Internet

That’s it. Chrome. It’s over.

Computers, Internet, Political, Rant No Responses »

Dec 062011

Thank you PC Magazine(Link to article). I understand that I may be taking your article and twisting a little bit from what it MEANT to say, but here is what I saw in it: Google and chrome aren’t for openness anymore. They’re evil and trying to make as much money as possible not by competing but by shutting everyone out. They’re Microsoft 2.0 and need to be stopped at whatever cost possible.

That is why I am going to only use Firefox and other browsers from now on. I will keep chrome only for testing my websites. Otherwise it’s going to be a ghost.

I’m going to delete all my bookmarks
Delete my History
…
Delete everything possible that Chrome could keep about me and disable anything remotely tracking sounding.

I ask that everyone do the same in the name of freedom that isn’t yet taken, in the name of freedom that isn’t yet infringed, but that isn’t being entirely protected and is in fact being encroached upon by the clutches of Google and her internet imperialism.

Chrome, it’s over.

My Work: Chris-Portela.com-Blackness(Gallery)

Chris Portela.com, Computers, Internet, My Work, Programming, Web Development, Web Sites No Responses »

Dec 022011

A gallery view of my wonderful website which I never got the chance to finish unfortunately. I will be going though this website in detail to show what I was able to accomplish, what went right/wrong, and how I could have done it better.

A little lesson that will help me and you!
Continue reading »

The key to blogging

Computers, Internet, Web Development No Responses »

Dec 022011

They key to blogging is writing. The key to getting recognition is writing original content. And the key to getting a large following is doing that regularly in a clear and easy to understand writing style that doesn’t have fluff.

When you read a blog many do not like the ranting style most write with because that is how most writers are taught in school(k-12, college, etc). However, the reader, in this case you, wants the writer to write something personal, easy, and quick. They do not want to look for information too hard. Clicking a lot of links it’s a lot of work. And if the website doesn’t look like it has what they want then it’s no good either. It has to have information that not only is accessible or visible to the user, but related to them as well. I do not post cooking information, it’s just not something I am interested or knowledgeable in, so those people do not come to this website. That’s just an example.

How do you get to that level of writing though? It definitely requires skill, because there is no extra stuff you can put in, your intelligence is measured by the ideas you have not the larger words you use, and your delivery is the most important part of the whole thing because any could come here and needs to understand what it is you are trying to tell them.

You learn by doing. Write, write a lot, and write some more. Do not worry if you suck at writing. With the internet it’s easy to set up a blog that isn’t tied to your name. As long as you’re not spreading hate or terrorist ideas I am sure that is enough security for your horrible writing.

I want firefox!

Computers, Hacking, Internet, Rant No Responses »

Dec 022011

Not that complaining will do any good, I just want to note something in saying this. Google is evil. They are becoming the Microsoft of the 2010s and it’s becoming more and more apparent of that everyday.

They want your information, all of it, all the time, anywhere. They have more computers and power over the internet than anyone.

And I, like everyone else, just fell for it because of the goodies.

NOW, because chrome is out, Firefox is about to be thrown aside in to the ash-heap of history if they do not figure out a revenue strategy to keep development pace up. They also need a better marketing strategy because they’ve lost much of their base over the years.

I switched to chrome when it first came out for one reason: it was LIGHTER, and therefore FASTER than firefox. However it has gotten much heavier over time. ADDITIONALLY it is not as advanced as firefox. Granted, firefox is not that fast either and it’s javascript abilities are a bit below par, but they’re the good guys. They are a poster child for open source technology.

We should continue to use firefox. We, as an opensource community, need to support the project by putting out weight behind it and fighting this fight against a future where there is no real alternative still around. We need to back them up or find someone else. Chrome isn’t going to cut it.

My Work: Pompano Beach Piranhas v1

Computers, Internet, My Work, Pompano Piranhas v1, Programming, Web Development, Web Sites No Responses »

Oct 302011

This website was my first project in the real world. I created an awesome website which had several hundred users, mainly coaches and parents, and it helped organize and inform everyone of the the plans we had.

(View a gallery of my the website in development)

A summary of the things my website did:

Newsletters
Email Notifications
News/Blog posts(Notified subscribers)
Managed uploads(Admins didn’t need FTP, etc.)
Allowed easy access to Calendar and RSVP to events

I really didn’t want to update this website my self. I knew what being a ‘web master’ for the team would be and I wasn’t going to have it. I made this dynamic website to allow those who knew what needed to be on the website to put it what they wanted on the website themselves.

Things which at the time were very complex for me. In reality they are pretty complex to handle correctly although looking back I didn’t do it very well. It worked however which was the important thing. Issues I had though were in sanitizing inputs with ASP.NET in the admin section. Luckily my admin area was secure thanks to the ASP.NET login system and my users were not technical enough to try executing an SQL injection but there were many errors which they didn’t understand due to misplaced (‘) and (“). I was able to use ASP.NET and Visual Studio to make the website and maintain it until the day I lost the code. Then I moved on to hack a new calendar in to the website while also working on the Grand-daddy STWEB2.

Some lessons I’ve learned from this website were:

ASP.NET controls are slow
ASP.NET doesn’t compress or optimize easily
The simple project always gets more complicated
ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR CODE!
Know your users- In this case they knew very little about computers so everything needed to be friendly

Overall I loved making this website and got a whole bunch of hours from making it as well. I created the Project Manager application simply to track the hours I worked on this project alone. And it did a pretty good job of doing just that.

I learned to day that Google Plus sucks… here is why

Internet No Responses »

Oct 162011

Yea I know a lot of people are using google plus now and throwing all their data at the giant in hopes that they can get away from Facebook which they see as evil but they’re doing something that just isn’t going to solve the problem. The problem is control over the data, access to the way the system works, and other issues.

I recently read an article in the Huffington post about how a Google engineer said google was pathetic. At the time I was wondering what he meant by that as I had thought Google a particularly innovative company, however it got me thinking and I’ve seen something now that has changed my mind completely.
Continue reading »

My Work: Pompano Beach Piranhas v1(Gallery)

Computers, Internet, My Work, Pompano Piranhas v1, Programming, Swimming, Web Sites 1 Response »

Oct 162011

I have a million screen shots and this website is big enough that I can’t make one post with all of the information about it. Instead I’m going to post these screen shots and make smaller posts about the website over time.

Piwik won’t install? Maybe it’s just chrome!

Internet, Web Development No Responses »

Sep 162011

Turns out that I need to use Internet explorer to install PIWIK! Chrome has an issue with it! I couldn’t get past the database setup portion of the install and I thought it was piwik but in reality it was just Chrome that did not work correctly in saving the cookies or something.

Very weird.

: Here is chrome… LOOK AN ERROR! I didn’t do it…

: Wow IE works?! That’s a surprise lol.

A new way to use KeepNote

Computers, Internet, Personal Organization No Responses »

Sep 112011

KeepNote has been my favorite note program for a while… I think I’ve proven this over time, but I have a new way to tell people of how to use KeepNote!

I’ve mentioned various ways to use KeepNote before such as: as a journal, school notes, general reference(GTD), a powerful place to store ideas, and any other information you might have.

I have not however made this connection for you yet… put it in Dropbox. Or any other cloud sync application and then… wait for it: PUT KeepNote in there with a ‘portable.txt’ file in its root.

This is awesome. Not only will you have your notes of whatever, but now you have this ultra easily editable notebook with KeepNote right there! Putting a ‘portable.txt’ file in the root of keepnote/ will tell KeepNote that it should act in portable mode which saves the settings and other data within the KeepNote directory. This is a Windows specific thing of course because in Linux/Mac OS X applications already generally work like this.

So go ahead! Switch to KeepNote, get a Dropbox or Wuala account, and move your notes to a more private, secure, portable, and easy format! No motive here except helping people find things out and not asking them to click ads on my website!

My Work:Chris-Portela.com V6

Chris Portela.com, Computers, Hacking, Internet, My Work, Programming, Web Development, Web Sites No Responses »

Sep 082011

I do not have an image for my website to show you this time. This is because I lost all of the code for this website a long time ago. It was eventually so horrible that I deleted it. I couldn’t even load the page without errors so I would have had trouble getting a screenshot anyways.

I’ll use this as a chance to explain the pitfalls I encountered making this website and how you should avoid them in your website but also as a history lesson of my old website.

It was created using PHP which I had just learned from Tizag.com. At that time I just learned PHP only and no understanding of how to organize my code. A horrible mistake on my part and which my dad warned me on and I promptly ignored as well. Reason being that I created a website the worked! For the first time ever I made a server-side powered website that actually did something! It was, to say the least, VERY liberating to finally have gotten to the point of making a website. Not to say it looked that great, did much, or even did it well, but it did something.

I can’t remember for sure but I think I could update the pages using a web interface. I could also update certain things that showed up on the website. I do however know I did create a section for people to upload ‘Current Events’. The deal was that our teacher never actually checked the current events. It was just important that we made sure to not all turn in the same one or turn in the same ones every week. However all I made was a place for people to contribute to the place by adding new Current Events. The idea behind that being that if we all created one current event we could alternate between each other and build a collection to use repeatedly. It did not but it was a good try I thought.

However one day during math class, we were using the computers and disaster struck. I loaded my website out of curiosity and clicked a link. All of a sudden my website when in to a crazy error and nothing was working. The whole website crashed and it looked like my login.php was the source of the error. The problem also with this was that login.php was required for the whole website and powered a good deal of the functionality. Most of the website was created with login.php providing the authentication. So you can imagine I just did something to the website that causes this issue to occur. Apparently not because 3 hours later for me and another hour or two with my dad solved no bug…

My website was dead… the cause? SPAGHETTI CODE.

Login.php was a horrible piece of code. I couldn’t figure it out my self either I just knew it worked and that if I kept using the session variables and cookies it set that I could get what I needed and provide the features I wanted. However it was over… the website had died.

Thats when I created my temporary flash website of Chris Portela V7.net so I could create Chris Portela V7.net

Older Entries

Chris Portela.com

Internet

My Work: Chris-Portela.com-Blackness(Gallery)

The key to blogging

I want firefox!

My Work: Pompano Beach Piranhas v1

I learned to day that Google Plus sucks… here is why

My Work: Pompano Beach Piranhas v1(Gallery)

Piwik won’t install? Maybe it’s just chrome!

A new way to use KeepNote

My Work:Chris-Portela.com V6

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