Entries Tagged 'Coding' ↓

Well, trying to post consistently on here isn’t working either I guess, as it’s been like 6 weeks since I last put something up. So, the new goal is to post quick and small things.

First, Xubuntu! The main drive on my desktop crapped out on me, so I was forced into reinstalling Linux. I had been runnign Ubuntu 6.10 for a while and it was in dire need of a refresh anyway since I botched the nVidia drivers on day 1 and never cared enough to start over. I’ve been reading a lot about how great Ubuntu 7.10 is and I got used to using Gnome, but it always just felt so slow and I also read that Xubuntu (which runs Xfce) was a lot faster. So, that’s what I decided to install. Continue reading →

Yes, it’s my birthday today. So far I’ve been made to tie a birthday balloon to my chair at work, got lunch paid for and had a number of people say happy birthday to me. Later tonight will include a trip to Mickey Finn’s and this weekend, more Whirlyball! So, there are sure to be pictures of all that up eventually too. But, birthdays are overrated; on to other things.

It’s been about a month since the last post, so it seems like as good a time as any to update things. The new guy started at work and he’s fitting in really well. He seems to know what he’s doing and he’s getting the hang of the system here. We also had the show we sponsored air, but without much added business. Still, things went pretty well, the show turned out really nice and there’s nothing to say people won’t buy from us later.

We’re also still on track for our move to the city over the first weekend in March. The official plan is to pack everything up, have a moving company move it all over the weekend and they be back in business at the new place the next Monday. We’ll see how well that goes over….. still, it’s pretty exciting! In preparation for my commute, I purchased a Nintendo DS Lite; more on that in a little bit. Continue reading →

Well, this site and nearly all the other sites the my friends owned have been moved over to a new server. The overclocked Celeron I had sitting in my parents’ basement on their cable connection just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

The new server? Dreamhost! I got a shared hosting plan and went in on it with 9 other people. Then I found a $97 off coupon (Google it, you’ll see it) and got 2 years of hosting for about $94! Split that 10 ways and that’s about $10 per person got 2 years of hosting! That includes 200GB of storage (increased by 1GB per week), 2 TB of bandwidth (increased by 16MB per week), unlimited domains, unlimited databases and 75 unique user accounts, above other things. They also have one-click installs of a bunch of software, SVN, phpMyAdmin, free anonymous domain registration and a ton of other things that you can find listed on their site.
Bottom line, if you are looking for a new host, check them out! Their service has been pretty solid (despite some early issues, but I think that was our fault) and their wiki has answered every question we’ve had so far.

Wow, if that isn’t the understatement of the year. Eesh, I had really hoped to keep up on things better unlike when things were still on outinthecold….. seems I failed.

Anyway, a lot has happened since, Christ, JULY. I did end up getting a job, working as a PHP/MySQL developer for a company named Select Italy; I couldn’t be happier about it. Well, I’m sure if I was making like a million dollars a year I would be happier, but in realistic terms, I’m all set. It’s good to be back on a steady income instead of having my money come in whenever I can get it. It’s also nice to converse with other like-minded individuals and learn even more about web development (or Italy for that matter).

I’ve also learned a TON about Javascript/AJAX use in web development due to a need to spice things up and learn new things. My boss really likes what I’ve been cranking out and I think it’s been turning out pretty slick if I do say so myself. I’ve become the resident Javascript guy, which is ironic because I really expected going in that I would be greatly overshadowed by everyone else’s knowledge on the language. To a point, I am by one of the guys, but I’m the first one to start working it into the actual website on my own instead of just internal applications. Or, that’s how I see it anyway.

The job is part of the reason I haven’t posted on here is so damn long. It’s also why I have no new project sites or updates on existing sites (schoolinsummertime specifically). When you sit and code all day long, it’s hard to come home and actually want to sit in front of the computer even more. I do keep telling myself that “this weekend I’ll work on something” but it hasn’t happened once yet. Sigh….

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Alright, that may be overdoing it a bit, but it was said to me. It was said to me during a technical evaluation that I was doing in order to get a job. But before I get into that, I should explain my situation.

I’ve been working with a college friend of mine for the past year now, and while I have learned a ton during that time and made some cash, it hasn’t been as great as I had hoped. Seems I’m not cut out for entrepeneurialship just yet, at least without more motivation than just money. So, it’s time to find me some steady income. So, off to the job junting I go. Continue reading →

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. That’s mainly because I haven’t been up to a whole lot lately. That’s not to say things have been boring, but they haven’t been all that great either.

First, earlier this month I was playing volleyball with my roommates and some people that one of them works with when I rolled my ankle. Those of you who don’t know what that means, basically the foot folds over and the outside ball of the ankle hits the floor; not fun and very painful. Here’s a link to a video showing what it looks like when it happens. I’ve been using crutches for a while as a result and I only recently started walking on it again.

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Recently, I realized that you can extract image information from images in Linux. I was tipped off by playing with Gallery2, which shows you all kinds of information about the image; the dimensions, the date and time the image was taken, the camera used, exposure info, flash info, etc.

Upon looking further, I found the ‘exif’ program. I used that for a while, but the information it spits out, while extremely extensive, was not really usable. It would require a ton of parsing to grab even simple information out. Digging around further, I found out that Imagemagick has it’s own ability to read EXIF info. So, I wrote a little script to read that information out.
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