Looking to build my own website

Braving the cold artic planes of the Internet to bring you the freshest content!

In the last few days, I read a bit more precisely all the conditions and stipulations that come with wordpress.com. I’ll be the first to say that it comes at a great price… FREE. However, I’m feeling a little boxed in with some of the limitations that come with that price, for example having to pay just to be able to change the css layout and the forbidding of advertising.

So I’ve invested some time into researching what will be necessary to create my own web server and host the website myself. At first I was just going to find some sort of a free web host. I even stumbled upon a “free” web host that requires that you to post to get hosted. In other words you have to participate in their forum in order to earn credits and you use the credits to keep your account open. I found the idea interesting, even signed up for the forum but the email acknowledgment never came. Also I noticed that some of these free webhost don’t come with a domain name but rather a subdomain. Meaning mywebsitename.theirwebsitename.com, which is a format that I’m not so crazy about. I’d rather have mywebsitename.com. So I’m sure you guessed where I’m going with this, I started looking for free domain names and there are some available “.tk “for example. My search lead me to Wikipedia and looking through all the possible domains. By this time it was several hours later and I was getting kind of delirious and thought to myself what about www.fu.ck that would be amusing and BEHOLD a “.ck” is available so I click on it and found out from good ol’ wiki that the domain level is not available but only the second level domain which comprises for the following list:

• .org.ck: not-for-profit organisations
• .edu.ck: educational institutions
• .gov.ck: government agencies
• .net.ck: Internet Service Providers
• .gen.ck:
• .biz.ck: Business related pages for the Cook Islands
• .info.ck: Information pages relating to the Cook Islands
• co.ck: business organisations

If you read this list closely enough you’ll realize that I about died laughing. My laughing fit was only worsened by the following pre-requisites for registration also found at Wikipedia

“Pre-requisites for applying for a domain is as follows:

1. Non-resident domain applications cost $150.00(USD) for a minimum of 2 years, and must be renewed every 2 years thereafter.
2. Applications for a domain if it is already taken or is not affiliated with brand or name identity to you or your company e.g. ‘nike.co.ck’, ‘mobil.co.ck’, etc.
3. Domains considered profane, e.g. ‘blow.co.ck’, ‘mybig.co.ck’, etc, will not be considered on any level, and the application will be dissolved with the applicant being notified, and future requests for the same domain name will be ignored. ‘.ck’ domains are monitored on the web, on a regular basis for profanity on the Internet if it is found to be doing so, or if the site is deemed inappropriate, the domain will be terminated without notification or refund.”

So by this time my brain is reeling with the possibilities for the “dot Cock” domain. I didn’t want to take anybody else’s name so I search for the ones already taken and there was the good ol’ car rental company “Budget” with their website Budget dot Cock. However I still couldn’t get over the mybig.co.ck example and started thinking up stuff like myhairy.co.ck or mydrippy.co.ck. My friend Robin even suggested bloody.co.ck and rotten.co.ck *barf* I love the phrase so much I’d trade mark it if I could. Well I suppose that’s enough gutter humor for now but till next post if you get angry at someone do me a favor and tell them to suck your dot Cock or kiss your dot Az.

Setting up my Blog

Pushing, kicking, & Shoving my way to setup success!

So, I spent all day learning about the craft of blogging, and setting up various accounts like Google Webmaster Tools, Twitter, and Youtube. I now realize that it’s rather large mountain that I’ve decided to climb. I also can sense this wonderfully large ball of clay begging to be molded and crafted into something I can be proud of, something to call my own. So essentially at this point my blog is a blog, about all the steps I am and will be taking to create a successful blog or at least an entertaining one.

I’m having fun learning about the intricacies of this place called the web. At least the social side of it, and I think that’s the direction that I want to take, is a social/technical direction. I don’t think it will have enough code to keep the technically minded searching for examples happy (if you’re searching for those kinds of examples may I suggest Stack Overflow) and perhaps It’ll have just enough code/tech content that It scares the non-technical away. Be that as it may I’ll be going in that direction and seeing if anyone is interested in it.

During my preparation leading up to this post I was ripped away from my work quite unexpectedly by my wife, who was rather distraught about the disarray of my office and the contents thereof. At first I was annoyed but as I continued to help, I realized that it was providing me with a much needed break from the computer. Something I probably wouldn’t have done of my own accord anyways. As I continued to help her, I noticed that she seemed to be getting more upset, instead of happy that she was receiving help. Looking back at it now I think I can safely say that about 90% of the time I have no clue about women at all! Thank goodness for geniuses like Dr. John Gray and his galactic interspecies studies. Without the aid of such an insightful tome of knowledge, I’d still think that women talk too much or ask too many questions. <– What a silly newlywed mistake that would be. Seriously I can’t recommend his book highly enough. It’s life altering stuff.

I later had some time to think about it and talk about it with my wife and have come to the conclusion that really she was just upset about my lack of involvement concerning the household chores and about the prospect of receiving next to no help in the days to come. Worded this way I can understand why she was so upset. It would also make me pretty upset to be in her shoes and feel that way. It’s just hard for me as a man to sift through all the emotion, so I can pick out the informational nucleus at the center of a woman’s emotionally driven communication. Which I would like to note in my wife’s case is about 1 part Information to 99 parts relationship defining emotion. Perhaps there’s hope for me yet to shed the chauvinistic mantel of misogyny. Seriously though, all men should do themselves a favor and learn to correctly interpret the emotions of their lady.

I wish I would’ve posted that

I can’t say how many time a sudden change of events have occurred or a brilliant idea has come to me only to be lost in the day to day shuffle of time.  There’s a lot of things that I wish I had posted. A lot of things that I’d like to say. There is something freeing about writing exactly what I feel for absolute strangers to to read. It’s the sort of thing that I often shy away from in my day to day life and I feel it’s probably time for me to take serious the medium of the blog. Ever since the eighth grade I’ve wanted to write my own story and the funny thing is I have been every day. I just haven’t taken the time to write it down and share it with those who may be interested. So that’s what I’m going to do.

There are so many cool technologies being developed for the web and I’d like to have some fun tinkering with in them and using them in the uttermost creative ways possible. This is my first blog and my first experience creating any sort of content for the web. So It’s going to be more than just a journal of my life and more like a sandbox for me to create whatever I can think up but always sprinkled with anecdotes of my personal opinion and a sprinkle of imperfect grammar.

The focus of this blog is going to be mostly programming in nature however it’s not going to be any sort of reference. I can imagine that with my thoughts and post being spread out over such a wide range that I’m limiting the kind of people that could be potential audience members but I want to be free to write whatever and not be trapped by any kind of marketing scheme. With that being said I have a lot of planning to do. See you next post.

Reverse Culture Shock?

In 10 days I’ll be standing where I haven’t stood for the last 2 1/2 years… My former home Arkansas USA.  Hard for me to even imagine how I’m going to be feeling. I don’t know if I miss it or loathe it or what.

I just know that I’m going to be there and I have this eerie feeling in my gut that after all the nostalgia, I’m going to be let down.  When I first came to Berlin I suffered somewhat badly from culture shock.

Hated every one and everything. Now after 2 1/2 years it’s starting to really feel like my home and I have only my in-laws to thank for that. They have done nothing but bend over backwards for Steffi and me and even regard me as their own child. *tear* My father-in-law is probably the most generous man that I know. He has a really big heart and over time he’s made himself a niche in the corner of mine. My mother-in-law has also taken a liken to me. Since I started this school I really feel that their on the side lines rooting me own. Even if they don’t say it in so many words. That’s kind of the point, they speak to me with what they do and not with what they say. It’s a sort of quiet confidence that I have come to deeply respect from them. I guess I could even say that I love them. I like my sister in law also but haven’t had the chance to spend very much time with her. So as I prepare to go home for the first time in a long time it’s also at a point in my life that I realize that there’s a second family that loves me just as much as the first one and I feel really torn between the two.

Till next time

Tony

A Little about myself

I’ve never really blogged before or really gotten into the whole social web thing ever. However I decided to give it a try. My name is Anthony Franks.

I’m 27 and going to school to become a Fachinformatiker Anwendungsentwicklung, in english that’s IT Specialist for Application Development. I’ve had a lot of fun learning all that I have so far. I’m very determined to turn this oppurtunity into a career and not just a Job. In fact, often after school I’ll continue learning somtimes even till bedtime, which makes for a long day .

I’ve explored quite a few different areas of programming and program development for example with the .NET framework I’ve created a compound Interest Calculator that solves for all variables in the Compound Interest Formula. That program was in C++. Also in C# I developed a guess a number game with Exception handeling and touch screen optimised user controls for my Samsung Omnia i900 Cell phone. That one was a lot of fun. I would even possibly enjoy continuing in the direction of Cell Phone Application development. I’ve toyed around with Direct X using C++ and created a 3 Colored triangle and binded three Keys, two for camera control and one to exit the program.

At the end of the C++ phase at my school I had to develop a program that basically worked as a database for leases. The most difficult part of that program was that when a lease was ended that a bill had to be display in order to be able to calculate the amount to be paid I had to first compare the beginning and ending dates to make sure that they made logical sense. Meaning that if I leased a car today then I can’t return the car yesterday . After that I had to subtract the one date from the other. Which is easier said than done. We had to use pure ANSI C++ with no additional libraries which means it was almost like C programming. Except for the Classes ofcourse . Anyways it took me over a hundred lines of code just to subtract the one dat from the other, most of this is because my date consisted of three variables, one for year, for month and for day and since I didn’t know anything at the time about using a reference date to turn my date into milliseconds I ended up having to do it the hardway.

Currently I’m learning Java in school which has also been a lot of fun. On my own I’ve been learing about Test Driven Development and I’m learning to really love my Eclipse IDE. Other than eclipse I use Visual Studio 2008. Back to eclipse I really love the “ctrl + space” content assist. It’s super useful and also”ctrl + 1″ for quick fix.

Still not sure what direction I want to go as far as programming is concerned. I really like the complexity of Direct X code with the Instant gratification  you gain as soon as you’ve compiled and “see” the results. I also like the idea of developing for Cell phones because for one thing the platform is constantly increasing in complexity and secondly it’d be cool to be able to ,via programming, control so many different devices in one compact package. I just think a person could really get creative with a platform like that. I’m still not certain about web. I honestly don’t know much about web programming and what that would be like.

At any rate I have to start looking for an Internship in german Praktikum soon. I’m quite concerned that I’m gonna get stuck serving coffee and not programming. That would be such a waste of time.

Till next time

Tony