Phase Two – Love

The day that I knew I'd found the one was July 12, 2008. The 3G and the OS 2.0 software update had come out the day before. I'd updated as soon as I could, playing my part in the server issues that Apple had that day. I was fascinated by the prospect of adding apps, though I didn't really know what I would want to add to the thing that wasn't already there.

Had a nice loooong road trip down I-81 to contemplate such matters. I spent most of the ride and all of the battery perusing the app store. By the time I got to wherever we were going, my life was changed forever. “My God, this is going to change everything! RRE needs an app! Everybody needs an app!, if for no other reason that to format the information that's already on our website for the mobile screen. Everybody in the future is going to be carrying these things around, so if you're not with it, you're a friggin Dinosaur! I wonder how you write these things? It must not be that hard – the experience is so smooth, it must be really easy! I need to do some research.”

So I'll spare the details of what I found about programming iPhone apps, since that's basically the theme of this entire blog, but let's just say it's a bit more involved than I thought.

My involvement with Facebook only really began after the installation of their iPhone app. Same with Twitter. Or Wordpress. Or jogging. Or blogging. And on and on. So in a way, you could say that everything I've gotten interested in, or re-interested in, over the last year and a half – programming, design, marketing, my band – has been because of that little doo-hicky. Thanks Steve! On the other hand, the recent dearth of LiveDownloads is also partially attributable to that thing, also, since engineering and production have kinda lost a bit of their luster as a serious career path for me. Sorry, guys. Net positive, though, to be sure.

Phase Three – Seperation and reunion

I lost my original iPhone. I won't go into where, or when, or how, but it was a major bummer. I'd already bought a Mac by that point, since iPhone and Mac development doesn't happen on a Windows machine. Oh well, twist my arm. Besides, in the year that I'd been an iPhoner, my life had slowly but surely realigned itself around being in touch and on top of things, so even if I hadn't decided on development as a future career path I was certainly not going back to the “old way”.

Luckily, at the Rockaway Mall Apple store, they gave me the AT&T subsidy, so that my 3G didn't cost me a million bucks. Only half a million. The 3G, of course, has GPS, which I didn't think was really going to be that big a deal. I was already a good navigator and always had a map in my pocket. I was wrong.

GPS went hand in hand with a cool app that I'd gotten just after that called iMapMyRun, which tracks your runs, your training progress, and just happens to run on that little doo-hicky that you already had in your hand since you like to listen to tunes while you jog, which, by the way, neither did you jog nor did you listen to tunes a year prior to that. Goodness. So you could definitely say that loosing my original phone turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

#random #iphone

Bollocks!! Do not buy a domain from Yahoo.

I just want to make sure that shows up in the description of search results, if there are any. Now a parable...

Many years ago it occured to me that if I didn't go and buy JohnnyGrubb.com, then I was stupid. I had no idea how to make websites and no need for one whatsoever, but I did know enough to know that if I didn't buy my own friggin name then someday I might regret it. So, in March 2006, I bought my own name for 5 years. Doesn't that sound weird? Yahoo gave me a great deal, or so I thought then.

I soon started getting lots of emails exhorting me to host a website with them. Come on, it's only $15 a month and we'll help you make the website. It seemed like a good deal (it wasn't), so I did it- for about 6 months or so. At some point I got a new Wachovia check card and didn't update my info with Yahoo and they shut me off. Apparently when they shut me off, they also shut off access to my domain. I didn't find this out until yesterday. I'd kept an eye on it over the years to make sure that some Chinese company hadn't stolen it from me, and according to the records, I still owned it. Registered with Yahoo. Cool.

So, yesterday, as I was switching this website over to the new host (didn't even notice, did ya?), I got it into my head to try and point JohnnyGrubb.com over this way also. I'm thinking that perhaps JG will be the more personal website – the one that deals more with music – and that this (ibD) will be the business (that's presuming there's business, I know).

This is when I discover that even though I own JG, Yahoo won't let me in so I can transfer it, or even point it where I want it to go. So now it's time for a lesson that I learned the hard way over the last few days...

We'll skip the possibly fraudulent fiasco that is Yahoo Domains for now, and talk about what happens when you buy and host a domain/website. If you're a musician and you only buy a domain so that nobody else can buy it out from underneath you, it stays parked wherever you bought it. You can then go forward and decide to host a website with the company where it's registered, or you can wait and maybe host a website somewhere else. If you decide to host somewhere else, then you have to do some configuring. That domain that you bought is parked on a computer somewhere, and what you have to do is tell that computer to resolve any incoming requests made for johnnyGrubb.com, for example, into the proper numerical IP address for the website. That computer is called a “nameserver”, since its job on this earth is to take the english web address and translate it into a numerical IP address. If you want to host the website somewhere else you have to login to your Domain Control Panel, they all have 'em, and tell that domain to point to your webhosts' nameserver. This website, for example, is hosted at Media Temple, with a nameserver address of something like ns1.mediatemple.net. I had to login over at GoDaddy and tell them that, since that's where the domain name is registered. When you come here MediaTemple's nameserver gets the request and turns it into a number that the rest of their system can understand. It's kinda complicated at first. That's why it's good idea to buy the domain from the same place you're gonna host it, if you like things to be tidy.

I just found this all out. The hard way.

Since Yahoo wouldn't let me in to JohnnyGrubb.com's domain control panel, I couldn't point my name to my new web host. Bummer. So I had to shell out another $10 to re-register my domain with Yahoo just so I could get in there and point it in the right direction. Jerks. Like I said, my registration for that domain name wasn't supposed to expire until 2012, but I figured that $10 is probably better than me spending until 2012 trying to get someone at Yahoo on the line. They don't even have a customer service email. What kinda shit is that? I even dug up the email welcoming me to Yahoo domains and clicked on the link to my domain control panel, which promptly told me “oh you must have decided to let your overpriced, crappy webhosting service lapse because we can't let you in there. Sorry chump.”

Long story short. If you're a casual user buy your domain at GoDaddy. They're at least reputable enough and I had good experiences with their customer service during my period of hosting over there. DO NOT buy a domain from Yahoo.

Better yet, ask me. I'm getting the hang of this stuff.

#random