It began with good intentions.  An application to finish that was six months overdue and the core of my start-up.  By years end I’d made less progress than in the last six months of 2008.  Go figure that, I can’t…

It began with the bush-fires, a month of interruption in itself.  The first anniversary of those fires is this Sunday 7th.  You’d not believe me if I stated the state government here had done virtually nothing at all to address the core reasons for those fires and that they’ve proven, yet again, that preferences from other parties and latte environmentalists in the inner city are a greater concern to them.

Without dragging out the interruptions in too much detail a damaged shoulder followed, then a hand in plaster after an operation, frequent interruptions in respect of my involvement in politics  it would be fair to say I lost at least four solid months, punctuated by two month intervals of getting anything done at all.

So yeah. Glad to see the back of 2009.  We did incorporate, that was a positive, and two applications were released that I mentioned here at the time.

2010 did start a bit rocky when I managed to give myself second degree burns on my left hand, three weeks later still bandaged. < Note to self.  Lawn Mowers get hot after use, they bite when lifted by carburettor. >

Then the development machine monitor died. Exactly one month to the day out of warranty.  Repair price?  Twice retail price paid.  I now buy wholesale so for $20 more than the price of a 22″ I bought a 24″.  No room on desk now for two monitor setup I was planning.  New desk first. 

So am getting prepped now to get serious again.

Across on his blog, Steph has some really positive things to say about 2009 and his business.  So if I’ve managed to depress you get on over to Follow Steph and a dose of good news.

Updating CMS

As you probably guess this blog runs on WordPress.  In fact so do most of my product sites.  My first “roll your sleeves up, mate” exercise this year has been to begin moving the whole lot from WordPress to WordPress MU – the multi-site edition.  This is actually pretty cool.  One installation of the software on an account on the server delivering multiple websites.  There are a few tricks to pull this off and in the next few days I’m going to document them in an article here should others decide in the future to do the same.

It’s not hard, rather it just needs to be done in the right order and tracking down the doc’s to do it can be tedious.  It might save somebody some time, beyond just being interesting in general.

Progress So Far

To date this blog – www.davidscottkane.com , which you’re reading now, www.mixactionmultimedia.com.au the company site (needing lots of data added to it, not written that yet), www.MixingPress.com – our audio related “magazine” style site and www.kliknmix.com one of our product sites have all been transferred to the WordPress MU installation and are settling in.  The rest will follow.

Note – there is no limit in WordPress MU as to how many sites you run off a single install – but your physical hosting account may well set some limits.  I’ll also include some info on basic requirements and some info on how I structure the server.

The benefit of doing this is multi-fold.

• First one install of the software means lower use of server resources.  CMS software is hungry and does use more resources than a basic HTML site of similar traffic levels.
• Secondly when an upgrade or security fix comes through for WordPress MU, or a plug-in, all sites get the update because they all use the instance of the software.
• Finally – WordPress.com runs thousands of sites off single instances of WordPress MU so it’s been pretty thoroughly road tested.

Next post I’ll document the process.

Scott Kane

==========================================================

An Australian ventriloquist visiting New Zealand walks into a
small town and sees a local sitting on his porch patting his
dog. He figures he’ll have a little fun.
Ventriloquist: Hey, good looking dog, mate. Mind if I speak to
him?
New Zealander: The dog doesn’t talk, you stupid Aussie.
Ventriloquist: Hey dog, how’s it going old mate?
Dog: Doin’ alright.
The New Zealander is shocked!
Ventriloquist: Is this Kiwi your owner? (Pointing at the New
Zealander?
Dog: Yep.
Ventriloquist: How does he treat you?
Dog: Real good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food,
and takes me to the lake once a week to play.
The New Zealander can’t believe his ears!
Ventriloquist: Mind if I talk to your horse?
New Zealander: Horse doesn’t talk either.
Ventriloquist: Hey horse, how’s it going?
Horse: No worries.
The New Zealander’s mouth is agape.
Ventriloquist: Is this your owner? (Pointing at the New
Zealander?)
Horse: Yep.
Ventriloquist: How’s he treat you?
Horse: Pretty good, thanks for asking. He rides me regularly,
brushes me down often, and keeps me in the barn to
protect me from the elements.
The New Zealander is TOTALLY amazed!
Ventriloquist: Mind if I talk to your sheep?
New Zealander: The sheep’s a liar.

==========================================================

<With apologies to any Kiwi readers!    >

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Regular readers will know, only painfully well, that I consider download sites to be loathsome creatures.  The justifications for this view sprinkle articles in this blog time and time again.

So I’m not going to go into detail, again, on why I consider them to be so.  Please use the search tool above if you seek clarficiation on this – but warning, it’s not pretty.

Some time back (well over twelve months ago now) I stated on several forums and this blog that the day was coming when the search engines started banning these cretinous sites.  While that day hasn’t quite arrived, it would seem we are closer than many, if not most, ISV’s suspected.

I’m a server log reader-aholic.  I religously examine my server logs through a number of tools daily (not all at once) for each website I run.  Imagine my delight today when I see the search term from Yahoo for  “free live sound mixing software” and got the following result, page after page, for the download sites:

Click the images to zoom in…

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

After page six my enthusiasm for looking flagged.

Some notable names in there, many more are not there of course.  But it’s encouraging.  Site Advisors accuracy on such matters is a matter of some dispute, but in this instance I’m not complaining.  Though I do feel for the Adwords advertiser the scumsites download sites are featuring in the listing.

Updated: Forgot to mention, and it’s important, if you’re linking to these places on your website, indeed any download sites at all – PULL THOSE LINKS NOW.  Site Advisor works on the principle of guilt by association.  If they are flagged you’ll end up flagged like this too!  That’s been the scenario in the past.

Scott Kane

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Nice isn’t it?  Worthy of framing.  Now as you probably know this has been happening to legitimate software authors who link to download sites (as opposed to piracy sites above) for some time now so it’s fantastic to see it happening these criminal turkeys now.  They’ll probably get it lifted I expect, but in the meantime Google has been displaying “This site may harm your computer.” in some searches to boot.

How just and how apt.  Google reports “Of 699 pages tested, it found that 2 pages resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent… Malicious software includes 68 scripting exploits”.”

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “User Pays” eh? 

Scott Kane

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Customer service is almost always viewed as a necessary evil. Annoying customers always poking around looking for answers to things which are right in front of them and causing us to take time out of programming to help them. So this leads into the great cop-out. Make it beta and hey, make it free. Those 2 tags let the programmer get out of so much. Customer has a problem? Screw off, it’s free. Can’t find a phone number or email address to contact us by? Screw off, it’s free.

While I accept there are always exceptions I don’t find this argument at all spurious.  I’ve been a member of a number of software (mISV) trade associations, participated in various forums for several decades and moderated three newsgroups aimed at small developers starting or running small software companies for ten years, before I retired as the primary moderator. In each of the instances above I’ve found the world is brimming with lazy, scared (and both) developers.  Hell, they even get angry when they ask for suggestions for assisting their business and the answer you give forces them to abandon their laziness or scared mindsets.

 

• Write content for my website?  No way!  I’m no writer.  I don’t have time.
• Start a blog?  No way!  I’m no writer.  I don’t have time.
• Avoid using PAD files?  What are you? Some kind of heretic? Download sites are my friend!
• Incoming links are the answer to SEO!  Why would I bother with your suggestions to actually work or make a fool of myself writing?
• All I have to do is submit PAD files and sit back and wait for all those sales! Go way oh philistine Kane!

 

While I fall short of being contemptuous of these answers (not just given to me) I admit to getting extremely peeved.  To the point where I rarely attempt to help anymore.  But to the point of the “lazy + scared = free” equation.  I think it goes further.  It extends to the same mentality that prices software at $10, 19.99 and I’ll say it “29.99”.  This is 1990’s pricing.  While internet access and hosting has gotten cheaper, admittedly two major expenses for online sales, bread, milk, petroleum and the cost of sending your kids to even a basic school has more than tripled since then. Are you pricing because you’re lazy or scared?  

Scott Kane  
Quote Of The Day

“When we came we had a drought. Then the floods put the bushfires out”.
(Theme Song From On Our Selection soundtrack.  1995)

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Between 10/Mar/2009 10:00PM – 6:00AM AESDT (Australian Eastern Standard Summer Time) is the window involving the hardware move as well as name server changes and may take a day or two to settle down in some parts of the world or ISP’s who use slower refresh rates.

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Committee–a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done. – Fred Allen

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In the process of converting the entire project across to the Visual Studio 2008 .Net platform, while simultaneously learning to think in C# and VB.Net instead of Object Pascal (kind of like thinking in your head in your mother tongue and speaking a new language out loud) I’ve also been able to consider some of the issues in relation to Microsoft’s Windows 7.

Most of the visitors I get to the MixAction website, according to the server stat’s, are still running Windows XP.  No surprises there, though the three visitors running Windows 3.11 did raise my eyebrows a bit! 

When Microsoft released the Windows 7 beta on MSDN I downloaded it and installed it in a VM.  A couple of issues immediately raised themselves.  Windows 7 did not like the “virtual hardware” after the “additional tools” were installed.  A problem as this meant no audio support, which makes it rather hard to test an audio application.

So, into another box on it’s own and I was able to give it a full run with MixAction with audio support.

Not a single problem I’m glad to say, and I’m extremely pleased with Windows 7 as well, very sharp for a beta.

This is however where things get sticky, believe it or not.  Vista and Windows 7 introduce the Core Audio API in adjunct to plain vanilla DirectX.  There are some great features in there I’d really like to include, but then there’s the issue of the Core Audio API not running on XP.

Ooops.

Like it or not one finds oneself in a bit of a dilemma.  The additional stuff is extremely useful, yes I could conditionally compile or even load assemblies according to the version of the OS, however, from experience looking at other multi-media software user forums, the moment Group Y gets a cool feature Group X wants it too and to blazes with the fact that they need to upgrade their OS in order to do so.

Plus, it is additional maintenance doing it this way and such code tends to be a sore spot when it comes to little bugs raising their heads.

So, for now, sadly, I’m holding off on the neat Core Audio features until until I notice the number of XP visitors has begun to dwindle.  I’m not planning on holding my breath for this event to transpire. 

But in time, they will.

I’m one a, hopefully last time before public release, icon shopping tour again.  MixAction has rather specific needs in terms of interface icons, or glyphs.  While it has some document type paradigms very few of these fit comfortably and fail to deliver the desired metaphor.  So I’ve purchased a number of packs, based on screenshots, from a few vendors.  Is it just me or are a few icons in many of these packs really good quality and the rest utter crap?  Another thing.  How come so many of these icons look the same (read colour shifted) yet claim to be 100% original designs?  Who’s fooling who?

I mean – I can colour shift a design in Fireworks in around 3 seconds so I tend to resent paying for an “original” design that was clearly lifted and shifted from a free collection or commercial collection by another icon designer.

The simple solution of course is paying for custom  icon design.  That’s going to have to wait however until after a release iteration.  So I’m looking at yet another collection, which do seem to be extremely good and have a high price tag, comparatively,  to boot.  They are also extremely specific. 

Scott Kane

The bigger the hat, the smaller the property – Australian proverb

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Last year – January 1st 2008 I threw out all that resolution clap trap.  Give up smoking?  Yeah – as soon as they take the addictive crap out of tobacco, or the government stops taking 75% of the retail price in taxes from me and paying subsidies to tobacco giants for “research” instead of taxing the likes of Phillip Morris into bankruptcy.

Needless to say I actually did attempt quitting in 2008 – four times. 

Epic Multiple Fails!

I visited the Royal Melbourne Zoo with my wife and kids last week and guess what – they have banned smoking.  This probably explains why there are no chimps in their collection currently… 

So in 2009 I’m not the least bit surprised that I’m still choking on Marlboro’s, battling ever increasing morning coughing fits, finding it harder to walk and not get puffed out (especially while dragging) and recently facing yet another major “scare” where-by I was convinced my number was up due to mysterious chest pains that miraculously disappear a few days after chest x-rays and blood work ups and I’m given the all clear  – with warnings of existing damage due to “smoking or bronchitis”.

Hmmm.  I’ve never had “bronchitis” – but I’ve had chronic Asthma since I was five – does that count?

I’ve got to do something about that bloody smoking – bugger it!

But 2008 Was Different

Yep.  It was.  After coming out of several years of major illness (not caused by smoking) and having run in a Federal election and having a hell of a lot of fun, mostly at the expense of sitting politicians and these weird folk from unheard of religious sects who seem to sprout like mushrooms around election time (you know, the ones who have pictures of lions eating grass with lambs and butterfly’s in “paradise” to show you in little magazines they thrust at you as you leave the conference)– and then wither away, I figured it was time to get back to my life.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know this ultimately led to MixAction, this blog and of course the June 30 day sprint – you know, the one that I’ve not completed. 

OK, but it was a hell of a learning curve.  If this year can be, even, a quarter of what 2008 was for me it’ll be a fan-bloody-tastic year!

If you’re not a regular reader feel free to browse the archives. 

OK.

Enough with the rambling already.

Why 2008 was different is because these weren’t resolutions – they were convictions that grew from a number of years of thought and self analysis – and self criticism.

Convictions that indicated, to me, that what was said “to be” in my familiar circles was utterly, entirely, unequivacobly WRONG!

That many of the books I’d ravenously consumed like “The E-Myth Revisited” would have been better used if published as toilet paper.

I’ve uttered my thoughts here time and time again on download sites and my “conviction” that they are utter Google Adsense cess pools at this juncture.

But it goes beyond that.  I read Bob Walsh’s books – and looking forward to his next one promised later this year – Steph’s books (am right now reading his latest one on blogging) and sucked up some commentary, both complimentary and critical in the comments on this and other blogs.  Each of these were positive things and I recommend these books highly.

I switched IDE’s and development languages proving I’m even totally stupid, reckless, a complete sell-out bastard or increasingly more astute as I grow greyer.

Choose whichever works for you. 

So in November I dumped Delphi and switched to a hybrid mix of C# and VB.Net and put my head down and my bum up learning the IDE, the language and the idiosyncrasies sufficiently to be able to use them in a production program.  Not the first time in my career, but probably the smoothest transition I ever carried out.

Naturally that also meant that my years of carefully collected component libraries and source in Object Pascal where pretty much useless to me for MixAction, having asked, and received, a switch to the .Net version of the audio library I license for the product.

What to do?  Well I hunted.  Hell, these .Net component vendors charge an arm and a leg – at least most.  Then I found a library, that I purchased and wish I never did, called “Pure Components”.  To cut to the chase, not mince words and sum things up in two words – they should be renamed to “Pure Crap”.  Ugly code, ugly implementation, ugly compiler warnings, ugly licensing scheme – mostly because it fails – ugly, yech, blech, blah!

I then, as I indicated here recently, fell over Krypton Components.  Beautiful components, beautiful UI’s, no compiler warnings, working licensing scheme, excellent price and a fellow, Melbourne based ISV.  I have now licensed the Krypton Suite, with some generous assistance from Phil Wright of the Component Factory who kindly offers a license to .net bloggers meeting certain criteria outlined on his site.  Thank you Phil!

I highly recommend them!

I’ll be expanding further, and as promised, finally with screenshots of MixAction sporting these lovely components.  A few UI surprises there in that I’ve implemented some things I said I would not implement… 

This took place over the Christmas/New Year period where I was also fighting my 100th server outage in 60 days, my 4th hosting price increase in 40 days and the disturbing “realization” that my “VPS” was anything but.

Today, I finished, what I hope to be, the final version before release of MixAction’s file system under .Net.  It’s ironic in that it’s not a database, but can be read from a dataset if desired, is XML in one file, yet contains multiple “tables”, is encrypted using a combination of SHA and Blowfish, is stored inside another file system that supports folders and anything else I want to shove in there – though right now only meta data and presently that’s just the XML file – and it’s streamed in by MixAction, so there’s no temporary files or messy crap like that.

Which was what I wanted all the long!

That’s the thing about leaving all my Pascal code and libraries behind.  So much of it is built into .Net that I don’t’ need them.  File handling, shell handling, UI, XML support – I can honestly say, out of the many thousands of lines of code both commercial, free and my own code libraries that I don’t miss any of them – with only one exception being ESBPCS.  I’ve actually gained access to Windows API’s that were either very expensive under Delphi (as components or DLL based tools) or not available and requiring a development effort equivalent to the product they were needed to be adjuncts to.

Weird!

I paid out nearly all of my overseas debt.  Bootstrapping is fun, but I’m careful even in good times about debt (I learnt about debt and credit very young OK?), but when the Aussie took a 30% drop against the Greenback within a few days – and stayed there – I knew I could no longer afford to play with possibility of it heading further south.  Couple this with the hosting issues I was having and I took the only course I could, paid out the debts, sucked in the old stomach further and moved hosting back into Australia.  Thankfully things are better here these days in terms of hosting than they were even four years ago, the last time I hosted locally.

Of course if the Aussie dollar does head further south, say around to 1999 49 cents to the Greenback levels, and I’m selling product, then it’s all good news. 

The 2009 Convictions

• That many of the things we are told “are so” are even more incorrect than I suspected! 
• That  I’ll keep slamming download sites on this blog.
• That blogs are a wonderful form of expression, advertising, SEO and are the replacement for UseNet that I hoped for (arguably better than UseNet, but to argue that you’d be better served starting a thread on UseNet because I’m not interested, so don’t hold your breath for me to take part).
• That WordPress is underrated as a tool for micro and not so micro ISV’s – and not just as a blog (more, again, on that soon as I make changes again on the MixAction website).
• That I will release MixAction in “short form” within the first quarter of 2009 come hell or high water.  The audio problems I faced due to COM + Delphi are not a problem now under VisualStudio – mostly because everything is native – the UI replication issues have been addressed and I’m semi comfortable with C# and increasingly ambidextrous with VB.Net (did I actually just write that?     )
• That the economy is going to get worse before it gets better and that negative inflation is a real possibility.  Now this could well be a good thing for ISV’s as the venture capitalists begin to exit and the fly-by night “lets create the next Facebook” crowd head for safer economic pastures – like selling shares in bridges and public landmarks – and the industry is left to those who code because they actually love solving problems, using code!
• That we’ll see at least one, if not two or three, Enron style melt-downs and exposures this year, with a bunch of other rats scurrying away into the dark.
• That the Business of Software forums will be flooded by newbie’s looking to supplement their income as mISV’s.  Most of these will start up and conversely shut down by the end of 2009.
• That the Australian Greens will join with the Liberal/National coalition and block Prime Minister Kevin Crud’s climate change legislation (ethics for the coalition and spite on behalf of the Greens) at the very least making things look a tad wobbly in Canberra and maybe, just maybe triggering a double dissolution, affording myself and the Australian Democrats the chance to salvage something….  
• That a huge “something” “gate” will sweep the Victorian State Labor government in order to stay up-to-date and in fashion with their New South Wales counterparts.
• That the price of water here will go up by 100% – hang on – that was announced today.  We get to use less (restrictions) and pay more for it.  Hmmmmmm.  We’ll probably run out by 2012 anyway – what – me worry? 
• That Obama will avoid becoming a skeet for some stupid fruitcake somebody forgot to certify and lock up exercising his “right to bear arms”.
• That Jeb Bush will announce his intention to run for President and his possible intention to “liberate” the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
• That I can get this blog back to November 2008 readership levels. 
• That I stop using the expression “period” to signify a point in a sentence so that certain upset women, concerned about an absence of a certain cycle stop getting this blog as one of the first results in Google and MS Live for their search on the reason for this absence.  :-O
• That Mike Wilson will finish his 30 Day Sprint around the same time I do.    There’s a challenge Mike! 

OK.  That’s it in a nutshell.  More work, a little bit more transparency than the last few months, my idiotic cloner is gone wherever it is such idiots hang out and all that worry and angst amounted to, well, bugger all actually. 

If 2008 was the year I kicked off 2009 is, for me, the year I plan to make things viable again.

Later!

Scott Kane

“The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. ”

- Robert Bloch

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First, some quick news. I’m moving this blog, indeed all my sites, so if you can read this post your ISP has updated their name servers and everything is back to “normal” again. The blog was actually pretty easy, now that WordPress includes an export that works nicely. Exporting SQL was never much fun. Exporting via XML is a doddle.

I’m going to elaborate why I moved in the coming days. Suffice to say I had the VPS that wasn’t. When a host sells you a VPS without root access *look very very closely*…

After two months at MediaTemple my recommendation is:  “Don’t bother.”

I’ve chosen a new host, with whom I will be setting up a VPS (with root access) that is a *genuine* VPS, in the meantime, while I devour all things related to being a nix admin I have a shared server for the blog and websites as a temporary home.  The VPS is with the same people and they have superb tech support and PR to boot!

I’m going to write a more expansive post later on, discussing my goals this year, and in particular the development and release schedule of MixAction in some detail.

More soon!

Scott Kane

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I’d like to thank the many people who have made 2008 a great year for me.

Firstly that’s you the reader, who helped take this blog from nothing in March into the top 1.25% at Technorati at one point this year.  Readership of this blog has varied from a few a day initially to over 10,000 unique repeat visitors in November 2008.

Since November, admittedly there has been a huge drop.  I have issues with this server, more on that soon, that are largely responsible for the drop and I have issues with a spam bot marketed, or at least credit card processed by, a major and well known service that serves the mISV community.  More on that in 2009 too as I’m intending to name them – when I have all of my facts straight.

Next up there are some specific individuals who have contributed massively to my own efforts this year to get off the ground.

I won’t go into details as to how.  I’d like to simply give them credit.  If I don’t name you and you’ve been of assistance this year, it’s not because I’ve forgotten you, or because I don’t appreciate it, but rather I’m assuming you’re preference for anonymity. 

These people include:

Steph Grenier

Ian Landsman

Bob Walsh

Patrick McKenzie

Mike Wilson

Julien Codorniou – Microsoft BizSpark

My wife and family for tolerating the whole process. 

And a list of others, some of who will be helping more in the future.

Without these folks I couldn’t have gotten anywhere at all, and despite no release as yet, I’ve gotten a hell of a lot further with what I’m working on – in a manner I could never have achieved without their assistance.  In some instances this assistance was merely a pointed comment, a well thought out criticism or in some cases actual assistance with boot strapping.

So thank you all.

I took the opportunity to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.7 today.  A painless exercise thanks to an auto-upgrade plug-in I use.  WordPress 2.7 it’s self of course includes auto-upgrade tools now anyway.

So far it’s pretty nice.  A very nice Ajax admin section has been added in 2.7, layout is cleaner.  So far the nicest looking WordPress yet.

I’m expecting the usual wave of script kiddie attacks in the coming weeks, as with every new release, but it seems to working nicely so far.  Let me know if you have any issues.

If you celebrate Christmas than Merry Christmas to you and your family.

If you do not celebrate Christmas then best wishes to you and your family in any manner you feel most comfortable with. 

Scott Kane

Dec. 24th 2008

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I try to follow these scum merchants and their proclivity for the advancement of turning search engines into sewer pipes, and as I’m switching currently across to VisualStudio and the .Net platform I have cause to do more searching than usual.

What I’ve noticed is a massive increase in download sites using the product name of an ISV or mISV’s software as a sub domain of their website.  What this effectively means is that they are attempting to out rank the author – and each other naturally – on the product.

OK.  Sure many have been using web pages with the product name for some time, which certainly can play a role in rank.  But a sub domain is taken as far more authorative by the engines – even Google.  Don’t give them the “benefit of the doubt” here, this is extremely cynical.

Given that a sub domain has to be setup – albeit scripts can do it – and takes more work (and expense in many cases) than a simple generated page /productname.html compared to product.name.spammydownloadsite.com

Some developers with a firm grip on SEO are not going to be affected by this, those using content, blogs etc will cream these Google Adsense farmers without any problems.  But those, most, mISV’s who don’t write content, don’t get the basics of SEO will be affected.  Especially if they host their product on a company domain name mycompany.com as opposed to a product domain name myproduct.com

To my mind this is tantamount to stealing IP.  Maybe your IP.  Though you’d be hard pressed to make it stick in a court and the downloads sites know it.

Check and keep an eye on the the search engines lest a download site sneaks up on you.  Better yet – ditch PAD, ditch the download sites and get cracking on writing content to support your product.

Scott Kane

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