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Blog Overhaul

The release of WordPress 3.0 introduced a lot of good stuff behind the scenes that I wanted to take advantage of. The new built in Twenty Ten theme incorporates all this new stuff and is pretty nice so I ditched my old custom theme that I was never super happy with. Overall changes:

  • Switched to Twenty Ten theme
  • Customized header with one of my panoramas from Kauai (Menehune Fishpond just south of Lihue)
  • Built navigation menu using new Menu feature
  • Added Contact form
  • Added Google Reader snippet to display recent starred items in sidebar
  • Setup footer widgets with Recent Posts, Tag Cloud, Pages and Categories for unobtrusive navigation links
  • Deactivated Wordbooker, less content Facebook has of mine the better
  • Enabled threaded comments, giving it another try
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WordPress 3.0!

WordPress 3.0 was released yesterday and it’s a very nice upgrade. Couple big features include custom post types and taxonomies, new default theme, new navigation menu system, merged MU (run multiple blogs from one install now) and tons of bugs fixes and tweaks. Be sure to upgrade!

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3-way computer transplant

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Moving gaming sytem into new Antec case and HTPC into the monster P180. Gaming sytem gets full upgrade to i3 530, 4GB DDR3 and Radeon 5770 once the memory comes.

Oh yeah, new headset. Have we discussed the new headsets yet?

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Found the best rechargeable 9V NiMH batteries

We started using rechargeable 9V batteries at church for the wireless mics a couple years ago. There’s a plethora of cheap Chinese batteries available and just started off using those. If we got four or five charges out of them then we’d be doing pretty good and come out ahead of alkalines in terms of cost and waste. We started going through those cheap batteries real quick; the cells would physically burst during a slow charge on a fairly nice dedicated 9V charger. I’ve probably bought ten different brands that all had two things in common: they were under $3 shipped and were made in China.

With the introduction of low discharge batteries like Eneloops in AA and AAA formats, I kept wishing they made a 9V version. Some eventually popped up on Ebay but were well over $10 each. After our stock of batteries started running low again, I found a company called Bear Wobble that offered a full line of low discharge NiMH batteries. I picked up two 9V’s to try out at the same price of eight cheap Chinese 9V’s. Their performance so far has been awesome.

The original two 9V’s I bought are still in weekly rotation and have had zero problems. I picked up four more so we can charge two ahead of time and have them in reserve. All have worked flawlessly and show no signs of giving out. I’ve also picked up a number of their AA and AAA batteries which are competitively priced against Eneloops and perform just as well.

Two big thumbs up for Bear Wobble’s low discharge NiMH batteries. I’m done with the Chinese garbage on Ebay.

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StableHost Web Hosting – An Honest Review

Seriously good hosting at a low price
Use 40OFFGEEKY coupon for 40% off US plans

Update: 7/22/2014: Use special coupon code 40OFFGEEKY for 40% off your plan. Buy 3 years up front to get the most savings.

Trying to find honest reviews of web hosts is next to impossible. Do a search on Google and you get a ton of spammy, referral sites. The Web Hosting Talk forum is probably the best resource for real reviews from actual users. A little research there found nothing but glowing reviews for StableHost and practically nothing negative. I thought I’d go for it since it would be hard to be worse than my previous hosts.

I opted for their middle hosting plan (5GB/100GB, free domain) which drops to $5.45 if you sign up for a year at a time. With the USYEARLY coupon you get 50% off for life which makes a whole year of hosting with domain name come out to $32.72. If you offered me hosting for $2.75 a month I’d probably ask what the catch is. Turns out there is no catch, just great hosting.

After signing up and switching over this site, I noticed an immediate increase in speed. Pages in the WordPress admin area would take a couple seconds to start loading and just seemed a little sluggish on LunarPages. The exact same install on StableHost is fast, really fast. I don’t think I’ve seen WordPress run this fast before. I attribute this to nice servers that have not been oversold. The middle hosting plan only gets you 5GB of space and 100GB of transfer, but that is more realistic than a host offering unlimited space and bandwidth for 5 bucks. That just leads to overutilization and slow servers.

Performance is also helped by the use of Lightspeed instead of Apache. Lightspeed is a commercial web server that offers improved performance over Apache, but the extra cost probably keeps it from being more popular on shared hosts.

I’ve only had previous experience with GoDaddy, ResellerZoom and LunarPages, but I would choose StableHost over them and any other shared web host in a heartbeat. Throw in the free domain name and the hosting technically only costs about $23 a year. The WHTUS coupon could end at anytime so I’d jump on it if you are considering a new host or moving hosts.

Seriously good hosting at a low price
Use 40OFFGEEKY coupon for40% off US plans