Mike Cohen

SDHC Card Compatibility

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I got a 8GB SDHC card, since my D40x creates very large images and can only hold about 500 in large (10MP) JPEG and less than 200 RAW images on my old 2GB card. The SDHC card worked perfectly in the camera and can hold about 600 raw images or about 2000 large JPEGs.

However, when I tried to read the card on my Mac, I found that my Griffin ExpressCard/34 5in1 reader won’t recognize it. I also tried an older USB multi format card reader, which also wouldn’t recognize it. Fortunately the USB reader that came with my EyeFi card is able to read it.

TextMate Rocks

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I’ve used BBEdit for years, but TextMate blows it away (except for one thing). TextMate’s bundles and plugins really make it shine. The only thing I miss in BBEdit is the FTP browser, which lets me open files directly from an FTP server, rather than using a separate FTP client.

Ciarán Walsh offers some great TextMate tips in his blog, including some features I wasn’t aware of. In his latest entry, he discusses the HTML bundle.

One unique feature of TextMate is that bundle commands can interact with the selection intelligently. For example, ^< (shift-ctrl-<) with no selection will insert opening and closing <p> tags with the first 'p' selected. If you change it to something else, the closing tag will reflect it. As far as I know, there's no way to do anything like that in BBEdit. If only TextMate added FTP support, it would be perfect.

Drupal 6.0 Released

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Drupal 6.0 has finally been released. This weekend I will probably start working on upgrading MacMegasite, since it will be a lot more straightforward than worldbeatplanet or my2unz, which depend on a lot of extra modules for content types and features.

Some of the enhancements in Drupal 6.0 I’m especially excited about include:

  • Simplified administration: instead of entering weight values to reorder menus & blocks, you can drag and drop to rearrange them.
  • OpenID support: I can allow logins using OpenID to simplify registration.
  • Improved theming: Themes use less PHP code, so most customization can be done only with CSS & HTML templates.
  • Improved security
  • Improved performance

Aperture 2.0

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I downloaded the Aperture 2.0 trial this morning and I really like it. I’ll probably purchase it in the next few days.

Initially, there was a screw-up with the download link & trial serial number. The acknowledgement page gave the correct link to download 2.0, but the link sent in the email was for 1.5, as well as the serial number. When I requested another trial about an hour later, I received the correct serial number.

Aperture has some nice features for working with raw files, but unfortunately it won’t open a raw file in an external editor such as Photoshop; it will always convert to tiff or psd. Even without using Photoshop, I can do a lot of adjustments.

Original RAW image
Aperture Before
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!
Color enhanced image
Aperture After
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Moving back to Dreamhost

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I’m now in the process of moving this site back to Dreamhost. I’ve already moved the database, so the same content will be mirrored on both servers.

I found that HostGator doesn’t seem to offer any advantages over Dreamhost and their control panel (CPanel) is nowhere near as nice as Dreamhost’s control panel, plus I have a lot less bandwidth & disk space, and they don’t offer shell access.

Taxes don't end with death

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When my mother died in 2005, I took over her checking account, which she had in both of our names to avoid probate issues. I kept a small balance just to keep it active, although I didn’t use it, since I use a different bank. I never bothered to switch it to my name only.

I never really thought about it until a few days ago when the statement showed that the entire balance (which was less than $100) was taken as a tax levy.

It turns out she had some taxable income in 2003 & 2004 from an annuity, although she didn’t file taxes for the last few years and her primary income was social security. When I got it closed out, it turns out she (which means me) also has to file taxes for 2005 and it has to be done within 30 days. This is going to be loads of fun – NOT.

Web hosting scorecard

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This has been a weekend from hell for my web sites.

It started when Dreamhost moved one of their server clusters, which affected all of my sites. It was only supposed to take 8 hours, but it turned into almost 24 hours. Unfortunately that seems to be their usual pattern. Every planned change they make always runs into unforeseen complications and results in extra downtime. On the plus side, Dreamhost has the best account management & control panel of any web host I’ve tried. Their hosting package also offers the most features, disk space, and bandwidth for a reasonable price. Thanks to referrals, I haven’t had to pay them for a few years.

During the downtime I decided to look into other hosts. Media Temple’s GridServer seems like a great idea, but I had tried it previously and found it to be much slower than Dreamhost. A google search turned up lots of reports of problems with it.

Two hosts that seemed to get a lot of recommendations were Bluehost and HostGator. I first signed up for BlueHost but started running into problems immediately. I host several sites for myself and for friends, so my major requirement is to be able to host each site independently, preferably with a unique login and home directory for each site. As is the case with most sites that use CPanel, Bluehost only allows additional domains to be treated as subdomains, sharing the same directory with the main site. I find that unacceptable.

Next I signed up for a reseller account with HostGator, which is where this site is now hosted. It uses WebHost Manager with CPanel. Did I mention CPanel sucks? Even though each CPanel account can only host a single domain, I can create separate accounts for each domain, which is sort of like Dreamhost but much less convenient. Unfortunately no shell access is available, unlike Dreamhost.

For now I will keep this site at HostGator and the rest of my sites at Dreamhost unless they have another major meltdown. I can create about 40 additional user accounts at HostGator, which I can either use for my own sites or resell.

DNS Problems

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The DNS entry for Macmegasite is screwed up right now, so it’s inaccessible. I had temporarily switched it to Bluehost and a little while later switched it back to Dreamhost. The first DNS change is in effect now, so it’s pointing to a non-existent site at Bluehost. It *should* be back to normal by the end of the day or early tomorrow.