Sun, May 11, 2003 Check this out.  Someone is putting GeoURL to good use.  It is a clickable map of the Seattle area.

Sun, May 11, 2003

Instead of switching to a new ISP, I'm thinking of getting a bunch of friends together and buying a box and colocating it.  Here is how the math works out:

• 1U server hosting: $100/mo.  There are a couple places in seattle that i've found that offer this kind of deal.  $100 seems to be the starting price.
• 1U server: ~$1200.  This all depends on how much you want to spend.  Since there won't be someone backing this stuff up for us, a RAID mirroring config is probably best.  It looks like iron systems might have some decent machines.  I spec'd out a 1.47GHz Athlon w/ 256MB of memory and 2 160GB disks w/ HW RAID for $1200.
• OS: Install something free or step up to Windows 2k3 :)  Being a MS employee, I can get a deal.  This could be an extra $1000, depending.  When the web edition is released it will probably be a lot cheaper.

So, assuming that I can get 5 people together on this total, the start up cost will be $250-$450 each.  The montly cost will be somewhere around $20 each.  With 6 people, we can get the startup cost down to $200-$360 each.  I'd probably want to charge more per month so that there is an ongoing slush fund for machine upgrades and fixes and such.

Adding SQL server is another $5k.  Chances are I won't need anything that industrial strength. 

So, for a very reasonable price ($450 + $20/mo) you can get your very own W2k3 machine in a data center that you can do anything you want to.  BTW, 160GB is a ton of disk space to have on the net.  Beyond this, you also have to worry about back ups and applying the latest security patches...

Has anyone out there done this?  How is it working out?  Words of advice?

Sun, May 11, 2003

Want to TS to a machine from the command line?  Here is how to do it:

c:\> mstsc /v:<hostname>

Sweet!

Sun, May 11, 2003

I finally cleaned up my blogging software enough to release the source and an install package.  There is a screenshot here. I'm releasing this as 0.9.0.

License
MSI install
Source

Once you've installed the binaries, there is a readme on what to do next installed into the programs directory.  You have to copy some stuff around and edit some xml files to configure what is going on.  If any of this is unclear, let me know and I'll update the readme.  The readme is here also.

Here is the basic architecture:

• All data exists in <My Documents>/JoeBlogger.  If you want to back up your site, this is the thing to back up.
• <My Documents>/JoeBlogger/Config/Site1.Config is a private config file with various file paths and FTP server information.
• <My Documents>/JoeBlogger/Site1 is everything that gets uploaded to the server.  This includes the raw XML source data and the generated html files.  If you have images or other files in that directory also, they will get uploaded for you.
• <My Documents>/JoeBlogger/Site1/Config/Site.Config contains public config information.
• When publishing the client generates the site into the <My Documents>/JoeBlogger/Site1 dir and then uploads that to the FTP server.

Play around with it, send me any deltas you have and spread the word!

Thu, May 8, 2003

Brian (no blog?) suggested Alentus.com (where do people come up with these names?).  This looks like the best deal I've seen so far: $25/mo for 400MB.  I'm off to Seattle for a couple of days now so I'll have to check this out when I get back.

I've gotten another nibble but I haven't heard back yet, so I'm still looking.

Wed, May 7, 2003

I hate New York.  It isn't just the Yankees.  It is the snide attitude that nothing else matters.  Dave Winer, today, has an entry today that smacks of the same self-righteousness: 

"Basically the rule is that success breeds envy, and envy isn't that far from hate."

While I think that this sentiment is true, I think that the bigger reason that people hate him is that he is a Bipolar whiner. I've never had an email exchange with him where he doesn't take his toys and go home.

By Dave's own criteria, the only reason people hate Microsoft is because we are so successful.  In the ancient essay that he points to he makes this argument (with BillG) directly.  However, he has changed his tune over the last couple of years.  I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't write the same thing now.

The "they only hate me because I'm successful" arguement may be some of why MS is such a focus for animosity, but I (and a lot of other people at Microsoft) think that the problem is deeper than that -- it is one of the ways the company has changed over the last couple of years. 

If Dave really beleives what he wrote, he is guilty of the same hubris of which he accuses us.

Tue, May 6, 2003

It is getting on to time for me to look for a new car.  I was pretty settled on a Z4 3.0i w/ SMG but the new 350Z Roadster is looking pretty sweet. 

I'm looking at picking it up sometime in September, but I want to plan ahead.  I was going to avoid the 350Z Roadster because of the typical new car feeding frenzy but it looks like availability might not be that bad.  However, if I get the Z4, I can pick it up in Spartanburg, NC.

Tue, May 6, 2003

I probably can't say any more than just point to this: Paul Thurrott's first impressions on longhorn graphics.  This is exciting technology to work on.

Tue, May 6, 2003

I just feel sorry for this kid.

Basically, the story (23rd hand, probably) is this:  This kid used a school camera to video tape his star wars fighting skills.  He forgot to take the tape out and someone else found it.  I've mirrored the original video here.

It wasn't long before somebody on the net remixed it by adding appropriate sounds and special effects.  I've mirrored that here also.

Sat, May 3, 2003

I was finally able to find time to put true WYSIWYG HTML editing into JoeBlogger. Here is a current screenshot:

Notice that there is no save button.  Just start a new entry and hit Upload.  It FTPs everything that has changed to your site on a background thread. If you don't hit upload, it will automatically save your unpublished entry.  I really like the UI model with no explicit "save" functionality.

I stole the HTML editing control code (which is really a wrapper around IE's rendering engine: Trident) from ChrisAn's BlogX.  He stole it from Nikhil Kothari who wrote it originally ASP.NET WebMatrix project.  The HTML -> XHTML conversion code was written by Andrew Lin.

Note that JoeBlogger is a very different project than BlogX.  BlogX is a client/server solution that has the canonical data store on the server.  It requires a ASP.Net server to run the server side part (Actually, you could probably write a different server that expose the same API, but you get the idea).  JoeBlogger is a client side only solution that doesn't have any server side code at all.  All of the pages are generated on the client and uploaded to the server.  As long as you have FTP access to your web server (and almost everyone does) you are set.

If you are interested in getting a look at the JoeBlogger source, let me know and I can give you an early drop of the source.  I'll probably add some more features (and a decent setup) and then release it.