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I wanted to start small on the Flippa marketplace. Since this is my first purchase, I do not intend to “flip it” as it where. I am going to hang on to this for a while, and if anything else, it will act as a great storage engine for myself to put up great images I want to use. Even if I never get my $300 back, I think that the buying process has taught be a lot.

Hopefully as I learn more and more I will get better at buying and/or selling websites. I put what I thought to be a big bid on magnt.com, which was for sale on Flippa. I bid just over $12,000 and the auction ended at $30,000. I just don’t see the value of that price given the revenue, but I am new to the website appraisal business.

I do not expect buying or flipping websites to become my full time job. This is just a way to have a little fun on the side. The fun for me isn’t really the money, it’s the challenge. I like to see if I can take a website or app that wasn’t doing well, and make it a viable website or service. Only time will tell how well I will do at this side hobby, but right now I am excited.

Every once in a while I got stuck on a problem I couldn’t seem to figure out immediately. This is of course very common in programming, and nowadays we just hop over to Stack Overflow and we’ll have the answer usually within the hour. The problem was I was out East in Nova Scotia, and the Internet was down more often then not.

This created a problem for me as I was often getting stuck, either with something I was trying to do differently with CodeIgniter, or something new I was learning with Rails. So without the ability to go onto Stack Overflow, I had to figure things out on my own.

Getting Smarter through Problem Solving

When I would get stuck on have to figure things out on my own, I would find that I had a clearer understanding of the solution I came up with, then solutions given to me on Stack Overflow. This of course makes sense, as I came up with the solution versus having it handed to me. However, consider all the other times I did just get the answer off of Stack Overflow. Did I take the time to figure out WHY that works? Do you?

I feel like I’ve become a better programmer just by spending a week with no access to Stack Overflow. I’m not just talking about Stack Overflow either. I’m talking about seeking out answers in general that you could otherwise figure out by working through the problem. I think this applies to more then just programming. It really can apply to any area of life where you go for the quick answer, rather then working through the problem yourself.

I’ve worked in IT for many years, and I’ve seen this problem come up too many times. A person will have a problem with their computer, instead of working through the problem and getting a better understanding of the computer, they will call their IT guy to come fix it immediately. Of course, the next time they have this problem, they will inevitability do the same thing, and so on. If they took the time to figure out the problem the first time, they wouldn’t need to rely on the IT department as often.

Next time you feel the urge to post a problem on the Internet, or go to a person you know can give you the answer, try and work through the problem yourself to see if you can figure out the solution. I know you will be a better person for it; well at least a smarter person.

HostGator had an amazing Black Friday special where all their hosting packages were 50% off, so I took advantage of the sale and hopped aboard. I signed up for their business plan, which I wanted for the dedicated IP incase I need to do any SSL connections in the future.

From VPS back down to Shared

On Media Temple I was on a VE server, which is essentially a VPS striped bare. With a VE server you can control exactly what you want to have on your server, but more importantly, what you do not.

While I really enjoyed having that control, there were issues. The main issue is that I’m not a Linux Guru, so I had to Google lots to find out how to do the simplest of tasks. This lead to many problems with the configuration of the server, which actually broke my WordPress automatic updates.

I decided I was no ready for that pure Linux experience yet, and so I downgraded myself back to a shared plan. I would still recommend a Media Temple VE for anyone who had the Linux knowledge, and wants a little more control. For $30 a month, you really can’t go wrong.

I find the products, pricing and support at HostGator to be all top notch. I am very happy to have them as an affilate for this site, and I hope many of you will give them a chance and try out one of their shared or VPS hosting packages.

DISCLAIMER: I am an affilate with HostGator through Commission Junction, and any sales that result through a click through of this website, I will get a commission off of. I DO NOT let this effect my opinion of them, or my reviews of them. I only put advertisers on my site, whose products I ACTUALLY USE.

Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" Montior

After doing some quick research online, I found that Dell recently introduced a new 24″ monitor that offers a fairly high resolution, at a very fair price. With a native resolution of 1920×1200 and a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio, this monitor can start to compete with the higher end professional monitors. The monitor retails for $399 US, but you can find it even cheaper then that if your diligent. I picked it up for $360 after a couple of Dell.ca coupons curtsy of Air Miles Shops.

What really drew me to this monitor was the features it had over most of the other monitors on the market. I don’t know when this started to become the norm, or why, but most monitors now come with a fixed height. Meaning you can’t increase the height of the monitor’s stand. Most monitors now are designed to be tilted upwards. Frankly, I like looking at my monitor, not down on it like it’s some second rate piece of technology that can’t even go eye-to-eye with me.

The Dell monitor slides up and down effortlessly. You can adjust the height on the fly with very little resistance. The monitor stand also swivels in multiple directions. You can keep the base stationary, while moving the monitor left to right. It can also be turned into portrait mode, as shown in the picture.

The display looks great when editing in Photoshop or playing games. I found the colours to be well represented, and found the quality very sharp. While it’s still not at the same sharpness as my 27″ Cinema Display, the huge price difference lets me quickly forgive any small shortcomings in that area.

I would highly recommend this monitor to anyone needing an upgrade, or who spends a lot of time programming (the portrait mode is perfect for a programmer’s editor). The size, resolution, quality and price of this monitor make it one of the best buys on the market. I plan to buy a second one for my upcoming gaming rig, and quite possibly a third.

Being the excessive compulsive type programmer that I am, I have been trying out a different framework almost every week. This week I’m all about Codeigniter. For some reason I decided to rewrite the application I had already mostly written in plain PHP, in Codeigniter. What could go wrong? Well actually, I lot. (Side Note: Obviously things went wrong. If everything went perfect would I be writing about this? Who cares about the experience that went 100% right? Boring!).

I’m not here to post by amazing solution to XYZ problem, I’m just ranting on my experiences, and trying to hammer home the point to not rewrite applications in frameworks before you REALLY know them inside and out. Some things like posting the form data have been so much faster. Some stuff I’m hitting my head against the wall with. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to pass the data around to the different views. This has nothing to do with Codeigniter, and more so with my inexperience with the framework.

In the end I’m sure I’ll figure it out, so no need to worry (I know, you don’t really care). Maybe if I was writing this application sober, I’d actually be able to figure this shit out.