Starting today I am no longer going to use the www. on my domain name. There are a few reasons I have come to this conclusion. In my opinion my domain is josephcrawford.com the www. is just a sub-domain of my domain. The www. in a domain name was just an abbreviation for ‘world wide web’ and well who calls it that anymore it’s called the internet

I think everyone should follow the no-www.org movement and make your www sub-domain redirect to the real domain name. You can accomplish this by adding the following lines to an htaccess in your root directory.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Please note that I have not figured out a way to make this work by adding it to the apache configuration file, however it will work in an htaccess file. Please take a few moments and join the no-www.org movement with me.

I meant to include this but for some reason added the trackback and failed to mention it here ;( This code was found on this site and I am very thankfull for the mod_rewrite code

As many of you know i have been using PayPerPost on this site and I have been paid from them so I had money in my PayPal account. Last night I decided to go on eBay and see what was available for the 24 Seasons. I am a BIG fan of the show 24. I found an auction that had a buy it now link for seasons 1-5 on DVD, after verifying that they were the US version and that they contained all disks for the seasons I opted to use the buy it now feature. I went through the payment process last night and everything seemed great. I was looking forward to getting the DVD sets. Or so it seemed…….

I woke up this morning to the following email in my inbox.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is an all new low in my opinion. LicketyShip sent out the following email.

Friends,

LicketyShip is looking to hire 2 amazing guys. If you can help us hire one of them, we’ll buy you a 37” Plasma TV (and we’ll deliver it in 4 hours :
If you know one of the people we’re describing below, please e-mail me at ******@licketyship.com.

Thanks, Paz

Guy #1: Web Developer Extraordinaire

Proven experience developing websites for highly trafficked consumer businesses
Ability to construct HTML/CSS/JavaScript (manually if necessary)
Expertise in cross-browser compatibility (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera)
Expertise with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop or Macromedia equivalents
Experience in conducting usability with end users a plus
B.S. or M.S. in Design, Computer Science, or related experience Desired (but not required)
Exposure to leading edge JavaScript frameworks like Dojo and Prototype
Have built consumer tested Flash and Action Script applications
Some exposure to ASP.NET

Guy #2: Web Application Developer
2+ years developing .NET or J2EE Web Applications
3+ years developing business applications
Strong OOA/OOD experience
Strong communications skills
BS or MS in Computer Science Desired (but not required)
XML and REST Web Services
Software Development Kits

Now if you ask me this sounds a bit desperate. However it was a good experience working with these guys. They have a solid product that they can and probably will bring to market. Oh yea tell him Joe Crawford refered you hehe. If you have the capabilities above contact Robert and tell him I said to give you the TV

I have to admit that when I started with PayPerPost I was a bit skeptical about whether or not they would pay out. I have seen programs like this before that would pay you to surf or post things on your site and they did not survive or payout. I received my first payout from PayPerPost the other day and I have been watching as each day I get more payouts in my Paypal account.

What are your thoughts on the content I have been providing for PayPerPost? I have been trying to keep to only relevant topics and certain topics that interest me but if it does not interest my readers it is pointless. Please let me know your thoughts

THe other day I was looking for a new speaker system for my mac pro. I have been looking at a few different systems from Creative and Bose. The systems are priced comparably so I decided to go with the Bose system since it offers a 30 day money back gurantee. I have been listening to music on the Bose Companion 5 system and so far it is pretty good. I have yet to actually test out a movie. The system from what I understand is not a 5.1 system. There are 2 speakers and a sub so I would guess that it is a 2.1 however Bose technology makes it sound like 5.1 quality.

I am not sure how much I like the setup yet but the sound quality is pretty nice. A BIG DRAWBACK is that the system does not come with a remote control. It does have a control pod that sits on your desk and has a volume knob with one touch mute. However if I am in bed watching a movie I do not want to have to get out of bed to mute the volume. It seems that the volume control is not effecting the OS X volume settings so I doubt if even the Apple Remote will help with this and that alone is a bummer.  However there is another issue that I have found with the Bose system already and that is the control module has no way to adjust the bass levels.  In order to increase or decrease the bass level you have to get to the back of the sub-woofer and turn a knob like so many older systems are setup. There few things Bose could do to increase the usability would be to add a remote control to the setup, this would give the remote control luxury but also would allow for the bass to be changed with the remote so you dont have to climb under the desk to change that.

I have also been looking at the Creative GigaWorks ProGamer G550W which is a true 5.1 setup and has wireless rear speakers. The cost for the both systems is the same $399. The GigaWorks system comes with a remote which is a big plus.

I have been a strong believer in Bose and will give this system some time before I jump to conclusions and return it. I will try watching a movie on the system later and see just how well the speaker system sounds during a movie. I will post here again with my findings and whether or not I decide to return the Bose system.

Today i was browsing around and I ran into something called Forex Trading. I was confused because I have heard of the stock market and mutual funds etc. What is this forex? I did some google searching and found that there are a lot of people who trade forex. From what I have been able to gather up it is buying another currency and when the value of the dollar increases you would sell it and make a profit.

This was a new thing to me and sounds really interesting. Why not take advantage of the value of a dollar in another currency? For an example currently you can buy 1168.4 yen for $10 USD. If you did that and then tomorrow the value of the dollar in Japan increased you could sell the 1168.4 yen for say $12. I am not sure how often the rates change but it does sound interesting and I am going to look into this. Pretty much rather than investing in a company on the stock market, you are investing in the value of the dollar converted to other currencies.

I am going to Google this term more and I will post here with any updated findings. I am not even sure if you can be a “day trader” as you can with stocks without having a broker etc. I wonder if there are sites out there like E-Trade for trade forex.

I woke up this morning to an email in my in-box that was telling me about a new release for some mac software. The software is called Power Manager 3 and is supposed to help you cut down the costs on running your mac. It allows you to schedule your computer to shut down, go into sleep mode, automatically logout at certain times etc. This all seems very cool. Could you imagine running this on the computers in the computer lab. You would set it up and it’s all automated.

One thing that the Power Manager 3 website is saying is that it can save you money. Well I guess it could if you leave the computers on 24/7. However I am not sure what computer lab would leave all of the computers on overnight. This is something they say on their website.

Imagine all your lab computers switching themselves off at night and on in the morning.

This is almost accurate. In order for the computer to switch itself back on it would have to be in sleep mode. While in sleep mode the computer is still consuming power. If you shut your computer down there is no way for it to monitor the time and trigger events such as wakeup. If you are already shutting the computer down at night, how is this supposed to help you save money? I believe that they are misleading people by not disclosing that to the public. Now they also state the following which I have no idea how they would accomplish.

From what I have found out (I am not sure how yet) the mac can actually schedule itself to power up from a shut down state. I retract what I said above about them being misleading and I apologize for stating that when i was incorrect.

Use Power Manager to automate when your organisation’s computers are switched on, off, or asleep.

How they can tell a computer that is totally shut down to turn on sounds impossible weird to me. I think i am going to have to get the demo and try it out.

Read the rest of this entry »

PayPerPost has started up a conference for bloggers. The conference will be held in Orlando, FL on June 1st and 2nd. They have a good lineup of speakers to share information with us fellow bloggers. Why should you attend the conference? You will learn a lot, get to network with other fellow bloggers. They will be talking about how to increase the traffic to your blog and what you can do to gain more and more daily readers.

I wish the conference was closer to me. I live in VT and the conference would cost a bundle between airfare and hotel on top of the conference fee. It would be nice to attend this conference though. Who knows maybe I will make it to PostieCon ‘08. This is the first time I have ever heard about a bloggers conference being held anywhere. The cost of the conference is very cheap compared to most other conferences you are looking to pay $199.95 (currently as posted on their website).

They have 2 full days of keynotes. To see the full schedule take a look at the PostieCon website. It even looks like these guys know how to have fun. After 8pm they have a social where it says Ted will be getting naked. Gee I hope there is alcohol involved for that to happen hehe.

I never knew that glasses were so expensive. Even with my insurance through work I ended up paying $300 for my every-day pair. I could not go without sunglasses though and i had to drop another $500 on those. With the sunglasses what I had to do was buy a pair of Revo and then have Lens Crafters send them out to have the lenses made to fit the frames. You can also get a pair of Discount Sunglasses for every-day use or to have prescription lenses place into them.  I found that these guys have much better prices on the name brand glasses for every place that I have checked.

I have already dropped my sun glasses and put a nice scratch in one of the lenses. I should have known to get the straps for them because I always put them on my head and then when I turn around they go flying. I just could not believe that I had to buy the frames from another store and then take them to Lens Crafters to have them put the new lenses in them. The store I bought them from is owned by Lens Crafters so you would think that they could order just the frames from Revo to make the cost lower. When you buy a $230 pair of sunglasses you are paying mainly for the lenses.

Lens Crafters did not even return the non prescription lenses to me in new condition. They decided to put both lenses in a plastic bag and send them that way. Through shipping the lenses clanked together leaving nice scratches in each other so I cannot even sell the lenses on eBay to make up the costs. I am not satisfied with Lens Crafters and I am going to be calling or emailing corporate to let them know.

Over the last few weeks I have been looking at home furnishings for the apartment that I will be moving into. I am not looking forward to buying everything again. The first thing I had to look at was bedroom furniture and I think I have finally found the set that I like. It is a bit expensive for my taste but it seems like all of the companies are comparable.

Once I get moved in I am going to have to buy 2 more beds for the kids and a crib for the baby. I wish I could just buy all of the furniture that I would need for the place in one shot but that would lead to tens of thousands of dollars. Hopefully the furniture that I purchase will last me several years. I bought a bed, dresser with mirror, armior and 2 night stands. I also got the pillow top mattress so that I could sleep easier at night. On the list of things to buy are beds, dressers, toyboxes and the such for the kids, but I will also need to buy a fouton or couch for the livingroom and a small dining room table.

That is just the beginning. Oy why do things have to be so expensive?