Welcome to NullMind's Lair, the blog of a cranky Web Hosting Geek

Rea & Leo – Ep 3

Thursday, August 24th, 2006

The guys at everaldo have finished drawing the 3rd installment of the Rea & Leo Cartoons.

I had the idea of having Null beat up Leo because he wakes him up from a great dream, I remember when I was a kid, my dad to get up at 4:00 AM to get his Restaurants/Bars ready to open by 7:00 AM (yeah, people start drinking that early in the Azores), so he always took naps in the afternoon, since he was one of those that talks on his sleep, you could sometimes hear him talking about millionaire deals, try to wake him up, and you might get slugged :)

Issue3
Yeah, it will come true someday.
Below is a very rough sketch I did t get the project going, it’s a bit messy, it was done in a hurry when the idea hit me, and my kids were all over me at that exact moment :)

Img022
My Sketch

Initially I was going to have Rea say “You woke him up, didn’t ya ?” .. but in the end, we felt this cartoon strip needed no words.

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24.08.2006 Toonz No Comments

Reseller Walkthrough Add-On

Monday, August 21st, 2006

I Have been testing a new script that Jeff (hspheretemplates.com) is creating for H-Sphere.

Basically it’s a Reseller Walkthrough .. the idea is, the reseller get their account, then then login and immediately are presented with a screen that highlights 15 steps they need to finish.

Attachment
15 steps to success

Until all steps are completed, thats the screen they get every time they log into their Admin account, the Walkthrough also has some tooltips and will link you to the right page to perform the step in line, it will also force you to d the steps in order .. as some later steps depend on earlier ones to be complete.
There are a few bugs, and I have sent jeff a list, but overall, it’s 95% there, and it’s better than the alternative, which is a html file describing what to do, that most people seem to have a problem with.

Our resellers at Relio are now using it, and they seem to love it .. I’m quite happy, because on the next H-Sphere 2.5.1 we will have the ability to not need to create an “Admin user” anymore (resellers got confused, they had a regular user and an admin user), and the ability for Resellers to “Inherit” plans from the Admin (Called Markup Plans) .. instead of having to create their owns from scratch .. this coupled with this plug-in will make reseller’s life in h-sphere so much easier.

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21.08.2006 Computers / Internet, Work 2 Comments

Rea & Leo – Ep. 2

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

This one was short and sweet, just an every day event that happens many times when you get short staffed.

Issue2
I wrote the script and Dirceu from FastIcon did the Art.

I should have a bigger (like Ep 1) Ep. 3 ready by the end of the month.

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17.08.2006 Computers / Internet, Toonz No Comments

More PR for Relio

Tuesday, August 15th, 2006

This morning I got an email saying my company (Relio) was featured on pages 10 and 48 of Issue 33 of HostingWeekMag.

I had never heard of them, so I downloaded the PDF, and sure enough, there is was:

Page10 Page48
Can’t beat free advertising.
It’s basically the announcement we made a few weeks back about the introduction of MS Exchange Hosting, they had it under 2 separate section of the magazine, the mag itself was mostly a compilation of news of the past few weeks and some OK articles, but PR is PR, and the more exposure the better.

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15.08.2006 Computers / Internet No Comments

Relio site clone project.

Monday, August 14th, 2006

Once in a while I Google for pages that contain references or links to Relio, this time I came across something truly amazing, somebody on “getafreelancer.com” was taking in bids for a Relio Website Clone

Relio Clone

A friend of mine asked me if I was upset, amazingly enough, I was not, it’s quite faltering, they say plagiarism is the biggest compliment one can get, and you can never be as good as the original :)

The only part that upset me was the price, the average bid was $1040 .. the original site, just in man-hours of the designers, and the caliber f the designers that worked with me, would have been over 10k .. there is allot of trial and error when you are designing a brand, but then again, we were coming up with something from the ground up, i guess if I was just making a copy, $1000 would have been ok too.

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14.08.2006 Computers / Internet 3 Comments

The wheels on the Bike go round and round

Monday, August 7th, 2006

Today I started a new chapter on what I hope to be a healthier lifestyle.

Since I got married for the second time in 2000, and shortly after gave up smoking, that I started to put on weight, eventually I stopped “enlarging” around 2003, but now that my kids are growing, I don’t want them to see me as a fat blob and think it’s ok, so I decided to get on a routine, more healthy eating habits and to bike the 1.7 miles to work and back every day.

Now, of course this is England, so it means .. I got a short window of time of when I can do it, but hopefully I can make the most of it.

Amazingly enough, it took me just 13 minutes this morning to bike the distance to work, I arrived with my legs feeling like bricks and my lungs were feeling as if I had smoke a pack of cigarettes one one go, but still, it was quite easier than I tough.

The bike I bought is called a “Skedaddle Montana Cruiser” .. funny story there also, I had seen a bike like this for sale used on ebay, but was missing the rear rack, so I decided to look who the manufacturer was and try to get a new one, after searching for a week and calling every major bike shop in the UK I finally found out the manufacturer of these bikes was called “Cycle Citi” and their warehouse and offices went up in flames last year.

Bike
yeah, it’s funky looking, thats why I love it

Decided to dig a bit more and eventually I was able to find their new site and phone, after a bit of sweet talking on the phone, I managed to convince them to sell me one of the bikes they had salvage from the fire (they put some of their stock that didn’t burn on a warehouse in Wales).

I drove tot he warehouse and was quite shocked, allot of the boxes were pitch black from the ashes of the fire, but luckily the bike I wanted was on a separate section that was undamaged.

So long story short, I now no longer need to drive 45-60 minutes to Manchester every day, I can just take a leisurely stroll on a fairly flat route to work, and try t get a little bit in shape in the process .. I dont know what I will do in the winter, I will try a raincoat .. see how it works :)

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07.08.2006 Family, General 4 Comments

Finally … Office Keys

Friday, August 4th, 2006

I was frustrated as hell a few weeks back because I was unable to get my new office, not anymore, yesterday afternoon I got the keys and access fob.

The new place is just great, 1.x miles from home, so I will be using my bike most days to comute, also my windows overlook a canal where houseboats roams (think RV on water), and they have a small pier on the back, my idea is, on nice days, I’ll just take the laptop to the pier and work there enjoying the sun (actually it’s not my idea, when i went to see the place I notice thats what two other people were doing), and since my office is literally 20 feet from the pier, wi-fi reception should be good :)

Which reminds me, Chris sent me the 4 line Panasonic phone, which has a wireless extension that will come in handy for those (rare in UK) sunny days.

Internet is in, so is office furniture, so when I move in Monday, I just need to plug the Vonage VOIP boxes and I’m ready to go.

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04.08.2006 Work No Comments

Bring back the Titanic

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006

My irrational stupid fear of flying is starting to get on the way of some greats trips.

Recently I closed a deal with the largest Telco in Brazil, the new deployment of our solution is to be unveiled on the 17th of this month, so they asked me to send somebody over for 4-5 days to make sure it goes smoothly, and preferably, myself, since I speak the language.

But after seeing the itineraries, it means I have to travel anywhere from 13 to 20 hours, depending on the carrier, with stretches over 12 hours on the plane.

Considering my last trip was just 30 minutes on a plane, and I was literally dying by the time we landed, 12 hours is just more than I can bare.

I know how it would be, within 10 minutes I would start to panic on the plane, and for the next 11 hours and 50 minutes, I would be puking my guts out and sweating of anxiety, not a pretty sight .. and then, 5 days later, do it all over again.

I cant understand or stand this fear I developed after many years of flying, unfortunately, it seems it’s the only way to cross the Atlantic these days, which leaves me with no choice but to send somebody else.

So there goes a great chance to visit Rio and Sao Paulo .. maybe one day I’ll take a cruise there, what a pain.

I wish there was a pill you could take and get nocked out, I haver try Benadril .. but it doesn’t do a thing for me.

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03.08.2006 Trips / Places, Work 8 Comments