Peppy Heppy

A half hour ago I released a game that I designed with the help of a friend and the input from my team members. The game took just under three weeks from inception to completion, and I also moved with my family to a new apartment as well.

It was fun to work on this project and I hope that it is successful.

Oh, on a more technical note, I wrote the game using Rails 2.0 with no plugins and only a handful of tables. It was fun on every level.

Now here comes the real question… can you beat me to where ever it is you want to go? If you are reading this, please invite me to your race (Paul Hepworth/ dderby[at]omniop[dot]com.)

Here is the link: http://realtravel.com/ddracing

You can also get to the game by going to any RealTravel destination page and click the “play” button when prompted.

Thanks again Phil for your creative flare major contribution.

Below are photos of what I went through last night while camped out and waited to register my son for an extremely popular Dual Immersion program that had only 15 open spots.

I managed to get second in line by showing up at 9pm last night. As I hung out, socialized, and slept, other parents trickled in throughout the night and morning. There were hundreds who wanted a spot and we got one, in fact we were the first to get one. Hooray! It was very refreshing to see so many parents who wanted the very best for their children and were willing to sacrifice dignity, sleep, and a warm bed—all this for their children’s education.

The temperature dropped to freezing, but I hung tight with a handful of dedicated parents. The lines actually ended up wrapping the parking lot. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.

Oh and I made the channel 2 news this evening. :)

A month ago this blogs MySQL database with InnoDB tables got totally hosed due to some unfortunate events and because it was just this blog I did not have a recent sql dump backup. Anyways, thanks to Google’s index cache I was able to recover most of my blog articles. I still didn’t get all of my comments back, but hey what do you expect from a FREE blog backup service from Google. It was still better than the one that I was paying for that didn’t work. ;)

A month ago my then VPS provider, JaguarPC, has some really freaky hardware issues, that to this day I have no idea what happened and they ended up restoring a two week old backup of the whole server which included my VPS. When I fired up this blog and a couple of other sites they failed due to mysql table corruption. The corrupt databases that used Myisam tables seemed to repair just fine, but all of my InnoDB databases (Rails uses InnoDB by default when you use migrations) were unrecoverable and I ended up having to try other means for getting my data back or at least as much of my data that I could get back.

Here is what I learned:

1. Never assume that your hosts backups of your VPS will work when they are restored because they perform backups while the server is running and databases don’t like that too much.
2. Always keep backups of your databases, especially the ones that use the InnoDB table engine, in a SQL dump format.

So here is what I do now to prevent this from happening again:

1. Perform your own backups of your databases using the methods that are suggested for your db and db table engines.
2. Get the data into SQL so when your VPS is backed up it will properly backup a dump.

Assuming that you have a file that contains a list of databases with one per line, you can do something like the following and then hook up your script t cron.

#!/bin/bash

cd /var/lib/mysql

if [ ! -d sql_backup ]; then 
  mkdir sql_backup
fi

for db in $(cat databases.txt); do echo $db; mysqldump --single-transaction $db > sql_backup/${db}.sql; done

Good luck, and oh BTW, you might want to get this running on your VPS before your host does the restore. ;)

I am looking to change VPS providers from JaguarPC to a company that has a higher level of service and uptime since I have had over 4 or 5 days of downtime and even lost some data due to the restoration form backup that killed my InnoDB tables in MySQL. (enough about that)

Anyways, i found a company called InMotion and after just a few days, here is my last trouble ticket.

---

To whomever it may concern,

Please cancel my account and refund the charges to my credit card as I would like to take you up on your 30-day money back guarantee.

In case you have questions about why, here is my best effort at giving you both an explanation and some customer feedback that I hope will be helpful to you as you improve your business.

Over the past couple of days I attempted to get going with you guys in hopes that I could move my current sites/customers over to a more responsive VPS provider with better support, etc. I am sure you are a great company and provide great services to many customers, but to be honest I was not impressed with the process of signing up and how my initial tickets were handled.

1) I was surprised by the $2/ip as there is no mention of this pricing before signup and the sales page implies that you do not charge for ips as long as they are justified. Believe it or not, that was one reason why I considered you guys.

2) The support seemed very reactive overall and although I asked questions that could imply that I was relatively experienced with system administration, it seemed as though i was talked down to and was practically told to be grateful for your help and that I wasn’t charged for you services. (The “service” that I didn’t ask for of changing the port that sshd was going to run on. I only told you that I was going to be changing it in order to have you open up a hole in your firewall to accommodate my customization.)

3) By default I didn’t have root access, and after I was “approved” to have it, I was still unable to ssh into my VPS due to your network firewall. Then once I inquired about it, I had to explain that I needed ssh access and was asked for the last 4-digits of my cc number, and then the ticket was closed by a technician, as if my issue had been resolved. After opening the ticket again and providing my cc info, I was asked for the ip address that I was going to be sshing from so you could add a firewall rule that would allow me access, to which I replied that I accessed the server from many locations.

Long story short: I appreciate your help but I don’t feel like InMotion is where I should be.

Good luck and have a most pleasant day!

---

I don’t like posting negative stuff (unless its about Microsoft and Visual Studio,) but before I signed up with InMotion I searched google for stuff like “InMotion sucks”, and “InMotion bad”, etc hoping that I could see what other peoples experience were and couldn’t find much. I hope this helps other hackers who will do the same and maybe save them some grief.

And no, this was not a paid advertisement by InMotion. ;)

UPDATE: InMotion sent me an email apologizing for the miscommunications and asking me to reconsider my decision. I will admit that their email was very nice and that they wanted to keep my business and make sure that I am happy. I am sure that their services will be great for some people, personally, I am looking for a provider who is a little bit more interested in the big picture of what it is that I want to accomplish and get setup. When I have issues or problems, I need to be able to ask a specific question and get taken care of. Each support cycle is expensive for me. I think the issues that I am explaining are due to VPS companies whose primary business is shared hosting and their secondary business is VPS—their techs are trained to deal with the shared hosting folks. If I decided to stay it wouldn’t be a horrible thing I suppose, but I have already found an alternative VPS provider ServInt.

I am sure that InMotion is a good company, but it didn’t work out for me.

Last night I walked down the street with my family to view a train exhibit that had been put up year after year for over 30 years by a local train enthusiast in an effort to share his Christmas with neighbors, adults, and children alike. Two nights before that I drove by a couple of houses in Sunnyvale, CA that were covered in Christmas lights choreographed to music that could be heard by tuning your car stereo to a certain channel.

On both occasions I wondered to myself, who would have the time to spend on such projects year over year? Then I realized that this was not unlike all of the brilliant and willing software contributors who work tirelessly in open-source communities to build great software that other people can use, enjoy, and even use to make a living.

I am impressed with the passion that so many individuals have that causes them to DO what it is that they do. Its encouraging to see that people with passion can provide a great service to the rest of the world in small but meaningful ways.

While some people stand around wondering what can be accomplished or think about why things should or should not be done by them, others just DO.

So here is a thanks to all of the people that DO because they DO!

For every Ruby on Rails plug-in and gem, every Linux install and presentation given in a local user group—thanks!

So, I like many others purchased my upgrade online prior to the release date and looked forward to the 26th of October. Since I was at work I missed the package and had to go to the FedEx place after work to get it. As I was walking in a boy and his father were just leaving the cash register and the boy had a huge smile and just as they left the FedEx guy said "now don't stay up too late tonight." Then I got in line and noticed a guy behind me with a shirt with the name Geek on it and wondered if he was picking up his Leopard, but I just minded my own business and didn't ask. Long story short there were at least ten people in line now, and once I saw the size of my package and realized that everyone was picking up and walking out with the same sized package, I knew for sure that they were all there to pick up their OSX Leopard. I couldn't help but be amused that so many people were there to pick it up. The puncher was when the FedEX guy said "I can't wait until work is over and I get to go home and install mine."

Now for my quick review of my first impressions of Leopard. Overall the upgrade is pretty good, but other than the Mail upgrades with TODO's, Notes, and RSS, and maybe Time Machine, I don't think that it was imperative that I upgrade since many of the new features were already available with third-party applications like Virtue Desktops for Spaces, Time Machine and regular backup software, etc. I did like the new "Quick Look" view in Finder, but like so many of the other upgrades and improvements they are fun, cool, neat, and sweet, but not life altering. Maybe I just haven't played with it all yet and haven't looked at all of the enhancements. I don't regret the upgrade, but to all of those cash strapped people who want to upgrade because they feel like they will be left behind -- take your time.

Today it was my pleasure to attend Startup School at Stanford. it was educational to learn from some great presenters. I can't help but get excited about what I am going to do for my next gig.

Here are a few things that I took away from the experience:

• When starting a company make sure that you don't neglect founders agreements, stock options, and other legal and business matters. - Mark Macenka's Presentation
• The internet and small startups open up markets that have never existed before and that there is "Millions of markets of dozens, and not just a dozen markets of millions." - Chris Anderson's Presentation
• There are not many good excuses to prevent techies from starting their own startups. - Paul Graham's Presentation
• The economy is doing great and the only thing we should be worried about is a slowdown in innovation and productivity, thus the need for startups has never been greater and more welcome. - Michael Mandel's Presentation
• Don't neglect product management and be sure to act quickly on data from users experience. Don't make things too easy as users have a perception that things that are too easy must not have value. - Max Levchin's Presentation
• Culture is very important in a startup; hire the right people; be sure to structure your company so that decisions can be made quickly. - Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi's Joint Presentation
• Always move forward in an iterative fashion and create a culture where everyone is technical, he said "marketing should be able to ssh into the server and change the text." Hire people because they are smart not just because they are experienced or knowledgeable. Release often, take risks, if you screw up thats ok because you will learn from it. Features don't have to be perfect but the app must be good enough to do what it does best. - Mark Zuckerberg's Presentation

It was a day well spent, or should I say invested? :)

I have been attending the Silicon Valley Ruby on Rails Meetup since the first meeting a year ago this next May (or so.) I am surprised at the number of people that show up and their purpose in coming. it started out with just a few computer geeks who love Ruby and Rails and now I think half of the attendees tonight were VCs, companies looking for Rails engineers, or people looking for partners for their next big idea for a web app.

I think its great but I have to admit it must be a sign of the times.

Ruby on Rails is here to stay and even companies like Spock (spock.com) are building large apps with it with 9M$ in VC.

now all I have to do is figure out a way to use Rails more since I don’t get the pleasure currently at my day job. :)

A year ago I was considering the move from Windows to Linux Desktop, but was a little bit concerned about not being able to run a few apps that I use day to day. The thought came to me... "why don't I just go to OSX since it is unix and has all of the software that I need?", so here I am today finally moved over to OSX. Yeah!

Last week I decided to purchase a MacBook Pro and start my move from Windows XP. I thought I would report a few of the things that I noticed during the transition.

1) Installing new software is so easy... where did all of the wizards go? :)

I noticed was when I downloaded the software, in many cases it was just a matter of dragging the application from the mounted package into my applications folder. I was expecting a windowesk experience where a wizard always comes up and I have to click next, next, next, yes/agree, next... you get the point, but it only happens when you install larger apps and even then it is fast and easy.

2) The hardware and software just work!

It came time for me to move my Palm Desktop stuff to OSX and setup the bluetooth sync. Now to give you some background, this process took me two days to setup on my windows xp laptop. I installed the palm desktop and turned on my treo 650 and went to the bluetooth sync settings. It quickly saw my macbook and I clicked next. Guess what? Yes, it worked. I was beside myself and wondered what I would do with all of the extra time I had expected to spend. :)

3) There are so many really cool apps out there.

I asked two of my good friends for suggestions for OSX since between the two of them they covered my software needs. It took me a couple of hours or so to install all of the software they recommended. It was easy and very fast.

I love my new MacBook Pro and look forward to becoming a more mature OSX user. When expressing my concerns about not having the time to learn a new OS, all of the Mac users that I new said that it would be an easy transition -- they were right.

Yesterday evening I was pleased to be able to attend the Silicon Valley Ruby on Rails Meetup. There were two presenters, Graham Glass and Jonathan Palley, who showed us all the ins-and-outs of their rails apps. Graham's application, EDU 2.0 (edu20.com), was an online education site that allowed collaboration for students and teachers or just individuals who want to learn more about specific subjects. I look forward to seeing it go live in the coming months while he releases a public beta. Jonathan Palley mainly showed us how to setup a rails app to interface with a telephone using VoIP. He was using the Astricks open source PBX server and rails in his demo. It was very cool. He was kind enough to show us his code even though he told us all that it was not finished with his implementation of responds_to: voice -- none the less it was impressive.

Last Thursday I attended a Ruby on Rails workshop in San Francisco put on by Carson Workshops and presented by Geoffrey Grosenbach (topfunky). It was a good workshop for those of us who have played with Rails and are starting to get a little bit more serious about it. It was nice to get a more general exposure to the framework that what I had from reading the first edition of Agile Web Development with Rails. One thing a came away from the workshop completely exited about was that ROR is not only a framework, but a complete turnkey solutions for developing and deploying web apps that scales from a one man development team to as many developers that it may take to develop the app you are working on (usually not more than four or five.) It was also fun to meet some other cool guys the night before at an informal little get-together. (click for pic) BTW, I am the guy who is standing between Geoff and Josh in the back fighting to be seen in the pic. ;)

(In response to my prior post about my nano) Well... I am very pleased to report that my iPod nano was revived after letting it dry out for three days and then recharging it back up. Apparently it was only thirsty. ;)

I just started playing with Ruby on Rails a little while ago and find it very interesting to say the least. I was a little skeptical when I heard David Heinemeier Hansson on many blog posts and podcasts talk about how enjoyable coding web apps with Ruby on Rails was. One thing that bothered me was that in all of the press and comparisons of ROR to other frameworks done on the ROR podcast and other podcasts and blogs rarely would compare PHP to Ruby. Finally last week I was listening to an interview of David on the Web 2.0 podcast, I learned that David used to use PHP and then found Ruby and fell in love with the language. That was insightful to me. I am no expert (yet, give me a month or so) but as I have played with both the language and the framework, I too am starting to believe. :) I look forward to creating some web apps.

Last week I received a iPod Nano as a gift. I was so jazzed about it (I know I am the last person to have one, but...) I started to load all of my Podcasts on it from iTunes and was able to listen to the Ruby on Rails, Web 2.0 Show, and Audible Ajax while golfing and (I wouldn't advise this, but...) while driving to and from work (which is only a mile or so anyways.) Today, I went to the Oakland Zoo with my family and noticed that my Son's shoe lace was un-tied while he was jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone in a 10 inch deep little pond. As I leaned over, while balancing on a stepping stone no less, my Nano slid right out of my short pocket into the water. It seemed to work fine for about 10 minutes before it finally faded and then died. What really ticks me off is, I could have saved it if I could have turned the power off or removed the battery somehow but either of those options were available due to the Nano's design. Anyways... I'll be off to buy a new one next week.