Archive for April, 2012
Clickbank Analytic Software
Posted by Randy in Internet, Internet Money, Programming, technology, Web Development on April 21, 2012
There’s a site called cb-analytics.com which has always been a great resource for information on Clickbank products. However, I’ve always found the site hard to navigate and I wanted a site that showed some of the “hot” clickbank products. So, I’ve written a site called cbniches.com which I hope will rectify these issues.
The site shows all the latest products in each category and shows gravity and earnings per sale. It also has a graph for each product to show gravity over time. I think this will be pretty helpful to affiliate markets looking for new products to promote on Clickbank. Check it out at http://cbniches.com. I wrote it with the latest version of my LavaPHP framework, another product I’ve been developing as open source. LavaPHP can be found on github, but it’s still in early development, look at how to give good customer interactions.
Weird video issues in LinuxMint (and others) Gnome 3 + Netbeans Re-Revisited
Posted by Randy in Uncategorized on April 18, 2012
I’ve posted about this issue on two other occasions, and I finally decided to really dive into it and find the true problem.
If you have noticed some video/graphics issues in LinuxMint or another Debian/Ubuntu based distribution along the lines of slanted tooltip fonts, random desktop environment restarts, and strange menu issues in Java apps, you may have the same problem I have been having.
My issues were a lot easier to resolve than I though they were going to be. The problem stems from an older version of the AMD/ATI video drivers that are found in the repos. If you have installed them and see these issues, then I may have the quick and easy solution for you.
This is the post on the LinuxMint forums that helped me considerably:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=96957#p553730
Introducing LavaPHP – Yet Another PHP Framework
Posted by Randy in Open Source, Programming, Web Development on April 13, 2012
I’ve used quite a few PHP framework to varying degrees, and like many other PHP developers, I’ve decided to make my own. Of all the current frameworks available, I prefer CodeIgniter, because it is easy to use, has great documentation, and generally stays out of your way.
Everyone has their opinion of the best PHP framework, but I like the ones that let me write PHP and don’t throw a lot of features that I don’t need into the mix. I found that no matter what PHP framework I was using, I was always creating a table for users. I was always creating login functionality for users. I was always creating email confirmation functionality for users. I was always creating an admin interface for working with my configuration. I was always creating classes that helped me work with web services/REST APIs. I always need a small web service of my own for Ajax functionality. I always needed to add curl functionality just in case the hosting provider had fopen disabled (which most do). A Managed Cloud VPS would be great for such purposes
Those were the things I needed. ORMs are great and all, but I really didn’t want to learn proper YAML syntax just so I could setup automatic object models for my database tables. Creating models for my database isn’t that much of a chore. Creating a complete user system can be.
So, I set out to create a framework that I can use for my own projects and have all the functionality that I find I usually need right out of the box.
Another thing about frameworks is that they are designed to make enterprise level sites. They aren’t designed to create software system which can be distributed. By that, I mean I wanted to create a software package that could be installed by end users and used by them to create their own websites (custom CMS system with a specific purpose). A normal framework doesn’t work well in this area because of the way views are usually handled. Mainly, I wanted third parties to be able to create themes for my CMS systems without much effort. With something like CodeIgniter, I could use a templating engine via a plugin or Codeigniter’s own minimalist template engine, but I don’t like take one piece of software and adding on a bunch of plugins.
First you have to learn how to use the plugin. Then you have to hope that there isn’t a bug in the plugin that will spring up in your app. Then if there is some small customization that needs to be made to the plugin, you could spend days trying to figure out a way to make it work with your system, when it would have taken less time to just write your own. Using plugins also feels a bit like cheating to me, as well. I want to know every little part of my system, so that if a bug comes up, I’ll know right where to look or at least have a decent idea where to look.
With all that said, I’m announcing my PHP framework. I’ve written it completely from scratch and I’m hosting it on Github. I also have purchased the dot com for it. I’m calling it LavaPHP. The motto will be “LavaPHP – Add a little lava to your LAMP” and it will have a lava lamp as it’s mascot/logo. If you’d like to help with the initial development, hit me up and fork the project here: https://github.com/lpcustom/LavaPHP
Slow internet in LinuxMint
Posted by Randy in Linux Stuff, Networking on April 13, 2012
I installed LinuxMint earlier today because I found that I really liked the Cinnamon desktop environment on my laptop. I promised that I would post how well it works on my desktop.
Well it mostly works fine. There’s still a slight hiccup that I’m trying to work through, where the desktop environment just seems to die. I have this same problem on Gnome 3 and Unity though, so I think it has something to do with the ATI drivers. I wish I had a good nVidia card to go in this thing.
There’s one bug that I had to post about. I was getting terrible internet speeds from my LinuxMint install. My top speed was around 190KBytes/sec. Some people may still regard this as fast, but I’m on a 30Mbit/sec connection. I should be seeing speeds around ten times that.
It was across the board too. I thought it was a bad mirror at first because I first noticed it while trying to update the system and install new software from the repos. I soon found that the problem was also happening from every web site and speedtests showed the same results.
I started out by searching for the issue and was coming up with a lot of duds. It was the standard first level support answers like “unplug your router and modem”. No need, I know that’s not the issue. After some intense searching, I finally found the answer. It was a problem with my network card drivers in the latest versions of Ubuntu and LinuxMint.
My system was showing a RTL8111/RTL8169 network device. The 8169 is the part to look for. This driver is built into the latest kernel and it has problems. I found that the solution was to build the r8168 drivers (note that’s 8168 not 8169) from source.
A full walk-through can be found here: https://unixblogger.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/the-pain-of-an-realtek-rtl8111rtl8168-ethernet-card/
Follow those steps and you’ll not have this issue again. Much thanks to the author!