Currently my website is being hosted on a tiny account on A Small Orange servers. It includes 150mb of disk space and 4.5gb of bandwidth.This might not seem like a lot of resources to most people but it is more than enough for many websites. I run many different programs on my account some that are for the public and many that I use personally.

The most resource intensive program that I use is my WordPress blog install. It uses about 30mb of space on my hardrive and uses the most bandwidth. I still manage to stay under about 250mb per month depending on whether or not I post some pictures or something else that takes a lot of bandwidth.

I will admit that if I ever encounter a huge rush of traffic from Digg or somewhere else my website will be crushed within minutes. That is why I have a backup plan. I have a smaller blog called crash test. Crash test, is run by a lightweight CMS called snews. It uses a couple of kbs of bandwidth per page load which enables me to redirect people to a smaller less resource intensive version of an article if need be.

I probably could run an snews site with under 25mbs of bandwidth every month. It is that small. The other advantage is that it loads almost instantaneously. If you would like to check it out it can be found at quips.bshootz.com.

No matter what all the other hosting providers say unlimited is never truly unlimited. They know most sites use half a gigabyte of bandwidth or each month and count on you never fully trying out their limits. Because they tell you you are getting an unlimited account you are more inclined to pay more for something they really aren’t providing. I would rather now exactly what I am and am not paying for. I don’t want an excuse saying I would rather now exactly what I am and am not paying for. I don’t want an asterisk after my hosting conditions putting unknown limits on my usage. i say spell out your terms and conditions in clear print for everyone and stop hiding between unlimited* plans. Even though at first ASO’s hosting plan may sound restrictive it is actually quite the opposite. Even though at first ASO’s hosting plan may sound restrictive it is actually quite the opposite.

If you are looking to run a personal blog I say start with the smallest possible hosting account you can find and work your way up from there. I will keep my twenty-five dollar a year plan until I start using 4499mb of bandwidth a month or 149mb of drive space. With my host I know I can always add badwidth for a couple of dollars or switch plans at anytime. I am truly unrestricted.

I officially finished under the dome at 4:33pm today. I conquered the beast at a breakneck pace a little over 200 pages per day.

I don’t want to spoil the ending, I was however, totally unprepared for it. Overall I found the book very interesting and a great summer read. Like all of Stephen King’s word it was a page turner that never backed down. I will definitely recommend it to anyone. It is a long book and is on the expensive side, don’t even considering trying to read it if you haven’t read other Stephen King novels.

I still can’t believe I finished it so quickly.

I acheived my personal goal of page 200 today in my hour long reading streak. I’m so glad I think I am on track to finish the whole book by next Monday. I am trying to read atleast 140 pages of the book each day. So by the end of today I want to be at page 340 or higher. In my book it is better be slightly ahead of my goal. SPOILER WARNING: So far in Chester Mill it is the day after the dome dropped(came down yadda yadda). People aren’t too worried and don’t think they will be in there forever. Many are heading to church and praying. The general concensus is that the dome is a government experiment gone wrong or something related to that. I personally think it is something different but I don’t really know. See you on day 3.

I know this system probably won’t for many people, maybe it only works for me! So if you have a better note taking system. Please tell me about it in the comments. This note taking system utilizes two free programs. Simplenote and TiddlyWiki. They both accomplish the same task of keeping notes in one place in different ways. Because they are fundamentally different I use them for different notes at different times.

First I will start out with Simplenote. Found at simplenoteapp.com Simplenote is a free online note synchronization platform. Think of it as evernote but faster and wit no upload limits. But without the extra non-note capabilities. Evernote could probably fill the same position: I prefer Simplenote because it is lightning fast and syncs very quickly. Also their iPhone app is great. Still this system does not need Simplenote specifically it just needs a program like it.

The next program I use to keep my abundance of notes in check is this nifty little file called TiddlyWiki. Yes it is a file. You just save it on you computer and open it up in you web browser and you are ready to go. TiddlyWiki is small and portable and can be put on anything including floppy drives! I have to admit I don’t actually use TiddlyWiki. I use ccTiddly: ccTiddly is a version of TiddlyWiki that runs on a webserver. I just have it hosted on my hosting account for the ultimate level of accessibility. Their features are exactly the same. One just runs on your hard drive and one is stored on a server.

Anyways TiddlyWiki is great because you can link all of your notes together and has many of the wiki features found on normal wiki software like Wikipedia’s MediaWiki software. TiddlyWiki allows you to keep all of your notes and notes related to them all together in one space. I am also pretty sure that ccTiddly allows you to upload images. I haven’t needed to use that feature yet, but it might be helpful to people who need to have certain photos accessible at all times.

Now that you have a grip on the programs that are being used. You need to learn how to implement them. First let us start out with Simplenote. Simplenote is simple. It it used for quick notes. No fussing around. Think shopping lists. You don’t need to reuse a shopping list and you can’t be taking a long time to write it down. So you open Simplenote on your laptop and you type out you list. Then when you are in the car you get a call from your spouse, and you have to add an item.

So you just open up the Simplenote app and append the list. Even cooler you could just have them log on at home and change the list without even telling you! Wouldn’t that be cool, everyone could take responsibility and add their own items to your shopping list! Because when you get to the grocery store the note will already be synced. I also use Simplenote for basically all of my blog posts. I don’t need to archive my posts. Because they are already located on the same server in my fully searchable blog. Think Simplenote = simple notes. Notes you will need only for a short term. Simplenote is great for shorter notes, and items you will need in the short term. That is the first half of my note taking duo.

The second note taking program is the previously mentioned TiddlyWiki. TiddlyWiki is my “archive”. Tiddlywiki is slower to open up and get writing. I use it to host all of my info I will potetially need in the future. TiddlyWiki doesn’t get cluttered up like Simplenote does and it has an awesome search feature. Also I have more control over my data on my selfhosted wiki.

TiddlyWiki is also great because I can link to other notes and I can keep my notes seperate but together. If Simplenote is for wriiting blog posts: TiddlyWiki is for writing term papers. TiddlyWiki is almost my private blog. Basically Simplenote notes go to two different blogs. My public one and my private one. Continuing with my analogies: If Simplenote was the New York Times, TiddlyWiki would be the Library of Congress.

With our program’s tasks defined let’s set some good habits. Taking a page from Getting Things Done. Simplenote is your inbox. A place for things that need to be categorized and put in their place later. I suggest taking half an hour each week sorting your past week’s note into TiddlyWiki. I don’t suggest updating TiddlyWiki every day. It is better done when you have multiple additions and you can link everything together. That way you don’t have to go over notes over and over again linking them together. Just do it all in one shot.

Also try to capture everything into Simplenote. If you have something on a sticky note type it into Simplenote. I think this system definitely works best when used exclusively. If you have notes scattered all over the place you are only hurting yourself. It is either all or nothing.

In my heart of hearts I hope this method works well for you. I haven’t worked put all of the kinks yet. So far it’s the best way for me personally to take notes. As I said before and I’ll say it again. Please help me improve my method. I am always welcoming to constructive criticism and comments.

First I started out using Emacs for typing out my .cpp files. But I found that it was a little too sparse for my likings. I know I could always code some extensions in Lisp to add all the features I wanted. Unfortunately I don’t know Lisp and I wasn’t about to learn it just so I could compile a hello world program. Luckily I stumbled upon a perfect program to suit my needs: Geany.

Well I was about to write I review on Geany, but then I stupidly decided to see if I could integrate python with Emacs. It turns out that it is entirely possible. So my whole article on Geany is now based on the false premise that I needed to know lisp to write Emacs extensions. So Emacs has officially bursted my hate bubble.Then I also learned that there is actually a compile command built into Emacs. Which totally and undeniably kills this article.

Even though Emacs is so awesome I still want to review the almost as awesome IDE Geany. Geany is basically Microsoft Visual Express but um you know, open source and Linuxified. You can’t beat free software with no restrictions. If you want to move from Visual Express to Linux, this is your program. It works exactly like it except that it includes a built in terminal pane! How cool is that. You don’t even have to alt-tab to type out your terminal commands!
Geany is worth looking into if you are looking for a full featured Linux ide. I reccomend it. If you don’t want a resource heavy editor I think Emacs fits the bill. They are both free so why don’t you just try them both. It can’t hurt!

Owning writing instruments that shape to your hand and not vice versa is such a great feeling. With Fountain Pens writing seems much smoother and natural. While ballpoint pens require you to push into the paper fountain pens allow you to glide across it. If you haven’t tried writing with a fountain pen you are really missing out on a better writing experience.

In the long run fountain pens are actually cheaper. A fountain pen and a bottle of ink can cost as little as $30. The fountain pen can basically last forever and depending on how much you write the ink can last for up to a year and a half or more. Compared to buying a thirty of the cheap disposable ball point pens that seems like a good deal.

Last but not least fountain pens allow you to write in whatever color ink you want. One day it can be sky blue the next amazon green. Ink makers such as Noodlers make hundreds of different colors that allow your writing to stand out among the seas of blue and black ink.

Overall I highly recommend you ditch you cheapy dollar pens and make the switch to the always reliable king of all writing instruments: fountain pen. If  you are wondering where to start out try the awesome forum boards at fountainpennetwork.com. I also highly recommend the Noodler’s Inks and the Lamy Safari for beginners.

Simplenote

Simplenote is an awesome text editor. Its main purpose is to sync your notes online on your desktop and with your phone through one of its apps. It doesn’t over clutter its interface with editing features like google docs and word. It allows you to get straight down to writing with ease and every one of your computers.

Nirvana

Nirvana is an amazing GTD app that helps you organize all of your next actions and todo’s. It is currently in beta and should be open to the public soon. It has an awesome iPhone web app and an even better desktop website. The nirvana team is also updating the website very often with new features and plans on releasing an iPhone app soon. I think as it come out of beta it will be the killer GTD app.

WordPress

WordPress is the most extendable, usable blogging platform out there. It has an answer for basically any situation you need to overcome. Also with its multitude of themes available for free you can make your blog look unique.

Honorable Mention: iPhone

The greatest thing about the iPhone is that there is an app for everything. From managing your blog to managing your todo list you can do about anything. There is an iphone app for everything I have mentioned in this list so far. I can start a blog post on my phone and finish it on my laptop with simplenote. It is situations like this that show the versatile nature of Apple’s iPhone.

Honorable Mention ccTiddly

ccTiddly is an almost unknown web app that is self hosted. It is a lightweight wiki. It is a great system for storing information that you will want to access an unknown time in the future. There is also a standalone HTMl file called TiddlyWiki which you host on your desktop. It is great if you just want to have an accessible information storage system.

Normal computer illiterate folk wouldn’t understand the holy war ongoing between the dueling text editors. Most people fire up Word and get done with it. Well we open source fanatics will have none of that if we have any say. We are obsessed with speed and being a quote UV quote “power user”. We want to tailor our text editing experience to fit us personally. We don’t want to conform to some Microsoft engineer who’s making all the UI decisions.

No one who wasn’t into computers would even know there is such a thing as a “EMACS” or a “VI”. Obviously anyone who cares enough to use a complicated non-word text editor is probably very passionate about computers and what software they use.

Both text editors go very far back and have been around longer than I. Emacs & VI have. Both have been around since 1976. They are still maintained and used by thousands of people each day, and have probably the most loyal fans after operating system fanboys.

There main difference between vi and Emacs is that vi inside the terminal and emacs is more like an individual application. Also vi is basically available on every Linux distribution and even OSX without needing to be installed and emacs is not. If a server is down and all you have is the command line you will be using vi to edit files.

In my opinion vi tends to be lightweight compared to Emacs. But Emacs seems to have a higher level of extensibility. It is basically a compiler form lisp. It even has its own tetris game. Emacs can made to do basically anything with lisp. I don’t know of anything comparable on Vi. Also too me the Emacs commands make some more sense. With Emacs you don’t have to worry about switching from insert to command mode. You can execute commands all the time not just in specified command mode.

I don’t know but vi seems a little less user friendly compared to Emacs. Emacs could be used by anyone you don’t technically need to know any commands because at least in v23 there is a GUI you can resort to if you don’t know a command or don’t feel like typing everything. Also Emacs allows you to use a mouse in addition to keyboard commands. This feature is especially nice for anyone not ready to learn a lot of new commands.

Overall I would say Emacs is generally easier to use without any command knowledge. It also is very extensible. With Lisp you can basically do anything. If a function for something in Emacs doesn’t exist you can make it exist.

Where Emacs is more user-friendly Vi tends to be a little bit harder to pick up as it is totally navigated with keyboard commands. Vi is also lightweight compared to Emacs. Where Emacs takes a second to load on my netbook Vi loads immediately. Vi is also highly configurable through its .vimrc file where basically any feature can be changed to fit a user’s preference. To me Vi seems a little too bare bones for what I do with text editors.

I admit I used to be one of those Microsoft Word minions and still to some extent still am. Emacs overall seems like a much smoother transition and seems to have a function to fill all of my needs. Where it lacks in speed and portability it makes up in pure potential. This is a real thing that happened to me today. I wanted to see how long this article would be. I had no clue if Emacs had a word count function so I Googled it. Emacs does not in fact have a word count command. It was no problem though because I was able to download a script and put it into my .emacs file and I was fine. I reloaded Emacs and hit alt-x word-count and I was on my way. As far as I know Vi doesn’t have that kind of easy process to allow you to add a command.

When it comes down to the text editor holy war I think it all depends on what you would rather have. A jack or all trades (EMACS) or a master of one (VI/VIM). They are two totally different text editors based on different design philosophies. I think that is why they clash together in this ongoing holy war. This is why this war will never end. This difference, the most important difference of all is why no one will ever win.

I am sure the Vi lovers will say I need to give it a chance. To take more time learning the commands, and that this wasn’t a fair article. The Emacs lovers will tell me I am making the right choice in sticking with EMACS. Honestly though does it really matter? People will use the right text editor for them and nothing else. If they want to write all of their C++ code in notepad so be it. If no one can win let us agree to drop it and get on with out lives.

Hipster PDA vs. iPhone 4

Old School vs. New School. Pen vs. Finger. The match of the century the longtime cotender Hipster PDA versus the new kid on the block the Iphone 4. There are many differences between these competing devices. Two will enter and one will leave.

First up the challenger of time, the GTD killer app, more hip than those tight jeans. The anti-technology Hipster PDA.
The Hipster PDA has some greate features going for it today in the match. Including:

1. It’s syncable with anything, Cross Platform. Not limited to any input device.
2. Hold it anywhere this kid has no death grip.
3. Comes in all colors not just drab black.  Be ahead of all you iphone toting friends with a white Hipster PDA!
4. You don’t have to deal with AT&T, the Hipster PDA hasn’t even heard of dropped calls!
5. No expensive data packages or restrictions where you can use it. Go all across the world without incurring expensive roaming fees.
6. Never run out of hard drive space. Just add more cards!.
7. True multitasking:  Just put it down & you don’t even have to worry about battery life.
8. Games are free, classics such as Hangman and Pictionary come included.

Next Comes the Newcomer the greatest feat in technology since the Iphone 3Gs: The iPhone 4

1. Will be outdated within a year. You don’t ever have to worry about having too many features because the features you need now are only a year away.
2. No unlimited data plan, never worry about being able to access more than 2gb in a month!
3. Excellent Door Stop
4. Revolutionary Death Grip feature allows you to have a reason to hang up on awkard phone calls.
5. Proximity sensor allows you to hang up on phone calls with you face! You will never have to touch the screen again!

It was a touch fight between the iPhone 4 and the Hipster PDA. However, there has to be a winner that comes out of this fight to the death.

WINNER: Hipster PDA

We just couldn’t get over the flexibility of this device. The battery life was great. The ink lasted over 100 years without fading. We said goodbye to chargers, we didn’t even have to worry about dropping it! Never again will we deal with the death grip or AT&T’s horrible reception. Using the Hipster PDA was the most liberating experiencs we have ever experienced.