The Events that are: My Life

Chris, Josh, Brian, and myself went for a bike ride while Kit walked the dogs. Then we drove into Golden and said hi to Chris’s dad, Kelly. We stopped at Woody’s and ate, then they dropped me off at my place.

After a full day of moving things in, I’m back at Kit’s.

I moved in all my stuff and purchased a futon off of Craigslist.

Well, this is my last day of vacation. I’m going to go get on a plane now and fly out to Colorado.

Fortunately, I had my old SQL files from the last version of my site. So I was able to convert those. I also have about 125 posts saved in my RSS aggregator (call me egotistical), so I’m going to copy and paste those back too. In all, I only end up losing about 14 days starting just after my first year of college ends.

I’ve started to pick up the pieces. I’ve been uploading my Gallery files since yesterday, and I most likely have one more day. There really won’t be much point in checking back for at least a couple more days.

Many people have asked, “Why?”
“Why build a web site?”
“Why host it yourself?”

Well, it’s finally time for an explanation. If your expecting some big secret to why I have a website, you best look else where. When it comes down to it, there is one basic reasons I have a web site:
Because I can.

I have been involved with computer since I was for years old. That was 13 years ago (at the time of this printing). Back then, I was toying around with an IBM 286. That would be 10Mhz. By comparison, my web server runs at 200Mhz, or 2000% faster. You could also compare that to my current computer, running at 1.8Ghz, or 18000% faster than my first computer, and 900% faster than my server. I was introduced to the Internet in 1994, and shortly after that, I began crafting webpages.

I’ve always been obsessed with unusual. I pride myself knowing intricate details about RFID’s, Warp

Field Theory (Alcubierre)/, Barcode Scanners, and the like. Who else do you know that has a home theater in their basement? Complete with a 16:9 rear-projection screen, theater chairs, complete Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound/DTS/ProLogic

II.

So I began the tedious job of mastering the Internet. Perhaps mastering is not quite the word to use. Indulging myself may be a better suited word. In fact, it really doesn’t have that much to do with the Internet. At this point in time, you’re probably asking, “What? How can a web site not have that much to do with the Internet?!?!?”

Well, it’s really simple. The Internet is really an extension of the computer. The Internet simply links computer together. So I tend to think of the Internet as the next evolution in computing. Which is what I gear my work towards. “What is this work you speak of?” you ask.

Ok, so by work, I mean what my current project and goals are. So far, I have risen up through HTML, SSI, Flash, PHP, and mySQL. I am currently working on using Apache, Linux, C, PHP, and mySQL. Future plans include ASP, msSQL, XML, C#, and IIS.

And now a quick note about IBM-based PC’s vs. Mac’s:
I hear many people comment on the fact that the think one type of computer is better then the other. While I use all PC type systems, it’s not because I I don’t like Mac’s. I was given the opportunity to demo an iBook for a few weeks. After using it, I almost considered buying one. But…It was too stable.

Now before you all jump down my throat, let me explain what I mean: It’s incredible hard to modify the Macintosh Operating System. And since I do quite a bit of development, I demand the flexibility that Windows gives me. The key word in that last sentence was “development.”

That is who I am. I develop crap. If you are a picture editor, you edit pictures and should be using a Mac. If you write newspapers: use a Mac. If you edit films…well, you should be using an Avid workstation, but if you aren’t: use a Mac! If you develop code, for computers, the Internet, or whatnot: use a PC! If you demand flexibility in what you do: use a PC.

NB: This was originally published as a page (andrewferguson.net/colophon/why)‎. It was archived to a post on 16-Sept-2016.

Chantelle Anderson: Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georga

Emma Ashbrook: Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin

Jasmine Azpiri: Willamette University in Salem, Oregon

Amy Beck: Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont

Thomas Bevan: Mechanical Engineering @ Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California

Saul Bierman: Year off in Cuba India

Arianna Bizzarri: Agriculture @ Perugia University (?) in Italy

Alex Blue: Industrial Design @ Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island

Case Blum: Engineering or Architecture @ Miami University in Oxford, Ohio

Daniel Bushyhead: Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut

Freddy Carley: University of Redlands in Redlands, California

Christian Carlson: Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado

Toby Coughlin-Bogue: Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington

Ali Dammann: University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California

Saskia de Jonge: New York University in New York City, New York

Terra De Long: Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon

Alison Delaney: International Business @ University of Colorado at Boulder in Boulder, Colorado (Rumor has it, she dropped out)

Lia DiBiase: Chemistry or Chemical Engineering @ Oregon State University, ROTC in Corvallis, Oregon

Trevor Essmeier: Willamette University in Salem, Oregon

Andrew Ferguson: Electrical Engineering @ Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado

Nathan Fihn: University of Redlands in Redlands, California

Devin Fitzpatrick: University of California at Berkeley in Berkeley, California

Jordan Frank: University of Denver in Denver, Colorado

Grant Gilbert: Business @ Bellevue Community College in Bellevue, Washington

Natalie Grant: Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon

Jeff Hanway: University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington

Morgan Harris: Musical Theater @ Emerson College in Boson, Massachusetts

Roan Hartzog: Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington

Paydn Harvey: Defering a year @ Capilano College in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Joel Hobbs: Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georga

Austen Holman: University of Colorado at Boulder in Boulder, Colorado

Ashley Hoover: Taking a year off in India teaching music, art, and theater at an elementry school

Erin Ikeda: Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawaii

Celeste Jalbert: George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Anne Jewell: Willamette University in Salem, Oregon

Nora Johnson: Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire

Lauren Johnson: Bellevue Community College in Bellevue, Washington

Brent Knowles: Willamette University in Salem, Oregon

Erik Krippaehne: Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington

Charlie Lakatos: Landscape Architecture @ University of California at Berkeley in Berkeley, California

Ben Lehrer:Union College in Schenectady, New York

Geoff Lyles: Sports Medicene @ University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Las Vegas Nevada

Leo Maizel:Year off in Israel then @ Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington

Peter Markl: Aeronautical Engineer in Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, Washington

Julia Masnik: Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California

James McKenna: Startup software company, Pwnzord Inc.

Brett Miller: Engineering @ Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon

Nate Mladenovic: Occidental College in Los Angeles, California

Ed Morgan: Business @ Menlo College in Atherton, California

Jill Muscatel: Photo Journalism @ George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Jessen Myburgh: University of Redlands in Redlands, California

Alia Paget: Mills College in Oakland, California Willamette University in Salem, Oregon

Paige Pauli: Pitzer College in Claremont, California

Ross Peizer: Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts

Dabney Rohrbach: University of Redlands in Redlands, California

Lauren Rubinfeld: University of Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Dori Scherer: The Gallatin School at New York University in New York City, New York

Brooke Schiffrin: University of Redlands in Redlands, California

Lynne Siefert: University of San Francisco in San Francisco, California

Remi Spector: New York University in New York City, New York

Phil Spelman: Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois

Brittany Stallings: Year off in Asia, then art school in 2005

Michael Stephens: Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington

Maya Stessin: Veterinary Medicine @ University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio

Paul Swanson: University of San Diego in San Diego, California

Andy Thomas: Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland

Sydney Townes-Witzel: University of Redlands in Redlands, California

Alec Turnbull: Columbia University in New York City, New York

David Wagoner-Edwards: Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine

Amelia Wates: Honor Academy in Garden Valley, Texas (Not going until Spring 2005)

• oishii! – ephemeral pheromonal de.icio.us-ness
  del.icio.us mini-zeitgeist
• Spell with flickr
  Spell words using flickr images. Actually pretty cool and a great way to make those randsom notes you've been needing to do.
• Virtual Apple 2
  An entire library of old Apple 2 disks online. Check them out. (Requires ActiveX, so IE only. Sorry.)
• net2ftp
  A web-based FTP client written in PHP. Perfect if your network blocks FTP ports!
• Blogebrity
  A-, B-, and C-list bloggers.
• Cool Media PowerPoint Tool
  From Scobleizer via Brian Kennemer. If want to maximize PowerPoint. Get this free tool. Awesome.
• Live Coffin Cam
  There is a line that everybody should draw when extending the use of technology. They crossed this line by even thinking about doing it. See dead people…live. (Warning: contains a live picture of a dead person and links to inappropriate sites)
• Caltech vs MIT
  Caltech and MIT pranks…perhaps I should startup CSMvsCU.com?
• Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP
  This handy little tool allows you to mount iso images as CD drives. Note: This is an unsupported Microsoft program!
• Computer Porn
  Porn for all you computer nerds (Mom and Dad: Link is to pictures of cool/big computers, not typical porn).
• http://sowiebinich.com/
  My name is Dan, and I have a website!
• The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia
  This tool lets you link any actor to Kevin Bacon. Give it a shot.
• Over The Top Today…
  Stephanie Runo's Site
• The Original Google
  Take a trip back to 1998 when Google: A) Still ran on the standford.edu server; B)only had 25 million results (compared to 8 billion now); and C) the logo was different
• Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta)
  Help protect your computer from spyware and other potentially unwanted software.
• NateTrue.com
  Interesting website. Has some cool software downloads and some really cool projects.
• Riley's Website
  Has some cool stuff, and some really nice panoramas.
• Choose the Blue
  If you really want to be political about it, check this list to see what political party a majority of a companys employees gave to…what has the world come to? Oh, that's right: ignorant people.
• Desktop Sidebar
  Desktop Sidebar provides you with instant access to the information you most desire by grabbing data from your PC and the internet. The result is a dynamic visual display you configure and control.
• 20 Questions
  I like 20 question as much as the next guy…or girl, but this is just rediculus!
• iTunes Art Importer
  Import images into iTunes with this utility that searches Amazon.com for matching album art.
• Eddie's Nissan
  My neighbor's awesome car. You really have to check it out.
• Quinn's Photos
  Quinn didn't ask me to plug his photo site, I thought I just give him a little publicity.
• myTunes Redux
  myTunes Redux is a program that allows you to download music made available by iTunes. It allows you to search everything on the network at once, live, and works with all versions of iTunes (from 4.1 through 4.7).
• What The Font?
  If you find a typeface that you like in a magazine or other published material, but cannot identify it, you can scan the typeface and upload it to MyFonts. WhatTheFont then finds the fonts that most closely match it. Accuracy of results is unprecedented b
• Pop Up Test
  Checks to see if you popup blocking software works as well as it claims…mine does!
• Really Slick Screensavers
  Some awesome 3D screensavers written in OpenGL.
• Build a Bush
  Make your own Genuine George W. Bush.
• BugMeNot.com
  Simply put: Bypass Compulsory Web Registration.
• Dark Side Switch
  Anakin Skywalker makes the Switch to the Dark Side. A great spoof on the Apple/Switch commercials! Again, recommended by Becca A.
• Orisinal: Morning Sunshine
  Some really well designed games…although defiantly odd. Recommended by Becca A.
• Waxy.org: Andy Baio lives here
  Interesting site. Worth checking out for a few minutes at least.
• fun.drno.de/
  Random german site I found. Has some pretty interesting stuff. Not something I would do at work though, if you get my drift.
• ZUG
  A very funny site with some hilarious pranks. A must see!
• The Sum of Humanoid Parts
  Machines are getting more and more like the rest of us. A piece-by-piece guide to the globe's most advanced bots.
• Themed Movie and Music Fonts
  Just about every font from a movie or tv show that you would ever want.
• Objects of Desire
  A rather interesting site that has some very cool projects that it seems you can make.
• mttrack – TrackBack Technical Specification
  This is the data sheet that I used when I developed the code for my Trackback system. If any body cares for it, it's in the 'Code' section.
• Color scheme
  A site that will give you nice color combinations
• Joel on Software
  'The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)'
• untitled organization
  '…a collective of experimental image makers…' Very cool.
• Math for Morons Like Us
  I'm in Calc II and you want me to add matricies??? I think not! …until I found this:
• MyPhysicsLab
  Really cool ways to visualize physics.
• New L33t translator
  k4n J00 5P33k 1N 7h12 r47H3r pH00l15h ph0Rm 0F c0mmUn1C4710n?
• Earth Impact Effects Program
  An easy-to-use, interactive web site for estimating the regional environmental consequences of an impact on Earth.
• Sensitive Light
  The creme de la creme for wallpapers.
• Shifted Reality 3D Wallpaper
  I'm very picky about wallpaper; this has some great stuff.
• Bombia Design
  Some pretty cool desktop wallpaper. Definatly worth checking out.
• musicplasma : the music visual search engine
  This is awesome! Type in a singer/band and find out what other music is related to to.
• Dropload.com
  A place for you to drop your files off and have them picked up by someone else at a later time. What could be cooler?
• Blog | 1976design.com
  Where I get a lot of my design ideas.
• Andrew's Web Site
  The best place on earth!

It’s really a series of crap mistakes on my part. I couldn’t get phpMyAdmin to authenticate to the mySQL Db, so I thought that something was wrong with mySQL. I reinstalled mySQL and moved my Db files to the new location (without making a copy). For some reason, the new version of mySQL didn’t like the files and decided to just delete them or something like that. I tried to recover them using some special software, but I couldn’t find anything.

So what did I do? Well have kicking my self repeatedly, I tried to recover the files (as mentioned above). When that didn’t work, I took a drive and ended up at REI where I purchased an REI Thermo LT Jacket to replace a similar one I lost at the end of last school year. All the while I was thinking about what I wanted to do (other than shoot myself).

It came down to four options: end AFdN and don’t host it anymore, host AFdN from my server again, have AFdN hosted by another company, and have AFdN hosted by another company but have Fergcorp hosted from my server.

To understand my thought process, you need to understand the orgins of my thought. I’ve been hosting my website out of my house for over 4 years now. It was a way to get hands on experience with technology that could be access by millions.

All that I had worked on, both in terms of what I lost in the mishap and the technology that I was using, had been built on the original system I used four years ago. Every time something needed upgrading, I would make the changes and shuffle the data over. In short, I had a giant tower of stuff that was in horrible condition and was going to fall…I just couldn’t catch it in time. Couple this with the fact that I’m only in the same state as my server for a 1/4 of the year and the picture seems pretty grim.

So I decided to hire a company to host my site. I selected BlueHost because of their recomendation on WordPress and their ability to meet my strict criteria.

So while not hosting at home is a disapointment, it is also a time for me to embrace the challenges that lay ahead. I know how the beast works, now I can help make him bigger and stronger.

And believe me, the cogs in my head are turner faster then they have ever turned before…