Brian's Blog tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2008://1 2007-01-27T01:47:27Z This is the Weblog of Brian Stephens. Movable Type 3.31 Upgrading to Wordpress 2.1 tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2007://1.32 2007-01-27T01:42:41Z 2007-01-27T01:47:27Z Brian Just upgraded Chocolate Gourmand Blog to Wordpress 2.1 I recently upgraded it to 2.07 for a security fix and noted they said 2.1 was coming at end of month.Upgrade to 2.1 now Just like installing Wordpress, upgrading is a snap. Here's what I would recommend doing for a smooth upgrade with minimal or no downtime:

1. Backup your existing wordpress installation files to a secure location. The easiest way to do this is to copy it to your local machine.

2. Backup your database. If you don't already have it installed, I recommend using a wordpress plugin to do this called--appropriately enough--Wordpress Data Backup.

3. Speaking of plugins, take a look at your plugins page and note which ones are installed but not enabled. I decided to remove the ones I don't use (tried them out and didn't like) so future upgrades would be simpler as I forget this step (and to copy plugins to new install) and had to figure out which recent comments plugin was the one I actually used.

4. Download and unpack the wordpress installation files from the WordPress download page.

5. Copy your wp-config.php file and your specific themes folder along with your special plugins (don't overwrite akismet plugin in new install--it is an upgrade, too) from your current install into the new wordpress folder. Upload the new wordpress folder to your site as a side folder (e.g. if your blog is under /blog/ then upload new files to /blog_new/). If you have any other customizations to files outside of the themes folder, merge those changes into the new wordpress files. I did notice that they did away with the template-functions-general.php and all the template* functions for a general-template.php page.

6. Open up your WordPress admin home page and log in if you haven't already done so. Rename your existing blog folder to something like blog_backup and now then you can rename the new folder you uploaded to the normal blog folder name (e.g. blog_new to blog). Reload the admin page, click upgrade, click upgrade again, watch the progress meter and you are done.

7. Double check that your plugins are all still activated and then check out your site. Hopefully it all worked out. Downtime should have been limited to less than a minute.

]]> ChocolateGourmand.com site launched tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.31 2006-12-01T05:19:26Z 2006-12-01T05:22:59Z It's been a long time coming, but chocolategourmand.com is finally live. There is even a blog at http://www.chocolategourmand.com/blog/. There are still some things to do for the site, but it has been a huge relief to get it launched, though... Brian It's been a long time coming, but chocolategourmand.com is finally live. There is even a blog at http://www.chocolategourmand.com/blog/. There are still some things to do for the site, but it has been a huge relief to get it launched, though it has been a launch with very little fanfare. Next week I will begin making candies, which will involve some 40 plus hours of stirring, dipping and cooking.

]]> Community Marketing: Think globally, act locally tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.30 2006-10-20T23:12:20Z 2006-10-24T18:17:45Z If you want a successful company where people want to work, you need to market your company to your employees. For a company like Swingline, this isn’t hard to do. Every Swingline employee has one or more of your staplers... Brian Swingline Red StaplerIf you want a successful company where people want to work, you need to market your company to your employees. For a company like Swingline, this isn’t hard to do. Every Swingline employee has one or more of your staplers on their desk. It probably isn’t difficult for employees to convey to other people in their social network what their company does and what characteristics set their company apart from the competition. They probably even have a humorous anecdote about rival Bostitch. In addition, since Swingline’s products are geared heavily to the consumer market, the same marketing materials used for your customers is also readily consumed and digested by Swingline employees. But what if you work for a company that sells something that the average consumers will never see on a store shelf or purchase?

PanavisionAn employee for a company like Panavision, makers of motion picture equipment, could easily extend their company product to the average consumer via motion pictures. But what if you work for a company that sells enterprise hardware, software and/or solutions—and your company or division is not a household name—the marketing material the company produces to promote sales is probably poorly digested by staff outside of the sales and marketing departments.

If your company’s product is consumed high up in the channel, it is important that all your employees be able to make the connection from your product to the consumer level, even if that requires linking in third parties or customers of customers. Some might argue that the non-sales employees probably don’t encounter prospects very often, if at all, so why does this even matter? The answer is simple: pride.

Can you succinctly describe your company and the benefit it provides society to relatives at Thanksgiving dinner without putting your audience to sleep? Tryptophan effects aside, if you are unable to provide the links between your non-technical relatives' daily lives and your company’s products, you probably aren’t able to take a lot of genuine pride in your company. That doesn’t mean you don’t take pride in your department, team or personal accomplishments, nor does it imply you doubt the quality of your company’s products and solutions. So how do you get employees outside of the sales cycle to live and breathe your products? You need to do some internal marketing.

If you want to unite your employees on a common front, they all need to be behind your products and solutions—employees need to understand the business. Externally, you may target key markets and individuals with slick campaigns full of acronyms and the latest analyst quotes; this is the language of your buying audience. Internally, your audience is much more diverse and includes many groups that have little time or interest to learn this language which, to many of them, may only be spoken at work by peers in other departments. This isn’t only their problem, it is the company’s problem. After all, the employees are all ambassadors of the company in their social networks. Wouldn’t you want access to this network for your community marketing?

]]> <![CDATA["Company - Sucks" domains and other negative press]]> tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.29 2006-09-28T21:09:06Z 2006-09-29T20:21:57Z I just googled for "dreamhost sucks" and found a huge number of disgruntled dreamhost customers, some still currently using dreamhost, apparently. I loved the google ad in the right column: "Tired of dreamhost's outages...". I even found a couple... Brian

I just googled for "dreamhost sucks" and found a huge number of disgruntled dreamhost customers, some still currently using dreamhost, apparently. I loved the google ad in the right column: "Tired of dreamhost's outages...". I even found a couple blogs staunchly defending dreamhost and suggesting that perhaps there should be a law against company-sucks websites. Who would benefit from that?

I just read Scoble's post the recent PR problems with dreamhost. I also frequently perform searches with negative terms appended. Before the blogging era, these kinds of complaints lay buried in newsgroups or bulletin boards. Without cross pollination of blogs, these links remained buried in search results. Now I'm sure that there are plenty of happy dreamhost customers--how else could they stay in business given that a lot of the complaint web sites and blogs have been around for quite a while.

You can expect to find unhappy customer for just about any company, but the kind of negative press you see and just how pissed these people are and what lengths they will go to in order to convey their grief (and the sheer volume) can be quite revealing. It isn't just about the quality of a company's products. How a company handles themselves when a relationship sours can be very revealing. If you watched Seinfeld, you'll remember the phrase, "he's a bad breaker-upper". That's good information to know before you get involved in a relationship with a person or a hosting provider.

It's so easy to forget what life was like before the information age. To just think all we had then were the kind words of a familiar actor doing a paid endorsement. The ability to communicate both synchronously and asynchronously with anyone in the world is simply awesome. Now if the people can only clean up corporate corruption next....

]]> Data Backup in Web 2.0 tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.28 2006-09-28T18:07:37Z 2006-09-28T18:07:39Z I've really been thinking a lot about backup these days, mostly home backup. I presently have critical files distributed across several computers and occasionally burn a CD or DVD. Note to self: take CDs/DVDs to dad's house. If the... Brian

I've really been thinking a lot about backup these days, mostly home backup. I presently have critical files distributed across several computers and occasionally burn a CD or DVD. Note to self: take CDs/DVDs to dad's house. If the house burns down, the photos and website code/files will be safe, albeit slightly outdated.

It seems inevitable that remotely hosted storage will be commonplace in the future. For consumers, this storage will probably be a subset of what they store locally, but for small companies or teams doing collaborative work, that may not be the case. Sure, I bet the big players in online storage will have a way to handle disk failures without losing data. But what if a company that hosts your data goes out of business or enters a legal dispute with your usage? What if your password was compromised and someone maliciously destroyed your files? If you are a big customer for the online storage company, you may be able to get some attention to have the data recovered, but I doubt end-users will have a loud enough voice.

What you need is a third party to backup your online storage needs. The real plus is that you don't have to commit personal bandwidth to facilitate this backup. It would be done from one remote host to another. You could have different price plans for volume and frequency combinations. With this kind of remotely hosted redundancy, you could free up some of that disk space locally and, more importantly, begin to work in Office 2.0 with the piece of mind knowing that your primary data source (remote storage cloud) is being backed up (and you are in control of the backup service).

With respect to Office 2.0, you could have these remote sources replicate each other on a frequent basis so that should one go done, your office doesn't have to. Given that gmail goes down more often than it should, this type of user-controlled redundancy will be important when you try to run a company with only Office 2.0.

]]> Hosting Nightmare tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.27 2006-09-28T18:06:32Z 2006-09-28T18:06:34Z Brian  

My friend Andy had had a horrible experience with Dreamhost. It seems they have cut him off from hundreds of gigs of data and are refusing to respond to his emails. Regardless of the reason for terminating service, which in this case sounds unjust, a company should at least have the courtesy to respond to inquiries. It reminds me of customer service for AOL or cable companies. Calling sales? They'll pick up on second ring. Calling customer service? Expect to be on hold for an extended period of time.

I hope Andy can at least get his data back.

]]> Bridging the gap between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in the Enterprise tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.23 2006-09-21T19:14:51Z 2006-09-27T17:59:24Z I've been reading and seeing more and more Web 2.0 information (hype?) and thinking about the hurdles it will take to get the enterprise and general public to buy in more. The techno-geeks have long embraced it and now there is a litany of 2.0 suffixes everywhere. Brian

bridging the gapI've been reading and seeing more and more Web 2.0 information (hype?) and thinking about the hurdles it will take to get the enterprise and general public to buy in more. The techno-geeks have long embraced it and now there is a litany of 2.0 suffixes everywhere. This got me to thinking about how major leaps in technology are actually executed and adopted. In general adoption rates for leaps in technology seems pretty low at the enterprise level--unless there is an intermediate step that can be taken that bridges that gap.

Take the typical fossil-fuel driven automobile. Long ago, visionaries predicted that everyone would drive electric cars. What happened? Almost nobody is driving electric cars, and those that do are doing so primarily in experimental or subsidized vehicles. Although I don't underestimate the political strength of the petroleum industry, the gap between the traditional car and the electric car has been too large for the average car consumer or manufacturer. Status quo prevailed for decades. Along comes the hybrid vehicle, which still burns gasoline but uses an electric drivetrain with regenerative braking. It is a transitional vehicle that is bridging the gap to electric vehicles for the masses. More interesting is what you could call, "Hybrid 2.0", or plug in hybrids. This technology was driven by clever consumers, like a youTube for auto making. Now the enterprise is starting to take notice as smaller companies are being created to retrofit existing hybrids with the technology. Check out calcars.org to learn more about plug in hybrids. The group that makes the first transitional vehicle for the masses will have more probability of success than the group that makes electric vehicles for the few.

I would apply this same analogy to Web 2.0, particularly the user generated content side. To really appeal to the enterprise, there needs to be more Web 1.5 - Web 1.9 if people are really serious about getting more buy in from the enterprise market, where many organizations are shy to embrace grass roots content publishing models and other Web 2.0 concepts. I think the key for getting us to Web 2.0 is by adding Web 2.0 features to existing Web 1.0 applications. I attended a demo of ConnectBeam the other day. They offer a social bookmarking tool for the enterprise. During the demo, it was clear this was a very powerful and useful tool, but how do you convince an existing user base to try totally new ways of doing things? One feature they had that was pretty cool was to overlay their technology to existing intranet search results. I think this additive approach has a greater chance of success than purely alternative models (e.g., instead, go here and do it this new/different way).

If we're serious about getting Web 2.0 into the enterprise, we need to build a passable bridge from Web 1.0.

]]> Pandora's risks and opportunities tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.22 2006-09-19T19:21:12Z 2006-09-22T05:35:43Z After attending lunch 2.0 at Hitachi Data Systems, I decided to try Pandora for myself. It's actually pretty cool. You get to listen to new music that matches your tastes for free. There are convenient links to iTunes and Amazon... Brian After attending lunch 2.0 at Hitachi Data Systems, I decided to try Pandora for myself. It's actually pretty cool. You get to listen to new music that matches your tastes for free. There are convenient links to iTunes and Amazon to purchase the music or album you heard. The only downside to Pandora is the licensing restrictions. You can't play a song on demand or skip more than about 4 songs an hour. You also can't go back and even hear a clip of music you just heard to make sure that was the song you liked. I guess you could go to iTunes or Amazon to hear a clip, which might be part of why they don't allow that, so they can get you one click closer to purchase.

All this got me to thinking about the new subscription based music buffets like Urge or Yahoo Music Unlimited. Apart from music catalogue, how do these services plan to compete with each other. Assuming that the subscription price will bottom out, if it hasn't already, features will play a large role in controlling market share. If you could pair Pandora with a music buffet you would essentially remove the things that suck about Pandora.

What a kick-ass service: find new music and listen to it again and again on demand and when away from your computer with no buyer's remorse. You could even queue up a Pandora-style playlist of songs you haven't heard in advance to listen to offline in your car or at the gym. You could then apply ratings through your player that would then sync up when you were online to further refine your playlist stations.

In this respect, I would think Pandora would hope to be bought out because if Urge or Yahoo built their own music genome (or even iTunes), I would think that investors might be shy about investing in Pandora.

]]> Web 2.0 and the Freemium business model tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.18 2006-09-13T17:37:21Z 2006-09-22T05:35:59Z Brian WatermelonI recently attended a lunch 2.0 event at Hitachi Data Systems. There were some pretty cool companies there showing their wares. The mood was reminiscent of the booming dot com days, filled with buzz and optimism. I was particularly impressed with Pandora, a music streaming service geared towards discovering new music based on your current musical interests. I spent a while talking with Tom Conrad about the features. Although there is no classical music in their collection, they still have an impressive amount of music catalogued. I tried it out last night and was impressed. I do wish you could hear a clip of songs already played. If you were listening casually and remembered a song you liked earlier, it could be hard to figure out which song you liked. I would still recommend it for people who would like to expand their music collection to new/different artists without wasting time listening to radio.

A friend sent a picture to me from the lunch 2.0 event via flickr, and I got to thinking about the business model of flickr. In general, most of these new 2.0 web sites seem to be using the "freemium" business model, a term coined by Jarid Lukin and elaborated on this blog. As a person with kids, I am wary of wasting my time. I think of the time people spend uploading, organizing and tagging photos to flickr. I wondered to myself, "what if flickr goes under?" Sure it is free, and you get what you pay for (though power users do pay), but there is an inherent risk with the "return to mainframe" software movement.

With all this Web 2.0 hype, the looming bubble 2.0 could be lurking in our future. I am curious about the revenues these companies really get from ads. Are they significant? Is anyone making a profit? A lot of these new sites may be hoping to be gobbled up by yahoo, microsoft or google--or perhaps that is the safety net should things go sour. One can only wonder the shock of users of a site like flickr should it suddenly close up shop for lack of profitability.

]]> First Post Using Windows Live Writer tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.15 2006-08-18T23:36:38Z 2008-01-11T22:24:08Z Greeting, using windows live writer to post to my blog from my computer using movable type webservice feature and Microsoft Windows Live Writer http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/ . Note that the image to the right is hosted on their site. The first... Brian Windows Live

Greeting, using windows live writer to post to my blog from my computer using movable type webservice feature and Microsoft Windows Live Writer http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/ . Note that the image to the right is hosted on their site.

The first time I tried to save this post to my blog, it left some weird temporary thingy that said it couldn't be deleted. I went into the normal Movable Type admin and rebuilt and then it was ok.

Now I am using Windows Live to edit this same post again. I created another post and the temporary thingy wasn't there, it worked perfect. I used Windows Live to delete the post and no problems. I think this tool is nice. My guess is Microsoft will integrate this into Word or something.

]]> Upgrading Movable Type from 3.2 to 3.3 tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.13 2006-08-05T17:37:22Z 2006-09-15T05:39:26Z I periodically check to see if movable type has updated their blog software. Today I checked and noticed they had version 3.3. out. Cool, upgrading should be a snap, right? I had to sign in to TypePad to download... Brian software-movabletype.gif
I periodically check to see if movable type has updated their blog software. Today I checked and noticed they had version 3.3. out. Cool, upgrading should be a snap, right? I had to sign in to TypePad to download the latest software. I downloaded the tarball, and uploaded to to my server. Unpacking revealed no readme file. Version 3.2 had a README.txt, though it just pointed you to their website. I like the idea of having the latest installation instructions, but a simple text file with quick and dirty "./configure, make, make test, make install" type of instructions (ahh, the good old days) should still be included.

I poked around on their site and found http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/docs/Movable_Type_Installation-Upgrade_Guide.pdf. Awfully wordy and geared towards first time install, though there is a section about upgrading. My biggest gripe about open source software for linux is the upgrade process. You always end up running around, copying, moving chmod'ing, logging into your database and executing scripts, etc... I'm afraid Windows has a great thing going with setup.exe. Even a simple perl script with some simple text prompts would be nice. How about just uploading the new tarball, logging into the web admin, and it unpacks itself, makes backups for rollback and so on? I'll give Movable Type credit for the database part, which is done automatically for you via the admin console. This was nice. I could use that when upgrading HORDE applications like IMP (webmail). What a pain upgrades are for horde apps.

Anyway, here are the quick and dirty instructions to get you upgraded on linux/unix in a hurry:

Unpack tarball, backup existing executables
gunzip MT3.3.tar.gz
tar -xvf MT3.3.tar
mv /web/mt /web/mt.save
mv /home/brian/MT3.3 /web/mt
cp mt.save/mt-config.cgi mt/
cd mt
chmod 755 *.cgi

Backup Database
I have to admit, I skipped this step, but I already had a relevant backup. I use mysql so the quickest way is to just tar up your /var/lib/mysql/[blogdbname] folder.

Copy Static files
Ok you are almost done, and the admin may almost appear to work, but you will get some javascript errors and other problems. You need to overlay the contents of mt-static to your actual webroot. It's best to just dump the new mt-static contents over your existing webroot to preserve any plugins or other customizations you may have that are not in the database. Some of the plugin directory names were the same, so I just renamed the originals and moved over the new ones in their place. Once you move all the style sheets, javascript files, images and such, everything should be fine.

Log in to the Blog Admin
Log in to the admin and you will see an Upgrade button. Click it and the database is updated. Rebuild the site files and you are done.

]]> Coldfusion CFSchedule fortnightly recurrence workaround tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.11 2006-04-21T04:51:43Z 2006-04-21T05:20:23Z I am working on a project that requires reminder emails every 2 weeks for some users. For some reason, I just assumed that this would be a no-brainer with the Scheduled Task screen in the Coldfusion Administrator screen. The... Brian coldfusionmx.jpg
I am working on a project that requires reminder emails every 2 weeks for some users. For some reason, I just assumed that this would be a no-brainer with the Scheduled Task screen in the Coldfusion Administrator screen. The only options for recurrence are dail, weekly or monthly. I tried faking out the daily section with more than 24 hours, but no good. How can I easily get this task to run every 2 weeks without resorting to a persistent flag like in a database, filesystem or (less reliable) long expiring application scope? We are using MX 6, so perhaps this is resolved in version 7?

At first I thought, "OK, 52 weeks in a year", but there are 52.14 weeks in a regular year (52.28 in leap year). So it would be possible for a consecutive execution or skipping of the task. Granted, it would probably go unnoticed during the holidays, but it's the principle. Then I thought about looping over the days and counting off the weeks--not scalable or elegant. So here is the low tech solution I came up with. Yeah, sure, there has to be a simpler, and slicker way, but this works. I even made it so you could choose to run your task every 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.... weeks. Simply plug the following into your task, adjust the frequency and mod adjustment to fit desired starting point, then set the task to run weekly and you are done.

<!--- multi-weekly CFSCHEDULE workaround, since only recurring choices are daily, weekly and monthly. January 1, 2006 is convenient in that it is 1st day of week. We set start date to equal day of current week (1 -7) to get a nice round number when we divide by 7 days (a week) and add 1 to get how many of today's weekday have happened since Jan 1, 2006 (e.g. this is the 15th Wednesday since 01-Jan-2006). Set this task to run weekly in Scheduled Tasks. --->
<cfset variables.today = now()><!--- for testing override with any date
after Jan 1, 2006 --->
<cfset variables.frequency = 2><!--- every this many weeks to run --->
<cfset variables.modadjustment = 1><!--- adjust this from 0 up to frequency to fit your starting date --->
<cfif incrementValue(dateDiff("d",'JAN #datePart("w",variables.today)#, 2006',variables.today) / 7) mod variables.frequency is variables.modadjustment>
     Task to Run
</cfif>

]]> Unbelievable Stroke of Luck tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.10 2006-03-05T00:50:09Z 2006-03-05T19:01:12Z About ten days ago I was working on the development site for chocolategourmand.com when I noticed the page processing time of the coldfusion template I was working on. A simple page with a few includes, custom tags and two... Brian View Full Size About ten days ago I was working on the development site for chocolategourmand.com when I noticed the page processing time of the coldfusion template I was working on. A simple page with a few includes, custom tags and two simple queries, yet it was taking 680 milliseconds to render. I had thought about upgrading the server I have at home for the last couple years, but I never thought it was a necessity to upgrade unless I had a surplus of cash. My old server is a Compaq Deskpro PIII 600mhz desktop circa 2000. I had already upgraded the 10gb hard drive it came with for a 40gb drive several years ago along with adding some RAM.

So the next day I checked out some of the quiet pc websites, since I knew I didn't want a suite of fans replacing my old server which was fairly quiet. Being in our bedroom, this is important. I went to Frys Electronics at lunch and bought a small case, micro-atx motherboard, hard drive, celeron cpu and cd rom for about $550. I downloaded the latest Redhat Fedora Core installation iso images and burned some CDs. After dinner and the kids were in bed, I assembled the components of the new PC. After a couple failed attempts due to missing cable connections, the machine would boot. Time to install redhat.

I would have never had suspected that fedora was going to be so problematic. After numerous attempts to get the cd to install the OS without error, I read that maybe I should try another CD rom or even a CD burned from a different burner. I copied the first CD, that didn't help much. Apparently it wouldn't recognize the hard drive. More google searching. Could be the ribbon cable to the HD or perhaps slave jumper settings. I tried numerous settings and cable to not avail. More googling. Could be the hard drive or the motherboard's integrated video card. Enough! I decided the whole thing was a foolish impulse buy and packed everything back into its packaging. At 2:30 in the morning, it was time to get some sleep before work.

I returned to Frys before work with all my packages, nervously hoping that I wouldn't have to pay a hefty restocking fee or have some items be non-returnable. Fortunately, they took everything back and gave me a full refund. I decided to go look at the prebuilt, name brand computers while I was there. Since all I need is a machine with an ethernet card and simple video card, the selection was narrowed down. The salesman showed me the HP slimline. Already stocked with 1GB ram and decent HD, at $500 it was just what I needed. If the redhat wouldn't install, less to have to return.

That night I carefully unpacked the new PC and inserted the fedora install cd. Apart from the whirring CD, this PC was very quiet. More problems. I found a site that said you had to type gibberish at the first prompt, then hit enter, and then enter again to get past the failed install. OK, this looks better. I get through all the setup screens to the package customization screen and carefully choose the options I want. It then proceeds to install the OS, asking for CDs along the way. But then it fails, "due to a bug" the message read. Hmm, let's try the install again with a default setup. OK that worked! Lots more tinkering and adding packages, but seems to be working well. The next day, Saturday, I managed to hose the system and reinstalled it again, this time with custom packages. This time, it worked!

Over the next few days I proceeded to install coldfusion, trying several versions before winding up with the same version 5 I had originally wanted to upgrade, but the speed is still much better. The page that took 680 ms now renders in only 30 ms. For the remainder of the week I get all the websites dialed in, databases migrated over and more fiddling with settings and such--all standard linux admin fare. I decided that today would be the day I make the switch. I changed IP addresses of the two servers, adjusted some settings, did some testing, and it actually went very smooth.

I was eager to hear the new server alone to find out how quiet it really was. They had both been on all week. I decided to copy some other files that were backups of my images from iPhoto on our mac. I left the machines to go fold some laundry and came back to find that the old server was unresponsive. Hmmm, I switched over the KVM switch and saw a strange blank screen with a colored line down the side. I couldn't ssh into it, so nothing left but to hard reset. When the machine came up, this is the screen I saw. My guess is that all the copying was a little hard on the old hard drive, so it probably would have gone a few more weeks or so without all the activity surrounding the server migration. Still, to have the old server become totally unusable within hours of switching to the new one, now that is an unbelievable stroke of luck.

]]> Chocolategourmand.com is finally under way! tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.8 2006-02-10T06:42:01Z 2006-10-23T21:06:13Z OK, so after more than 5 years of sitting on chocolategourmand.com, I finally decided it was time to get the website going. I've been making candies for some 7 years now, and this last holiday season I really wished... Brian chocolatetruffles.jpg
OK, so after more than 5 years of sitting on chocolategourmand.com, I finally decided it was time to get the website going. I've been making candies for some 7 years now, and this last holiday season I really wished I could direct the 40 recipients of candies to a website to share how they are made and gather feedback to help shape the next candy run.

I've already built the database and am populating metadata about pages, links and user comments. I had considered using a blog such as this as the base, but I don't want the site to be run like a conversation, and I don't like how inflexible blogs are with respect to one off pages and so on. I do want people to be able to leave comments specific to a page with the ability for me to approve/decline/respond/rate the comment. I've got this functionality basically done now, and have started working on a good design. I put together a color palette last fall and then nothing happened, but I've been working hard on the site for several weeks now.

I've also compiled pages and pages of notes, recipes, antecdotes and tips for making candies, cookies, and ice cream. This has been a good outlet for my writing skills and I look forward to a lot of content being available with the launch this Summer--hopefully sooner. Over the holidays I took hundreds of pictures of the candy production--it will be so much work to crop, edit and resize them for the site. Meanwhile, I continue to take more and more pictures every time I bake now. It will be a challenge to keep a classy look to the site when there are pictures of our kitchen on it--photoshop to the rescue!

This will be my first public website that isn't work related. My kids' sites have kept me busy with updates, not to mention the kids and family. Having been a web developer for some 10 years for companies like Design Within Reach, Comergent, Hitachi Data Systems and reviews.com, it is about time to start authoring in public with my own voice. Who knows where this chocolate production/website will go?

I've also submitted account requests with google and amazon.com for their advertising banners and associate program. I just hope the cheezy under construction page at www.chocolategourmand.com does not cause them to decline my account request. Wish me luck!

]]> The Tooth Fairy tag:blog.chocolategourmand.com,2006://1.7 2006-01-20T22:44:24Z 2006-02-10T07:25:10Z Bryce lost another tooth today. The going rate is $5. Yes, $5. You see, it turns out that after Bryce lost his first tooth, the tooth fairy only had a 20 on hand. That's all ATMs give out late... Brian toothfairy.gif Bryce lost another tooth today. The going rate is $5. Yes, $5. You see, it turns out that after Bryce lost his first tooth, the tooth fairy only had a 20 on hand. That's all ATMs give out late at night. Needless to say Bryce was very pleased and everyone he told about it was quite surprised. Immediately after Bryce would say "twenty dollars" his audience would announce the going rate for deciduous teeth during their child hood. We told him that the first tooth is special, and that he probably wouldn't get as much for subsequent teeth.

Apparently, the two to four quarters we got as kids won't buy much nowadays. My son has a huge cup full of coins--probably $15 dollars in there, but it doesn't mean as much in little denominations.

$5 for each additional tooth seems like a good compromise.

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