web development

I thought I would share with the rest of the community this great little time saver. FireQuery, needs Firebug, allows you to query the DOM and see what changes take place - without saving a file or refreshing the page. Just like testing  CSS changes in Firebug.

I spent more time than I wanted to today learning how to subtract unix based timestamps. I was looking for nodes (Drupal) that are greater than 30 days old. After much reading on all the different mysql time and date functions, I finaly found the solution...

I moved a few more accounts from the old server to the new server this evening. Once the accounts were setup I went to change the nameserver names at godaddy, where I keep most of my domains.

Google has launched their version of a "website overnight" - Google sites. Those who keep up with Google expected this to come soon.

Thanks to Joshua over at AddingUnderstanding.com for taking the time to blog about two Drupal modules that help WordPress users migrate to Drupal.

I wanted to followup with why WordPress users would want to do such a thing and a trend I predict will unfold over the coming years.

Wordpress is a great CMS mostly used for bloggers. WordPress has plenty of modules to add to your WP CMS but many WP users are finding that Drupal is a better fit for scaling and growing your website needs.

I am happy to report that my server came in today, all 105lbs of it! I couldn't believe that thing weighed so much. In case anyone is interested in the specs of it:

Dell PE 6650 - 2x3.0/4M 4G-8 P3DC 1x73G(10K) 2x146G(10K)

If I wanted I could add two more cores, two more drives, and 28 more gigbyte of ram.

Why am I buying a server? It is pretty simple. The savings over time. The server itself plus shipping was a little under $1,900. I currently pay $167 for renting a dedicated server. $167x12 = $2004/year. But, this server package is limited, it does not have the same specs as the server I just purchased.

If I upgraded my rented dedicated server at dedicated now my monthly costs would be $667.50/month or $8010/year.

Some months back I decided it would be good business to provide services to local small businesses here in my hometown (Lafayette / West Lafayette). There are some developing businesses already most charge an arm and a leg. And when you think they are reliable, then end up going out of business.

I have found over the past year I enjoy consulting and helping local business owners with web endeavors. I get more satisfaction out of that than actually getting paid. And, I have been told that is a start to something good!

Ok, so I am not that great on the command line in linux. Tonight I went to remove some files within a directory and used: rm -fR /

And that ended up removing all sorts of things from root down. That created a huge pit in my stomach! Not a good feeling. I should have used: rm -fR

Hopefully the backup will take place within a few minutes so I can finish what I was doing.

The one thing about making big mistakes is you learn from them! I won't be doing that one again...

Tonight I was watching a show called Flip this house, or something like that. Basically, people buy houses cheap, fix them up within 4-6 weeks, then resell them within 2-4 weeks. In the end they make a very decent profit.

I saw some parallels with flipping houses (reconstructing or redeveloping) and taking an idea and created a site to sell it. I thought it was interesting how the online world does and can reference the offline world - when it comes to this kind of business.

On one of the house flips, one couple shared how they learned a few lessons. One of the major lessons, was to sell the first flip before moving on to another. That definitely applies to the online world.

Well, I am hopefully about done with the current project. I am not sure if I can announce it quite yet since it is not my website, once it goes live I will give an update with a link to the site.

I can say that the site is a community site that focuses on practitioners interacting with those who have chronic diseases. I have spent a huge amount of time building the "profile" up for a user. I never knew that would take so long. There are a lot of conditions to satisfy.

A delay has come up in launching iPhone Gear. A friend is working for a client whose developers skipped town on him. Well, I shouldn't say skipped, but something happened to their commitment.

iPhone Gear is almost most done. I am so eager to finish this that I can taste it. This past week I have been talking with wholesaler's and distributors about the iphone accessories and it seems there is a bit of a delay due to Apple's involvement in approving who can make compatible accessories. It seems that Apple has their hand in receiving royalties from 3rd parties who make accessories for the iPhone - which is slowing the production of things down. Seems a bit too much to me that Apple would to that length to make money, I mean, maybe it is better for the 3rd parties (manufacturers) to not make accessories to begin with.

This is just a quick update for the website iPhone Gear, is 90% of the way finished. This website, in my opinion, has a good combination of community features and shopping options. My plan is to allow the community to help others to know about products, what works well, how to use certain products etc. so far the video, galleries, iphone widgets, and forums have been completed. I have not done the update to the live server yet but on my laptop these things have been done. I am considering of changing the theme/design but I will make those changes if the community indicates that should be done. I'll also began looking on hiring a few content moderators/builders.