Tralfaz

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  • Saying “Goodbye” to an old friend

    I have to say goodbye to an old friend. We have been together for a long time. Probably 20 years or so, a good run. Alas, all good things must come to an end.

    All the cans we have opened.  All the meals we shared. You have been reliable and faithful. Always there when needed. You never demanded much, but always ready for an adventure.

    My original Swing-Away can opener has come to the end
    My original Swing-Away can opener has come to the end

    Lately, you have been slipping your gears. No longer able to cleanly open a can. It started with a few “bad” spots, but it has been getting worse. Last night, opening a can of refried beans was more than just a task, it was a travail. The decision to retire you was not made lightly.  I had hoped that you could pull it back together, but it was not meant to be.

    I ordered a replacement. The sad thing is that the replacement from Swing-Away are now made in China, and had a slew of terrible reviews. Fortunately, someone is building the same design, with the old machines from the original Swing-Away company. It should be here Tuesday.

    I will miss my old friend, but I will not forget it.

  • Hope for the future

    When I was growing up, in a suburb of Sunnyvale, the neighborhood was typical. Single family dwellings, clean yards, lots of grass, and busy professionals who worked at Lockheed or Westinghouse.

    There were a couple of enterprising youths who leveraged this situation by mowing lawns. $5 a week, they had their own power mower and edger, and would come and keep your lawns in good shape. Just about everybody on the block took advantage of this, and had these youths maintaining their yards.

    There were other entrepreneurial things you could do to make some spending cash, for example I delivered newspapers, but yard work was seen as a perfect way to teach responsibility to kids. (of course, with gas engines and spinning blades, without much in the way of safety features, it was also a lesson in personal responsibility)

    Then something happened. Starting in the late 1980’s (a guess), the advent of video games, and other sedentary activities, coupled with helicopter parents who insist on controlling every aspect of their children’s lives, and that first job was no longer a priority. The moderate affluence of the middle class meant that parents could afford to subsidize the entertainment of their offspring, and thus a generation of kids (Gen X) came to be that got through high school without developing a work ethic.

    A catchy flyer, and an offer that is too good to be refused
    A catchy flyer, and an offer that is too good to be refused

    Now, it is common to see all the neighborhood yards being maintained by various landscaping companies, all offering pretty much the same service, and convenience. And another generation of kids has a reason to not build a work ethic. Newspapers are delivered by adults in cars, and the subscriptions paid by mail. Increasingly, the other route to early work experience (and cash), the fast food restaurant, is going to the less skilled adults who need jobs to live. Where is a kid today to turn to for making some scratch?

    Then today, I saw this flyer taped to the mailbox. A couple neighborhood kids are rekindling the entrepreneurial spirit, and going to work cleaning yards. A catchy flyer, a willing, can do, attitude, and a reasonable offer. I hope they kick ass and make something of the opportunity.

  • Battle of the Simple Website Creators

    I have been working on a fun project lately, creating a website and online personas for my adopted greyhounds. Since I started the bit of an advice column for how to create a website, and what tools to use, I figured that I would try one of the simple builder sites.

    The two I played with are Weebly, recommended by my friend David Kendall Grant, and Virb, a spin off of the hosting I use, Media Temple. They both are simple to use, intuitive, and pretty straightforward website creation package. Both are attractive, and have pretty complete components to place and drop. Naturally, they both do all the hosting and back end maintenance.

    Weebly, is a startup, VC funded. They have a free offering, and two tiers of paid services that add capabilities. It can connect to an ETSY store, it can create static pages, blogs, and even simple discussion forums. It automatically connects to Facebook and Twitter to alert the world that you published something. There are a pretty extensive collection of templates that offer some customizability, and flexibility of the design.

    Virb is fairly new. It is still under development, and you can see some rough edges. Their collection of templates is smaller (but growing) and some of the goodies and components that are available on Weebly are not yet implemented. But their bits and pieces that are done work well. Additionally, they have a blog that keeps you informed of what they are developing and when to expect it. I did like the facilities for customizing the CSS and getting some access to the bits and pieces, but naturally, once you go there, you are on your own for support.

    What I liked:

    It was really quick and easy to get a site up. Adding pictures, posts, quotations, and connections to social media were easy peasy. Modifying the templates on Weebly was hit or miss. Some elements were easy to figure out how to edit, some were a bit harder.

    Virb had great controls that let you alter almost anything on the templates, from fonts, to colors, and background images. I thought this was a bit better thought out than Weebly.

    Both give you quite a bit of flexibility for your free or trial period (Virb offers a 10 day trial and then it is $10 a month, Weebly has a “permanent” free offering, but sells you features and very expensive domains).

    Both seemed to have solid hosting, and while I am not sure about Weebly, I have always been really happy with the hosting at Media Temple. Great uptime, speed, and access, as well as just awesome support for when shit goes wrong.  And it does go wrong.

    What I didn’t like:

    While I am not a pro web designer, I do like having flexibility at my fingertips to get in and muck around. I also like having some control over the plugins and extensions that I use. With both Weebly and Virb you are at the mercy of what they offer.

    I also like to take standard templates and modify them.  Edit the CSS, change classes, and alter the layout to my whim.

    These things are a lot easier if you roll your own.

    Who should consider these services?

    If you are creative, but not web savvy. If you have an idea of what you want it to look like, but the whole idea of buying hosting, installing software, and customization is scary. If you want to get something up quick and easy, without headaches. Then these two offering fit the bill.

    A note on the “Fremium” model by Weebly. First, I am not a fan. Since if you are a “free” user, you are not really a customer to them, they spend a lot of time trying to get you to buy one of the paid tiers. I literally get one or two emails a day from them prodding me to upgrade. One today was offering me the paid tier at 33% off. Virb was up front and said that you get ten days of trial, no restrictions, and then $10 a month. That is one reason why I am a fan of Media Temple. They don’t try to sell you crap everytime you log in.

  • So you want a website – Weebly update

    After my first “So you want a website” post, one of my faithful readers, David Kendall Grant mentioned that Weebly is an awesome, free, and very flexible website creation option.

    Weebly-LogoI recall hearing about them in the past, but thought nothing about it, so I thought I would give it a try.

    First, a basic setup is free. Like WordPress or Blogger, you can easily get a site up that is <your cool name>.weebly.com.  I started setting up a website. It is pretty easy, and they have a huge variety of templates that you can use. You are sure to find something you like.

    The creation of the site is done by dragging and dropping features. Pretty intuitive, and almost fun. You can create text/articles, picture galleries, insert advertisements, and have interactive items like Forums pretty easily. Really slick.

    I didn’t see any way to really modify the template. For example, many of the templates have photos in the header area. No amount of hunting by me found a way to change those images. In a way this makes sense, that the templates have some rigor to them.

    How can they do this and make money if they give you a pretty solid experience for free?

    Well, say you want to have your own domain name (<your cool site>.com instead of <your cool site>weebly.com), they will register and set it up for you for a fee.  A pretty pricey option at ~ $40 a year.  (For comparison, WordPress.com will do this for $18 per year, and if you host your own, it will be about $12 a year).  So that is some revenue.

    There are also upgrades, two tiers of that you can graduate to. The starter tier ($3.29 a month) adds some support options, and the ability to remove the Weebly branding from the footers. The next tier is “Pro” that gives you a lot more flexibility, and adds things like site search, slideshows, Video and Audio players (boo, I hate web audio), and the ability to have other collaborators on your site.

    My impressions:

    I played with it for a couple of hours. I felt frustrated by the rigidity of the formats and the templates.  Of course I am the “free” user, and I am thus limited to what they give away.

    I am not sure I would want to play with it enough to go pro.

    I did see that you have the option of downloading your entire website. I didn’t play with that to see if it is in a format that can be moved to blogger or wordpress.

    I am also not their target demographic.  I am much more likely to roll up my sleeves and dive in to tweak the stylesheets, or the templates of my own site. But for the creative, but not very technical user, I am sure that Weebly provides a great entry point.

    I am not giving up on the experience, but I think the next step will be to cough up some green and get access to the premium features.

    One thing that is a turn off is the constant “hints” to get my own domain, and to upgrade. Heck, yesterday I got three different emails to find out why I didn’t finish my site, or buy a domain.

    I understand that as the free user, I am not really a customer, and they are incentivized to coerce me to pay more, but the hard sell is not very effective for me. As I said, I am not their target demographic.

  • So you want a website – part 2

    Yesterday I talked about the different avenues to putting up a website, and mentioned some of the pros and cons. Today, I will talk about some of the mechanics. It will be boring, because you aren’t doing anything, but planning at this point.

    What sort of site do I want?

    Ask yourself what you intend to do with it. Are you a photographer and want to share your portfolio? Do you want to write about current events, or your views on a variety of topics? Do you want to sell something (products, yourself, your services)? Do you want to have advertisements (banners or other related ads) to help fund your site/lifestyle?

    List out what you want to accomplish, in as much detail as you know at this time. There are no wrong answers.

    What should I be called?

    The first step is to obtain something called a domain name. This is something catchy that is related to your what you want to do. For example, the Greyhound rescue group I work with is sagreyhoundadoption.org A web name that is unique and descriptive. Before buying a name, it is good to look for names you want.  I usually use register.com to explore names, but pretty much any hosting provider will be able to search for the availability of your chosen name.

    Don’t worry if most of your clever ideas are taken. Be diligent, and creative, and you will find something.

    Do I want to host it or use one of the services. 

    This is a trickier decision. If you are a rank novice, I would strongly recommend using Blogger or WordPress.com. They will both get you up and running pretty easily, and free.  Both can have a custom domain name, and there is a pretty wide variety of themes you can select and customize.

    If you are a bit more tech savvy, don’t be afraid to go the self hosted route.  You can’t use blogger, but it is about a 20 minute process to get WordPress up and running. Trivial to say the least. This way you will have a very granular level of control over the look and feel of your website. I will post a blog about the learning path of self hosted wordpress.

    I want to go hosted, what should I do?

    First, select a hosting company.  There are many that will offer robust, reliable, and safe hosting for about $5 – $10 a month.  They will include almost endless storage, a reliable database, and all the infrastructure to handle your hosting. They will also be able to register your domain (and I recommend doing it from where you host) and keep all the records up to date.

    You are going to what a basic Linux hosted service. Pretty much all the hosting companies are good. Hostgator, Network Solutions (they are register.com) and GoDaddy are all fine choices, and will get you up and running quickly. There are another tier of hosting companies that are a bit more professional to deal with, but it comes at a price. I personally use MediaTemple and love their service and support. They never try to sell you crap you don’t need, and when you have a support issue, they are super responsive and fix things right away.

    All these hosting providers will have an option called VPS (or DV). That is a “Virtual Private Server”, essentially you will have provisioned a full VM with its dedicated disk, cpu, memory, and database. You will not have to share resources, which sounds like a big benefit. But it comes with a mighty cost. You have to update and maintain the linux installation, applying patches, and configuring the services that are used (like PHP and Apache). Unless you are comfortable mucking around in the Unix environment, I would avoid this at all costs. Also, these services will come at a premium price. Expect it to start at $20 a month and go up depending on your resource use.

    How to install the software.

    When I first started, this was a major deal. I had to download the package, upload it to y hosting site, and then follow the setup process. Pretty easy, but still a manual process.

    Now, for the common packages, you can just use something the hosting company will call a “1-button install”. All the most common packages can be installed and a basic configuration setup in a few minutes. No need to mess with MySql databases, or user accounts. Literally, push the button and in a couple minutes you have a WordPress install. Or a Joomla install. Or a Zencart (e-commerce software) installed.

    Now you have a basic site. Next in the series is how to set it up, how to customize it, and how to begin populating it with content.

  • Observations – cycling edition

    Lately I have gotten back into bicycling in a big way. I had fallen out of the habit a few years ago, and had several aborted attempts to rekindle the cycling mojo. But the recent diet and exercise plan, and the fact that I can ride without it causing my plantar fasciitis to flare up is all good.

    About 16 miles of my usual route are on well paved paths that happen to follow the irrigation canals. Mostly in excellent shape, and mostly clean (some dirt and debris, as well as some potholes) make for good riding.  There are major road crossings about every mile or so.  I go from Williams Field Road all the way up to Broadway (past the 60) and back.

    On these paths I have many encounters with people.  Mostly they are smooth, I call out that I am passing, and what side, and they don’t freak out. But not always.

    • The Headphones: Joggers, walkers and the like are almost always using their headphones to listen to music or whatever.  No problem. But a pretty large fraction of cyclists also wear headphones.  I know you aren’t on city street, dicing it up with traffic, but FFS, you need to be somewhat aware of your surroundings, and that means being able to hear. The number of times I call out that i am passing and it invokes no response is alarming.
    • Riding two up: Again, a bicyclist phenomenon.  Two (or more) people are our for a ride at a leisurely pace. Awesome. Glad you are out. But, when someone calls out that they are passing, and telling you what side they are coming on, it is time to fall back into a line. Sometimes they do, but often they are in the midst of a conversation and they are oblivious to the goings on around them.
    • Responding to the call out wrong: this one is perplexing. I call out “Passing on the left” and suddenly they practically jump to the left. Really, all I wanted was for you to not move, and nto freak out (or if you are riding/walking two across, to scootch over to the right to allow me to safely come by. But for some reason, people react wrong.
    • Dog walkers: I am a dog person, and i have no problem with people using the multiuse path for getting their four legged friends some exercise. But keep them on a leash, and don’t let them lunge at bicycles.  I know that some dogs are less socialized and freak out, but most are fine. As a cyclist, I have a few seconds to ger around safely, and I don;’t want to worry about the hounds. Also, if you are walking your dog(s) please don;t wear headphones. Dog owners have a responsibility to be aware of their surroundings. Sorry if this is harsh.

    These are just some of the behaviors I see riding the canals. I also get to see some amazing wildlife (who would have thought that irrigation canals would foster a teeming ecosystem of fish, insects, and birds.  Last week I saw a turtle in the canal.

    I also see a lot of people fishing. There are lots and lots of fish in the canals, some quite large (5# or more by the look of them).  Most are probably carp, or related to the carp family, but I see a lot of people fishing and pulling out fish.  I couldn’t imagine eating fish from an irrigation canal, but to each his own.

  • Guilty Pleasures: Absolutely Fabulous

    To there are a few things that give me guilty pleasures in life.  One is the BBC comedy show “Absolutely Fabulous”. It is a ridiculous series, introduced to me by a long forgotten ex-girlfriend, but it never fails to bring a smile to my face.  The tales of Edina Monsoon, Patsy Stone, and Saffron always put me in a happy mood.

    Patsy Stone in all her glory
    Patsy Stone in all her glory

    One of the best episodes is “Small Opening” a tale of a play written by Saffy (Saffron Monsoon) about her life, and if you have been a long time viewer, you will be able to mouth many of the classic lines.

    Best line: Near the end of the first  run, there was a scene with Edina and Patsy in the bathroom, and Edina asks Patsy what she sees in the mirror.  The answer: “A mirror, looking fabulous.”

    It is why I keep BBC America on my cable subscription.

  • So you want a Website – let’s get started

    I get a lot of people asking me how to create a website.  They see this page, or the site I run for the Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption group, or my professional site, and wonder what they need to do to play. It can be confusing to a neophyte, but hopefully I can clear the confusion.

    First, you need to honestly assess your technical ability. Do you view yourself as a bit of a nerd?  Are you comfortable with supporting yourself on your computer, do you like to tinker?  Then you might want to look to hosting and running a site on your own. But if you get nervous when you hear terms like FTP, SSH, linux, apache, PHP or the like, you might want to go with one of the completely managed solutions.

    Second you need to decide what you want to publish to the web. Most common is the blog format. This is a series of articles that can be arranged by category, and give you flexibility on what you want to post (text? photos? videos? all of the above). Or do you want to be a bit more formal, run a site that is more of a portal or a magazine or newspaper.  The Greyhound site that I run is like this. Most of the content is static, but there are dynamic parts of the site.  Additionally, there are tools to help less skilled people contribute without giving them access to the back end. Do you want to do e-commerce?  Integrate ads to help offset your costs? It is best to get this down on paper up front.

    If you are a neophyte, and you are scared of terms like FTP and PHP you can go with one of the hosted solutions. Both Blogger (a google property) or WordPress.com will be able to get you up and running very quickly. Both sites give a reasonable service for free, and are very simple to use and setup. Both can host your own domain name (your address on the web).  The wordpress service is what I am using here, and it is pretty solid.  One downside is that they will constantly try to get you to buy extra services (custom typography, custom templates).  Still, for many people, this is the best path.

    If you are curious, and not afraid of computers and technology, you might decide to roll your own. Typically you buy hosting from one of the major hosting services (Hostgator, GoDaddy, MediaTemple) and then setup your site. Fortunately, it isn’t too geeky, as you can easily FTP your files over, create a database, and run the built in installer and you will be up with a basic site.

    There are some terms to learn. The software that runs on the host to deliver your website to the visitors is called a CMS (content management system).  A content management system (CMS) is a package that provides the logic, the maintenance behind the scenes, and utilities for adding content. They typically have a front end (what the public sees) and a back end (where you add articles, posts, or pages).

    Templates are sets of files that alter the look and feel of the website. The packages typically have a couple of default (read: ugly) templates to get you started, but you are probably going to want to use a different template. Don’t worry, you don’t have to create your own, there are tons of free and paid templates for all the major packages.

    Plugins/components are additions to the web CMS that extend and enhance the experience. Things like a tag cloud, or a twitter feed, or archive access are common. But there are other plugins that can be used. Perhaps you want Disqus for comments to your posts. Or you want to have Facebook “Like” icons. You can add these and more and not have to know anything about HTML.

    All the major CMS platforms have some common attributes – they store their content and settings in a database (typically MySql), they have some type of hierarchy or taxonomy to arrange and group content, and they are typically built on PHP code that creates the HTML and styles that are seen by the public.

    The major CMS’s

    wordpress logoWordPress: The most used CMS. It is very simple to setup (I can get a new site up in about a half hour), and straightforward to manage.  It doesn’t require a lot of skill to keep it going. There are an amazing number of plugins that gives you infinite flexibility in layout and pizzaz. Additionally there are thousands of templates to give you a site that stands out from the riff-raff. I started with WordPress.

    Joomla! logoJoomla!: The second most popular CMS software, Joomla! is quite flexible.  It is what I use for my tralfaz site, and the Greyhound site. It is more of a general purpose CMS, unlike the “blog” focus that WordPress takes. There are lots of automation options for contributors, and a very rich user management environment that allows you to have many different access groups and control who sees what (I don’t really use this, but private sites, and member sites are trivial to setup in Joomla.) Joomla also has a very powerful ecommerce option, called Virtuemart that is pretty easy to setup, but very powerful.

    Drupal logoDrupal: Drupal is probably the least friendly CMS that is commonly used. It is more for web professionals, and keeping it up to date is a pretty hefty job. The basics are easy to get up, and built in are things like forums, and some great content bits built in. But the major sites that use Drupal have a lot of customization, and a full IT staff to keep it going. One site that does use Drupal, is the Economist. It is a good example of what can be achieved with Drupal.  I have played with it a little, but it really is not for a hobbyist.

    In the next article, I will discuss how to choose a hosting company, and the basic steps required to get online, and sharing your passions. I will also touch on maintenance and how to avoid being hacked.

  • How you know you are from Phoenix

    When it is 103F outside, and it feels cool.

    When your pool is a tepid 92F

    When people you know from around the world feel the need to joke about the “dry heat”

    But mostly, I just don’t mind the heat.

  • Fitness then and now

    Back in 2003/2004 I lost a ton of weight. I went from a peak of about 265#’s to ~185#’s where I stabilized for a long time. I did it the old fashion way, by eating less and exercising more. I counted calories, targeting ~ 1,400 a day (give or take). I started exercising in a gym (because I was really out of shape, it seemed the safest way to get serious), but graduated to running and cycling (even completing a 100km fundraising event that summer).

    While I kept at that low weight for a long time, the following year we took a two week vacation in France, and I packed on a few pounds (don’t judge me, the food was OUTSTANDING).  Then I turned 40 (and 45) and the weight was harder to take off.  Just cutting my calorie intake wasn’t enough. Throw in plantar fasciitis and it wasn’t possible to do my daily exercise ritual anymore.

    Fast forward until now.  I got back up to 232#’s in early 2013, and I wasn’t happy. I decided to get serious about it. Fortunately, there are lots of tools available today that were just not an option in 2003.

    Perfect Diet Tracker – Byoni Systems. A great program that helps you set goals, and track your intake. It has an amazing database that users contribute to, and in the event that something is not there, it is trivial to add it to the database from the nutritional label. I can also enter in my exercise, so that I keep a running tally. Setting goals is easy (and it will warn you if you are being too aggressive, or losing weight too fast), and takes the guesswork out of the process. It is reasonably priced, and it is cross platform, so I use it on my mac as well as my work PC to track while I am on the road (it also has a Linux version too). It syncs with Dropbox, so my data is wherever I am at.

    Runkeeper – Application on the iPhone. I started using the Nike application, but it was buggy and crashed a lot.  A friend recommended RunKeeper, and I haven’t looked back. It has all the exercise types listed, and tracks your progress cleanly. It also integrates with a heart rate monitor so I can accurately track my cardio work. I use it for walking, hiking, and biking. There is a great website that you can use to review and track your workouts. It shares automatically with Facebook and Twitter. For what I use it for, it is free, but there is a paid version that will help you train for things like Marathons.

    BlueWazoo Heart Rate Monitor – A chest strap with a blue tooth sender unit, it pairs with my iPhone and RunKeeper app. Instead of just tracking speed, distance, and elevation, this option adds a real time tracking of my heartrate. Something I am concerned about being a victim of coronary artery disease.

    Excel – I take my blood pressure daily, and track it in an excel spreadsheet.  I also daily track my weight (I weigh myself first thing in the morning, and measure my blood pressure before I drink coffee. Excel is a great tool for this, as it lets me graph the results in a variety of ways that are useful to me.

    The world has changed, and the technology has made the exercise portion of fitness and the nutritional tracking to be more exact, and relevant to the process.

    To date I have lost 22#’s in 2.5 months. A good pace, and I am satisfied.  About 20 more to go.