dougv.com « The Web home of Doug Vanderweide

I’m clearing my bookshelves and have four books that I was planning to trash (since the local library doesn’t want them). Then I thought, what the heck, give ‘em away on the blog.

So, forthwith, I have the following four books available:

Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual (1998 Edition): This is a reference book used by reporters to ensure they spell things correctly, use words properly, capitalize appropriately, etc. I am replacing it with the latest edition; this one is still useful, especially for the casual writer.

Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft)): An excellent book for the beginning programmer who wants to get up to speed quickly. It teaches you how to program by getting you to make real programs that employ each chapter’s lesson. Includes a CD-ROM with source code. I’m using Visual Studi0 2008, and this is mostly relevant, but I’ve pretty much outgrown its message.

Microsoft Expression Web Step by Step (Microsoft): Like the book above, teaches you how to use Expression Web with real-world examples you can employ. (This is the first edition of the book, not the one for Expression Web 2.) Also includes a CD-ROM with sample code. I got this as a gift but I don’t use Expression Web.

Professional ASP.NET 2.0 (Programmer to Programmer): An extremely big book that pretty much covers every aspect of ASP.NET 2.0 programming. Heavily thumbed but still in very good shape. I’ve used it for reference for a number of years and highly recommend it for programmers who are familiar with .NET programming but not ASP.NET, or for other experienced programmers who want a good desk reference. This one really isn’t appropriate for beginners.

These books are first-come, first-served and will be sent by media mail to US addresses only (be advised that media mail can take up to three weeks to arrive). I will pay the shipping; it’s totally free.

If you would like one of these books, post a comment on this blog with your real e-mail address. Provide me with the name of the book you want and a reason you want it. The first reason I like for each book will be contacted by e-mail for shipping info. This will continue until all four books are gone.

Yahoo! suspended my Answers account today, for reasons they did not disclose but of which I am fairly certain.

I made the mistake a few weeks back of calling out a sock puppeteer via e-mail, after about a month of his using his puppets to vote down my answers and vote up his. I noted that sock and meat puppetry are against the Community Guidelines, told him I’d report every instance I found, and warned him to stop.

And, just as Dale Carnegie pointed out would happen in How to Win Friends & Influence People, the exchange had the exact opposite of its intended effect. Said puppeteer redoubled his efforts, causing dozens of violation notices, the significant majority of which were overturned on appeal. However, I apparently have hit some Community Moderation threshold against which reports lead to suspension, because alongside the suspension notice was a new batch of several violation notices.

I’m not going to bother with appeals; I’m just going to go. A fresh start someplace else is exactly what I need, so I’ll let you all know where I settle down.

I’m deleting my Yahoo! account on July 15. I will only check my Yahoo! e-mail periodically; obviously, sending me questions is entirely pointless.

Note to “Mary”: If you want to comment on this, please provide your full name, your Yahoo! Answers user name and a real e-mail address.

Well, I gave DreamHost PS a try. And let me tell you, it works great.

So why is this blog back on my DreamHost shared account? A few reasons; mostly, there’s no payoff between the cost and the performance difference, at least for this blog.

I got in on DreamHost PS as part of a promotion that basically made both the Web and MySQL virtual servers cost me about $15 per month. That’s exceedingly cheap, considering that for that small price, I got 150 MB of protected memory and protected CPU cycles.

The performance benefits were impressive. MySQL queries were executed lightning-fast, and there was no page grinding waiting for PHP to get around to doing its thing. The normally long process of working in the WordPress administration panel was considerably sped up, even going faster than when I had enabled Google Gears for the administration panel. (Firefox version 3.0.10 causes a crash when using the “Turbo”, or Google Gears-enabled, administration panel and its Flash uploader; I like the Flash uploader, so Gears had to go. The problem has been fixed in Firefox 3.0.11.)

But this isn’t Perez Hilton’s blog; I’m not posting 50 times a day (although I am trying to post at least once a day from here on out), and I’m not getting thousands of comments every day, either (one a week is a frantic pace here).

Since that’s the case, I set the WP Super Cache plugin to keep cached copies of pages for 8 hours at a time; that pretty much eases the burden on both PHP and the MySQL server.

Really, could I justify spending $15 per month for a second of two faster loading of the cache? In my mind, no.

This is especially true because I’ve made a commitment to never have advertising on this site, and to never charge for the code I distribute here. (I do use Amazon’s product previews, which are linked to an affiliate code. However, I do that mostly so people can see the prices of things I recommend without having to leave the site. I’ve made $5 from amazon.com Associates since Aug. 22, 2006, the day this blog started; $3.92 of that was because a family member purchased Christmas gift DVDs in 2006 after visiting my site and clicking a link. And yes, I do accept donations; of this writing, since the blog started in 2006, one very generous fan has donated $50.)

Because this is a labor of love, I can’t see spending too much money on it, especially when I’m not getting much out of the deal in the financial sense. (I do this because I love to teach, and because it’s my duty to give back to the community.)

Were this blog more of a resources hog, or far more popular than it is, I would (and will) run back to DreamHost PS. But for now, shared hosting will do just fine, and here the blog will stay for the foreseeable future.

I’ve restored about two-thirds of the code downloads on the site, especially for the most popular articles on this site. I’ve also had to delete some articles that were either based on images I can no longer locate or were, to be blunt, badly written.

Bear with me; I should have the last of the code downloads reinstated over the next few days.

Also, be aware that certain trackback / inline links on this site may now be dead, as a result of the aforementioned post prunings.

Hey all — a casualty of the move to the new server is that all downloadable code and images that were on this blog are now gone. As in, the new server ate them.

I’ll work on getting replacements up where appropriate, working from the most recent posts backwards. Expect this process to take a while.

Sorry about the blog being down for the last 24 hours. I moved it to a new Dreamhost virtual private server account late Monday, figuring the automated process would go well. And, of course, I made sure I was on the road all day Tuesday so that I wouldn’t notice things went wrong until well after problems did occur. I still manage some pretty rookie mistakes once in a while.

Everything should work fine now. In fact, everything should be better than before; the new server should be much faster and far more stable than the shared hosting I used before.

If it isn’t, and you find things that aren’t right, please let me know so I can fix them (just drop a comment), and thanks!