So previously I posted about a problem one of our customers had parsing the DNC. The solution was done in perl and you can read about it in the Perl Edition of this. And it worked rather well and very quickly. However it presented a support issue: They didn’t have a linux box nor the inclination to install perl on a windows box just for that meaning each month we needed to parse it for them.
So I rewrote it in Window using .NET…
Continue reading
Recently, one of our customers had a unique problem. The national Do Not Call (DNC) list they pay $15,000 (yes, that’s a comma and yes those are zeros after it) per year for access to exceeded the 2Gb limit imposed by older systems they were running. Specifically, fox pro couldn’t handle 2Gb+ files. So they asked if we could make something for them that would separate the file into smaller files that could be consumed by the out dated system.
So we did…
Continue reading
Recently, one of the local radio stations here in town wanted to stream their stuff live over the internet. Being their ISP, we helped them quite a bit. You can read about that and how it was done here: Multiple parallel audio streams from multiple audio sources on one Wirecast license.. Recently, however, we have uncovered a huge flaw in Wirecast: it’s inability to recover from pretty much any error automatically, start automatically, or automatically broadcast. If you don’t have a 24/7 technician who can sit in front of the server and watch Wirecast around the clock, this presents a problem.
A HUGE problem. And Wirecast’s official answer is “it’s on the wish list”.
Nice. I’m done wishing. So here’s what I did…
Continue reading
With almost 60,000 IP addresses, we here at High Speed Web are VERY familiar with ARIN and their website. We are constantly SWIPing and un-SWIPing network blocks and verifying our current SWIPs are correct. Recently, ARIN’s website underwent a startling change and to many it may appear much more disjointed and funky. This is because it isn’t really written for human eyes…
Continue reading
March 19th 2009, Microsoft released IE8 to the general public and made it available for Windows updates. The good news with this version of IE is it includes improved standards support. However for many of you who’s websites were designed with frontpage, word, or powerpoint, you may find that your website no longer displays correctly. Some websites will be viewable by using the compatibility mode, but even that will not solve all the problems.
When running a shared hosting environment, it is impossible to stay competitive without the use of some form of control panel. And in the world of linux shared web hosting, no control panel is as widely used as cPanel Inc‘s cPanel/WHM combo. The Cpanel team has put a lot of time and effort into the remote administration of WHM, and through that Cpanel. With a little ingenuity and not much work, really, this API can be extended to include any functions you can imagine, up to and including the system administration of the machine itself. So lets look at the basics thereof.
Continue reading
The art of debugging differs, some, with each language and it’s specific tools. Perl provides an interesting challenge to programmers since it, like most linux-originating languages, has no real IDE wherein it can be debugged step by step with breakpoints and like methodologies. Instead, the perl programmer must resort to using print statements, logging mechanisms, and then there is the __END__.
Continue reading
Researching to the internet savvy is like water to fish: we swim through and live in it. You can’t survive on the internet very long without learning the art of researching. And if you can’t figure that out, no article, course, or lecture will help. My purpose here is not to instruct on HOW to research, we know that well enough, but rather to RELY on the research obtained. In the world of web development, too often, egos become involved and overpower reason and research. A site that the target audience dislikes is worse than no site at all, despite what the designer feels about it. And so we look into the finer points of relying on our sought-out research.
Continue reading
The great paradox of the internet is information. The internet provides such a vast array of information that just about anyone can learn just about anything about just about any subject. On the other hand, without near infinite time to weed through it all, it becomes increasingly difficult to find reliable, pertinent, and quality information. The sheer volume has become both the benefit and the draw back. And with as many tech-savvy persons as there are out there, the amount of information pertaining to web design and development is astronomical. Throughout the years, I have gathered a list of sites I have tried and tested for valuable content and who I turn to for relevant references.
Continue reading
Every trade has it’s tools and web development is no exception. It has quite a few in fact. Throughout the years of doing web development I have used many different tools and have settled on a core group of half a dozen or so. It is definitely worth your while examining those I recommend, and possible a few that will receive honorable mention here. While it’s true that tools don’t make talent, they certainly speed it along!
Continue reading