February 2012
1 post
How To Cure Poison Oak
I had really bad poison oak a few months ago. I searched high and low for answers and tried lots of solutions.
Here’s how to cure it — or at least tolerate it til it goes away, which takes 2 weeks or so.
First: Stop wearing the same pants, change your sheets and towels, etc. If you think you still have the oils on your body, wash with Tecnu (over-the-counter poison ivy oil...
January 2012
1 post
Why Google's "Search, plus your World" Is Doing It...
Google search recently integrated Google+ such that that your Google+ profile always shows up as the #1 result when someone Google’s your name.
In theory it makes sense. Users now have a way to control their search results. And Google+ wins because those people are encouraged to actually use G+ now.
In practice, it’s awkward.
As Google hoped, the new G+ integration made me...
October 2011
2 posts
Product Placement In Music Videos
Back in the days of MTV, all logos and brand names were blurred out of music videos. MTV did this to stop advertisers from being able to get on the air without directly paying MTV.
Today, music videos are mostly shown on YouTube, and not MTV. And YouTube has no such restrictions.
So if you’re an artist like Avril Lavigne (I’m a fan… guilty pleasure), with a good track...
Copy (as in, words)
Lots of people take good copy for granted. Just like everyone thinks they can sing and do photography, everyone also thinks they can write. But there’s a difference between the way that you sing, and the way someone like Celine Dion sings. Same too, with copy.
Here’s a great slideshow where a professional copy writer critiques someone else’s website and gives great...
Did You Get The Last Email I Sent You?
People often ask, “did you get my last email?”
What a fun, paradoxical question.
I don’t know if I saw the last email you sent me. And I have no way of knowing.
I may have received email from you in the past. But I have no way of knowing if the last email I saw from you, is the last email you sent me.
Right?
September 2011
3 posts
IIS 7 SSL Certificates In Amazon ELB
Trying to load your SSL certificates into Amazon Elastic Load Balancer and getting this error? ”Error: Invalid Public Key Certificate”
Here’s how to get them working, if you use Microsoft Windows IIS.
First, go to the AWS Console and create a new load balancer.
Then add “SSL” to the list of protocols. You can come up with a cool name for your load balancer,...
Fucking Sue Me
So,
It was 1998 and the dot-com boom was in full effect. I was making websites as a 22 year old freelance programmer in NYC. I charged my first client $1,400. My second client paid $5,400. The next paid $24,000. I remember the exact amounts — they were the largest checks I’d seen up til that point.
Then I wrote a proposal for $340,000 to help an online grocery store with their website. I...
August 2011
1 post
Why Must You Laugh At My Back End
Disclaimer
I’m not a trained engineer or sys admin. Never even finished a book on it. But I’ve launched (and sold) a few things that have become popular (ref: here and here), so sometimes people ask me about my back end. Which ends up in blank stares, or worse.
OS:
Windows Server 2008. As for why not linux, I prefer working in a GUI and I’m pretty fast with it. I also read...
May 2011
1 post
Getting Users For Your New Startup
The most frequently asked question I get from new entrepreneurs is, “How do I get users?”
Here’s most of what I know.
Credentials (disclaimer: I feel like a douche writing these, but in case you landed here & were wondering who this guy is…really, I’m just trying to help)
I made a blog with 5 million readers, an ad exchange that reaches more people than...