Cody Sortore's Ramblings

Racing Simulator

cody — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:57:32 +0000

For Christmas Rose is going to get me a racing wheel. Going for the Fanatec Porsche 911 Turbo wheel, it’s pretty much awesome with great force feedback even in the pedals, and a 6 speed shifter (very important to me! What’s the point of a driving sim if it doesn’t feel like you’re driving?) Anyways I also wanted to build a computer gaming chair / racing sim. So this is the concept I’ve come up with! PVC pipe will help me keep the cost down, I’m going to get a PVC welder / bender so that I can make it super strong and get the curves I want. The two light blue sides I want to make out of one piece as with the two green ones on the bottom. Also plan on mounting a 5.1 surround sound setup on here… I’ll post again when I have the full picture. Still working on learning some 3D design things so this is pretty basic, but I’ll get a concept up with the seat and mock up wheel, keyboard, computer, speakers, seat, etc.

History Teacher in the making

cody — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:01:28 +0000

So of my two best subjects history and science I think I???��?�?m going to lean more towards History. Why? Well even though I was leaning towards science at first I think I could have more fun with History. I could be very interactive and make the class more of a living history class where they got to participate with weapons, armor, and other aspects from the historical time periods in question. It???��?�?s about time learning was made fun again. Of course with science it could be done very similarly, but to me a lot of high school teachers make science hands on???��?� not many make history hands on.

I want my students to know what it is like to shoot a trebuchet, wear a hauberk, and swing a sword. Too often kids get bored with history because there is no interactivity, and they cannot relate to the time period. In a world of computers, txt messages, IM, and email we forget what it might of been like to be on the front line surrounded by enemy and waiting on a horse and rider to carry your message of distress. Yes, I think history could come alive again for a few students.

Websites for sale

cody — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:00:01 +0000

Recently I???��?�?ve decided to put a few of my more valuable websites up for sale. Well 7 to be exact???��?� there???��?�?s a few that I need to just let go of (since they have no real value as far as name and no PR either). And about 3 others that I would gladly sell, I just need to get some PR on them and/or finish the development process. There???��?�?s a few of my sites that I will be retaining no matter what, those being this site, Archmaille Designs, Cody Sortore, KC LAN Party, and a few others just for the page rank if nothing else. I???��?�?m taking a little bit of a ???��?�career???��?? shift here though and any sites that I do keep will be primarily for the continual income from various outlets such as P3, Yahoo! Advertising, Jewelry Sales, or whatever sentimental value a site may hold for me. The sites I???��?�?m selling are all PR2 or higher, one PR4 as well for those interested I can give you a list.

Anyways, it has been a fairly fun run as a website developer???��?� it???��?�?s time to start moving on and doing something a little more meaningful. I???��?�?m going into teaching, probably high school level, and even that is going to be a few years since I want to time it to start when Connor starts school. I???��?�?m thinking science, or history???��?� obviously the two subjects that I know most about and have a passion for. I???��?�?d say computer science???��?� but I???��?�?m just a hardware geek when it comes to that I don???��?�?t get into much other than PHP programing and a little bit of light design work.

My web development progress… or lack there of :-P

cody — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:42:21 +0000

This post is more geared towards newbs in the field like myself, and will go over both advantages I’ve found and disadvantages. First off lets start by saying that my progress in the website development world has been VERY slow and everything has been self taught. I started out in 7th grade on NeoPets.com where I learned about “NeoHTML” which wasn’t actually HTML at all it was CSS that you used so that you could format your page. Then I actually started to use HTML when I got Archmaille.com which originally was where I tried selling my sterling silver jewelry (if you don’t believe me check out Way Back Machine) I hand coded the site at first, later on some webmaster forums I learned how to combine my knowledge of CSS and HTML to create prettier pages. I finally started to dable in PHP when I got kclanparty.org where I first had PHPNuke installed. Didn’t do much more than the template, and a few custom add ons… but it helped me to learn the interaction of PHP and HTML. Later on I learned of the beauties that come with Wordpress soon abandoning PHPNuke. I mean the only feature of Nuke I really used was the blog so why bother with all that clutter, and growing insecurities?

At this point not only my knowledge of the difference between good code, and the interactions of the different foundational languages was growing, but so was my portfolio of websites. Moving into the upper 20’s the list of domains I owned seemed to be growing month by month. Now with several Wordpress websites, the experience with PHPNuke, (also some PHPBB), and ArchmailleDesigns.com where my jewelry store moved with a custom PHP shopping cart… it was about time that I actually learned how to code a website in PHP from the ground up.

I went out and purchased several books on PHP and MySQL because what I wanted to do you really can’t have one without the other. After several chapters of these books I wasn’t really getting to anything terribly interesting to me. I was learning names of things that I’ve been using for a long time, which is helpful to a point, but not as much as you might think. I could now search for solutions when I had problems which was nice, but I wasn’t having many problems with the few things I knew.

Later when I was working on the security team with MTV protecting their websites I learned of the great world of PHP frameworks. Or rather MVC frameworks in general. I tried many of them but really attached myself to CakePHP since the others were basically worthless as you still had to write 100% of the code how is that quicker? With cake you’ve got the beautiful Bake function where you can bake up a simple CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) website in a matter of minutes (assuming you already have the database ready) What CakePHP really taught me was the importance of good Database Structure, hell it taught me database structure all together, but since it was writing 90% of the code for me and I was once again editing it… needless to say I’ve still not learned any sort of real code.

Which brings me to the downsides of PHP frameworks I still don’t know what I’m doing! I built PetitionsForChange.com in less than 2 weeks! It really is amazing how quickly you can build a website with a framework… but now I am starting to build websites more and more complex, each new project has new complexities that come with it. Now that I’ve become more comfortable with CakePHP it is once again time to move out on my own and start to learn just PHP by itself. I’ve actually learned MySQL very well which I didn’t know before, so I feel more confident to go out and take on the task of building a website in straight out PHP.

What used to be

cody — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:14:26 +0000

The original idea of this website was to keep it to have a diary of my life… after two years of that I realized that I never really looked back on anything anyways and very few people were looking for history of me so things started to fall away. Then I realized that I could make money with the site and I picked back up on here… the site was banned from Google for taking paid posts so I have once again nearly stopped posting anything new here. As you can see it has been nearly 3 months since my last post! Every once in a while I’ll pop in and update things, but mostly because I’m getting paid for it. Sometimes I wonder if I really know what I am doing when it comes to online development… it seems my knowledge continues to grow on how to build and design. I keep making websites better, more easily used and vast… Search engines even love them, but something is missing as I can’t seem to squeeze anything more than $5 a day from my sites without PayPerPost… and worse yet it seems that every time I get up to that with one site and think I can move onto another to do the same thing then the previous site gets knocked down and starts making nothing again. Well the economy is picking back up again, so we will see how things are doing here in a year or two. I really shouldn’t get so down since five years ago when I first began I was desperately trying to get my sites to pay for themselves… now I’m renting a $100/month server, and paying for 30 domains and paying the bills all on the income of about 5 websites.

Web Hosting Geeks

cody — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:04:55 +0000

I’ve stressed to my readers time in and time out on all of my blogs the importance of when you decide to go online to DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Whether you’re purchasing a new computer, computer parts, a car, or whatever you should research that product, research the company, research their customer support. I tell the same thing to all the people out there looking to go online with their business. I tell them that when you’re looking for web site hosting look up the company, look up what they stand for and how they do business. Not doing so is just asking for trouble. I know when I first moved my business online I was naive and just looked for a manageable price on everything. Then turns out the company that I went with was impossible to get a hold of, their server wouldn’t allow me to upload via FTP, and .htaccess files were not allowed so I couldn’t run the types of sites that I wanted… needless to say I didn’t stick with that company for very long (I won’t say who it is because from what I’ve heard they’ve changed since, but I still hold a grudge so will never return to them. It’s one of the mega super hosting companies)

Format fails

cody — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:15:49 +0000

ugh! Formatting = teh failz! jeez… I really REALLY don’t want to do this right now. Some of you may remember that I upgraded to a RAID 5 array well in doing so I moved from three individual hard drives to a “single” RAID drive. Which created all sorts of problems ESPECIALLY with Adobe products. Don’t ask me why but once you install an Adobe product (be in Reader, Photoshop, or anything else) the installation path is forever remembered and freaking ridiculous to get rid of. Even though I uninstalled everything from the other hard drives after ghosting the C drive to the new array now when I go to reinstall some of this stuff it won’t let me because I can’t specify an installation path and the old path is forever ingrained…

So the plan has been to uninstall everything, make backups of the information that is important, and reinstall the OS… don’t really want to wait on it for too long, but I think it’s going to have to wait until after I’m done at LifeTouch. I just don’t have the energy right now, especially with a newborn around finding the time and energy to make all the backups and what not has been more than a little bit of a pain!

Charter Cable Giveaway!

cody — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:47:10 +0000

Some cable companies just want to have fun, fun with your money that is! And other cable companies just want you to have fun! Fun with their entertainment, and viewing options. Charter Cable Company is striving to be on a whole new level of fun. In the past they’ve given away a Honda Civic Hybrid, several Xbox 360’s, and now they’ve got a chance for you to win a 52″ LCD flat screen television, a home entertainment system, AND one year of FREE Charter Digital Cable?�?� service with HD programming. Now we’re talking fun! And for once not just fun for them.

Even if you don’t win the 52″ LCD flat screen television they will also be giving away one 22???��?? flat screen HDTV every day throughout April. This promotion does not just apply to new customers either! Upgrading current customers will be entered into the contest as well.

Not only is Charter giving away this great prize, they’re trying many different methods to give their customers the highest level of customer satisfaction. Connecting with their customers on unprecedented levels they’ve got a twitter feed (@chartercom) their customers can follow, and have opened up the lines of communication so that they can better listen to and serve their customers.

Connor Gabriel Sortore

cody — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:55:40 +0000

Connor Gabriel Sortore was born to Cody and Rose Sortore on April 03, 2009

He entered this world weighing 6lbs and 15oz 21inches long.

First born of Rose and Cody, Connor will be raised with as much love and care as they know how.?�?� Surrounded by a community of support from our church family at Oasis Community Church, and the crazies that we love so dearly at Faire.

Search Engines

cody — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:17:55 +0000

Many people don’t remember what the internet was like before the days of Search Engines. Search engines truly did revolutionize the way we think about and use the internet though. It used to be that you could only find or go to sites that you had previously heard about, saw an ad for, or that one of your favorite sites linked to. Enter Search Engines… now all the information in the world is right at you fingertips with a few simple keyword searches! Websites such as Find Hub have made it possible for all of us to scour the internet and get the information that we want… not the information that other people want us to have!

Computer Registry Cleaner

cody — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:27:54 +0000

Recently I’ve run into a lot of troubles with registry errors… well I guess that’s what happens when you go from having three hard drives all with applications installed on them to ghosting your operating system onto a 4 hard drive RAID 5 1.36TB array. So a lot of my file paths were incorrect, even though I uninstalled everything on my E:\ and D:\ drives before I put everything back together on the larger, faster, safer RAID 5 array when I went to reinstall all my programs I still ran into troubles. Some programs didn’t uninstall the way I would of liked them to… as in completely. So when I went to reinstall them they wanted to reinstall back on my E:\ drive where they were before, and they wouldn’t let me customize where they got installed. Well let me tell you something else… running 8 gigs of RAM means that I’ve got to be running a 64bit operating system… never before did I imagine how insanely difficult it would be to find a registry cleaner for 64bit operating systems. I mean we’ve been running with 64bit for a long time now, I thought everybody was 64bit compatible right now (even if their program had to be in 32bit mode).

Luckily I did find jv16 PowerTools 2009 because I was seriously about to reinstall everything just to fix some of my problems. JV16 PowerTools helped save me the time and hassle of backing up my whole computer, and reinstalling EVERYTHING. Plus it only cost me $30 that’s a deal if I’ve ever seen one. If we’re talking just an hourly rate, if I charged myself what I get paid at work for the amount of time it would take to reinstall everything that is a savings of well over $150 just for one quick download and scan of my computer!

You flatter me!

cody — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:07:06 +0000

haha, okay, so as a lot of people know I’ve used a petition site for years to my advantage. The site used to be really good for SEO campaigns, you’d create a petition (with your own HTML in the body of the petition) and sign it 10 times… automatically you’ve got a PR3 page, PR6, and possibly several PR1 pages linking to your site! Bingo bango! Oddly enough I was the only person who had figured this out… I had used it for a LONG time without anyone ever noticing, or changing anything on the site, as you can probably tell that’s not the case anymore. I’m not really sure it’s possible to get any links from them now… and I have to say it’s probably solely my fault I started to get too greedy, adding the same site to every category, and adding more and more sites they finally stopped that from happening for me

MagNext Online Adventure

cody — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:45:19 +0000

Lets face it, the world is moving towards computers, every job needs them to function in one form or fashion. Which is why I still don’t get why some parents feel that computer games are bad for a childs health or development. Kids are going to grow up to be adults, and the world is changing, they will need to know how to use a computer, and the more fluently they can use that computer the better chances they will have with a job. So why not start them out early and teach them to play games? Heck you don’t even have to spend much money on it. Most homes in America have computers, and you can have your children play free games like the one offered by MagNext !

The Magnext universe is full of fun and exciting for your children to explore based upon the toys magnext (which are awesome by the way for kids of any age… even a big kid like myself at 23). The free MMORPG allows them to build, and play with MagNext toys virtually so you don’t have to spend money on MagNext products (well you probably will at some point in time because if they realize how awesome magnext are they won’t be satisfied with the virtual game). But it’s still a good way to get the kids out of your hair for a while, letting them grow mentally.

Here’s a screenshot of the game:

Riding the iCoaster

Cryo-cell stem cell - cord blood bank

cody — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:26:27 +0000

Are you interested in saving and preserving life? It has been said that our nation has become a selfish and self serving nation, but I don’t think that is completely true. If we were so selfish and self serving we wouldn’t advance technologies for the preservation of mankind such as stem cell research. Of course there are a few selfish and greedy individuals who do it for the glory or money, and those who donate or help for the hopeful increase to their life, but as a whole stem cell research does one thing: save lives. One company leading the stem cell world is a cord bank facility called Cryo-cell. Cryo-cell helps people by giving you the option to store cord blood with them from your babies cord blood.

Cryo-cell even challenges you to compare us and find out if their service is right for you. They push the limits and challenge their rivalry companies to step up and continue the advancement of technology with them. Of course Cryo-Cell is leading the way in this endeavor which is why they are so confident in their comparison charts. If you do choose Cryo-Cell you may be interested in their Current Offer which could save you a boat load of money!

Marc by Marc Jacobs for my wife

cody — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:13:55 +0000

Are you into shoes? Well isn’t that fabulous, because I have an amazing deal for you on marc by marc jacobs shoes! These gorgeous and high class designer shoes can be found on jildorshoes.com for a great price as well. Anyone that has ever wanted to own a pair or maybe even a couple pairs of Marc by Marc Jacobs shoes should not pass up this importunity! You don’t just find deals like this on Marc by Marc Jacobs every day, nor should you waste any time waiting on these designer shoes to disappear before you have your chance to own your very own pair of Marc by Marc Jacobs shoes.

I know my wife is into shoes and would love to own a pair of Marc by Marc Jacobs shoes so maybe I’ll have to find a good time to order some of these gorgeous dress shoes that I could surprise her with later! You all know me and how I like to purchase things based on quality of design and well Marc by Marc Jacobs is the greatest example of quality designer shoes you could ever hope for! Anyone who’s been searching for the right opportunity to get their very own pair of Marc by Marc Jacobs has just hit the jack pot because here is that very opportunity!

Those are my favorite Marc by Marc Jacobs shoes that I’ve found. I love the style, and think it’s totally sexy when my wife wears open shoes like these to bear her beautiful toes. If you’d like a beautiful pair of Marc by Marc Jacobs shoes you can snag them at a great price from http://www.jildorshoes.com/

RAID 5EE vs RAID 5

cody — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:11:18 +0000

Here in a couple of days I’ll finally have the opportunity to order the final piece that will allow me to put my 4 500GB hdd’s in RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). The real question is what sort of RAID array do I go for? I’ve heard a lot of conflicting opinions on the different RAID setups. Originally I wanted to go with a RAID 5 setup… then researching it I started to find a lot of information that showed RAID 5 as ALWAYS having a Hot-Spare drive… No offense, but I don’t need/want a Hot-Spare. I’m not running a full on server environment where information is mission critical… I can lose all my information and I might pout for a few days, but I’ll rebuild it, I mean my websites are all up and running respectively, and most everything can be re-obtained in some form or fashion. So double redundancy isn’t really that necessary… and I don’t need it to be rebuilt THAT fast if there was a failure.

Either way with what I’ve been seeing (don’t know if it’s true or not) but with RAID 5 I end up with 1TB of storage space and a slower speed than RAID 0 w/ 2hdds which then brought me to RAID 10 which also gives me 1TB of storage space but is as fast as two hdd’s in RAID 0. Then there’s RAID 5EE which should give me 1TB of space with who knows what sorts of speeds… I’d say about that of RAID 0 with 3hdd’s but some of the people I’ve read stuff from say no. I’ve also read on TomsHardware that regular old RAID 5 (with no Hot Spare) will give me 1.5TB of space and be as fast as RAID 0 with 3 drives… so I think that’s what I’m going to risk running… if nothing else I’ll make sure and set it up without a hot spare and it’ll give me 1.5TB of hdd space whether or not it runs too much faster.

I’m thinking that the people having troubles with speed come from running RAID with too large of a stripe size so their information isn’t getting spread out. Which brings me to another point… do I make a super small stripe size to force files to be split up, or do I go with a larger stripe size for faster transfer speeds? I’m thinking 64kb stripe size… but maybe 32 would be the better choice since I’ve got a whole bunch of little files for website things that would just eat up hdd space in no time if they were forced to take up 64kb each.

Lap-Band Surgeon

cody — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:01:50 +0000

We all know that getting out to the gym is hard, and dieting is no fun either. So where do we all turn as Americans? That’s right, the quick fix surgery is always the right fit for anyone. Just like in that movie where Cloning becomes popular and when you get too fat and old you simply get cloned for a new younger you, get your thoughts and memories copied to the new clone and dump your old body off to work in slavery. If you’re getting old and fat but are too lazy to actually go to the gym, and too unconditioned to be on a diet get yourself a lap-band surgeon to fix your ailments!

Unsightly Unwanted Hair

cody — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:56:12 +0000

Have you ever wondered what the secrets behind laser hair removal were? Do you have a passion for beauty and helping others achieve their best look? Then the laser hair removal training DVD is right for you! Learn the secrets behind laser hair removal and get your training on how you too can become a laser hair removal technician! This is also a great opportunity if you’ve recently been laid off, or have been looking for a career move opportunity. Help others get rid of unsightly or unwanted hair today as you train from the comforts of your home to become a Laser Hair Removal Technician!

Laser Hair Removal Video

Hair Removal Videos | Facial Hair Removal

Contact Info ???��??? The Complete Guide to Laser Hair Removal (run time: 1 Hr. 44 Mins.) can be ordered for $175.00 plus shipping, by calling 1-800-414-2434 or visiting www.VideoShelf.com.

Verizon Cell Phones

cody — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:10:21 +0000

I’ve been looking for somewhere to get a new cell phone recently, but everyone wants SOOO much for the phones. You either get stuck with a huge up front price, or tied to a contract for 2 or more years. That’s why I like BestInCellPhones.com they offer Verizon cell phones and cell phones for many other companies out there for great prices! I have to give a big thanks to BestInCellPhones.com they’ve made finding great cell phone deals a snap! Now I can get the plan I want from Verizon, without being tied to a ridiculous contract for my cell phone plan! Freedom from high prices or long contracts is a wonderful thing!

SEO Link Submission

cody — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:01:39 +0000

I’ve talked a lot lately about how many people have flocked to the internet during these hard economic times. What doesn’t get mentioned a lot is how many of those people get swallowed up into the vast depths of the internet. It’s a shame to watch a new person to the world of the internet get drowned and burned out by all the big sharks out there. You absolutely must get your site seen on the search engines. Anything less than the top 10 for any particular term and your site may as well not exist too. One of the best practices for enriching your SERPs and increasing your SEO quality is to get listed in as many free directories as possible… problem is finding the right ones for yourself! Trying to find enough relevant directories to get your site SEO optimized is more than a little bit of a pain in the butt.

Luckily there are services that offer affordable manual directory submissions! I’m actually thinking about using the service for myself, at $0.14 per submission getting my site listed on 1,000 directories is only $140… not bad considering the equivalent in blog advertising will cost you more than five times that much. When I launch my vacuum cleaner review site I know one of the first places I’ll be using to get it listed is DirectoryMaximizer.com along with some more expensive services like PRWeb, and PayPerPost. But DirectoryMaximizer is definitely my favorite, they have some great features such as allowing you to spread out your submissions (to avoid the sandbox effect) to where you can get listed in either 100 directories a month for 12 months, or do a slow 5 week launch. And you can keep track of all submissions to help avoid duplicate link content.

I was extremely happy to find DirectoryMaximizer, they’ll be included in the SEO campaign of every new website that I launch for a long time!