1&1

My site is now hosted on 1and1.com, and it seems to be working out all right. They have a limited-time deal right now where you can get free hosting for 3 years, including shell access, a bunch of e-mail accounts, PHP, and some other fun stuff. Definitely better than Yahoo/GeoCities. I’m not sure if they’ll really honor the whole 3 years, or if they’ll go out of business or something, but I figure it’s worth a shot. Now I need to learn some PHP so I can do some fancy stuff on the site…

Swatch

How not to run an online store:

– First, put in a JavaScript age-checking routine that works under IE, but not under Mozilla, so that everyone using that browser is identified as being under 13, and hence not allowed to buy stuff from you. Hey, why worry about it? Proper cross-browser date handling is well-documented, but who uses Mozilla anyway?

– Next, rely on pop-up windows for some key functions, so that people with pop-up blockers enabled can’t register on your site. Again, why worry? Only communists use pop-up blockers!

Thank you, swatch.com!

(Of course, the sad thing is that I bought a watch from them anyway. after switching browsers and disabling pop-ups.)

Spam

Spam is getting to be a big problem at work, so I’ve been spending some spare time looking into various spam-filtering solutions. The stuff I’m looking at for work is, of course, server-oriented software. For home use, though, I’ve been looking at a few things that get between your e-mail client and POP server. I just downloaded K9 and installed it for use with Eudora. I won’t know how good it works until I’ve been using it for a week or two, but hey, it’s free, so it’s gotta be worth a try.

site design

I’m playing around with a new site design. Mostly black & white, with simple graphics using the “Poor Richard” font. It still needs some work. I definitely need to work on the way this text looks, for instance. And, oh yeah, I need to find a better HTML editor than HomeSite 2, which has gotta be about 10 years old now. Maybe TopStyle?