5tags

I have been on Media Temple’s grid server for exactly one month now but I still don’t think I should post a full review yet. I do however want to share some negatives of (gs). Since this entire website is database driven if the MySQL server goes down, then the whole site is down. Every few hours this website is not accessable because the MySQL is down. It’s not just my site, I usually check out other (gs) websites like MattBrett.com and they are always down as well. This is very inconvenient for everybody and it seems to always happen when I either want to post or during the prime times.

One of the many other problems is the Urchin Stats. For the past few weeks they have read 0 for everything. You can click through everything and it all has no data. Before the migration to (gs) they worked great. I don’t really use these stats but I like to compare then with my Mint stats just to see trends and differences.

Every time I have a problem I never want to report it because they “probably” already know of the problem, but I guess not. I ocationally think that a little downtime is alright but then I realize that I am playing almost 4 times what I was with (ss) and getting worse service. The (mt) marketing guy said on Talkcrunch that they have a “120% uptime guarantee” which translates to “We never go down”. He said that they would actually pay us if it went down. All I can say is that I am still waiting for my check. I have my site monitored with a cheap utility and it only checks the site every 5 minutes and it catches this site down about 1% of the time. This is unacceptable.

Some time ago I decided to dive into Ruby on Rails and learn Ruby. Ruby is a great language but the only problem is that there are not a lot of books or articles around for learning the language. Since it is somewhat tough to learn, although it really isn’t, it seems that the people in the Ruby community are quite intelligent, which makes for a better learning experience.

Everybody knows that Rails is a Ruby framework for web applications and wants to learn it. A lot of books say that they are geared towards beginners with no Ruby experience. I have picked up several Rails books and although I have not completed them, I feel that I have a strong base to suggest books to people that want to learn Ruby on Rails.

The titles of some of the Rails books are quite deceiving. Agile Web Development With Rails is a great book for somebody with some Ruby experience. Although it is geared to a first timer, it jumps right into developing a Rails application and spends little time teaching a base a Ruby. I picked this book up as a complete Ruby beginner and although I have not fully completed the book, I feel this is a great resource. The author Dave Thomas goes through the process of creating an online shop. The code is very easy to follow along to and Thomas makes sure that each addition of code, will not only benifit the application but will also allow the reader to learn why and how the lines of code were used. This book is for somebody that wants to create Rails applications but does not necessarily want to program in just Ruby, although creating a Rails application is programming Ruby. This book is about $30.
I recently came across another Rails book called Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers. This is a fantastic book for somebody that knows zero Ruby. The book begins teaching the Ruby language it’s self. After only a few pages of learning Ruby you are then taught the basics of creating a functioning Rails application. Rather then teaching new Ruby syntax in the creation of the Rails Application, the author David Black stops and teaching several more lessons on Ruby and implements those teaching in the Rails application. This book is geared toward somebody who not only wants to program in Ruby but also create Rails applications. I highly recommend this book to anybody wanting to dive into Rails without a Ruby background. This book is about $35.

Yesterday I got a invitation to use Scrybe. Scrybe is a new online organizer, which I over viewed last week. It would not be fair for me to review it with only a few hours of experience so I will wait on that. Until that time I have created a short video on the basic functions of Scrybe. It was created with Macromedia’s Captivate so the mouse movements are strange but the overall file size is very small for the length of the video. There are several formats you can download it in.

html(swf): http://5tags.com/tmp/scrybe1.htm
swf:  http://5tags.com/tmp/scrybe1.swf

Prior to buying the Nintendo DS lite I knew that there were a few problems with the left hinges. I thought that the people that were having trouble either played it a lot or were rough with their systems. It turns out that by just leaving the system sit on my desk the top left hinge can crack! Lately I have not been using the system but sometime between last week and today, the hinge simple cracked. I have a few photos to show the crack.

It’s really not that big of a deal but since the whole screen half is connect with this hinge, it actually is pretty important. The crack its self is hairline, I actually thought it was a stray hair. The word around the internet is that Nintendo is fixing these for free but there have been reports that customers were charged $50 to $100 for the repair. I’m not sure if Nintendo can simply repair these things or if they totally replace them but it seems like a waste of money on their part. Then again I guess they could just make a half decent product considering their main market is children.

It was reported that about 14% of DS lites had the hinge crack. The interesting this is that the system came our in June 2006 and the warranty is 12 months so there is a lot more time for new problems to appear. I would maybe say that 50% will have the problem in the warranty perioid and at least 80% will have a cracked hinge in the 2 year period.

I really like my DS lite, although I don’t really play it a lot. I pretty much just use it for the web browser and playing the odd Mario Kart game. I really hope Nintendo repairs or replaces this for me. I’d be more happy with a coupon to $150 (cost of DS lite) off the Wii though!

The NHL has just signed a deal with Google that will see every single NHL game on Google Video. These videos will be released a few days after the game is played and will be free of charge to anybody. The deal also includes posting old, classic games.To search for videos by team, you can type “owner:nhl < team>” For example “owner:nhl oilers”Teams are taking advantage of this great deal, by posting links to the games on their official websites. Prior to the deal, the NHL clubs could only release highlights which met special guidelines. This was because of the boundaries of the broadcast contracts.You can view the entire NHL archive at http://video.google.com/nhl.html.

Several Mac website are reporting that Apple’s Macbook notebook computer will be upgraded today to include a core 2 duo chip.

None of the reports that we have received includes a “smoking gun”, however at least one customer has seen his AppleCare MacBook replacement order stalled until Nov 1st, and another has seen pressure from Apple’s financial department to make their purchase by today.

In addition, supplies of the current Core Duo MacBooks appear to be running thin. Earlier in the month it seemed as though Apple had achieved a supply/demand balance of the hot selling notebook. While the U.S. Apple Store still shows a turnaround of 24 hours for each current model as of this writing, some European online stores are beginning to have shipping times slip to 3 days for one or more model.

Mac Rumors