code_Whisperer

rodtsasdt llllllreport*

I was raised in a religious (Christian) household, and attended church 3 times a week through my childhood and teen years.

Initially I guess I started 'idling' on those beliefs and practices once I realized that the majority of churches were being run as businesses, with an eye toward making money for a select few as opposed to helping those truly in need. Throw in snake-oil televangelists and it further diminished my trust in those institutions and people. At that point I no longer went (or donated) to church, but preserved my own values and beliefs as a personal form of religion.

But then that all changed again.

Despite the strong possibility of being downvoted into oblivion by the rest of my answer, I am going to say it anyway, because it's the most honest response to OP's question I can summon. And maybe there's someone else reading this who has gone through the same thing.

The final blow to my faith and my upbringing was watching as my religious family and friends all self-inducted into the cult of [a prominent political figure]. To see them using their holy book and their pastors and their (false) prophets and their money to prop up and justify an adoration and worship of this figure's abhorrent and evil life became too much for me to accept. If you were to meet and talk with any of them today, they'd sooner tell you about the greatness of this particular person instead of the central figure of their professed faith.

And the ongoing weaponization of Christianity by this same political figure and all of his hangers-on has only served to further widen the gulf between where I am now and where I used to be.

not hotdog.

(I forgot I had an email contact in my HN profile, you can reach me there, as well) :-)

I am also interested in seeing what you have, and I love refactoring older code.

Please reach out if interested and let me know more, let's see if there's a possible deal here. :-)

codewhisperer at team803585.testinator.email (replace the " at ")

I had a similar requirement recently and ended up going with CodeKeeper (https://codekeeper.co/), mainly because they had a portal that seemed mostly self-serve. Because they are based in The Hague, and because my client had domestic restrictions, I also had to add the US-only storage option. Their pricing was also a factor in my decision. YMMV.

Looks backup, but that was about a 10-12 minute hiccup. :-)

Excellent catch, thanks! Clearly this old boy needs a bit o' sleep.

"Galatea 2.2" by (my all-time favorite author) Richard Powers

"Off to Be the Wizard" by Scott Meyer

"Daemon" by Daniel Suarez

"The Adolescence of P1" (vintage) by Thomas Ryan

"Snow Crash" by William Gibson

"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline

"We are Legion [We are Bob]" by Dennis Taylor

You mean like: if I am having mayo, not only must it be Hellmann's, but it must be from the glass jar and not the squeeze bottle? (different textures) :-D

Lots of positive points here, especially on things that are commonly overlooked (security headers, SSL configuration, compression, etc.), so congrats!

Some quick comments:

1) Under the tools listing on the home page, I'd make the entire block of each tool (name, icon, description) the clickable link, not just the words "Use Tool"

2) When in dark mode (which was auto-sensed, good job), every time I choose a new page it starts in light mode (flash-bang!) and then fades into dark mode.

Congrats on the new site. Looks pretty good to me!

Since you asked for feedback, here's something I noticed. I initially opened this on my tablet, and some of the H2 headlines had orphan words. Like this:

Understanding HTTP Status Codes When Websites Are

Down

I'd recommend maybe adding "text-wrap: pretty;" to those, or using other tricks (like maybe making the max width for headlines 80% or similar). Note that text-wrap pretty is still somewhat new (caniuse.com reports 72.9% support).

Other minor things (NOT criticisms, just trying to be helpful):

- It looks like your Google analytics and tag manager are not loading due to your content security policy (script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline')

- Your site weight is already impressively small (congrats!) but you may still want to consider compressing the CSS and JS to make it as quick as possible.

- In the bottom area (common sites), I saw that the comma after Zoom (for example) sometimes appeared on the line below (another place where text-wrap: pretty; might help)

- On the "About Us" page I could not read the subtitle ("The story behind...") due to the colors in use (looks like grey on green?). Same thing for Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

- I expected the form at the top to submit when I hit the 'enter' key, but I had to click the button. I'd recommend making it submit on enter, especially since it has only one field.

- I kept trying to check one of my own sites (picnits.com) and was told it was down, even though it's not (to be completely fair, it could be that my server is blocking something in your request, like user-agent or IP/origin, so that might not be an actual issue on your side)

Hope this helps!

Maybe https://www.indiehackers.com/

I typically like to keep the registration of the domain itself in the customer's own registrar account (even if I have to set it up for them). I provide them with that information (or they provide it to me, if they have already registered it).

Then depending on the registrar, there may be features that help to facilitate this type of management. Porkbun, for example, has "subaccounts" and also "authorized users" where you can then set yourself up to be able to admin those domains on behalf of your client. Godaddy, as another example, has a feature called "Delegate Access", where you can set yourself up under your client's account to be able to make changes, perform renewals, etc. on their behalf.

I would imagine that other registrars might have similar features.

I looked at the site and can say that I am someone who might be interested in your service.

This is not a criticism, but rather intended as (hopefully) constructive feedback.

As a technical dev who just doesn't have the time to spend on my own projects, I have general questions about your services. However, from the site it appears that the only way I can communicate with you is to schedule a phone call.

I understand why you might want that initial contact to be via a phone call, but for me a scheduled call is just too much friction when I just want to fire off an email or a chat to ask a couple of questions and see if we might be a good fit.

That may sound silly, but I suspect I am not alone.

How about searching for:

http%3A

Not sure about underrated, but if you mean lesser-known, here is some of the most memorable, possibly lesser-known science fiction I've read over the past few years. These are the ones that stick in my brain and continue to generate thought, even though I read them months (or even years) ago:

"Chocky" by John Wyndham

"This is How You Lose the Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (a new all-time fave for me)

"The Book of Strange new Things: A Novel" by Michel Faber

"The City and the City" by China Miéville

"The Fifth Science" by Exurb1a

"The Initial Fold" series by Nick Adams

"Peacemaker's Code" by Deepak Malhotra (still not sure why this is not more well-known)

"Eifelheim" by Michael Flynn (a most unusual premise and a gob of seemingly inane stuff to get through at about the 2/3 point, but IMHO worth it)

"Providence" by Max Barry (heart pounding)

"Hench" by Natalie Zina Walschots

"Orange World" by Karen Russell (short stories but many qualify as sci-fi, very memorable to me)

And here are some definitely well-known examples that also stick in my head:

"Infernum" by Jayson Adams

"The Fourth Wing" and "Iron Flame" by Rebecca Yarros (more fantasy than sci-fi, but very well done if you can handle two or three extended and explicit sex scenes)

"Rabbits" by Terry Miles (book includes some hidden hints and puzzles that lead you to things outside the book

"We are Legion (We are Bob)" series by Dennis Taylor

Thank you for your response. I don't see how they would have been able to, but the first email I received from the app vendor was a quarterly statement notification, and includes the person's screen name on the app. I checked all of the email headers and they seem legit (match emails I receive for my own account from the app vendor)

Depends on child's age, but here are some things from today that I would have probably found endlessly entertaining when I was a kid:

Flipper Zero

Raspberry PI

SDR

Not a computer, but still very relevant for inquisitive kids and adults:

Amateur radio (an oldie but a goodie)

Decent telescope

Decent microscope

Wife and I were looking to lease a solar system locally, but sadly our use-case includes a minimum requirement of nine planets.

I'd like to think it sounds like 'cagey', which is a positive attribute when you're taking on giants.

Your situation sounds very similar to my own (including the "old and crusty web developer" and "I made a word puzzle game").

And I have been facing the same difficulties, not just legal red tape but also the seemingly endless steps to making sure that everything's working for all scenarios, then finally having it ready to launch, only to find out that some new rules have just been created which force a restart of that whole QA cycle.

It's not about the programming. It's never been about the programming. It's about the surrounding "slog of obtuse processes" that suck the life out of what should have been a joyful project.

Like you I am searching for an alternative. I'll be watching this post for ideas and discussion, but also feel free to contact via email (see profile) if you want to brainstorm.

In case you didn't see it, this may be of interest:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37302315

https://www.whois.com/whois/bookois.com shows it for me. Same for https://www.whois.com/whois/apenbok.com

personal blog (non-tech stuff) is at:

https://www.oldirtyhacker.com/

And the prize for today's most egregiously-worded headline goes to...

Easily these (so far):

This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (actually now one of my all-time favorites, without regard to genre. Just amazing)

Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Book of Strange New Things - Michael Faber

Ted Chiang's short story collections (Exhalations and Stories of your life and others)

Daemon - Daniel Suarez

The City and the City - China Miéville

Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (this one still haunts my dreams at times)

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) - Dennis Taylor (just finished this series for book club)

Galatea 2.2, The Overstory, Bewilderment, The Gold Bug Variations - 4 different books, all by Richard Powers - what can I say, the man is a genius and a treasure

Eifelheim - Michael Flynn - ok, this book can be a slog at times, but it is very rewarding for those who persevere, and has stuck in my brain for many years

Chocky - John Wyndham - A quiet, delightful surprise

Providence - Max Barry - This book flows like a movie. It will make a great movie. I found myself LITERALLY out of breath a couple of times

Hench: A Novel - Natalie Zina Walschots - Quirky, memorable

The Peacemaker's Code - Deepak Malhotra - Why hasn't this guy written more sci-fi?

Orange World and Other Stories - Karen Russell - OK, maybe not strictly sci-fi, but this book tickles my brain

GUILTY PLEASURE SCI-FI FAVORITE: The Vaz series by Laurence Dahners. I think I've read that series 3 times now.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I have a feeling I'd probably find a little joy again by using Ruby/Rails. The only thing that gives me pause is performance. From what I recall, anyway, but maybe it's improved since a investigated a few years ago. Will give it a shot, thanks!

Thanks for the feedback. I will check it out.

Nope.

Thanks, Warrenm, for your comments and questions. In the past have used far too many languages to list. What I'm currently using is mostly .Net/C#, but as explained, I grow weary of the constant tweaking, the constant confusing releases and naming conventions, etc. Yes, I will stay in webdev, and location matters not, as I work for myself and have managed to service clients all over the world, often without ever even meeting face to face. My clients range in size from single employee startups to over a dozen multinational corporations.

By "fast/efficient" I was mainly speaking about speed of execution, although speed of development/maintenance is always important. Fast/efficient means (generally, and in my case) be able to handle thousands to tens of thousands of simultaneous users on a single web server. Which I currently can handily do with no problem.

By saying "scale well" I realize that I am addressing a different skill set and cracking open a completely separate set of topics, but in general I was targeting the frameworks with that phrase. If a framework already has features baked-in for horizontal scaling then that would be a plus.

In my experience, Windows servers are always more expensive and often require a bit more horsepower (CPU and RAM) to get similar performance. Not only that, but (again - in my experience) I must then add additional solutions that generally cost more in a Windows server environment (WAF, firewall, monitoring, etc.), and which can often be had "for free" or low cost with a Linux solution.

As for your comment about "basically any language/framework will check this box," I would respectfully disagree. Although I am far from feeble-minded, I am - as mentioned - older. And even though I feel that I am as sharp as ever, growing older brings a certain resistance to change. It's not that I CAN'T learn new things, it's that I DON'T WANT to spend a lot of time and frustration making the change. If you are saying that all languages and dev environments have a similar learning curve (which I doubt you were saying) then I would have to disagree based on real-world experience. Learning APL and Lisp were very different from learning Databus and COBOL and Pascal. Learning C++ is very different from learning Cold Fusion. Etc.

But your points are well taken. Perhaps my questions are simply too broad. I was just hoping to open a discussion about tools and frameworks that people have found to be fast-executing, relatively easy to pick up, and which might bring a certain amount of joy back to web programming and getting things done, rather than being mired in minutiae. As an example, I've just seen a recent post here on Sveltekit/Svelte, which I am now researching. As another example, I've frequently heard people attribute a certain amount of happiness or joy to using Ruby/Rails.

That sounds nice.