Switching to Webhostingpad in 2011

I have owned domain names since the 90s, mostly for email but also to host some minor blogs and photo galleries. Back in January 2011 I decided to step up the pace and look for a new hosting provider with more open systems and support for recent Wordpress releases. After a few nights of investigation I chose Webhostingpad - not the highest rated provider but seemed like a good tradeoff in price and features. I prepaid a 2-year “Power Plan” package and transferred 1 of my domains to them. I worked on it until the summer, got it in decent shape and then life caught up with me.

Shock

Fast forward March 2012, after an intense period at work: I suddenly realized my website was silent - no comment to monitor, no spam. I brought up a web browser and to my horror I was greeted by an eNom parking page! Panicked I logged back into the Webhosting control panel and saw that while my package was still active until 2013… my domain name had expired 2 months earlier in January and invoice hadn’t been paid. I started by cursing myself for missing that. I then logged into gmail to check for that invoice but no trace of it, not even in the spam folder; only emails from webhostingpad were a few promotional offers. What?!

Webhostingpad’s Response

I logged a ticket with Webhostingpad to understand what my options were. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how fast the initial response came back. The first persons I dealt with were quite responsive and civil although there wasn’t much they could do. Basically I had to pay $250 to eNom to claim that domain back and it was my fault for not paying the invoice. When I said I hadn’t receive any notification whatsoever I was transferred to the “managers” (Greg W.) and this is when Webhostingpad’s attitude towards its customers was revealed in its full glory:

"Right now there is only one option, to pay a redemption fee to Enom for $250
and then pay us $14.95 to renew the domain."

"It expired over 2 months ago.
Your domain was down for 2 months, and now you are contacting us.
If you have a problem with the way domain works, DO NOT blame us.
Complain to ICANN who set these rules. We just follow them.
Not paying for domain for 2 months is NOT being a little late."

Regardless of what the issue might be, using a condescending and threatening tone with customers is never appropriate (note that I did remain civil in all my emails despite being quite upset about this - I am happy to release the full email trails if required). But let’s look further into the problem.

So what happened here?

Obviously the domain was released because I didn’t renew on time - no question there: ultimately it was my responsibility to pay. However, anyone who owns domains will tell you one thing: domain providers do know the importance of not letting domain names being released. They send you reminders and invoices by email to avoid your precious domains falling in the hands of domain farms. At least all serious domain providers do it. In this case it didn’t happen, so where did the failure occur?

Outside of the (remote) possibility that gmail ate the domain expiration notifications (or that Google’s email search doesn’t work) I can see a few options:

1. Webhostingpad doesn’t send domain renewal and invoice notifications altogether
2. A bug in webhostingpad’s notification system (maybe because my domain expired before my package?)
3. A failure in Webhostingpad notification system (please don’t tell me this is not an option: I design enterprise software for a living).

All these are very possible scenarios and outside of #1 they are all forgivable - s**t happens. However Webhostingpad never bothered to even consider any of these: it couldn’t be their fault and by the way: I missed the deadline, I didn’t pay, it is my fault - now take a hike and pay $250 to eNom to get your domain back.

What did I expect from Webhostingpad?

Ideally they would have swallowed it and pay eNom the $250 to get the domain back. Now I knew the odds of that were quite remote and didn’t really expect it to happen. However I still expected some consideration, acceptance that maybe the problem was on their side (and that email notifications didn’t go out for a reason or another) and explanations of what might have happened,. Even just a few boilerplate sentences on “how they would make sure this would not happen again” etc. would have helped. Instead they went straight into the abrasive “it’s your fault, pay up” and this attitude is really was got me to write this blog post. This to me is what makes the difference between a company that cares and one that does not.

As of now I have asked Webhostingpad to send me the copies of the email notifications they supposedly sent me, along with full headers. I am not holding my breath here. Either way, the damage is done and my domain is gone - as dear to my heart it was I cannot justify paying $250 to get it back. Time to look for a domain hosting company that has better systems and more importantly: a company that values their customers a little more than Webhostingpad. Too bad, there was a lot to like in Webhostingpad on the other fronts. And yes, I will set up a calendar reminder next time since this seems to be too much to ask from a domain hosting company…

FruityLoops is a great tool for prototyping and sequencing but when it comes to mixing or laying down guitar tracks nothing beats Ableton Live. A quick and dirty way to import loops in Ableton is as follows:

1. create a new MIDI track. Call it “FLP Studio”. Drag in the “FL Studio VSTi (Multi)”.
2. create a new AUDIO track. Call it “P1-drums” (assuming you are going to capture the drums from pattern 1 in FLP).
3. Set the input of the track to be the “post mixer” for 1-FLP-STUDIO
   
4. Double-click the FLP-Studio track and hit the wrench to open FruityLoops:
   
5. then hit again the (acorn?) to start the main FLP interface.
6. Load your project in FLP.
7. Select “pattern mode” in FLP (click on the “PAT” LED):
   
8. Back in Ableton, arm the “P1-drums” track for recording.
9. Arm the main recording function.
10. Press “play” and let it run for at least double the size of the pattern
11. Your FLP pattern should be recorded in Ableton Live.
12. You will probably notice that there is some silence at the beginning of your pattern (at least I had this problem). Seems to be because a lag between Ableton and FLP. Solution is to crop the first iteration of the pattern (this is why it is important 2 record at least twice the size of the original pattern).
    
13. Rinse and repeat for each FLP pattern.

I know this is a bit tedious and it also assumes your patterns in FLP are pretty clean (ideally you have only one instrument in each pattern). But this avoids having to run FLP as a plugin in Ableton (or to introduce Reason and Rewire), which in my case is almost impossible since FLP is so CPU-hungry (which introduces cracks and distortion in the overall mix).

I’m sure there are more clever ways to achieve the same result, using drum racks and channel recording but I haven’t had a lot of success with this (if you know of good instructions please add link in comments - thanks!).

You will need to modify the above condition to include your current OS (in my case Windows 2003). Use the below table to find out what is the versionNT for your OS.

If that doesn’t do the trick, search for other occurences of the versionNT property using Orca’s Edit/Find.

It goes without saying that bypassing the installer OS checks doesn’t mean that the software you are installing will eventually work. As a matter of fact you could even potentially mess up your system. So use with caution and at your own risks…

Find the instance ID of your CD-ROM drive:

devcon find *CDROM*

Now, use this instance ID (everything before the : sign) to disable the drive:

devcon disable "@IDE\CDROMMATSHITA_UJDA755ZDVD/CDRW_______________1.2
0____\5&3CCF215&0&0.0.0"
IDE\CDROMMATSHITA_UJDA755ZDVD/CDRW_______________1.20____\5&3CCF215&0&0.0.0: Disabled
1 device(s) disabled.

devcon enable "@IDE\CDROMMATSHITA_UJDA755ZDVD/CDRW_______________1.20
____\5&3CCF215&0&0.0.0"
IDE\CDROMMATSHITA_UJDA755ZDVD/CDRW_______________1.20____\5&3CCF215&0&0.0.0: Enabled
1 device(s) enabled.

Do not forget to add the @ sign before the device ID. Haven’t seen any mention of this in help (found it in examples).
And unfortunately if you don’t put it you will not get any error message - it will just not do anything, as if you didn’t have enough permission.
You will also need to enclose the device ID in quotes.

More examples here.

… ok, comparing this to the French Minitel is stretching things a little bit. But think about it: when was the last time that one single entity owned the terminal, the pipes and the services?

(and now using Flock too - testing authoring tool here. Cool. Missing the “del” button. More details later.)

Kind of reminds me of my high-school days, trading obscure vinyls, making compilation tapes for friends and DJ-ing on college radios! Fun.

By the way, you can read more about Pandora on TechCrunch.
And here are the links to the stations described in my previous post (and slightly tweaked since):

• The Placebo
• Kruder The Thief
• The Keren Orton Connection

Don’t pigeonhole me please

I remember that the first time I stumbled onto the Music Genome Project and Pandora I was very skeptical and didn’t even bother trying the service. I guess I was being a little arrogant (dude, I’ve got over 600 CD’s in my collection; not counting vinyls; do you really think you have anything to show me that I don’t already know?!). In addition, I have a fierce aversion for services that try to pigeonhole consumers and then feed them with what they “want” over and over again; where is the spice in life when everything just tastes the same? There are tons of streaming services out there with specialized music channels - they all get very boring after 30mn, roughly playing the same song over and over again.

I eventually gave in after yet more raving comments on Pandora on HorsePigCow. It was time to try it out.

It all starts with a simple question…

I’ve never been able to answer the simple “what is your favorite band/book/movie” question. So when Pandora prompted me for my favorite singer, I was a little uncertain for a few seconds. Finally I entered Beth Orton, whose Central Reservation album is probably one of the most memorable record I’ve heard in this past decade.

Here’s what Pandora gave me in return:

1. Fifty five falls - Marissa Nadler
2. Keren Ann - Nolita (*)
3. Sunday Morning - Ana DiFranco
4. Beloved Wife - Natalie Merchant
5. Sweet Unknown - The Hope Blister
6. Lion’s Mane - iron & Wine
7. There For You - Sara Paxton
8. The Good Old Days - Eels (*)
9. One Thing - Finger Eleven (+)
10. Sorry - Pat Benatar (…)
11. Surrounded - Chantal Kreviazuk (-)
12. Sorry to Myself - Alanis Morrissette
13. Tomorrow - Avril Lavigne (…)
14. Annabelle Lee - Marissa Nadler (+)
15. Dragon Fly - Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright (+)
16. To This Earth - Nick Castro & The Poison Tree
17. Sno Cat - Kristin Hersh (*)
18. Fan Dance - Sam Phillips (…)
19. Chest Of Drawers - Wovenhand
20. Hall Of Fire - Hall Of Fame
21. Behind Her Smiling Eyes - Cyann & Ben
22. Mermaid - Lily Holbrook
23. Snow - Emiliana Torrini (*)
24. Landslide (live) - Fleetwood Mac
25. Big Brother - The Out Crowd (-)
26. For the Roses - Joni Mitchell
27. Wild Deer At Dawn - Diane Cluck (-)

Wow! I was stunned to hear Keren Ann and Yann Tiersen, two other artists I really like but who are definitely less-known, and whose relationship to Beth Orton is not that obvious. More importantly, I discovered quite a few new interesting artists (+) that I need to investigate. Overall, all the songs were decent, with only a few ones that I didn’t like (-). Some choices (…) were a bit surprising but to be fair they were not as bad as one might have thought.

What’s missing?

The fact that Pandora streams music (128kbps) in a Flash widget is a little annoying. Ultimately, for Pandora to grow from its current status of toy for geeks it will need to leave the laptop and either enter your living room through some media center, or your mobile life through your iPod - and for this, Flash will not cut it.

Is it really that good?.. or was I just lucky?

When was the last time I discovered 5 to 10 new artists I wanted to hear more of while listening to a 2 hour program? So far, I’m tempted to classify Pandora among the best things that have happened to online music since the Groove Salad of Soma FM!

Was I simply lucky, hitting Pandora with artists and styles that the folks at the Music Genome Project know well? Or is the quality of their “predictions” consistent across the whole spectrum of pop music (unfortunately they do not cover classical nor world music yet)? In any case, it looks very promising.

The first 10 hours are free and then it’s $36 a year. Try it out for yourself and let me know!

My other Pandora stations


Keren Ann station
------------------
Midi dans le salon de la duchesse - Keren Ann (*)
Simple Kind of Life - No Doubt (*)
Chelsea Burns - Keren Ann (*)
None - Erin McKeown (+)
Afraid Of My Heart - Universal Honey
Undertaker - Marissa Nadler
Story Of My Life - Kristian Leontiou (+)
Road Bin - Keren Ann (*)
While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Damon & Naomi (+)
Chemical Drive - Gosling (++)
Be With - Koushik
My Only Enemy - Meredith Bragg and the Terminals (++)
Mockingbirg - Papercuts



Thievery Corporation Station
------------------------------
Lebanese Blonde - TC (*)
Blackbird (feat. Nina Simone) - Mocean Worker (+)
Remember Me - Blue Boy
Breathe - Telepopmusik (+)
Beautiful Things (Gabriel & Dresden Unplugged Mix) - Andain
To This World - Soei
The gentle rain (RJD2 remix) - Astrud Gilberto (++)
Numero Deux - The Dining Rooms
Sofa Rockers - Kruder & Dorfmeister (*)
No Problem - The Dining rooms
Flowers - Fauna Flash (+)
Perfume (feat. Adriana Varela) - Bajofondo Tango Club (+)
Clear Cut (feat. Bomb The Bass) - Lali Puna (+)


MyLocations still work fine. And you might want to check the cool Google Maps tools on Matt King’s GNIKville wiki. His gmap_extras is more flexible than MyLocations, since it requires no web server and save/delete of locations on the fly. I might modify it to add the drop-down menus from MyLocations to the “directions” form - at which point I should be able to drop MyLocations.