billyhoya.info

I’m sorry I haven’t posted the notes from my presentations at the TLA 2012 Conference yet, but I’m in the middle of migrating from Oplink.net, my current host, to WebFaction.

I really don’t have a problem with Oplink.net. While I’ve been pleased with the level of support for both their DSL & Web Hosting services, I’ve become even more weary of using cPanel. It doesn’t seem like a very secure program, and I don’t like the way that cPanel limits some of your activities. I’m also interested in getting back into programing … something I haven’t done for awhile … and need something a little bit more advanced than a cPanel type thing, but not as advanced as a VPS.

Before Oplink.net, I used HostGator. While their support was a little spotty, I liked them because they were a local company. I’m pretty sure that both the Oplink.net and HostGator hosting facilities are located in the old Phar-more at Greens Commons.

Jimmy Newland, one of my professors from UNT, recommended DreamHost. While I found DreamHost pretty accommodating, I didn’t like their management interface. It seemed like I had to put in a support ticket for every little thing. Still, Jimmy swears by them.

I came across WebFaction in Christopher Pound’s “So you want to be a web developer?” post. I’ve only been playing with the service for about a week, but I’ve already grown to love the management interface. While missing some of the bells and whistles of cPanel (for example, there is no web-based file manager, so files have to be uploaded via SFTP and then expanded from the command-line), I appreciate the way that multiple websites and domains on the same account are managed and compartmentalized.

So, will WebFaction be my web-host of choice next year? Only time will tell …

In which I play a “library patron.”

Thinking about hiring for a position in the near future? Here are two articles that you should read before you write that job description:
Lehner, John A. “Reconsidering The Personnel Selection Practices Of Academic Libraries.” Journal Of Academic Librarianship 23.3 (1997): 199. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0099-1333(97)90099-9

Campion, Michael A. “Structured Interviewing: Raising the Psychometric Properties of the Employment Interview.” Personal Psychology 41.1 (1988): 25. http://www.krannert.purdue.edu/faculty/campionm/Structured_Interviewing_Raising.pdf

What’s the old saying? “When you loan a book, you never actually expect to get it back?” That is the idea behind BookCrossing. This website lets you track books that you “lend” to friends or just release into the wild as they make their way around the world. I had an account with BookCrossing a long time ago, but I never had much luck with it. This round,  trying to do more controlled releases. I’m planning to register all the books I keep in my house, and if I lend them to a friend and don’t return … well … I guess we’ll see were they go!

If you’d like to see what’s on my bookshelf, visit http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/billyhoya/all