Archive for June, 2007

This week has been a bit of a mess for me and thankfully i didn’t put JPEGr up for sale on any forums or marketplaces – it would have been a real disaster had i done that.

JPEGr was hosted on Lunarpages for a few months and ran with no problems, up until i decided to put it up for sale.. All of a sudden bandwidth shot up over a few days and Lunarpages sent me several emails and warningss and said i’ve have 7 days to sort it or else they’d kick me out.

Within hours i’d enabled hotlink protection and hired a coder to clean up the code as much as possible. I also went through the uploads and deleted the hotlinked images that were taking advantage of my free bandwidth. Mostly porn which i don’t allow anyway. But when you’ve got hundred of uploads/day, it’s impossible to monitor everything and all you can do is spot check.

So it thought i’d done a decent job as i’d reduced bandwidth by about 70% overnight back down do normal levels. To my horror, i received a ‘suspended’ notice after 2 days, despite me doing my best to fix the problem and despite a 7 day warning.

So for the past few days i’ve been begging working with Lunarpages and trying to come to an agreement. In the end, they unsuspened my account but as a deal breaker i told them i’d move JPEGr to another server – back to dreamhost.

Most of my sites are on dreamhost, but with hotlink protection now on JPEGr it shouldn’t cause any problems.

So what next? Well i’m still going to try and sell JPEGr, but i want to leave it a week or so just to make sure bandwidth is normal and everything is running ok.

Despite these problems, i’d still highly recommened dreamhost or lunarpages for sheer value for money. You won’t beat them. Lunarpages are probably better based on value for money and support, but then again dreamhost are excellent if you’re just starting out. Their ‘one click install’ and upgrade software is really handy and ensures you don’t mess up databases or code.

A word press blog can be set up or upgraded with literally a few ‘next’ clicks. Idiot proof

I’m delighted with this evening’s piece of bargain hunting.

As you all know i’m heading to London next month and had been trying to nab deals on priceline for some time now. For some reason the 10th of July is a busy day in London. Many hotel aren’t booked out, but they only have a few rooms left so that put a spanner in the works from my point of view as it inflates priceline’s price.

But my persistence has paid off. I’ve gotten a €400 room per night hotel, for less than €150/night. That’s a saving of over €250 I’m staying two nights, so i’ve saved over €500 on the hotel’s normal rates

The hotel is the Sheraton Belgravia. Sheraton are a big name so i was immediately relieved i’d gotten a big chain hotel rather than a local one. I was hoping for a hilton, but i guess i can’t complain for this price

As you can see it’s a 4 star and gets rated as a 4 star by about 30 different people on tripadvisor, so it’s obviously a decent hotel. Ranked 100 out of 1000 in london. It looks old and too posh for us however.. we like our modern skyscrapers with a bit of class, but as i said, there’ll be people staying in the hotel that have paid over 60% more than what we did

I checked out the location on google earth and now i see why it’s so expensive.. it’s in Kensington, a short walk from Hyde park, Buckingham palace and Victoria station, Harrods etc.. The perfect place to walk around in my BeerChief t-shirt

Well, it’s not looking likely that i’ll get my custom built Mini Cooper S anytime soon, so whilst i’m waiting on that, i’ve realized i’ll have to get some sort of a bluetooth kit for the car. I’m bidding on this at the minute, as it’s cheap and cheerful and doesn’t need charging.

Basically, you plug it in to the cigarette lighter and it charges itself. I have my proporta USB charger to power the phone so i can afford to sacrafice the cig lighter It has an answer/hang up button with up/down volume keys – all you need when driving. I want something that will stay in the car, not an earpiece that i can lose or get out of the car and forget it’s on my ear. An integrated system would be great but not worth the cash. I don’t go on long journeys much so i’ve never really had the need for any handsfree kit, but it will be handy to have, especially as i seem to be getting more calls lately for some reason

Being able to keep my phone in my pocket whilst answering it is a big plus.

I took that picture now (present), but that picture is of the past. No picture is taken without a view to print in the future and in this case it was printed on this blog. And there you have it. Past, Present and Future all within a split second

Quite often, you’ll only get one shot at that perfect image.

It’s unfortunate if you just missed out on that perfect shot and you’ll probably regret not hitting ‘snap’ sooner when you had the chance. Why didn’t you hit ‘snap’? – because you thought you’d get an even better picture later on. Now you’re left with nothing but regrets.

It’s the same with dreams, goals. Fail do follow your dreams or goals and you’re always wondering ‘what if’. For example, had i not given up my day job, id always be wondering what if i had made a killer website or come up with some new idea etc.. Now, i can’t do that, i can’t have any regrets.

I’ll never regret giving up work, because i wanted out, i wanted to follow my dreams. I would never have been happy to stay on. So going back to the whole camera metaphor thing, i’ve hit ‘snap’ and i’m now waiting for the print.

Had i never hit snap, or left it too late, i’d have regrets. Regrets are things you don’t want in your life.

Hope those words of wisdom fire a few people up or motivate them The bottom line is – don’t wait, go for it. It may be the wrong decision, but you’ll not regret it and you’ll have peace of mind. If you believe you can succeed, prove it. The most successful people around are those that go for broke when they get an idea.

I’m seriously considering switching to Meteor despite being with o2 for over 5 years.

Here’s a little comparison i carried out below.. all the red circles mean that o2′s price is dearer than meteor’s. Check out the amount of circles

Meteor have a new price plan called ‘Anytime Plus’ which is basically a set price – 20c to call anyone, anytime, anywhere in Ireland. None of this crap about peak times and off peak times. You know any call you make is 20c. (You can call other meteor numbers for 5c, but lets not confuse things).

Meteor kick o2′s ass roaming wise in the UK.

• A call to an irish landline from the UK costs 99c with o2 and just 20c with Meteor.
• To receive a call when in the UK costs 99c with o2 and is FREE with meteor.
• A text from the UK to Ireland will cost 39c with o2, and just 20c with Meteor.
• So in effect, Meteor have an all ireland and UK plan of 20c calls which is by far the best value of any network.

At the minute, o2 have 5c text bundles and 1c calls to 3 friends. That’s it. I have about 700 texts resting in my account so once i use them i could will be making the switch