Categories
Technology

Mini Host

Since around 2005 I have been paying for some sort of web hosting, every month, to pay for at least one WordPress site and some other, smaller, websites. It has been as low as $4/month and as high as $21/month (as it currently is, but they are not at all comparable). I’ve also tried my hand at hosting sites from my own home on a small server running with Intel’s Atom processor. That also worked well.

However, I’ve always wanted to take that last idea to the next level … to really set up my house as a mini host. Set aside a small part of the basement that I now own (WHOHOO!), get myself a server rack, purchase some rackmount hardware and then go at it! I would move everything over to those “new” servers (read: used) and run all of my business from my basement.

Yes, I currently use Rackspace Cloud Servers and have been very VERY happy with how they have worked. It has been great and made moving really simple because I just kept everything there and I could move wherever I wanted with no problems.

However, I want more power and the fun of doing this myself. There is also a need for a “large-ish” file server for backups here at home along with general file storage. A rack would mitigate the later need as well.

Right now I’m looking for a rack, talking with Comcast about what it would cost to get some static IP addresses to my home, and then searching out some used hardware to get started. I don’t need server-grade hardware, but I do want to get some rackmount cases and then get started.

Am I going to do it perfectly? Oh heck no, but I’m going to learn a lot and get to drill some holes and run some cable. I’m looking forward to it.

Categories
Life

My Advice for Future Home Owners

June 14 marked the 4 month mark of our living in our home and owning it. I can say, without a shred of doubt in my mind, that it was one of the best decisions that we have made and I would make it again … 100 times out of 100.

However, I do have some advice for future home owners from my short experience so far. Take everything with a grain (or two) of salt because I’m strange.

Do not purchase a home strictly for financial reasons. Owning a home is like adding a part time job to the mix. Things are going to break, stuff needs to be done, and you might just have a yard to take care of as well. Along with that, you never know how that “investment” you made in your house is going to actually pay off. Also there are a lot of taxes when purchasing a home, so you should also take in count to contact the best Metric Accountants. There were plenty of people who got caught with their proverbial pants down with the recession, and you never know when something is going to happen. Real estate might be the “safest bed” for investment, but there are other things you can do with that money.

Instead, take into considering the other benefits as well to round out your reasons. It IS a place to live in, after all, and you are going to be putting in some work as well so the sense of that place being “home” is quite great. It also connects you to the community in a way that renting cannot because it is a loud statement of “I’m planning on being here for a while, so we should really get along now.”

That’s the other part, make sure you are ready to settle down for a while. If you are moving every few months or even every couple of years, then owning a place is going to be one huge hassle. Want to move? Well, now you need to dump the house you just purchased not too long ago, which is going to add stress and make things all that much LESS pleasant.

So, when deciding, don’t just focus on the financial part of things but keep in mind the HUGE amount of other tangible and intangible benefits (and detriments) as well.

Get decent tools. Seriously, you might as well build it into your home budget if you don’t already have good tools because you are going to be using them. I was dumb and didn’t get a decent drill until very recently and already I’ve used it to put up curtains, hang a chalkboard and build some stilts for my desk downstairs. I should have done it a long time ago.

Also, get at least one corded drill to keep around just in case you forget to plug in your cordless drill. Just a nice insurance drill to have around.

I’m also a fan of doing the research and sticking with one brand of power tool as much as possible. This is especially true of cordless tools because you can often switch batteries between all of your tools (and then you also have multiple batteries).

Having the right tool for the MANY jobs you will have to do can make all of the projects easier and quicker to complete.

Go local for your loan. I only bring this up because of the great experience I have had with my local credit union. My loan officer was extremely professional and was from the area so he already had relationships with the local law firms and realtors. It made the whole experience that much better.

We also had the benefit of getting a great rate from them as well.

Paint as soon as you can. It will make the whole place feel like it is your own. Once that first wall is done, you can step back and marvel at how handy you are and smile because you are slowly changing someone else’s house into your home. It is an awesome feeling.

Also, don’t skimp on the paint. Getting a high quality paint can save you time, and even money because you will need less paint to get the job done.

This goes for any decorating. Just get to it and keep adding things as you want because each things will make the place more your own than it was before.

Beware of people bearing furniture. They’ll come because people came to them and offered them the furniture they “didn’t need” anymore. Mainly, you just want to start with the furniture you have and then slowly choose new pieces or replace old ones as you see fit. That way you won’t run into the problem of having too much furniture around and then looking for someone to  bring that stuff to yourself … it’s a vicious cycle.

Enjoy it. You just bought a house. You’ve decided to stick around in one place for a while with your family so enjoy it! Take some time to just walk around your property and dream big dreams about what you want to do, but always remember that you have TIME to do it. As someone who lived in seven places in just four years prior to moving into our house, I always need to remind myself that what I don’t do today … I can do tomorrow and some things need to wait.

That’s about it for right now.

The Best Time to Design on the Web

I just finished a marathon. Well, it was a marathon for my mind.

Two books have recently been published and they are poised to take the web design community by storm. The first was Adaptive Web Design by Aaron Gustafson and the second Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte. If I was going to recommend just one book, I would push towards Marcotte’s book, but both of them are great and I would recommend each.

I’m not going to go into an exhaustive review of these books, but both of them have found a permanent home next to Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards, a book I still consider to be the most important book in my very short, very poor career so far. If you care about the web at all, you will read Zeldman’s book before anything else.

Back to my task at hand.

The two books I mentioned at the very beginning usher in a new era of web designer, or perhaps it is the same era, just more refined and more focused. The idea flexibility on the web has always been on a designer’s mind, even if it was how to combat that flexibility.

Now the goal is to take hold of the flexibility of the internet and put the user first and foremost. Using every tool available to craft experiences that allow people to use your website on any device, anywhere, without having to compromise on the content.

The idea of “mobile first” has been going around the web for a little while, but it isn’t a dogmatic ideal to pursue. The idea behind “mobile first” is to provide focus for a design and a litmus test to drive decisions. I’m going to try and burn into my head this thought:

How does this content or feature benefit our mobile users?

That one is straight from Marcotte. It isn’t supposed to limit what you can do, but provide the start of a conversation about what is important for you to be doing. A lot of people will be asking for their “stuff” to go “somewhere”, but the focus of asking that simple questions allows for some objectivity to be put into it.

However, it doesn’t stop there. The “desktop” (read: larger-screened) experience tends to fall into the fallacy of thinking that more space automatically means that it needs to be filled with something … anything! Stop right there and forget about that entire notion.

The focus of starting with the idea of what a “mobile” site might need really just focuses on what every person needs, because you really don’t know if that “mobile” person is sitting on a train on spotty 3G or sitting on their couch with good fiber internet, so you have to make those decisions with everyone in mind.

It tends to come back to focusing on what is important. The question provides focus for decisions.

Responsive and/or adaptive web design using such techniques and tools as progressive enhancement, JavaScript, media queries, CSS3, HTML5, etc. allows for the same markup to be massaged in such a way as to present the content in a manner that is appropriate for varied screen sizes and devices. These are nothing more than tools that can be used in many ways.

The real advancement is in how we are now thinking. The embracing of the flexible nature of the web along with the focus of mobile-first development makes this the best time to design on the web.

Categories
Technology

WWDC 2011 Keynote: iCloud

This is decidedly the one announcement that is both the most cryptic and has the ability to be the most revolutionary. Everyone was expect “iCloud” in some form, mostly revolving around a streaming iTunes service (which we did not get), but I don’t think people were expecting a complete and total rethinking of the “digital hub” concept that Steve Jobs has touted for the past decade.

It is hard to talk about what iCloud means without talking about what iCloud is supposed to do in its current form this Fall.

Mail/Calendars/Contacts

Since iCloud is going to replace MobileMe (may she rest in peace), it will handle the main feature set that MobileMe was used for. Not much to talk about here. I’ve been very happy with MobileMe for these three, so I’m hoping that it will worked “as advertised” with iCloud as well.

Apps, Books, Backup

Easy enough as well. Apps can now be pushed to any device when you purchase (so push Twitter to your iPad after you installed it on your iPhone), and you have a list of purchased apps right in the App Store. Welcome addition.

Books work like they have before. Bookmarks and current reading positions are synced across devices. I’ve used this, it works.

You can also do partial backups right to iCloud. Here is what is saved:

  • Purchased music, apps, and books
  • Photos and videos in the camera roll
  • Device settings
  • App data
  • Home screen and app organization
  • Text and MMS messages
  • Ringtones

That’s a good amount of information. It isn’t everything, but if you connect to Wi-Fi, your iOS device will automatically download the latest backup if you put in your Apple ID. All part of untethering your iOS device from a computer.

The backup parts will happen only when connected to Wi-Fi, but it is a lot better than having a person lose all of their information if they break their iOS device.

Documents in the Cloud

Save a document on one device and have it on all devices. That’s what it will hopefully do. Right now it is baked into iWork, but Apple has opened this up for 3rd party developers as well. There isn’t a lot to talk about here, but I’m hoping this makes “cloud syncing” a feature that is just there … for everything.

Photo Stream

This one is a little more complicated. Basically, you take a picture on one iOS device and it gets pushed to the rest, including your Mac or PC. Photo Stream on your iOS device (including you Apple TV 2nd gen) will keep up to 1000 photos for 30 days until you are able to connect to Wi-Fi and back everything up (see above).

At the same time, your Mac or PC will save EVERY photo that you push through to your photo stream. So, you don’t have to worry about losing any pictures at any time, they’ll always be on your Mac or PC (or you can always move them into another album on your iOS device where they will be kept in perpetuity).

iTunes in the Cloud

No, it is not a streaming or subscription iTunes service.

What you now have access to is all of your purchased iTunes music on all of your devices where you can download your music as many times as you want.

This fixes the famous issue where someone loses their iTunes library and wants to get their music back. Now they can log into the iTunes Store and do just that. YAY! New purchases can be pushed to all of your devices as well, which is kind of nice.

iTunes Match

For $25/year, you can have access not just to music purchased through iTunes, but also to your other music as well!

There are two tiers here:

  1. music that you ripped or downloaded somewhere else that is in the iTunes Store can be downloaded on your other devices just fine without having to upload any files
  2. music that iTunes cannot identify is uploaded to iCloud and then is passed around for you to enjoy (up to 20,000 files … I think)

That’s pretty cool as well, but you do have to pay for it.

Price/Overall Impressions

Everything listed above (except iTunes Match) is now … FREE!

Yup, that’s right, Apple has released something huge for free. I’m imagining that they are not going to have a huge issue covering the costs, but this is a major shift for them and it also opens it up even more for 3rd party developers to include iCloud in their offerings. If every Mac/iOS/PC customer with an Apple ID can have access to iCloud … that’s a large market.

This entire offering (and it is really a collection of many services under a single name instead of one large offering) is going to define Apple going ahead. They’ve moved iOS to being on-par with the Mac platform in many ways, and this is another huge push.

However, what remains to be seen is how this all works. MobileMe, for how well it has worked for me, got off to a rocky start and I expect some growing pains with iCloud as well.

With the Apple Stores obviously pushing iCloud to as many iOS and Mac customers as possible, the uptake could be quick (which would be great for data retention). However, iCloud comes with the same fears as any “cloud” technology: privacy, reliability and data caps for three. Will they be an impenetrable barrier, or has Apple finally figured out how to get people to move into “the cloud”?

WWDC 2011 Keynote: iOS 5

As a person who is generally very pleased with his iPhone 3GS (by far the best phone I’ve ever owned, and very close to the best technology device I’ve ever owned), the announcements of iOS 5 are welcome, but not as exciting as either Lion or iCloud to me. I’ll run down just a few things that matter in just a bit.

First, I’ll just recap really quick thoughts on the stuff that really doesn’t excite me all that much but other people will find interesting.

Game Center … meh. I don’t play games on my phone so no use. Twitter? Eh. I already use Twitter. I guess being able to send a twoot from Photos will be nice but not a huge deal. iMessage? I guess it will be nice for Laura and I, but nothing huge for me. Newsstand? Nope.  Reminders? I just ditched Things for pen-and-paper for the sake of simplicity.

Enough of that.

Camera/Photos

My next iPhone is going to replace both a point-and-shoot and camcorder for me. The iPhone 4 would already do that, but I don’t have one. The 3GS is good, but not quite good enough to completely replace everything. Be it a 4 or 4S/5 it really doesn’t matter because it will be replacing my camera.

So the quick snap from the lock screen is going to be a very nice addition. Re-purposing the volume-up button for shutter will be nice, but it still doesn’t sit right with me to reuse a button like that. Perhaps the next version will have a dedicated hardware button for shooting pics, who knows, but I guess it will be nice to get my finger off of the screen for pics.

Some simple editing capabilities along with some improvements to how it handles balancing colors and focusing are all good improvements. People use their phones as cameras, so adding features that make it easier is a good thing.

Notifications

Probably the single biggest headache for me has been dealing with notifications. My way of handling them has been to turn off all pop up notifications that I can and just use badges when needed (mainly for Twitter). Of the notification systems that I have been able to use, I’ve like Android’s the best and I am somewhat pleased to see Apple use that, seemingly, as a template.

You can find out how it works somewhere else, but being able to get at any of the notifications from the lock screen is a nice touch (just slide on the notification). My one hope, for now, is that I can disable the weather and stock tickers. I have no need for either.

PC Free

Being able to set up your phone before attaching it to a computer is awesome, and I’m sure my friends still working at an Apple Store will appreciate not needing to have access to an iMac to get people set up. More of this will be covered in my post on iCloud.

This is another step toward iOS devices being completely and totally independent of any other device. Another page out of Android’s book (somewhat), it is good to see Apple continue to go in this direction.

It is also exciting because it means I will be able recommend iOS to more of my family and replace some of the complex PCs soon(ish).

Wi-Fi Sync

This one is more for power users, and I’m excited about it. Sure, it will probably take all night, but being able to plug in your phone (to the wall) and then have it wirelessly sync with your computer while it is charging is seriously awesome.

Granted, it needs to be plugged into a power source, but I can understand why this is needed. The last thing I would want is for me to come home, have my phone wirelessly sync, leave the house and find that my phone only has 5% battery power left because it really wanted me to have the latest episode of Back to Work.

AirPlay Mirroring

This wasn’t really touched on during the Keynote, but I am most excited about this as a person working for an educational institution. Essentially, you can have one Apple TV (2nd gen) hooked up to an HDTV and any number of iPad’s in the classroom and they can wireless share whatever is on their screen from anywhere in the room (or school for that matter). Seriously cool, and I agree with Fraser Speirs:

The interactive whiteboard has had its day.

That’s seriously cool and, if it works well, could change things considerably in a classroom. The key is that is has to work seamlessly for it to be effective. I hope that some developers are starting to think of new ways to exploit this 1:1 screen-sharing opportunity in the classroom.

Overall Impressions

There is a lot in iOS 5, but I’m still more excited about Lion.

A lot of what was announced directly hits at what other platforms have been doing better, but brings it to iOS and just makes the platform that much stronger. It seems like the elevation of iOS to the Mac’s peer instead of an accessory to the larger, older platform … which is both cool and kind of frightening at the same time.

Some people have been saying that the entire presentation seemed to be saying “we’ve been listening to you for the past four years and here is what we’ve come up with to fix these issues.” I’d agree with that. Apple has been listening, and it will be even more interesting to see how everything works once it is released … this Fall.

I’d expect a simultaneous iPhone 4S/5 + iOS 5 release right around the time we usually expect iPods.