Things have been quiet for the past couple weeks, but an undercurrent of change has been happening within. My hosting account expired this month - which also marks 3 years of yammering (err… blogging) - I switched accounts, changed blog engines, migrated the content, and tried to resolve all existing links to the new engine.
I’ve joined the millions of a happy WordPress users. This site was running dasBlog - now dasBlog was pretty swell 4 years ago, but so was PHP-nuke, DotNetNuke, table-based-design, ASP.NET Themes & Skins, and ASP.NET AJAX. :) Web technology changes at an accelerated pace, and some software / technologies / frameworks need to run their inevitable natural evolutionary course (extinction). dasBlog did its job, but it’s time to move on - not to mention I’ll sleep easier knowing that Rhett won’t be taunting me about how my blog reminds him of SharePoint. Adios dasBlog! :)
The new digs:
- WordPress running on IIS 7 hosted by GoDaddy’s shared hosting plan ($203 for 4 years!!)
- Redirections by ManagedFusion Url Rewriter
- WordPress plug-ins installed:
- FeedBurner FeedSmith - uses feedburner feeds in place of the WP vanilla feeds
- Google Analytics for WP
- Google XML Sitemaps
- WP More Feeds - generates feeds for categories like musings (this feature was native to dasBlog, but not to WP)
Be sure to update this blog’s RSS feed to: http://adam.kahtava.com/journal/feed/. Old feeds will continue to work, but you may experience some oddities.
Memories were being relived as I dug through years worth of archived email in a quest to find a reseller / hosting account. I once had lofty aspirations to create my own web company and quickly became the obsessive CEO.
The plan was to sell domain names, web hosting, and deliver websites to my clients - a one-stop-shop of sorts. I’d frequently obsess over the idea and smatter my coworkers, and friends (actually, anyone that would listen) with my fantastic ideas. I was obsessed. By obsessed, I mean, I obnoxiously sent out weekly (sometimes daily) emails containing mindmaps, and reams of links - all while maintaining a wiki bursting with my exceptionally mediocre ideas. :) I purchased reseller accounts, hosting plans - nothing was stopping me! Now that I think of it, obsessive tendencies probably run in my family - to this day my Mother vacuums her house three times a day, sure there were 11 people in our family and things got messy, but three times a day!! Try watching TV with the vacuum running three times a day It’s enough to make you quit TV and take up programming. Anyhow, during the time of my obsession, a couple senior coworkers gently suggested that I need more experience. I remember thinking:
Man, I’ve already been through school, I have an freak’n edumacation. I’m building sweet programs. How much more experience do I need?
Of course they were right. Since then, every year / month / day has brought heaps of new knowledge and experience - experience is one of those things that can only be acquired with time. My idea of the one-stop-shop crumbled when I realized that I couldn’t compete with discount hosting like GoDaddy / Dreamhost. I also realized that I enjoyed working in teams on large web applications rather than solo projects. Today I’ll occasionally meet an obsessive CEO, I’ll offer some advice, and smile. Good ideas tend to be self evident - they don’t require wikis and link farms to convince people. If you can execute your idea (develop it yourself) then your personal passion and drive will contribute to it’s success or at least provide you with irreplaceable experience - even if it is a hair brained idea.
If you’re interested, I still have the reseller account which offers reasonable domain discounts. Thanks to all my friends who tolerated me through those growing pains. :)
Comparing between the postal websites of Japan and Canada will gives you a good feel for where Japan is in terms of web development and personal computer use.
View my related post titled: Computers in Japan: Advanced Technological Literacy does not imply Computer Literacy
