Free lunch

Have been scouting for a free web hosting which support Ruby on Rails for sometimes. If you Simply google for it, most likely you will come to names like RailsPlayground, HostingRails, AmbitiousLemon, FreeOnRails, XMG, soyhost, profuse.net., etc. And you would thought, hey, there is free lunch after all.

But the journey of finding a free Rails web hosting, is not necessary a good one. So I thought, I might as well write it down here, could be a handy guide in case someone are in the same situation. Or better still, if someone could chip in and help out on this.

Out of the names listed above, I have tried a few of them. Since I don't have much time to go through everyone of it, the outlook of their site quickly become one of the most important factor on whether I wanna try my luck with it. I know judging a book by it cover is a bit swallow, but site that cluttered with flash adds, text links can't help but make you feel a bit cautious...ha, I know this might even look to you as one of those "10 Most Visually Appearing Free Rails Web Hosting site" from Smashing Magazine. :-)

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Soyhost first impression really..impressed me.
Its simple design immediately make you feel comfortable to try out their service. Submission of application seems really easy, just put in your e-mail address and click the "make it happen button".tata....err.. I have tried more than 20 times, on different times and days as well, but the "make it happen" button just didn't make anything happen. It keeps on showing you the same old error message "File not found. Change this error message for pages not found in public/404.html."And the worst thing is, there is zero contact information in the page, no mail address, no link to a blog or something. You just feel like being left in a dessert, hopelessly.

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AmbitiousLemon is another one with simple and neat webpage design.
The application process seems easy enough, only that "AmbitiousLemon is currently not accepting new members, please check back soon". And I have seens that message for months, so I am really not sure if they will ever open it again. Just keep your finger crossed.

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If I remember it right, FreeonRails and HostingRails both offered some special promotion with Dreamhost, sometimes ago.










Where you could sign up with them for free hosting, then signup a Dreamhost promotion account that gave you free domain name , put in some promotion code from this sites to counter off the charges for the Dreamhost account, then tata..you get a free hosting plan with free domain name. But the thing is, Dreamhost no longer offer such deal. And FreeonRails didn't give you free domain name, not even sub-domain name. And the site's latest news last updated on February 11, 2006, and I didn't tried to apply for an account yet, so I am not sure if it still valid. As for HostingRails, well, just say the free hosting plan no longer available.

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RailsPlayground is the same case, no more free hosting plan. The closest I can find in their front page is "Free setup", duh.

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ProfuseHost website has a rather busy design, with ads visible almost on every possible white space.
But heck, after the disappointment of being deceived by good look, I don't believe in clean-simple design anymore. After all, I do understand the need to generate revenue for their business, especially they are offering free hosting. The application process is relatively much more complex, other than standard stuffs like password, username, email, etc, they would like you to give them a valid reason why you need a free hosting plan. I almost feel like filling in a immigration form before entering a foreign country. And so I happily filled in the form, and waited for 2 days for their decision. Well, it has been rejected, reason is my application didn't really comply to their policy. I am a bit disappointed of course, but understand that there might be somewhere in my application which might have just violated their policy. It is more to I didn't have time to read their policy in details than anything else.

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XMG hosting look much like profuse, and their application process work almost the same as well.
Well, I signed up by filling in all the information, plus the reason of course. That is yesterday. Still awaited for their decision if I will be accepted. So, wish me luck.

Rails, derails, rerails

It is really frustrating.

I keep on repeating myself. Posting too much (errr...ok, that didn't happen here lately), Reading too much, but doing too less. Try to trick myself into a false sense that I am learning and developing something, but in fact, I am not.

So I get a new notebook after the old one being stolen. Now, this one is runnig Vista, so it take a bit of time for me to settle thing down. Finally I get the time around to set up all the necessary stuffs few says ago.

Installation of Ruby, Rails, Mongrel, and sqlite3 in Vista are actually no different from in XP. So, it just take me less than an hour to get things ready. Great. At the time I wrote this, I have actually continue with my "Ruby for Rails" book, after putting it down for a while.

So here is a promise to myself, write more posts, read more blogs, but do even more actual work - learn and write programming, damn.

stupid me

I have purposely waited for a while, so that all the frustration and anger to calm down before writing about this here.

Well, I have lost my notebook. Not exactly my notebook, but the company notebook. While I was having breakfast happily in the restaurant, someone broke my car's window and grab it.

I look at the empty space where the notebook used to sit, glasses spreading all over the places , a big hollow feeling quickly surrounding me. Shit. I lost my notebook. There are already enough e-mail circulating around, enough news about stupid notebook users left their notebook in the car while they are away, and people just break in and grab their notebooks...

And now this actually happens to me. I am becoming one of those stupid people that I used to laugh about. The company could have imposed a hefty penalty on me, while I still have to pay to fix the car’s window. Worst of all, I have lost all the works that stored in the notebook (ok, I know, should have backup it), On-going projects documentation, useful notes, and mails oh all my mails are gone!!

For the past two weeks, I was almost like a newbie in the office. Setting up everything from scratch. That really set me back about a month worth of work. But really, I have no one else to blame but myself. When you get away with it time and time again, you start to think it is ok to do certain thing, even though you have been warn. You think other just being paranoid; you think it wouldn’t happen to you.

Perhaps that person needs the notebook more than me. Perhaps he actually use it to learn up some fancy web framework and create a buzzword-proof, hyped web 2.0 social network site and sold it to Google for 3 billion and donate half of that fortune to charity.

Then I have actually done something good.

Perhaps.