Mokka mit Schlag » Software Development

Every few months someone asks to buy a license to some old course notes I wrote. Usually it takes a few days for me to get around to invoicing them, packing up the zip files, and e-mailing them. I’d like to make this more automatic.

What services do folks recommend for selling basic files? i.e. zip files? I don’t need DRM or anything fancy. However I do want it to be hands off after I upload the files. Also, my sales volume is low so no monthly fees is a must. I am willing to pay a reasonable percentage of the transaction or per-megabyte sold charge.

I’m not looking to make a great deal of money, or become an online store, just automate the delivery and download process a little more so it’s a bit easier to buy from me. Any ideas?

If this blog goes dark, you’ll know why. This always scares me. I wish WordPress had reliable XML export and import, not SQL.

I upgraded The Cafes yesterday. The automatic upgrade failed, but manual upgrade seems to have succeeded.

OK. Seems like the upgrade completed successfully. Holler if you notice any problems. I think I’ll spend the rest of the morning straightening out the old computer mess as part of my general effort to simplify, clean up, and declutter my apartment.
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Three regexps for the Python-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Ruby lords on their Rails of stone,
Nine for C++ doomed to die,
One for Larry Wall on his dark throne
In the Land of Perl where Obfuscation lies.

One regex to match them all
One regex to find them
One regex to replace them all and in the text file bind them
In the Land of Perl where Obfuscation lies.
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Minor user interface inconsistencies still annoy me, even in otherwise excellent products. Usually the problems I notice are GUI problems. However, recently I’ve noticed an audio user interface problem, this time in Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Why, oh why, do you put the microphone to sleep by saying, “Stop listening” but wake it up by saying, “Listen to me”? Obviously, the correct, parallel command is “Start listening”. And while I’m on the subject of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, why can I say, “Cap that”, but not “Capitalize that”?

I’m finally getting serious about moving away from pair.com. I’m not sure who to host with though. Minimum requirements are:

• WordPress support (i.e. I can install it; they don’t have to provide it though it’s cool if they do).
• Full root access to WordPress: I can install my own themes and plugins and do my own database dumps.
• No fixed bandwidth, storage, transfer, or CPU time quotas (I’m willing to pay for more as I go up in usage, but I need to be able to handle spikes without the ISP turning off my site.)
• Hosted under my own domain name.
• Regular, reliable backups

The more I think about it, the more I suspect I don’t even want a shell account. I really want a managed WordPress account, preferably hosted in at least three data centers on different continents with hot switching. (Is that even possible? ) Who offers this?
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I’ve installed WP Super Cache. It’s supposed to be transparent, but holler if you notice any problems.