Welcome all visitors from EEWeb! Today I am excited to have my site featured as site of the day: http://www.eeweb.com/websites/mostthingsweb.
As far as new content is concerned, I am working on an AVR PWM tutorial, and a new Raspberry Pi automation project. More details soon!
I have just finished migrating all of my BitBucket repositories from Mercurial to Git. All of the projects are still accessible at the same URLs they were before, but they now use Git. The reason for the change is that I have been using Git for a number of projects since the summer, and have grown to like it more than Mercurial. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Since 2009 I have sold my photography and designs on my Zazzle store. Recently, I decided to rebrand the store and somewhat integrate it with my blog. If you are interested, please check it out either by using the new “Store” tab above or by clicking here.
Much of what I sell comes from my interest in nature photography and also martial arts. I’ll spare you a Flash widget, and instead just include a few photos below:
“The Krav Equation” Sports Shirt
Black-chinned hummingbird mousepad
Queen butterfly mousepad
I appreciate the support, even if you only want to take a quick peek.
Happy belated new year! Wow, I’ve been slacking on this blog. Anyway, I wanted to give a quick update on what I’ve been doing over the past month and what I’ll be doing in 2013.
I’ve switched to Linux! Linux Mint, to be exact. I made the switch during my Christmas break, and after a few weeks of getting adjusted, I don’t think I can ever switch back to Windows again. While I still have a small Windows partition for games (Battlefield 3, anyone?), my day-to-day activities are now carried out exclusively on Linux. There were a few factors that caused me to switch:
What does this mean for my blog/projects? Well, I think I’ll be spending less time with C#, unfortunately. I’ve installed MonoDevelop and Mono, which I’m looking forward to working with, but the draw of Python may end up being too great. I don’t think I’ll ever give up C#, however.
As I said, I’ll be spending more time with Python. I’m hoping to come up with some good Python posts.
Over break I acquired my first Raspberry Pi (model B). Currently, its sole purpose is a No-IP client, but I have big plans for it. Sensor gateway, anyone? More on that some other time.
I’ve been using C++ on a very basic level for the last year or two (with Arduino and a few other projects,) but this year I’ll be investigating it much more.
And finally, I have a few improvements in mind for VirtualScroller, my Titanium module for implementing memory-efficient infinite (and finite) scrolling. In addition, I’ll probably be playing around with some networking stuff on Titanium.
Well, that’s what I’ve got lined up for now, although I’m sure I’ll get side-tracked during the course of the year and end up working on completely different stuff in addition to what I’ve listed. Either way, 2013 should be fun.
Take a look my friend’s new blog about tea: http://epiteablog.com/
He has some neat information on the science and history of tea, how to brew it properly, and reviews of various teas. There will also be a store opening soon.
Here’s an excerpt from one of his latest posts about the origins of Rooibos tea.
So, what is this Rooibos Tea?
For centuries in a small part of what is now South Africa, people were using a redish bush to cure ailments, promote health, and increase longevity. The people there took the dried leaves of this bush to make what we now call Rooibos tea (roy-bos).
This Rooibos tea remained in South Africa for centuries until very recently. Even at the dawn of the new century Rooibos tea was not widely known outside of the country…
So far it’s looking very promising and active, with multiple updates a week. Go check it out: http://epiteablog.com/
I’ve just finished moving all my projects to BitBucket and changing their version control systems to Mercurial. This change was a long time coming: Subversion was really pissing me off (I know Google Code supports it but BitBucket has a nicer interface) and Google Code had a few annoyances.
So, here are the updated links for each project:
I’ve also gone through my past posts to remove references and links to Google Code. If I missed a Google Code reference, please let me know in the comments below.
In case you didn’t recognize this site when you first came to it, please be aware that I’ve changed themes. I’m now using Suffusion.
Although I’ve generally been dissatisfied with GoDaddy (sex-sells marketing, constant up-sells, etc.), their most recent infraction really pushed me over the edge: error logs are not enabled by default.
Logs must be explicitly enabled, which isn’t very helpful after an error has just occurred, which is usually the case on a live site. Granted, this was on a shared hosting server. But, considering that I was paying about $8 a month, you’d think that such a simple feature wouldn’t be too much to ask for. With this in mind, I began researching replacement web hosts.
I don’t remember exactly how I discovered Hawk Host, but it might have been after reading this review on SitePoint. After a little more digging around, I found that the general consensus was that it is a good company with fast and helpful support. Case and point: During my research, I had a question about domain transfers so I sent them an email. Not only did I get a response a few hours later, but it was from the CEO! I’m not sure if it’s standard practice for him to answer a few support emails here and there, but I was sold.
After exchanging a few more emails, I committed to a hosting plan with two domain transfers. During setup, I did encounter a few problems (which turned out to be related to my stupidity), but HawkHost’s support was very helpful. It was refreshing to get responses that actually pertained to my problem, as opposed to a canned response (*cough* GoDaddy *cough*). They had a very “Yes, we can help you do that.” attitude that I really liked.
The thing I immediately noticed was how fast HawkHost’s servers are; hopefully you too have noticed that this blog has gotten faster. I was so sick of 10 second page loads, even with caching. I don’t even have caching installed on this site anymore!
Some other benefits I’ve noticed after switching from GoDaddy:
I could go on, but I’d rather keep this post short and end here: If you are looking for a place to host your site, take a look at HawkHost.
P.S. I do not work for HawkHost or their related companies. I did not receive any compensation for this review. However, I did link to HawkHost using my affiliate link, which all customers get for free.
