Archive for the 'Information' Category

Vayama - International Flights

Published by
Nif
at October 17, 2007 in Information and Travel. 0 Comments

OK - I was out there looking for cheap flight to Paris and came across Vayama.

The site is great - pretty flash heavy - but I can deal with that. It has a simple interface with all of the required flight booking things:

  • Automatic airport lookup
  • Calender
  • Round Trip/One Way/Multi City lookups
  • And the coolest map of all (it shows the great circle route that the plane fly - well approximately)

The prices are comparable to those found on Kayak plus they have extra information to help you plan your trip. Basic stuff like a city map, an airport map, links to visa/passport/health information and for those who are also looking for more interactive research - they have linked to the blogs on TravelPod.

But really it was the map that got me. I like to see my route - don’t you enjoy looking in airplane magazines at all of the flight paths? It also looks like they have created their own background map - it’s Flash - but one great thing is that you can pause over any country and the shading changes to show you’ve “hovered” over it and the name of the country pops up. This design is unobtrusive and easy to understand.

They must have paid bank for advertising though. The were in the “Sponsored Links” section when I did a Google search. I honestly picked them because it was something different and it has one of those nonsensical web2.0 names - the other two links were CheapTickets.com and www.wholesale-fares.com.

The United States has been lacking a good flight search site devoted to international travel - maybe this will start to fill in that hole.

cPanel Chaos

Published by
Nif
at September 18, 2007 in Information. 0 Comments

I am finally trying to get things straightened out with the hosting, but it’s not going well

cPanel is apparently one of the most popular control panel packages out there but it seems to have been designed for use with one domain.

You can have these things called addon domans but just try to install WordPress on these. The addon domain gets shoved in the public_html folder and gets a unnecessary to us but necessary to cPanel subdomain created under the original domain you signed up with. I think this is completly f?$#!@? up. Who wants to manage one domain through a different domains url? Not me. For all incredible shittiness of 1and1’s customer service-they at least had an understandable directory structure.

So I will try one more time and then if I cannot make it work then I will look for a host who doesn’t use cPanel.

A problem that I think lies with WordPress is that I can’t stick WP in it’s own happy little directory and stick all of my other files in parallel directories. Things like photos and GPS tracklogs.

But I will try one or two more things and then spend some time on the phone with customer service. Maybe just moving to a reseller package is the qnswer. But one way or another I will figure it out and UNDERSTAND what is going on.

Frustrations with Website

Published by
Nif
at November 26, 2005 in Information. 0 Comments

This is proving much more difficult than I’m used to.  It’s usually a little easier for me to figure out computer stuff, but this whole process often has me scratching my head.    I decided to transfer my domains to www.1and1.com  upon the recommendation of a friend and got the Home Package rather than the Business Package.  First, I was told that the domain wouldn’t transfer because it hadn’t been registered for 60 days yet with the previous registrar.  So, I had to figure out how to redirect it which was easy - just put in new DNS name servers for your hosting site.

Then, I downloaded the wrong MoveableType package and used the one my friend downloaded.  We installed it on the server and it wouldn’t configure.  After numerous trips to the Customer Service website and phone calls we determined that the ability to run Perl scripts was necessary and that the new and improved Home Package allowed this.

After two more rounds of email and two more phone calls (one of which I was on hold for 30min with no updates) they finally fixed the problem.  I never really got told what the issue was though and received an email saying that in order to run MoveableType I would have to install the files.  Hmmmm, the files had been installed for 4 days.  However, the amazingly uninformative emails from Customer Service no longer mattered.  The mt-check.cgi ran correctly now and I was able to continue.

So, after the check script I was supposed to initialize the database.  Check - that’s done.  Now for the moment I’d been waiting for since Tuesday (it was now Saturday) - the initial login.

Nothing.

I tried all possible login ids:  TypePad, TypeKey, a new TypeKey account with the same results - user name or password not valid.  Arrrgh.

Finally on Sunday (today) I was reading through the MT help forums and low and behold the answer appeared.  Every new installation of MT has the EXACT SAME user name and password which you need to immediately change to make your site less of a target.  Duh, Carl even mentioned this to me and in the daze of a glass of cider, red lentils and the James Bondathon on SpikeTV I forgot about it completely.  I didn’t even see it while perusing the installation instructions. 

Now another hurdle has been cleared and I can go forward…