I’ve started my Crestron Gold Exam thinking the end of the year is likely to slow down. Ha! My workload has remained pretty high for the last few months, not leaving much time to work on this blog. I am still working on new posts, just not getting enough time to finish any of them. And now that I’ve started my Gold Exam, I’ll have to set aside time every week to work on that (due 3/13/23).
Sorry if things have been a little quiet, I do plan to keep writing when I can find the time again.
It looks like WordPress has another new theme and new blocks that don’t work with my old theme. So here we are, a new theme!
Like most mornings, I started today by reading through the Crestron Groups.io daily digest. It’s the spiritual successor to the old Yahoo message group. Reading through those posts really helped me out when I first started programming Crestron in SIMPL. I was already familiar with control systems (I’d been immersed in AMX for a couple years by that point), but coming to SIMPL from any other imperative programming language requires some different thinking. Lucky for me, there was a thriving community of professionals who were willing to share their knowledge and experience.
Continue reading “Community Support”I’ve tried a few different web hosting providers over the years. I think it was a particularly bad experience using GoDaddy that pushed me toward the VPS offerings, and eventually I settled in with Linode. I’ve been with Linode for several years, but just recently cancelled my service. My domain has wandered between different hosts for a few days now but has finally come to rest at WordPress.
GoDaddy is the absolute worst. They boast a clunky, slow interface that hides common functions in bewildering places. There are a few Internet sites that notoriously do this to you: Cisco, AT&T, BlueCross, etc. They all lead to the same frustration by running you in circles until you finally give up. When I finally ditched the GoDaddy domain, I felt a wave of relief.
My next foray was into Virtual Private Servers, and Linode was one that seemed reasonably priced and offered a wide selection of Linux server images that could be quickly deployed. Over time, the specs for the VPS changed slightly (more disk space, more memory, less processor) and the price slowly increased. Finally, I realized I was paying $20 a month for a service I was mostly not needing. My immediate needs are pretty simple: just want to host a WordPress blog somewhere.
I set out looking for a new web hosting service and the landscape has changed considerably. Everyone seems to offer some form of shared hosting, VPS, or dedicated server. The prices for shared hosting are surprisingly cheap. I tried IX Web Hosting, but was instantly reminded of the horrible experience I had using GoDaddy, and cancelled my account before anything could be billed. I set up Amazon’s S3 service since it provides an introductory free tier. But after a year, I’m not sure exactly how much I might be billed.
So I’m back to WordPress. This time, I’m using a hosted WordPress and pointing back to my domain. It’s easier than managing my own WordPress (which my VPS eventually turned into). I think this will become the permanent home for my blog.
Kiel the Coder 