I'm official!
My LLC is formed, I have my county license, my EIN and I have a checking account for my business!
Now I need clients!
Check out my site: www.tecbrat.com to learn more about me and my company.
I'll plan on an update here very soon about a client that will be hosting multiple sites with me, and possibly a couple other clients that host one site each.
I'll be doing SEO for myself and my clients. I'll probably talk a little about my success in that area on this blog too.
Corry Wauford
aka TecBrat
Tecbrat.com LLC
www.tecbrat.com
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
HostGator
I have had more than my share of frustrations with HostGator as I was the lead web developer at my previous employer. Their servers would run excellently for a long time, then be down for 6, 12 or 24 hours with little to no explanation, only apologies.
I seriously considered going with Liquid Web for my new venture, but they don't have the kind of reseller hosting that I'm looking for. The closest they have is what HG sells as "Hatchling, Baby and Business" shared hosting.
So, I'm back at HostGator. I had a question and clicked on their "Live Chat" button. Wouldn't you know it, they gave an estimated response time of 30 minutes!
If you have a decent alternative, I'd suggest something besides HG. I was pretty satisfied with LW for the few months I used them.
NOT AN AFFILIATE WITH EITHER. JUST AND HONEST OPINION.
I seriously considered going with Liquid Web for my new venture, but they don't have the kind of reseller hosting that I'm looking for. The closest they have is what HG sells as "Hatchling, Baby and Business" shared hosting.
So, I'm back at HostGator. I had a question and clicked on their "Live Chat" button. Wouldn't you know it, they gave an estimated response time of 30 minutes!
If you have a decent alternative, I'd suggest something besides HG. I was pretty satisfied with LW for the few months I used them.
NOT AN AFFILIATE WITH EITHER. JUST AND HONEST OPINION.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Free Cloud Service as a mapped network drive: WebDAV
I have two computers sitting at one desk. They share a keyboard and monitor with a nifty $16 device that switches with a button. (I just checked. It went up to $19.99) Often, I'll be working on one and need to switch over to the other. Subconsciously, I want to use the clipboard, but I know better. I thought I'd just share a folder and pass text documents through it as a fairly simple work around. It would be better than emailing myself, and would allow me to pass images and other files easily as well.
One of them is running Windows 7 Home Premium. The other is running Windows 7 Professional. The Professional one is also joined to a domain, and that causes confusion when trying to do file shares with a homegroup. (This article will tell you how to convert / copy your domain profile to local) When I began to run into trouble getting this to work, I started looking at ways to map Google Drive as a network drive. I found a service that does exactly that, and supports other cloud services, but they charge a fee. I'm fine with someone making a buck, but I have a saying "If it's free, it's for me.", so I went looking for a free option.
In my searching up to this point, I learned an important vocabulary term "Web DAV".
From Wikipedia: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers
What I found was "Box" or "Box.com". (formerly box.net) You get a free account with 10G storage and 10G transfer. Visit their site for premium options. (no affiliation and too soon to review)
Once I created and verified my account, I simply mapped a network drive.
Box.com will provide you with the link to put in the "Folder" field.
In the dialog, I had to check the "Connect using different credentials" option.
Whatever email address you use to create your box.com account will be the user name and your box.com password will be used here as well.
My Home premium system shows the drive being nearly full, but my Professional one shows it much larger than my actual quota. If that's the worst problem with it, then it's functional enough for my immediate needs.
YMMV!
One of them is running Windows 7 Home Premium. The other is running Windows 7 Professional. The Professional one is also joined to a domain, and that causes confusion when trying to do file shares with a homegroup. (This article will tell you how to convert / copy your domain profile to local) When I began to run into trouble getting this to work, I started looking at ways to map Google Drive as a network drive. I found a service that does exactly that, and supports other cloud services, but they charge a fee. I'm fine with someone making a buck, but I have a saying "If it's free, it's for me.", so I went looking for a free option.
In my searching up to this point, I learned an important vocabulary term "Web DAV".
From Wikipedia: Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers
What I found was "Box" or "Box.com". (formerly box.net) You get a free account with 10G storage and 10G transfer. Visit their site for premium options. (no affiliation and too soon to review)
Once I created and verified my account, I simply mapped a network drive.
Box.com will provide you with the link to put in the "Folder" field.
In the dialog, I had to check the "Connect using different credentials" option.
Whatever email address you use to create your box.com account will be the user name and your box.com password will be used here as well.
My Home premium system shows the drive being nearly full, but my Professional one shows it much larger than my actual quota. If that's the worst problem with it, then it's functional enough for my immediate needs.
YMMV!
Amazing what happens when you take a day off from Facebook
So, I recently became unemployed. Instead of job hunting, which I hate, I'm starting my own web development company. Being home, alone, with no boss or supervisor has its own challenges: Facebook!
If it wasn't Facebook, it would have been something else like Pogo, Mindjolt or PopCap, but at this time in my life it's Facebook. Most recently, it has been Pool Arena. I can literally play it for hours on end. Then, when I think, "I better get off this game and get some stuff done", I check my feed "one more time" and scroll and scroll and scroll...
Today, I decided to take a day off from Facebook. I am considering an even longer fast, but let's start with just one day. (I even gave myself permission to go on tonight, to check for updates from my daughter.)
It's bizarre to me how strong the pull is to go log back in to Facebook. It's like a mild (or maybe not so mild) addiction. But, so far I haven't broken my goal to stay off for a day.
What have I accomplished?
1) I reviewed the art file for my new mascot / character. It's not ready, but getting closer.
2) I figured out how to use a free cloud hosting plan to make a shared drive between two windows machines that didn't want to talk to each other. I consider this more progress than it sounds like because first I had to realize that the two systems were not going to work together the way I wanted them to.
3) I addeda post 2 posts to my blog which sits idle way too much. I hope to become more active in blogging now that I'm on my own time and not my boss's time. I'll probably do what I did a little bit before, and that's talk about my website clients, and any interesting programming bits I work on.
4) I developed an a la carte and packaged price-list for a subset of the services that will be offered by TecBrat.com LLC
5) I actually cooked myself some food instead of just eating whatever I could grab out of the cupboards or 'fridge.
6) I did some housework. My wife usually does most of the housework, but unless I am swamped with customer requests, I might as well get some of it done during the day.
7) I read a little bit about a couple of other blogging platforms. I'm not ready to jump into them, but I'd like to have options.
8) I sent a proposal to a potential client who may host several sites with my new company.
I hope tomorrow is similarly productive.
If it wasn't Facebook, it would have been something else like Pogo, Mindjolt or PopCap, but at this time in my life it's Facebook. Most recently, it has been Pool Arena. I can literally play it for hours on end. Then, when I think, "I better get off this game and get some stuff done", I check my feed "one more time" and scroll and scroll and scroll...
Today, I decided to take a day off from Facebook. I am considering an even longer fast, but let's start with just one day. (I even gave myself permission to go on tonight, to check for updates from my daughter.)
It's bizarre to me how strong the pull is to go log back in to Facebook. It's like a mild (or maybe not so mild) addiction. But, so far I haven't broken my goal to stay off for a day.
What have I accomplished?
1) I reviewed the art file for my new mascot / character. It's not ready, but getting closer.
2) I figured out how to use a free cloud hosting plan to make a shared drive between two windows machines that didn't want to talk to each other. I consider this more progress than it sounds like because first I had to realize that the two systems were not going to work together the way I wanted them to.
3) I added
4) I developed an a la carte and packaged price-list for a subset of the services that will be offered by TecBrat.com LLC
5) I actually cooked myself some food instead of just eating whatever I could grab out of the cupboards or 'fridge.
6) I did some housework. My wife usually does most of the housework, but unless I am swamped with customer requests, I might as well get some of it done during the day.
7) I read a little bit about a couple of other blogging platforms. I'm not ready to jump into them, but I'd like to have options.
8) I sent a proposal to a potential client who may host several sites with my new company.
I hope tomorrow is similarly productive.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Monitize
I decided to try another way of monetizing this blog as well as a few other projects I have going. I signed up as an amazon affiliate and enrolled to use their product search API. I have some experience with the API already because my employer uses it. I have been fortunate enough to be given permission to use that code as a base to move forward. When I run into interesting problems, and find interesting solutions, I'll try to blog about them. In the meantime, watch for me to mention amazon products in my posts.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Recursive Function to find substrings in a possibly multidimentional array
I needed this, and was happy enough with the results to share it.
This is like PHP in_array, but it searches for a substring.
for a one-dimensional array, it returns the key of the first match.
For a multi-dimensional array, it returns a csv list of keys to the first match.
<?php
function substr_in_array ($array, $term, $case=true )
{
//optional third argument set to false will cause case insensitive test.
// return false if the provide $array is not actually an array.
if(!is_array($array))
{
//echo 'Not Array';
return false;
}
// if $case has been set to false, make the term and each value lower case.
if(!$case)
{
$term=strtolower($term);
}
foreach ( $array as $key => $value )
{
if(is_array($value))
{
$inner=substr_in_array($value,$term,$case);
if ($inner!==false){return $key.','.$inner;}
}
else
{
if(!$case)
{
$value=strtolower($value);
}
echo 'Actually doing the text comparison now: is '.$term.' in '.$value.'?
'."\n";
// if the term is found in the value, return the $key.
if (strpos($value, $term ) !== false )
{
return $key;
}
}
}
return false;
}
?>
This is like PHP in_array, but it searches for a substring.
for a one-dimensional array, it returns the key of the first match.
For a multi-dimensional array, it returns a csv list of keys to the first match.
<?php
function substr_in_array ($array, $term, $case=true )
{
//optional third argument set to false will cause case insensitive test.
// return false if the provide $array is not actually an array.
if(!is_array($array))
{
//echo 'Not Array';
return false;
}
// if $case has been set to false, make the term and each value lower case.
if(!$case)
{
$term=strtolower($term);
}
foreach ( $array as $key => $value )
{
if(is_array($value))
{
$inner=substr_in_array($value,$term,$case);
if ($inner!==false){return $key.','.$inner;}
}
else
{
if(!$case)
{
$value=strtolower($value);
}
echo 'Actually doing the text comparison now: is '.$term.' in '.$value.'?
'."\n";
// if the term is found in the value, return the $key.
if (strpos($value, $term ) !== false )
{
return $key;
}
}
}
return false;
}
?>
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