If anyone is interested, here's a YouTube link to demo versions of songs my friend and I are writing for an album under the Average Joes banner. These aren't mastered yet as we're planning on adding 2 or 3 more songs. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpfhPfZx7S8AAIs5H9mWg2w6P8UU944kt
Sleigh Bells' 'Treats' turns 10 this year, and since I didn't give them a proper listen way back when, it's now time to do that.
For unmanaged VPS hosts (which is what I've been using for the better part of the last decade) I like: - Digital Ocean - Vultr (who I use right now; their 'high frequency' offerings are killing it at the moment, starting at $6/month) - Linode - Hetzner Cloud (albeit they're Euro) - Lightsail (the worst performer of the bunch; not newb friendly; but, it gets you on AWS without the technical complication, and static pricing) I'll use these in combination with some kind of server software like RunCloud, Laravel Forge, SpinupWP (currently what I'm using). For managed, or shared hosting, I've heard good things about: - Siteground - DreamHost - Hetzner Shared - Kinsta (WP only, not the cheapest) - WP Engine (WP only, not the cheapest) I'd advise staying away from anything EIG owned, but maybe that's just me. These include: - Bluehost - Hostgator - iPage - Site5 ...and a whole whack tone of others that Google will list for you
I use DreamHost and have been generally pleased with them. If you want to use them send me your email address and I'll get you a referral code. The code will give you $50 off your first year and also give me a $50 rebate when I renew. NativeSpace operates from the UK. If you feel like using them I'd strongly suggest taking an aspirin and lying down until the feeling passes. I used them for a time and their service was usually OK but if it went wrong it really went wrong. I left them part way through a year because they lost everything - literally it was as if they just wiped their server clean. Then it took them nearly three days to admit just how bad the outage was. Then when I tried to rebuild my sites from my own backups I got locked out because my email client tried to connect to the mailboxes they had deleted and they registered failed logins and blacklisted my IP address so I couldn't rebuild anything. For good measure, that was the point that I lost patience with them and asked if they could organise a pissup in a brewery and they warned me that using bad language could result in them cancelling my account. When I asked whether I'd notice any difference if they cancelled my account they went quiet so I made it easy for them and cancelled it myself. The only reason I'd stayed with them was inertia, not wanting to rebuild everything elsewhere. When I had to rebuild it all anyway I figured I might as well take the opportunity to move.
Finally feeling motivated to get on and finish this room I seem to have been working in since, like, forever. I've had the wood for a while but really struggled to spend more than a few minutes at a time working. I decided I need to pull my finger out, so to speak, and now I've got the window trim cut to size, except for one piece. I'm going to have to cut right through the middle of a knot, but think I'm just going to go for it and replace the entire piece if necessary. If the knot falls out that's no big deal, it will be mostly tucked out of view, and I can replace most of the trim with the yellow pine I really wanted in due course. I'm not replacing the window sills - I cut those out of a beautiful piece of red oak.
It goes up in 2.4Ghz steps, so I'm assuming their plans are: - 1 vCPU core (doesn't say dedicated or not) @ 2.4Ghz - 2 vCPU cores @ 2.4Ghz, although it's advertised at 4.8Ghz - 3 vCPU cores @ 2.4Ghz, although it's advertised at 7.2Ghz Mind you, at just over $860/year this is an incredible expensive hosting plan. Close to $300 more per year from any other VPS provider. Stay far awaayyyyyyyyy, listen to tango.
Their shared hosting plans were reasonably priced overall while I was with them, although they did periodically suffer from problems of having their mail servers blacklisted for spamming, which of course meant anyone else sharing that server was also blacklisted. I lost count of the number of times I raised tickets complaining that my email didn't work any more, although in later years they seemed to have mostly fixed that. I guess one obvious question is what sort of hosting you want. If you just need a bit of web space for a simple domain and don't mind a shared server you can get it pretty cheaply. If I recall the standard shared hosting from DreamHost runs a little under $120/year. Their domain registration is a bit more expensive than other places but the price includes keeping your details private so you won't get spammed with phone calls from people with Indian accents who think that just because you registered a domain you need them to build you a web site. Curiously I got spammed with calls from people wanting to build a web site when I let one of my domains expire because I wasn't using it any more.
Yeah, now that tango mentions it, you can get free static hosting with something like Netlify or Github pages if you don't need WordPress, or anything dynamic. Hugo and Jekyll are good newb friendlyish options.
Moving on from web hosting, cutting through the knot in my piece of wood was about as uneventful as it was possible to be. I wasn't sure if it would catch the blade, ping, fly out at speed or what. In the end the blade slowly worked through it, it threw up some dark sawdust which contrasted nicely with the near-white sawdust of the regular pine board, and that was the end of it. For good measure there's a bit of the knot showing on the face that will be hidden and the edge that will be hidden, and the visible face has no sign of the knot at all because that part was in the offcut. Maybe tomorrow I can dig out the surviving trim from above the window and get that ready to go. Maybe it won't be all that long before I can get tools out of there and finish the floor. That will be really good. I've struggled with motivation to get this room finished and all the lockdowns and stuff really haven't helped, so I'm looking forward to ticking it off and moving on to the next room.
Got a bunch of sanding done this evening. I ran over my pine boards with my quarter-sheet sander fitted with 60-grit paper, then the random orbital sander with 80 and 120-grit. The new window sills are made from red oak so that got a quick passover with 120 grit paper, having already had the 80-grit treatment. Then, because they are really nice pieces of wood, I went over them again with 220 grit paper. They feel smooth to the touch now, even gently running my fingertips over them I can't feel anything rough on them. Now my battery is sitting on the charger, the floor is vacuumed and maybe tomorrow I can stain everything.