V9.04 April 2007

0. Introduction.
1. Manage your cron jobs!
2. Green your web site!
3. Moving picture our wiki!
4. Monitor your unique IPs!
5. DHSOTM

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0. Introduction.

Welcome one and many to the WACKY zany crazy and insaney April 2007
Happy DreamHost Newsletter! Now, some of you mayyyyy remember what I
said last week, and some of you don't.. some of you might get with this,
and some of y'all won't. But let me clear my throat.... da na na na na
NA na na, da na na na na NA na na. That's right, I said last month began
a series of ONE HUNDRED serious, high-quality newsletters to follow the
first 100 not serious, no-quality ones.

BUT. I'm actually writing this newsletter while ON VACATION. And people
think it's an easy life, my job? Honestly, sometimes people say, "Josh,
what is it you really do at DreamHost apart from write newsletters and
blog posts, and secondly, how do I get that gig?" Well, not much. And it
is a pretty sweet gig. But there ARE plenty of downsides that nobody
seems to consider, or understand, or appreciate, or give two rat's
tatooies about. Not the LEAST of which is having to plan all your
vacations so they don't fall around the first of the month. Because
although they're generally fine with down servers, and although they're
pretty understanding when their email isn't working, and ALTHOUGH they
don't really seem to mind when we "accidentally" overcharge their credit
cards for thousands of dollars, one thing I KNOW the dozens of Happy
DreamHost customers will NOT stand for is a late newsletter.

Anyway, sometimes the vacation thing just doesn't work out right, and
I'm stuck in a minivan in Wadi Rum, Jordan, without having had a BM in
over 72 hours, typing gibbery gish on my teeny tiny laptop with 1:27 of
battery life remaining. Now is one of those times. And I think in times
like these it's acceptable for me to revert to the tried and true method
of DreamHost newslettery-ship. A proud tradition dating back to previous
centuries, one where the newsletters are self-defecating, filled with
grammertical mistakes, school-boy scatological humor, arcane references,
factual inaccuracies, and last but not least...

Are several days late.

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1. Manage your cron jobs!

One thing that helps me write newsletters when I'm low on battery and on
vacation is writing them in advance, and then just setting them up to
be posted, emailed, and written automatically via a cronjob! Last month,
in the OLD days I had to do this with some arcane command line mumbo
jumba, oompa loompa like "crontab -e".. which is why I had some unnamed
plebe who I pay in the thrill of being able to see ME once a month make
an easy-peasy-Jordanesey web panel interface to set up your OWN at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.cron

Go try it out and see how it works, Allah knows I haven't and don't!

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2. Green your web site!

Another thing that helps me write newsletters when my bowels are
completely compacted is to think about how nice it would be to have some
electricity to power my laptop, running water to flush my poop, and wind
to cool my unmentionables. It was exactly such thinking that led me to
think about wind and water power and how we could use it to power our
four servers when the current hamsters die.

Which led us to buying some "R.E.C."s (renewable energy certs) and doing
some other stuff to "offset our carbon". Again, I'm a little fuzzy on
the details, being a "big picture man" who just jets around the world
while the rest of you try and figure out what our customer service phone
number is, but if you read this blog post:

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/04/20/were-green/

I think Brett has a better idea. And if you notice from that URL that
that post is two weeks old, and how long have I been compacted anyway,
I hope you appreciate the personal sacrifices I took in order to turn
DreamHost from blue to "green" in time for Earth Day. All so that YOU,
you baby seal-driving, hummer-clubbing, middle-wing nut jobs can put a
cool little logo on YOUR site to tell all YOUR visitors how YOU are
saving the planet without YOU actually doing one tree-gone thing. Apart
from choosing us to be your DreamHost. Er, your host. Named DreamHost.

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.green

Which you probably did a long time ago. So who cares.

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3. Moving picture our wiki!

When you're out of the loop as long as I am, it's sometimes hard to
think of things to put in the newsletter. Well, at least things that are
actual. So, what I do is look through some of the logs of what people
have checked into our code repository, see what bugs have been closed,
skim the internal mailing list archives, and eventually I usually can
find three or four things that might interest some of you a teensy eensy
bit.

No such luck this month.

All I could find is this lame excuse for a new feature: our public wiki:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/

Now supports embedding video.. a la:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Video_test

Which I guess means maybe people will put little how-to videos up or at
least funny videos about not paying rent to your toddler landlord or
daring sheep rescues with your local Bedouin guide.

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4. Monitor your unique IPs!

Yeah, that's right, I *DID* rescue a baby sheep (what you say, a lamb?)
yesterday while hiking through the Jordanian desert. What did YOU do?

Apart from paying your hosting bill to allow ME to rescue a baby sheep,
I'm guessing NOTHING.

And that is exactly what you're going to do to celebrate the new feature
I'm about to tell you about.. straight from the bowels (nggggggh) of our
closed bug log.. our Manage Account page now lists unique IPs (if you
have any):

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=billing.accounts

I know it's exciting, but try not to release your bowels all in one
place.

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5. DHSOTM

In the spirit of reverting back to the olden days of heightened
newsletter glory, this month's DreamHost Site of the Month is what SEEMS
to be a fancy flash-based site:

http://www.paladream.com/

A "Startup based in Singapore dealing with technology, design and
creative content." I say "SEEMS" because again, I'm not really into
"details" or the "nitty gritty" or "doing stuff" anymore.. so I'm just
taking what I heard some guy on usenet say and running with it.

I'd check it out and give more info so you don't have to waste your time
visiting it, but really which is worth more, 30 seconds of MY time or
30 seconds of ALL you Happy DreamHost Customers combined? I think I
proved my point.

Plus, YOU try and get on the Internets while going 80 mph down some
crazy Jordanian highway with 1:19 left on your battery. Holy crap (soon,
I hope), I really AM going back to my old newsletter days.. this whole
thing has only taken 8 minutes so far! And I'm D.U.N.. Done!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

Is where YOU go to get your own website ridiculed by your peers.. and IF
you're lucky, eventually voted up to be ridiculed by me! And I'm done!

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What I wouldn't give for some prune juice,
Josh Jones

P.S. Didn't know what you were getting into when you signed up? Thought
I was serious last month about being serious? And I'm DONE!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact

Is seriously where you change your contact preferences to never ever
have to read such earthy filth again. At least not from me!

Dream Host customer newsletter

Dream Host newsletter - V9.04 April 2007 - Apr 4, 2007