I'm a little late mentioning it, but I was an expert reviewer for SitePoint's latest kit, the
Website Revenue Maximizer.
I got my name in the credits, a mention and screenshot of W3Counter in the appendix, and a few other bonuses for myself. It's a huge binder and CD with information, forms and reference for building and profiting from websites. It covers everything from affiliate programs to flipping websites like real estate and came out last month. Check it out!
I got busy with school work at the end of the term and didn't develop anything notable to write about. But I'm here. A week and a half ago I graduated with my BS in Computer Science from Drexel. Last week I started moving to a new apartment, which I'm still working on. Once I'm settled I'll start working on my websites and WordPress plugins again.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had joined
Jackpot Rewards, the online lottery and cash-back shopping site with a weekly $1 million sweepstakes. It's still the best odds anywhere for winning a million dollars, and you get extra tickets when any of your friends have two matching numbers in the jackpot drawing that week (so if you're going to join, use a referral link — the larger network of friends you join, the better your odds). Now they're also paying a $10 bounty on referred friends and have grandfathered in past referrals — I just got paid $50, more than paying for my membership.
As of this week, I've been accepted to masters programs to study computer science at University of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware, Lehigh University and Drexel University. Now I have to decide where I want to go.
Continued »
Quite tangential to everything else I've been doing recently, I wrote my first ray tracer in C++ today. It can render arbitrary triangle meshes defined in SMF format. Next weekend I'll teach myself shading.
I heard back from
UPenn — I was accepted into the MSE program by the Computer Science department. I haven't heard from the other schools I applied to yet.
W3Counter's got a new website ready to go up getting committed to the repository now. I need to finish the changes to the service that go with it. The last significant piece is rewriting the account area to move from Authnet ARB billing to Authnet CIM. That wraps up a number of changes in plans, pricing, and features available in the next release.
I don't know when I'll finish that, though, since my next free coding day or two goes to
WikiWip, a wiki-to-RTF and wiki-to-PDF conversion tool I'm helping to build as a 'Senior Design Project' with a group of other graduating Computer Science majors.
A new company backed by investors Peter Lynch, Chuck Clough (the former chief global investment strategist of Merrill Lynch) and other big names from the Boston area offers a $1 million weekly lottery with a guaranteed winner. The site claims the best odds ever of winning a million dollars, and also runs a drawing for a jackpot prize that increases each week nobody's numbers match those drawn — currently at $105 million.
Continued »
Apparently the people I asked for letters of recommendation are worse procrastinators than me. I gave them all at least a month's advance notice, and two reminders, and got them all back exactly two days before the March 1st application deadline for some of the graduate schools I'm applying to. 26 envelopes, $8.49 in postage, $240 in application fees, $280 in testing fees, and $90 in transcript fees later, all the applications are in the mail.
I took the GRE today. 610 verbal, 770 quantitative (math). Good enough. Now I need to actually fill out the grad school applications.
Last time I subscribed to cable TV service, the bill for basic service and cable internet was nearly $100 per month. Even with the short-term bundle pricing, all the taxes and fees the cable companies tack on make it an expensive service. I decided it's not worth it. I don't subscribe to cable TV. But what are my alternatives?
Apple just announced the addition of movie rentals to iTunes for $3.99 a day. I don't know why anyone would pay that. With a Netflix subscription at just $8.99 a month, you get physical DVDs in the mail, plus unlimited movie streaming on your PC. There are over 6,000 movies available to stream so far, far more than iTunes has available to rent, and you can watch them whenever and as many times as you'd like.
Especially with the major networks starting to cancel prime time TV series due to the writer's strike, dropping a huge bill in favor of streaming video makes a lot more sense to me. I watched a movie between classes on my laptop today, streamed in very high quality from Netflix, and have a new DVD coming tomorrow. Not a bad deal.
