Jay Gaulard Blog

Twitter, Local Search, Cool Websites, Blogs and Web 2.0

Monday, May 26th, 2008

The simple dictionary definition of “Twitter” is “microblogging/social networking platform that places a 140- character limit on each individual post/tweet.” However, describing Twitter thusly would fail to encapsulate the power of this new omnipresent medium. So, instead here are 101 examples of how Twitter members regularly use the service.

Community Powered Local Search - This Could Actually Work

I found a site last night that claimed to be the “Easiest Local Search Ever”. My reaction to this: “Oh reeeaaallly.”

10 Cool Websites We Recommend

A list of 10 websites that are either useful or entertaining. Personal favorites: Cooking for Engineers (self-explanatory), thesixtyone (safari for music junkies), and Rentometer (save money on rent).

GigaOM Favs: 10 Blogs You Should Follow

Om Malik shares the comprised results of a twitter survey and personal contributions of his team members. The results are definitely useful!

Finally the definition of Web 2.0 & 3.0

One of the most misused buzzwords finally gets defined. Now we can stop people from labeling everything on the internet as Web 2.0. Please stop the madness.

Power Surge Blocks Access To Server?

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Last night around 8PM, I heard the surge protectors/battery backups that we have for the computers beep. It’s the first time I heard that since we have been here. I am pretty used to it because they are rather sensitive. Any power fluctuation causes them to beep. It is comforting.

I didn’t think anything of it. Then, a little while later, I tried to access some websites that I have on one of my servers. I couldn’t get on. I tried again a little while later and still couldn’t get on. I asked Laura if she was able to get to the sites and she said no. She told me that she was working on one of them when she couldn’t get to it anymore. I figured the hosting company’s monitoring “red light” would’ve gone off by now and the server would be brought back on line by them. Nothing. I decided to submit a support ticket.

The hosting company responded to the support ticket informing me that they could access the server and all the sites just fine. I then called my sister down in Chapel Hill, NC to see if she could log on to the sites. She could access them just fine too. The strange thing is that I was able to see all the websites on my other server like nothing was wrong.

I responded to the hosting company ticket and let them know that I could not access the servers from only my location, but it seems like the rest of the world was looking at the sites without issue. I felt so left out. They asked me for my IP address so they could check the firewall. That was fine. Then, they asked me to do a traceroute to the server. I did that and the connection timed out at the server. Then, they did a traceroute from the server back to me, and the connection was timing out at my location.

This was all getting kind of odd. They asked that I power cycle the modem. I did and the problem was solved. I was able to access the server again.

What I find puzzling is that I was only blocked from one server in the world…mine. How did this happen. After thinking for a while, I remember right at the moment of the power hiccup, the issue began. Could being on a website at the time of a power surge (or failure) make your modem block you from the website (server) you were looking at?

Gaulard Web Services is Hiring - Writer Wanted

Saturday, May 17th, 2008

Well, you would actually be an independent contractor.

I already have two people helping me out these days. They manage all the websites, which is nice because it loosens me up to run the business. It has worked out very well so far. Now I need to take the next step. I am looking for someone (preferably an English major) who LOVES to write and do research. The main words are creativity and professionalism. This person must be able to write better than me, because if they can’t, I might as well do it all myself. I would love to read something this person writes and give them a pat on the back and say job well done. This person needs to be thinking about what they are going to write the next day while they are laying in bed falling asleep. Have you ever turned the light back on to take notes so you wouldn’t forget that great idea? Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

If you don’t know me, I am going to let you in on a little secret. I am kind of hard to please. I do many things related to business myself and have gotten very good at them. It’s rare that I come across someone who knocks my socks off. When it comes to writing, I notice all the missing commas and off punctuation. It’s not easy noticing all this stuff, but that’s the way momma raised me.

Anyway, if you, or anyone you know is looking for some cold, hard cash and is an awesome writer, please let me know. You are going to need to send me samples of your work so I can look at them. It would be fantastic if you knew all about keywords and how to write for the web. It would also be fantastic if you were a marketing major (as well as an English major) who has experience with the web.

Setting Up a Cron Job in Plesk

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

I have been putting this off for a while. For some time, I have had the need to set up a cron job to run my website sitemap generators. Currently, I do them by hand. Every few days, I log in to each one and run the generator. This gets a little tedious, because I have to do about thirty of them.

I have always known there is a function in the sitemap generators that allows a cron job to kick the generators on. All I had to do was set it up. Now, I am not all that good with that little black screen…SSH. I mean, I use PuTTY for some things, but not all that much. I would rather use a nice GUI to take care of these tasks.

Well, it just so happens that Plesk offers that GUI. By the way, I am talking about Plesk 8.1 here.

Ok, the first thing I did was to login to Plesk. Then, I clicked on, “Domains.” I clicked the domain I was interested in setting up a cron job for. Next, I clicked the “Scheduled Tasks” icon and then the system user. Once I was done clicking all that stuff, I clicked the “Schedule a Task For …” That’s the easy part. Well, the rest is easy too, but at least I was at the place I had to be to set up the job.

Once I was at the task page, there were a few things I had to fill in to set up the job. First, I checked off “enabled.” I think that’s pretty self explanatory.

Basically, I wanted this php script to run every two days at 4AM. It’s pretty simple. For the first field, labeled, “Minute,” I put in a “0.” That will start at zero minutes of the hour. For the “Hour” field, I put in a “4.” This will start the script at the fourth hour of the day. It is based on the 24 hour clock. Ignore the periods after the digits. I put them in there just for grammar’s sake. For the “Day of the Month” field, I put in an “*.” I guess that means any day. I also put in an “*” for the “Month” field. For the “Day of the Week” field, I put in a “*/2.” This means that the script will be initiated every two days. For the last field, “Command,” I put in the path to the cron file in the script. That is something you will need to get from the script itself.

This was the first time I did this. If there is anything I missed, anything I did wrong or anything that might have been done more efficiently, please let me know by way of comment.

Some Video Please…

Saturday, November 17th, 2007

I have been going back and forth for some time on this issue…whether or not to go video. I know I take a lot of photos for this blog and that seems to be working out well. I just think that people would enjoy video a whole lot more.

The benefit is that people can see much more through video. They can hear me talk and hear the birds chirp. They can get a real feel for things. Image watching TV as a slide show. Not so much fun. I think video is where it’s at.

I was thinking that I can get a little Sony hard drive video camera and upload the videos to YouTube.com. Depending on the software I get with the camera, I can add my URL in the bottom corner of each video to promote whatever website the video is going to be posted on. Then, I can simply pull the code for the video in from YouTube to my website. Sound good?

Ok, since I really know nothing about video cameras, I am going to have to do a little research. I saw one at Circuit City for decent price. Maybe one of these days I will go grab it. I am sure my family would like to watch these videos, or maybe I am just being a little narcissistic. Nah, I think they will like it.

Switching From Adobe GoLive to Dreamweaver

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

I have been through it before…when Adobe discontinues a certain piece of software. The first one I lost was Adobe ImageStyler. That was back in 1999, when I was in college. The second one was Adobe LiveMotion. By this time, I can pretty much read the writing on the wall.

Recently, Adobe purchased Macromedia. I have been wondering what is going to happen to my favorite website editing piece of software…Adobe GoLive. I am not really sure if GoLive was ever my favorite editor, because it is quite bulky and has always been full of bugs. I remember back a few versions ago, the program would just disappear from my screen, right in the middle of my work. Where did it go? Oh, who knows. Then, the site file would get corrupted and I would have to figure out a workaround. Now, with my latest version (Adobe CS), the program is just really big and takes a long time to load, especially when the site is large. I dread opening it.

I took a look on the Adobe site and read that they are pushing the new Adobe Dreamweaver. They still offer GoLive, but aren’t talking it up like they used to. In my opinion, it’s history. Dreamweaver is the industry standard website editing program. I agree. I have seen it in action and like it. A few years ago, we purchased Macromedia Studio MX 2004, which included Dreamweaver MX 2004. Knowing where this whole thing is headed, I decided to purchase “Dreamweaver MX 2004 - The Missing Manual” from Amazon. I got the book for about $3.50 ($7 total). I started reading it and using the program (2004 MX, that is). I really like it. It is more intuitive than GoLive and has a few more things that I really like. Coming from GoLive, I know how to do most things, they are just in different places.

I figure that I will learn the program with this version and if need be, I will move up to the latest version. Sound good?