User:MrHacks

Hello, DHW user! I am MrHacks! I've been a happy DH customer for over five years!
 * 1) !/MrHacks

A little bit about myself and my relationship with DreamHost
When I first started with DreamHost is was a big decision, like the first time you buy a cellphone or earning your drivers license. But I had experience with free webhosts during the Web 1.0 days. (Needless to say they went to hell in a hand basket once Yahoo! scooped up GeoCities and shut them down for needless reasons.)

But in 2005, I began to miss my days of being an independent web programmer where I had control over my website. Blogspot was a big step a few years prior. Google only made it so much easier to migrate elsewhere. So that year I signed up for DreamHost, registered a domain, moved all my old Blogspot stuff to the new website. It was at that point that I thought about creating a new blog, still through Blogger and established it on my first domain.

By 2008, the world was changing, and so was my thought process. The politics of the world had shown how horrible the conservative establishment treated programmers and techies (*cough*Carly Fiorina*cough*) as well as those with mental and physical disabilities. So I changed from my old domain to a new domain: MrHacks.com.

I'll admit MrHacks.com isn't as glamorous, but it is a better name than my first domain. The new blog at Blog.MrHacks.com hasn't been as updated like my old blogs were. In fact, I've been contemplating replacing that with a Tumblr website hosted on my domain. But for the most part, social networking on Facebook and Twitter has stolen the thunder out blogging, but I'm trying to change that.

Over the past couple of months, I've got my motivation to program back. And even though I haven't been using the web features that DreamHost offers as much, I've been taking advantage of using their Linux Shell features.

I've used SSH as a way to modify my website for years. And regret terribly installing Wordpress as it had sucked the motivation out of me to write great code. (Not to mention all the spam comments and emails I get from people who are abusing SEO, but that's kinda my fault for not being motivated to flush out these horrible people who were the reason both attempts at establishing a wiki on my own site failed. (From now on, I will just contribute on other wikis because it is so much work to manage a wiki on your own!))

But if there is any reason to pay $20 per month for service it is being able to access your small little piece of internet real estate and play around in it.

I love accessing the shell, especially since I use Linux as my primary operating system. If your local Linux machine is your home, Dreamhost is that spacious condo you rent on the nice end of town. Why anyone would choose to sign up for GoDaddy over Dreamhost is madness. Using GoDaddy is like renting a slum where the landlord kicks you out even if you've been paying the rent on time.

So for a good deal on webhosting and remote access, Dreamhost is the way to go.

So why am I at the DHW?
I've caught the programming bug. (Don't worry, that's a good thing.) For a short while, a malaise had clouded my creative process. But a few months ago, I began to realize some of my tasks were repetitive while using the computer. So I began to write a shell script that organized files I downloaded. At first, it was just to move files starting with a specific letter to a directory starting with that letter, but then I began to realize that there were so many of them, and developed writing a script that would search through the stored structure for those files. The search function revealed there were files of identical content but of different names. So right now I am working on a script to identify those files so that the better file is kept and the other is removed.

Along the way, I had rediscovered some programming methods that were long since forgotten that are quite fun and creative but have been kicked to the way side because Windows had replaced UNIX as the default operating system on many computers, especially at the work place. These methods have been integrated into my code, to which once I establish a good enough version of my program, I might be willing to share what I know.

Much of what I have learned has been through other sources, but to truly establish my own identity and individuality when programming, some of those examples I borrowed have been enhanced or I figured them out on my own (with a little trial and error of course) to make my program look so much better and to do things that no single book will describe.

As far as my contributions to the DHW, I've learned some things that should be shared on this wiki. Like being able to access your DH Shell via an SSH program for Android, adding colors to your bash scripts and programs, and combining processes to work together to display information elegantly and with professionalism.

Well, that was certainly a long introduction. But I must be off. I need to post a few things and get some stuff done. Take care!--MrHacks 09:25, 22 January 2011 (PST)

Programming Resources
Here are some links that might be useful to programmers.
 * Greg's wiki - Excellent resource for Bash shell scripting.
 * Linux Programming Blog - Useful tips for using Linux
 * Linux Journal - THE Linux Magazine! Also a great place to search for programming ideas and help.