I discovered that Sandvox uses a framework called Connection Kit for uploading files. I downloaded the framework (it’s open source) and found that it had the same problem as Sandvox which lead me to believe that the framework is broken. After spending a large part of today looking at the framework, I managed to fix part of the problem in that I no longer get SSH errors when trying to upload via SFTP. I’m not ready to reveal my fix to the problem and I still don’t have things working (some pictures just don’t upload).
Unimpressive software
Last week, Sandvox was a runner up in Apple’s Design Awards, so I decided to take a look at it to re-create my website. I really like the look of the websites; they look more professional than the basic one’s created by RapidWeaver (which I’ve used for about 1.5 years). I spent about half a day yesterday reworking my ReceiptWallet website in Sandvox and am pretty pleased what I’ve done. I went to publish it to a test site and the demo limited me to publishing the main page, so I went ahead and purchased it (I had to purchase the Pro version for $79 as I have a few places that I have raw HTML) and proceeded to publish the full site. I use SFTP (secure FTP or FTP over SSH) to publish and kept getting errors about the encryption key. Not looking too hot for $79. After a few tries and changing some settings, I was able to publish the “full” site. I was about to switch my entire site over and make it live when I discovered that Sandvox only uploaded one of my graphics.
Wow, I’ve never had so many problems with one program in the first day of using it and having spent $79 on it, I’m a bit disappointed to say the least. I’ve spent them a few pieces of email and hopefully they’ll have a solution soon. For a product that has been out for over a year, it seems like it still needs a bit of work. There are a bunch of hidden features that really shouldn’t be hidden; for instance, I needed to change the file extension to .php from .html so that some of my PHP code would run which I could only do with a hidden preference; in addition, I wanted to change the Amazon associate ID to my own instead of theirs (at least I could do it).
I just discovered that they also embed a link to their Amazon associates stuff in my page that includes Amazon links; not cool at all.
So, at this point, my site remains unchanged and unimpressive. I also feel that I’ve wasted $79 on a piece of software that needs a ton of work. Oh well, live and learn.
That brings me to another complaint I have and that’s the Apple Design Awards; this year they recognized several web design applications that frankly look better than they function. So Apple Design Awards must really only recognize applications that look pretty. Am I disappointed that ReceiptWallet didn’t win? Yes, but now I understand why, it is extremely functional and doesn’t have fancy pictures to make up for its shortcomings. Another lesson learned, don’t waste time entering time year. Apple better send back my Pentax DSMobile 600 scanner I sent in with my entry to make judging it easier.
Dumped Sirius!
Today we finally dumped Sirius radio! We got it as a gift from my in-laws a few years back and they’ve been paying the fee since then which was fine, however, we got real annoyed at the DJs. In January, we got my wife a new car with a built-in XM receiver and she enjoyed the 3 months free. However, I held out subscribing until they sent me an offer I couldn’t refuse (the dealer said to wait until they sent a good offer and they sent several offers). When I subscribed, it also came with free online access which was pretty neat. I found an XM Radio plugin for my Squeezebox and was pleased. I discovered that I could stream 2 XM stations at once, so I picked up another Squeezebox today (used) and hacked the XM plugin code to let me connect twice. Now we can stream 2 XM stations at once or have XM on one Squeezebox and MP3s on the other; this also works out well so that we can play children’s music on one box and whatever we want on the other. Very cool. Goodbye, Sirius and the crappy DJs! (I hope things don’t go downhill when/if the Sirius/XM merger is finalized.)
Sales tax on downloads
Today I went to purchase the professional pictures that were taken of me at the marathon last week and one of the options was electronic download as opposed to CD. This wasn’t offered last year and would save me $16 (the $84 for the electronic download is already extortion). I got to the checkout page and saw that they wanted to charge me sales tax. Whoa…that doesn’t fly in California. According to the California Board of Equalization’s publication about downloads
Products electronically transmitted to customers
Your sale of electronic data products such as software, data, and digital images is generally not taxable when you transmit the data to your customer over the Internet or by modem. However, if as part of the sale you provide your customer with a printed copy of the electronically transferred information or a backup data copy on a physical storage medium such as a CD-ROM, your entire sale is usually taxable.
So I sent the company email and hopefully they’ll fix the problem. I suspect that when they started offering electronic downloads, they didn’t re-tool their store to reflect this or don’t have a clue about sales tax on non-tangible goods.
This is a bit frustrating as I’ve had to do this in the past with another company. Let’s get with the picture, folks! I’ve known about the sales tax on electronic downloads for 13 years when I first had to do research on it; things, luckily, haven’t changed with respect to this.
You can never have too many backups!
Yesterday I went to open up my website that I created in RapidWeaver and found that my site was all screwed up; I didn’t realize this until after I exported it to my server. Luckily, I was able to quickly restore what was on the server as I have a week’s worth of archives of my server in tar.gz files. However, getting the RapidWeaver file back required me to go back to the previous night’s backup. The problem seems to have arisen from the upgrade from RapidWeaver 3.5 to 3.6 where it converted the data file. A 3.6.1 update was released, but it appears I had already done my conversion before the update came out.
I had a momentary scare, but with my paranoia about backups, there was nothing to worry about. Worst case was that I had to grab the files from the hard drives I store in my safe deposit box; there were only a few web site changes since that backup.
Cool application
I found this cool application yesterday. My wife asked me to locate the manual for some baby thing we have (it seems that we’ve collected a lot of stuff for our 5 week old and each thing comes with a manual to lose) and said that she had emailed it to me. I fired up DocumentWallet and looked for it. I’ve been placing all the manuals I get (most are available online) into a baby category in DocumentWallet so I don’t have to search for things again.
OK, maybe DocumentWallet isn’t new and I didn’t discover it (yes, I wrote it), but this is sure a cool use for the app. With a smart category for everything that contains baby, I can find manuals quickly and easily. Why didn’t I come up with this sooner?
Military security?
At today’s marathon, the finish line was at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. As part of being on base, all bags were subject to search and weapons were not allowed. My dad forgot that he had his Swiss Army Knife in his pocket and had to go back to his car to drop it off; that’s fine, but the policy of “weapons” is not evenly applied. At the start line, runners could check gear in “gear check” bags; I had zip tied my bag closed and all bags were transported on UPS trucks to MCRD. While the bags were clear, it is quite easy to conceal stuff in the bags and they were never searched. So after I got my bag, I couldn’t open it and asked a vendor if he had a pair of scissors. He gladly said yes and cut the zip tie off my bag. Are scissors not a weapon? Furthermore, how many of the vendors had box cutters to open up their boxes? Most likely all of them.
It’s a good thing that nothing really exciting happens at MCRD. At friend of ours is a civilian contractor at MCRD and he said that they don’t have weapons or anything interesting on the base, except for the weapons that the military police carry (some had pistols, others had some type of automatic rifles).
I rock!
Well, today I completed my second Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon. I registered for it last year before I knew that my wife was pregnant. To say that training was a bit tough and I wasn’t ready was an understatement. Our son is just over a month old and I haven’t run long runs in months. However, my goal was just to complete the marathon again. I’m not sure how I did it, but I beat my last year’s time by over 12 minutes; I came in at 4:02:37 which still amazes me.
Will I run another marathon? At this point, it’s unlikely. My reason for running my first marathon was to prove to myself that I could do it; with that behind me, I have a lot less motivation to run another.
Is there magic to using plastic wrap?
A number of weeks ago, I tried to wrap up leftovers from our dinner and it dawned on me that I’ve always hated plastic wrap. I think there must be something wrong with me as I can never rip it off the roll without making a mess and it usually doesn’t stick. Years ago, I recall my father buying the big rolls at BJ’s Wholesale Club and I hated them. Plastic wrap seems so popular, but the mechanism for slicing off pieces hasn’t evolved. My mother-in-law wrapped stuff up when she was here to visit without any problem, so I think that I need a few lessons in plastic wrapping.
MotionBased has gone down hill
When I got my Garmin Forerunner 305 last year, I signed up for MotionBased and was generally pleased with it. I pay for a yearly subscription (which isn’t cheap), so I expect more than just a crappy website. Unfortunately their site has almost become unusable as it is so slow. The other day it took 5 hours or so to upload some runs to it. Today I wanted to upload my marathon and it’s just sitting there waiting to process. They need to start adding horsepower to the website and give paying customers priority over free customers. That’s just smart business sense. Can I recommend MotionBased to others? At this point, no. Hopefully the service gets better as I have about another 2 years left on my subscription.