As regular visitors may have noticed there were only few (or no) updates to the site in the past few weeks (or months).
This was primarily due to the fact that most of my time was soaked up with finishing my diploma thesis.
I have now successfully graduated from university and will be entering “business” in October this year.
In the meantime I plan to simplify this site and update most of the 700 posts.
My advertisement revenue is down from previous 900 $ USD to a laughable 11 $ USD a month, while the number of visitors has just slightly declined from 10,500 (daily) to 5,000 (okay that’s a 50% drop, but still). The drop in ad revenue is also explained with the new theme that I introduced in December 2009. It is, as I may have to admit, too confusing and too colourful/image heavy.
Many preferred the white theme before (2007 to 2009). In that sense I will try to do a good job in coming up with a real simple and user-friendly design. After all this site is not primarily for me, but for you. Also, I need to fix the download links and generally links that link-out. I will pay more attention to comments. For all the trouble and lack of updates I am sorry. Stay posted and keep the comments coming.
Quite frankly I should rather be sitting down and study for the upcoming exams, but since I have been toying with my website redesign since October 2008 (last year, yes…) and the dark-ish, artistic version does not really “fit” to spring/summer anymore I am working on a day/night time theme which basically shows the old, white site when the sun is up and the dark, night-ish site when the sun is down. I was thinking how to realize this: I could have gone for an easy PHP-switch checking the server-time and therebased-on use stylesheet A or B, but since the website’s audience is spread over the world I am now opting to use a jquery javascript client-side approach. So every user, regardless of timezone and location, will be served the appropriate version.
So I hardened my wordpress by means of playing around CentOS usergroups and permissions and I was able to get the upload and cache folder to work with quite restrictive permissions (755 as the worst). Hopefully this will take care of the past security issues…
Anyhow, using the “automatic upgrade” function within wordpress I stumbled upon the “highly praised” WordPress 2.8 version (2.8-beta1-11402) and frankly it is doing “shit at all” but not displaying “pages” anymore (posts are fine). I suspect it has to do with changes in the theme terminology, but then again, why is it working on “posts” all fine? I am reverting, or at least trying to revert. The last “major issue” I have had with WordPress was the switch from 2.6 to 2.7.4… my advise: keep your fingers off betas if you can. There are not, as the devs say, for public use in open, active, systems.
I have some themes lined up, alongside the changes I mentioned above, but still exams till 2nd of June, 09. Gah…
Read More
Solar VPS - Green hosting
Today I have received an email from Sean at zone.net stating that effective from four months now onwards all VPS (Virtual Private Server) business will be transfered to SolarVPS.
Sean speaks very highly of SolarVPS’ CEO and managing director and excuses for the “crap” level of support that zone.net customers had to endure in the past few months.
The official press release can be found on Solar VPS’ news section. Being transparent about communication is one of the major pillars of decent business – “I like”.
Some famous highlights include the multi-day downtime due to some failure and a for-ages taking check-disk (from 11:48 AM EST(11/7/2008) to 7:19 PM EST (11/9/2008), where as it would be more like 9am to 8pm, frankly)
Also some minor, less exciting downtimes of twelve to twenty hours recently can be recalled by some of you.
My phone-calls to the 001 yank-hotline have been answered but greeted with massive unfriendliness and really low level of knowledge stating “we are aware that our sites (cough and yours) are currently unavailable”.
I am curious what the time at SolarVPS will bring – the mail sent by Sean listed an email address by which management might be contacted directly.
If SolarVPS prolong zone.net’s sponsorship agreement I would be keen to give them a ride.
In the meantime, if you have any other recommendations or comments, feel free to contact me.
Oh- and the new site is coming, I am currently just looking into a way to politely tell IE6 visitors (still 26% over the past few months) to upgrade or switch.
Having worked in a major PR company in the last six month and having experienced the (probably worst) “almost” over-sea like IT support, I see the problems with upgrading, however believe it should be able to replace a seven year old piece of software with something newer (IE7, IE8 beta, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc).
Read MoreHey folks,
long time no updates; I am very sorry about the lack of news, but unfortunately I have been very busy with university projects. Thanks a lot for all the comments left in between, I did my best in answering to every single one.
So.. this semester is coming to an end (again), I am now finishing my second year of studies in the study course International Business and Management Studies here at Fontys International Hogeschool Economie in Venlo, the Netherlands.
I have one, yet to be written, exam left, plus an oral assessment and some university stuff to sort out.
This semester I have written a 72 pages report (about offshoring in germany), finished a financial report about a leverage buyout (56 pages), finished a semester of SAP/R3, passed the Cambridge Young Enterprise exam with credit (that’s quite nice); as general manager (respectively assistant this semester), won a couple of awards (best regional student company #2 (out of 435)), best student company as selected by worker’s union, most innovative product of the Netherlands #2, best student company website of the Netherlands #3 (out of > 500), best student company campus site, dividend > 30%, accomplishment for selling all products in most complicated market… etc)
The exam mentioned earlier is on June 17th, so after that I am pretty much available for all kinds of web related activities. I will be in London from July 3rd to 5th and then from mid august to beginning of march.
I have digitalised my oldschool, dnb and jungle collection from vinyl to 192kbps, respectively 320kbps, mp3s and added them to a discogs – will post a complete list later-on. There are some really amazing and rare tunes. If you care to buy some, feel free to drop me a line.
I have also sold my Pioneer DJ headset HDJ-1000 and exchanged it for a pair of Sennheiser HD25-1 (the old ones). Wonder if they are more comfortable then the Pioneer ones. They hurt the head after hours of use (both physically and in-ear wise, got a pretty annoying buzz from them).
Revision for the Global accounting and finance and accounting exam is currently underway and I am really enjoying the DI.fm solo-piano channel (actually that is from sky.fm, is it?) -
You’d really get a premium account, especially as the dollar is so weak against the EURO at the moment (that is probably only the case if you live in Euro land…)
That’s it for now, keeping you locked
P.S. I am going to buy one of the graphic tablets when I am done with university for this summer, so you can surely expect plenty of great new themes!
Read MoreWhat’s up with me, why so little updates? University has started four week ago and I am somewhat busy with projects there unfortunately. I finished re-visions of all my past themes, but still the themeviewer is closed to updates (their laziness is really starting to piss me off; not once, not twice, but at least three times I have offered the community’s and my help to speed things up. So many people work on fixing bugs in WordPress; I am sure that at least 10 to 50 highly motivated individuals would volunteer to fix the themeviewer “according to Mr.Wordpress’” needs.
What is still in need to be done from me this the coming month(s)?
- real release Japanese version
- release croatian version
- release polish version
- release spanish version
- update manual (to reflect credits and bug-fixes/faq)
- work on wordpress 2.5 compatibility
- do IN wordpress work (slice and dice)
- do SAMBA! work
- do Zone work
- release calendar style theme (yes, this is going to be the next big thing after magazine styles)
- release highly simplified show-hide collapsible theme that does not look like wordpress
- work on a way to pass dynamic data to flash and forth and back (seo-aspects)
- release my theme (h4x3d.com) to the public?
- come up with a new format
- launch wordpress mu more successful
- launch forums (again…)
- launch photoblog / flickr incorporation
- re-write moo
but first of all some university work:
- individual topic about offshoring in germany (did offshoring paper 50 pages before)
- finance report (LBO)
- finance and accounting exam
- SAP report and certificate
- student company work
- release deviant audio trance mix monthly
- record more vinyls, because of my recent change to Rane Serato Final Scratch
- sell vinyls before work placement London
- sort out a flat in London (may)
- visit company in London (may)
university wise:
- individual topic (late april)
- sap (5th june)
- accounting LBO paper (june)
- exams (june/july)
Possible vacations / work opportunities between July and August, commence Work placement in September till March (Maybe February); Interim assessment in Late February; Semester six March / mid March.
pfew… I better get started some serious scheduling with Google Calendars…
Read MoreThanks for the Great feedback received on Rainbow Feather Theme Version 2 (includes bugfixes and is valid xhtml and valid css)
You can get your Rainbow Feather WordPress theme copy here.
I have been away, as you might have noticed, for about ten or so days. Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been to Sardina, Italy. Using my newly acquired Canon EOS 350D I took some interesting pictures (some 460 MB). Some are landscape, water, fire, plants, object pictures, others are hard to describe. Soon to come.
University is moderately occupying me, I worked on two themes in the meantime (two business style themes) – still the themeviewer at wordpress.net is down to updates. I wonder what the people maintaining it are doing. It is a community thing, isn’t it?
If they fail to patch it up, why not ask for help, I am sure many people would volunteer to help out.
I am overwhelmed by all the spam-themes removed from the themeviewer, it is really a joy surfing the corrected version. Have you tried it out recently?
In other news, there is a lot to do and my PC (using zalman reserator v2) is dying every randomly 3-5 hours or sometimes even 30 minutes. No warnings, nothing, just restarts. This is great when working in Photoshop, Word or Coding stuff. (not really)
I wonder if they can exchange it. Also my Sony notebook is being repaired once again. Quite a “monday”-model I got there. I tried out adconion when I was away and made a whooping 20 Euros vs. 140 Dollars that I usually make with Google Adsense. Now what? Keep Adconion, as they are nice and even call in, or change back to the more lucrative Google Adsense?
I am off, listening to Above and Beyond – Anjunabeats Volume 5 1-Hour Promo Mix and doing some work for university. Thank you all for your plenty comments, I promise when the next vacations come (in four weeks or so?), I will be dedicating it to updating my sites and themes. Maybe by then, they are done updating the themeviewer. sigh
Read More