Foundation blog post begins when describing why they have quit the Java JCP EC. They later add:
Free PHP Flash charts FAQ: What do you know about Flash charts (Flash charts and graphs tools that can be used in PHP applications), especially free Flash charting and graphing tools (or interactive charts and graphs)?
As I keep digging into free PHP charts and graphs tools, I've found that several of these tools special in "Flash charts", typically interactive Flash charts. Here's a quick review of what I've learned about these Flash charts.
Open Flash Chart Project
Summary: This is a CakePHP cheat sheet. (Note: This reference was initially created in 2011, and may be slightly out of date.)
As I embark on another CakePHP project after a long hiatus, I'm trying to cram CakePHP back into my head. As part of this effort, I'm creating this large CakePHP cheat sheet (reference page), which I hope will be helpful to the CakePHP community. It is based on both the CakePHP cheat sheet on their Trac website and the CakePHP Cookbook (see the links below).
iMac brightness FAQ: Help, my iMac brightness is too bright, is there a way I can dim the iMac monitor brightness more than the standard iMac brightness control allows?
Yes, I have the same problem, and fortunately this "iMac brightness is too bright" problem seems to be a well-known issue. Even better, you can get free software to help dim the iMac brightness more than Apple allows with Mac OS X. Over a year ago I downloaded a free Mac application named Shades that does a good job of reducing the iMac brightness, and here's what I know about it.
MySQL alter table FAQ: Can you share some examples of how to use the MySQL ALTER TABLE syntax, especially the ADD COLUMN syntax.
Sure, here’s a MySQL “ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN” example I just ran through. I started with a MySQL database table named ideas:
Apache virtual hosting FAQ: How do I configure Apache to run multiple virtual hosts (name-based virtual hosts)?
An Apache name-based virtual host (NameVirtualHost) tutorial: As a quick reminder to myself for something I just did using MAMP on my Mac OS X system, here's how I configured the MAMP Apache server to use name based virtual hosting for two websites that I'm developing at the same time.
PHP integer FAQ: Can you demonstrate a regular expression pattern to match an integer?
Interestingly, while reading a book titled Advanced PHP Programming, the author mentions that the PHP is_int function doesn't work exactly the way you expect it to. It just tests to see whether a given variable is typed as an integer or something else, so if you give it a string like "123", it will return false. This is a bad thing when you're trying to test web form data, for example.
Wow, after “Eleven Days of Hell” following my gallbladder surgery — I had a post-operative infection — I'm glad to say that I’m finally back to work from my gallbladder surgery. If you were thinking I haven’t responded to your comments or emails lately, well, you were right, and I’ll try to catch up soon.
I've been playing with Drupal 7 lately on the Drupal Gardens website, and in the process I decided to create another blog about living in Alaska. If you're interested in Drupal and/or Alaska, here's a link to this new blog about living in Alaska, which currently includes information about Wasilla and Talkeetna, Alaska.
