Aug/100
Finding the right web host is never easy
In order for your website to be available to anyone at anytime, you need to host it with a web host (i-e a web server leased to you by a website hosting company).
Also, in order for your visitor to easily access your site by name, you will need a domain name such as yourname.com. Most hosting companies will offer you a package including a domain name with the hosting of your site.
While static HTML sites can be hosted on virtually ANY web server, when it comes to web applications, you need to be aware of the technology they are using. There are 2 main categories here:
Linux hosting: this is also referred to as LAMP as in Linux Apache MySQL PHP which are the main technologies here. b2evolution for example runs on LAMP servers.
Jun/100
Word, dude
Buddhism Plain and Simple (Steve Hagen)
most of us have lost faith in our ancient storybook versions of the world. With the development of science, many of us have come to see the world as an inconceivably strange, vast, complex, impersonal, multi-dimensional, and perhaps meaningless realm of mind and matter.
We may feel forced to deal with this loss of faith by going to one of two wretched extremes. Either we blind ourselves to our predicament and attempt to escape via drugs or alcohol or our careers or any of innumerable belief systems, or we face the woeful prospect that we’re intelligent creatures living in a meaningless world.
Many of us act as though we could find fulfillment if only we possessed enough money, enough security, enough respect, enough love, enough faith, enough education, enough power, enough peace, enough knowledge, enough… something.
There are others among us, however, who don’t (or can’t) buy into this. They sense that real security is impossible to attain. For they know that even if we could manage to accumulate all we desire, it will be inevitably taken from us by death. Our mortality looms above us, as terrifying as it is certain. We seem utterly stumped. How can we possibly find peace under these conditions? Not only do we feel imprisoned by our ignorance, we seem doomed to remain that way.
Dec/093
What do you think of the new wordpress theme?
I'm so happy with the new blog theme!
Thanks to the talent of our designer friend, Damian, and software development skillz of our Indian software partners Daffodil Software the whole Listingslab Productions package is coming together.
It's been a long, hard job over the summer and inter-season but the work jag is coming to an end now. With an original design coded into compliant XHTML, a drupal and a wordpress theme, all that remains is to roll out the design using a whitelabel approach to all the sites I've got in my portfolio.
There's a lot of 'em....
- www.living-websites.eu
- www.chamonix-green-white.com
- www.papillonchamonix.com
- www.live-the-good-life.eu
to name just a few of the new ones.
About Daffodil Software
Based in India, in a small city of under half a million souls are our Indian coding parnters Daffodil Software.
View See Gurgaon in a Google maps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurgaon
Dec/090
Re-Reading JPod on the kindle
The kindle couldn't have been a twinkle at the time JPod was written, but Douglas Coupland could not have created a more perfect book to read on the medium.
JPod (Douglas Coupland)
Added on Monday, December 07, 2009, 02:04 PM
John Doe said, "I'd like to do whatever it is people statistically do when confronted by a jolt of large and bad news."
I suggested he ingest five milligrams of Valium and three shots of hard liquor or four glasses of domestic wine. "Really?" "Don't ask me, John. Google it." "And so I shall."
Oct/090
Baron von Winckler flattens park hill?
My Aunt in America has written a book of local history which I can't wait to read. This is what she has to say about it;
My book is a 100 year history of a Denver suburb called Park Hill. The first development began in the 1890s. Before that it was prairie land. For perspective, Park Hill is closer to Denver than where I live about 7 miles further east. We need histories of suburbs because Americans are too quick to bulldoze everything after 50 years and simply loose the information that has gone before.
Park Hill was platted by a german possibly related to the "Red Baron" of WWI. His name was Baron ...von Winckler. He had a very sad life and committed suicide here but left us what became a beautiful suburb with architect-designed homes and tree-lined streets.
Then, in the 1970s, the school busing laws began to be enforced here. That was a complicated process where public school boundaries were redrawn to include lower economic areas so that blacks would be bused into the white schools.
This happened all around the country. "White flight" followed, meaning that white families sold their houses quickly and moved further outside of Denver to avoid busing their kids.
But in Park Hill, a core group of residents and churches decided to embrace the changes. The problems they had and the law suits that followed hopefully will be my next book.
How about that for a summary?
Sep/092
Why I love Spotify and you will too
Since mp3 was invented I've been collecting music and have over 1500GB of music on my server. The music was collected from many sources: ripping CD's, raiding other people's collections, downloading torrents etc, but something has always bothered me about it. The artists aren't getting paid for their work, and that's wrong. Much as my conscience bothers me, there's obviously no way I'm going to actually pay for something I can get for free and in most cases I can get it quicker and easier for free than I can by buying it.
I've been waiting for something like Spotify. Finally, someone has come up with a way to sidestep the problem, making music easily available to all for free but without ripping off the artists in the process. Music is added to theSpotify system with the artists permission and the clever Swedish company share the revenue from advertising and Premium services according to the number of times the artist's tracks are played.
The Premium Service is EUR 10 per month (EUR 120 per year) and gives the subscriber the ability to use Spotify Mobile. The mobile service runs on an iPhone (and other good phones too), and the 3G mobile networks are currently good enough to stream music over. This means you have mobile access to an enormous amount of music whilst yourplay lists are synced between your computer and phone meaning you only have to find it once.
I consider 120EUR per year a very fair price to listen to whatever I want, whenever and where ever I want to listen to it.
The service is so popular at the moment that it's invite only in the UK, but that will change. Hopefully Spotify and the companies that follow will create a fine business model which is fair to all. Here's a selection of Spotify's own FAQ's if you're not yet convinced.
What is Spotify?
Spotify offers you legal and free access to a huge library of music. All you need to do is create an account and download our streaming music player. For more details have a look at our video or introduction page.
What is Spotify's goal?
Our dream is to let everyone listen to whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want.
What countries is Spotify available in?
Spotify is currently available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain. We hope to launch in more countries in the future.
Do I need to pay to use Spotify?
No, the advertising-funded version of Spotify is free of charge, however, for now it requires that you receive an invite to register unless you are in the UK. Visit our invitation page to sign up to the waiting list. Alternatively, you can pay for an ad-free premium subscription to Spotify.
What bandwidth does Spotify need?
We recommend 256 kbit/s. Spotify usually works well on a 3G connection. Plenty of free disk space also helps keep the network requirements down as it enables more caching.
How much advertising will I be exposed to?
There should be significantly fewer ads in Spotify than you’d find on commercial radio. We are trying to strike a balance between artists who want to be paid and providing the best possible user experience.
Why do I have to install Spotify?
By installing Spotify as a stand alone application you get a much better user experience and audio quality compared to web-based sites.
On what platforms can I use Spotify?
Mac OS X 10.4 or later and Windows XP or later. You can also run Spotify in Wine on Linux.
Can I use Spotify from multiple locations?
Yes, you can install Spotify on as many computers as you like. You may be logged in to Spotify from several computers simultaneously, but you can only play music on one computer at a time. The music at your other computers will automatically be paused. If you want to install Spotify on more than one computer simply download the program again and login with your existing username and password, there is no need for an invite token.
Can I share music with my friends?
Yes, you can drag and drop any track, album, artist or playlist to your email or instant messenger which creates a link to your favorites that you can send to your loved ones. They need to have Spotify to listen, though. Read more about sharing and collaborative playlists in our blog.
Why do you have two different link formats?
The spotify: URIs are the real Spotify addresses. The http://open.spotify.com/ URLs are a workaround to give you clickable, blue and underlined links in instant-messenger and email applications that don’t yet recognize the Spotify URI format. When there is a choice (such as when you are creating your own hyperlinks on the web), always use the spotify: addresses. What happens when you click an http://open.spotify.com/ link is that a page is opened in your web browser that redirects you to the real address (the spotify: equivalent). When you have control over the links, that’s a redundant step. And if you’re a software developer, please consider auto-detecting the spotify: URIs in your applications.
Can I make more advanced searches?
Yes, you can search for genres by writing genre: followed by the genre you want to find, like genre:Trip-hop. You can do the same thing with release years for albums by writing year: and the year you want. You can even specify a range, like year:1979-1982. Other searches to play with are artist:, album: and track
Can I use Spotify to play music in my bar, restaurant, store, etc?
No, the Terms & Conditions that you agree to when registering for Spotify states that Spotify is for personal, non-commercial use
Can I stream Spotify music to speakers with Airport, Logitech Squeeze box, Sonos, etc?
Currently there is no built-in support for this but some of our users have found ways to make is possible. For more info read here about Apple Airport and Logitech Squeezebox
Sep/090
Mass biking
There were 10 of us biking in Les Houches this morning. Ruth's birthday you see, so we thought we'd celebrate by booting it down from the Prarion lift on our bikes.
Mel from the Office bar showed up on a bike she'd borrowed from a mate which looked like a toy compared to the full suspension downhill rigs we're all riding. Watching her come off it a few times made us all consider giving her our body armour, but that would be a chivalrous step too far. She did well, though and even went up for another run.
It's fun biking in a large group like that, although with a lot of bikes the chances of something breaking is quite high. We got away with a single puncture between us, no broken bones and a bit of a tan.
Sep/092
Bombs disguised as drinks. String ‘em up
There's been quite a lot of hype about these three dodgy looking geezers in the in the UK media over the last two days.
(L to R) Tanvir Hussain, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar were found guilty
These are the twats who got caught planning to mix two inert, innocent looking liquids into something very explosive and therewith board an airoplane and knock it out of the sky, killing everyone on board.
Obviously that's not very nice and a lot of nice people would have their innocent lives ended, but that's not my beef with these idiots.
It's the fact that through their stupidity - and you only have to hear their suicide tapes to be sure they're not the sharpest tools in the box - you can no longer take liquids onto planes.
What a mess that was. No shampoo in your hand luggage. Aside from the extra time and bullshit going through customs to get on a damn commuter flight from London to Geneva, I also had to watch those jobsworth airport security wankers throw my shampoo, toothpaste and deodorant in the bin, forcing me to buy more of the stuff at my destination.
For that transgression against human rights alone, I think Messers Tanvir Hussain, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar should be given the strongest punishment UK law allows.