Tikkabik

Just so I can continue to read your entertaining Blogs. It's been the best way for me to keep up with what's happening with someone I consider a good friend.

Well, I don't consider you a "good" friend (more of a long lost acquaintance, really), but you are a very entertaining writer, so I enjoy checking in every couple of days. I don't much care where you post your musings, just don't disappear entirely...

Yours is one of the better, more entertaining BLOGS around.

I look forward to reading your real-world, well-written stories and opinions, instead of the usual blog fodder: boring adolescent meanderings about we-all-know-what and tiresome self-aggrandisement from geeks with no lives ("I figured out this programming challenge, aren't I a smarty pants?" Eh, mother pin a rose on you, a*h*!

Hope you can keep Tikkabik going...

Found your blog yesterday while going through my list of NetNewsWire subscriptions... why on earth I didn't stumble across your blog earlier, I have no idea.

Two things:

1) Moveable Type does not require an SQL server. It will run out of a flat database file. They don't recommend it, but it is an option. See the Moveable Type requirements page.

2) There's a hosting provider offering three years (!) of full-featured hosting for free as an introductory offer. Apparently they're one of the largest hosting providers over in Europe and they're trying to take over the US market as well. I've done quite a bit of research on it and this seems legit - while I've heard their service sucks (and you should never, ever purchase a domain through them if you want to transfer it to another provider), the hosting does have pretty much every feature you could ask for, and the speed seems decent (control-panel can be dog slow at times though). The only personal info they ask for are your meatspace and e-mail address, and your phone number, to which they make one test call to to ensure you're legit. I have not received one piece of junk mail, spam (as far as I know, Mail catches most of it), or any telemarketing calls as of yet - I would know as I used my cell phone number and I don't get anything that's not personal on there. Never had to give them my CC number. Personally I wouldn't trust anything business-critical to them (I'm still slightly suspicious - no such thing as a free lunch after all), but I plan on setting up a blog with them sometime soon, and it seems perfect for at least that. Even if you don't wind up using them, might as well just set up an account and park tikkabik.com there.

Yeah it would be a pity to see you stop blogging mate. Your blog is always entertaining and a good antidote to some of the more po-faced bloggers out there.

http://www.surpasshosting.com

FWIW, I run brad-oliver.com off my personal OSX machine, and I didn't need to use SQL to get it up and running. I remember worrying about that, but it worked out OK.

I have a dyndns.org account which points brad-oliver.com to my Mac and I let Apache and MovableType do the rest. It was not the easiest thing in the world to set up, but if you've got a spare weekend, you could probably do it.

You will need to lay out something like $35 to dyndns.org to point the dns servers to your vanity domain (as opposed to a generic dyndns one), but that's about it.

For what it's worth, chock up another vote for STAY from me.

As my eternal iChat Soulmate (now with 138 conversations held) I have to strongly advise against you taking this website down. Next to Stefano's daily adventures no other "blog" has provided me with as much entertainement as reading your problems with the van and various whinings on life in general.

Typing out homepage.mac.com/tikkabik or whatever it is will be so much effort and strain I don't think I could handle it. Not to mention the fact I can't leave witty comments if I ever think of something witty.

In the ultimate twist of Mac gaming irony I will make a petition if necessary.

I only discovered you had a blog here last week, though I remember visiting the old Tikkabik.com Mac gaming news site in the late 90's. Seems a shame to take it down just as I got here, but a new address wouldn't matter to me; that's what bookmarks are for!

I say save money. Bookmarks are free.
Love, Pat

Its freaking like $7/year now, forward it to your .mac blog or whatnot, if not only to not let frank point out how tikkabik.com has gone the way of utterer.com

Ill also reiterate what Brad said, im running jamesdolan.com off a box I have in my apartment, which I havnt touched in months after setting up. It works quite well for low traffic sites.

I think the goons at Victoly LLC have made Peter an offer he can't refuse.

omg noe! I depend on your writings, flargh! Don't take them away from me!

(This useless banter brought to you by the aftermath of an organic chemistry exam.)

I use phpwebhosting for about $10 bucks a month. It will be sad to see you go.