Figured I should make a post the sip of water blog merging with the purpleorange blog (and soon the phpark.com blog). In upcoming posts, I will cover more of how I went about doing so.

Blogging advice I have come across dictates that you should stick to one topic per blog which is advice I may have taken too literally. Over a year ago, I decided to split the topics I was interested in blogging about into three seperate websites.

Doing so presented a few problems for me. Certain posts I wanted to write could have easily gone onto one or all three websites. I spent more time trying to figure out how to construct the post to fit one or more blogs then I did blogging which left me at a standstill with lots of partially written blog posts that have never gotten out of draft form. There was also the increase in maintenance by having three separate websites.

Another reason for me to combine the three websites (which may seem obvious) is that it should be a lot easier to get one blog going then three by allowing me to focus all my attention into one area. I chose the sipofwater.com domain over purpleorange.ca or phpark.com for a three reasons: registration cost, authority and brandability.

Was merging them a good or bad idea? I guess it depends on how you look at it. One blog was going to be about business, another about technology from a users perspective (such as using WordPress) and a third working with the technology from the perspective of a developer/programmer. In small companies, the three areas could be covered by one person and my target audience sure isn’t corporations.

My goal with blogging was to help anyone out with the knowledge I’ve obtained about WordPress, blogging, computers, programming, networking, server administration, business and the Internet over the last decade to anyone who is wanting to learn more. The feedback I was getting from Vancouver bloggers, was they wanted to get their hands dirtier with maintaining their websites but weren’t sure how to go about it. I am hoping the sip of water blog will help them out.

Whether I confuse the hell out of people or help them, remains to be seen.

Over the last month, I’ve been adjusting to working part-time, coding a php-based web application, getting my family into a routine around my girlfriends school schedule and my work schedule and felt a cold hitting me literally as I walked to my car after my job interview. What a great way to start a new job!

People have thought me crazy over the past two or three years saying that I wanted to quit my corporate desk job to go work in a coffee shop where I could learn more about coffee - I no longer wanted to be chained to a desk, I wanted to interact more with people face-to-face on a daily basis and get more exercise. There are websites in my portfolio on coffee and it’s from doing research and my love of coffee that the interest in becoming a barista came.

I have to admit, I almost cried when I got my first pay cheque for my first week of pay. I made close to half my first week of 15 hours of what I used to make in one day as a programmer - my last pay cheque as a geek, I cleared just over $1,500 for two weeks pay. Other then the financial end of things, I am loving being a barista.

Since meeting my girlfriend 3.5 years ago, I knew she would have to move away to do her Phd in a city where there wouldn’t be a lot of jobs in my field. I started mentally preparing for the lost pay by paying off my car and down as much debt as I could. We were planning on having a child between her MA and Phd with me being daddy daycare and finding part-time work to pay my remaining debt off while also taking the time to work on my web projects.

I took this to be a great time for me to explore new things. I moved from Vancouver to Kelowna this past summer where the main industry appears to be tourism. When I saw that my favourite coffee shop with free wireless was hiring, I put in my resume and was hired almost instantly but made the mistake of not asking the pay until my first shift and was a bit disappointed that they are paying less then most places here in Kelowna.

In all honesty, I have turned down interviews for low paying geek jobs and was happy to have not been offered a promising position in a company that I was a bit put off from the initial phone call for an interview to the point that I almost phoned a half hour before to cancel. I would rather be a barista, work on my own projects and be happy then get paid less money then I started out making as a web developer eight years ago for some dipshit that pays peanuts and expects the world. I justify it to myself as me paying myself to work on my own projects without any cashflow occurring.

In my career as a web developer, I have always questioned whether or not I enjoyed what I did. It was through discussions with my counsellor that I came to realize that I do love what I do - just not in the environment I was doing it. I would work miserably eight hours or more a day to go home and code for several more hours on my own project. Who would do that if they didn’t enjoy what they did?

For now I am happy - I see people on a daily basis, I’m learning more about coffee and I’m getting to work on projects I want to in the capacity I want to. Now comes the time for me to work harder on my web projects and start making money from them so I can pay down my debt faster. Even when that does occur, I’m not sure I will give up being a barista because it’s a job I enjoy.

Ever wanted some nice looking icons to add to your website but not graphically inclined? I came across famfamfam a few years ago and have been using their icons ever since. They released under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned much on this bog that I’m a PHP developer. I look forward to getting some of my php applications into the pubic eye so I can send famfamfam an email to show them I’ve used their icons. Most of the php applications I’ve written thus far, are sitting on my development server either for my eyes only, or in the works to be released to the public.

WordPress is a great content management system to maintain a website with whether you use it for web pages or blog posts. There are three plugins I strongly recommend to help maintain your WordPress based websites.

Akismet

The “social web” is meant to facilitate user participation and promote user generated content. This can be accomplished in WordPress by enabling commenting and then encouraging readers to participate in discussions by leaving comments and optionally providing a URL to be linked from their name. The unfortunate part is comments attract spam.

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. - Akismet Plugin at wordpress.org

Akismet is installed with WordPress by default and although not perfect, does a good job of catching spam comments. You will need to provide an API Key from WordPress to enable Akismet.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade (WPAU)

From time to time, WordPress releases a new version of their software that you have to download, unzip, upload, and upgrade which is more time consuming then anything. I was ecstatic when I happened upon this plugin!

WordPress releases regular updates and security fixes to the software and after sometime makes it mandatory. Every time you have to manually upgrade your WordPress installation. This plugin helps you to upgrade your installation without any efforts. We also ensure you will always download the latest version. -WPAU faq

WordPress Automatic Upgrade can be set up to automatically upgrade whenever a new version of WordPress is released. I am not a big fan of software automatically upgrading itself so I prefer going through the upgrade clicking the links myself while it does the work for me.

WordPress Database Backup

Even good geeks like myself are bad when it comes to backing up items we know we should be backing up - even when we have been burned in the past for not doing so. It’s one of those things that never seems to leave the to-do list.

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database. - source

I finally have no more excuses for not backing up WordPress-based websites with the WordPress Database Backup plugin. I can set this up to back up as frequently as I want, have it emailed to myself and backup other tables in the same database if I so choose.

If you don’t have the Akismet, WordPress Automatic Upgrade, or WordPress Database Backup WordPress plugins installed yet, I recommend doing so. *Touching wood* I have thankfully not had to restore a WordPress backup yet and have already saved myself hours of work with the automatic upgrade and Akismet plugins.

I totally missed posting this last week. We went six days in a row of having a lot of storms here in Kelowna after a week of temperatures in the high 30s (and low 40s in some areas). I have always been fascinated by storms and lightning in particular after hearing the story of my mom getting hit indirectly when she was about 16/17.

Was speaking with a friend online about how crazy the lightning was one night which had us looking on YouTube. Here are some of the videos we came across (some of which have foul language, you’ve been forewarned). The sounds from some of the strikes are crazy: