A few weeks ago I came to the realization that my current implementation of upgrading and billing users on FantasySP using Paypal was pretty terrible. It was a clunky process where the user left my site to go to paypal, then they could sign in and/or input their credit card information. After that, they get [...]
Case Study: Bleacher Report
Not too long ago I made a blog post about how Fantasy Sports sites need to be faster. For those of you unfamiliar with me, I run my own fantasy sports start-up called FantasySP. It is a simple yet effective way to keep tabs on your fantasy teams. I tend to write articles detailing things [...]
Building a 3D Capable HTPC
For those of you interested in a brief summary, building your own 3D HTPC is recommended for the technically inclined. You will likely run into small snags and it is a bit pricey. Despite that, it beats ALL small media players such as popcornhour or wdlive in terms of features and performance. I used to [...]
Two-Step Google Verification SMS Spam
Not too long ago I started to receive an endless stream of Google Two-Step Verification codes to my cell phone. I had not changed anything, but I had no way of stopping it and hoped the problem would resolve itself. Well, it turns out that it does not. What you need to do is use Google [...]
5 reasons why the Internet Sales Tax Bill is bullshit
I just heard that there is a bill in the senate that will force all online retailers to pay sales tax, regardless if they operate in that state. This is wrong for a few reasons: Online retailers are at a disadvantage to traditional stores because of shipping fees. Local stores usually do not have to worry about these [...]
What’s Your Angle?
This post might bite me in the ass one day, but what the hell right? Running your own start-up is not easy. In fact, its insanely frustrating for many reasons. Try telling ‘regular’ people your idea over and over and for it to just go straight over their heads. Either that or they’ll instantly think [...]
The cost of running a boot-strapped startup
I’ve seen a few well known entrupenurs make mention of services that they pay for and I’d like to join the club. For those of you unfamiliar with me, I run a fantasy sports news aggregator called FantasySP. You can sync fantasy leagues rosters/transactions and be alerted of real-time player tends. This is bootstrapped in every single way, as [...]
Switch from Google Chrome DEV to Beta Channel
If you are like me, then you’re sick of the Google DEV channel getting screwed up by new bugs. (I thought that was the whole point of the Canary build?) Recent hair-pulling bugs include: fonts no longer rendering properly, sluggish performance on Twitter, or random crashes that weren’t there a build ago. Well, fear not. [...]
Is it hard to use logic?
This is just one of those random thoughts I had. As a programmer, everything I do involves taking complex problems and breaking them down into small pieces of logic. I look for the simplest and most effective answer to a problem. Pretty cut and dry, right? But after being a programmer for almost 10 years now, I’ve realized that [...]
Fix the WordPress SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS Bug
Anyone who has a WordPress blog with a lot of posts will eventually encounter an extremely slow query. I refer to this as the SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS Bug. If you have slow-query-log enabled then a query similar to this might have shown up before: SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.* FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND wp_posts.ID NOT IN (44682, 44657, [...]