If you don't want to pay the Tivo fee on DirecTivo, sign up for DirecTV's Total Choice Premier package. Granted, $81+ a month for satellite TV is pricey, but you get to add on as many Tivos as you want with no fee. And you get every non-PPV movie channel you could want (all HBO's, Cinemaxes, Showtimes, IFC, etc), including the HD channels. But that's another "buy a receiver" vs. "build one on a PC" debate...
(I subscribe to Total Choice Premier + NFL Sunday Ticket, and no, I don't work for Tivo/Hughes/etc.;)
Raw sodium blocks will float... if packed in mineral oil. That's how my uncle's buddy used to get it from work. They would float, fizzle as the oil wore off, then explode. I have fond memories of chemistry lessons watching those two throw the sodium into a local lake. They also had a trick where they mixed (I believe - open to correction) red phosphorous and trisodium phosphate, put this mix into vitamin capsules, and threw those at solid objects. Think "party snappers" x 100.
You're a genius. I say so because we're doing the same thing:-).
I am consulting at a "Top 50 Worldwide" website. We currently have seven international versions of the site, and almost three hundred "private label" versions. By using the tagged document/swap in messages from database approach, we gain a lot of flexibility in what content shows up on a page. Also, we can do this at the time we build out the site, not when the pages are viewed.
We have the notion of a channel, that has a language and country associated with it. Every bit of text on a page is replaced in the ASP files with a tag delimiter. Each of these "messages" is substituted when the page is built out by a Perl script. You can refer to a "message" by a number, or a human readable text alias. We also include in functions from a library into each page as needed. Using this message approach, we can do translated text, or conditional logic per channel inside ASP. We built an HTML GUI to allow people from around the world to log in and translate messages. After translation, each site is built out and the correct messages appear when viewed by users.
If we tried to swap in all this localized text on the fly, we'd be dead. We do too much volume. Make your pages flat html that gets built out every few hours whenever possible. If you absolutely need dynamic things on a page, minimize them and make sure that your SQL queries rip. Cache lookups in server level variables (Application("whatever") in ASP) and build a mechanism to flush the cache when you want changes to take effect. Make as many things static as you can, and resolve them at build time as opposed to run time. Make flat HTML when you can, and only make dynamic pages when you need to.
Though in our case we use ASP and a Perl script to swap in the messages, this technique could be applied to any dynamic page server and scripting language, as long as its source code is in text. You could even do JSP's.
Just a validation of your post. It is a good system, it's extensible, and it helps performance.
Banana Republic - especially good, rapid delivery. Wife gave wrong billing address (we just moved), they called her at home, at work, and emailed her on the same day. Once things were straightened out, the stuff was here in 3 days.
Cooking.com - paid $17 for expedited shipping on 12/12, arrived on 12/18. Called up and bitched, shipping charge removed, bonus cookie cutters sent.
Yankee Candle Company - Very good, prompt shipping. Established mail order business, no surprise.
Kitchens etc - Easy to order, sale items just like in store, goods arrived in two days.
LL Bean - Easy to order, rapid on-time delivery.
Bath and Body Works - cannot order online
CDNOW - Wish list was nice. My mom was finally able to get me CD's that I want. Free shipping for 3+ cd's. One weird thing - now I get promo email addressed to me but with my mom's name on it.
We did most shopping on 12/5, though. I'm sure that the earlier you ordered, the better off you were. All of the shipping companies' service deteriorates towards 12/25 as well, which potentially tarnishes your opinion of the e-tailer...
...for good backups, kept offsite. As a rule of thumb you should always be able to recreate your system(s) as of yesterday given an OS install disk, a partition table, and backups. If you trust Travan, you can get drives for $400 and the media's pretty cheap too. Backups are a good idea anyways, for hardware and software failure reasons. Is anyone doing large scale backups using open source tools? Or is everyone using Veritas/Backup Exec?
I'm trying to decide what to go with. I'm tempted to wait until this fall and get one of these.
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If you don't want to pay the Tivo fee on DirecTivo, sign up for DirecTV's Total Choice Premier package. Granted, $81+ a month for satellite TV is pricey, but you get to add on as many Tivos as you want with no fee. And you get every non-PPV movie channel you could want (all HBO's, Cinemaxes, Showtimes, IFC, etc), including the HD channels. But that's another "buy a receiver" vs. "build one on a PC" debate...
;)
(I subscribe to Total Choice Premier + NFL Sunday Ticket, and no, I don't work for Tivo/Hughes/etc.
-DG
Raw sodium blocks will float... if packed in mineral oil. That's how my uncle's buddy used to get it from work. They would float, fizzle as the oil wore off, then explode. I have fond memories of chemistry lessons watching those two throw the sodium into a local lake. They also had a trick where they mixed (I believe - open to correction) red phosphorous and trisodium phosphate, put this mix into vitamin capsules, and threw those at solid objects. Think "party snappers" x 100.
You're a genius. I say so because we're doing the same thing :-).
I am consulting at a "Top 50 Worldwide" website. We currently have seven international versions of the site, and almost three hundred "private label" versions. By using the tagged document/swap in messages from database approach, we gain a lot of flexibility in what content shows up on a page. Also, we can do this at the time we build out the site, not when the pages are viewed.
We have the notion of a channel, that has a language and country associated with it. Every bit of text on a page is replaced in the ASP files with a tag delimiter. Each of these "messages" is substituted when the page is built out by a Perl script. You can refer to a "message" by a number, or a human readable text alias. We also include in functions from a library into each page as needed. Using this message approach, we can do translated text, or conditional logic per channel inside ASP. We built an HTML GUI to allow people from around the world to log in and translate messages. After translation, each site is built out and the correct messages appear when viewed by users.
If we tried to swap in all this localized text on the fly, we'd be dead. We do too much volume. Make your pages flat html that gets built out every few hours whenever possible. If you absolutely need dynamic things on a page, minimize them and make sure that your SQL queries rip. Cache lookups in server level variables (Application("whatever") in ASP) and build a mechanism to flush the cache when you want changes to take effect. Make as many things static as you can, and resolve them at build time as opposed to run time. Make flat HTML when you can, and only make dynamic pages when you need to.
Though in our case we use ASP and a Perl script to swap in the messages, this technique could be applied to any dynamic page server and scripting language, as long as its source code is in text. You could even do JSP's.
Just a validation of your post. It is a good system, it's extensible, and it helps performance.
-ASome of our on line Xmas shopping experiences:
Banana Republic - especially good, rapid delivery. Wife gave wrong billing address (we just moved), they called her at home, at work, and emailed her on the same day. Once things were straightened out, the stuff was here in 3 days.
Cooking.com - paid $17 for expedited shipping on 12/12, arrived on 12/18. Called up and bitched, shipping charge removed, bonus cookie cutters sent.
Yankee Candle Company - Very good, prompt shipping. Established mail order business, no surprise.
Kitchens etc - Easy to order, sale items just like in store, goods arrived in two days.
LL Bean - Easy to order, rapid on-time delivery.
Bath and Body Works - cannot order online
CDNOW - Wish list was nice. My mom was finally able to get me CD's that I want. Free shipping for 3+ cd's. One weird thing - now I get promo email addressed to me but with my mom's name on it.
We did most shopping on 12/5, though. I'm sure that the earlier you ordered, the better off you were. All of the shipping companies' service deteriorates towards 12/25 as well, which potentially tarnishes your opinion of the e-tailer...
...for good backups, kept offsite. As a rule of thumb you should always be able to recreate your system(s) as of yesterday given an OS install disk, a partition table, and backups. If you trust Travan, you can get drives for $400 and the media's pretty cheap too. Backups are a good idea anyways, for hardware and software failure reasons. Is anyone doing large scale backups using open source tools? Or is everyone using Veritas/Backup Exec?
I'm trying to decide what to go with. I'm tempted to wait until this fall and get one of these.