June 2011 – Spencer Heckathorn

June 28, 2011, 6:50 pm - This date has to be wrong (note that the prefix old means I have not updated the grammar or spelling mistakes it is posted as it is from an old version of this site) I am almost ready to move!!! After dinner today I am going to be loading my car and will finish getting ready. I can’t say I am excited about where I am going or what I will be doing but I am excited about moving, for some reason. I did not realize how much stuff I had brought here to get ready for the garage sale that my sister canceled... It is not all bad I will have a chance to list a lot of this on eBay and that is one of the things I will be working on after I load my car, CMS seems like the best option but the time it will take to get it setup is not something I want to waste, although I will consider it for the advantages. The biggest problem I have with CMS is they are easily hacked; web 2.0 does not come without its problems. The biggest disadvantage to not using CMS is to implement my own systems will take longer and be more work, data needs to be collected, analyzed, and organized in useable fashions doing all of this myself the system would still be as vulnerable as any but less likely to be hacked, or rather cracked is a better word because most script kiddies don't know how the hell the programs and attacks they use actually work, they find them from someone more skilled and emulate. The other disadvantages along the same lines relate to updates and protection, when part of a WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or whatever CMS they provide the updates and protection my biggest problem is that I would like to know the data I am collecting and using is secure not only for myself and what I plan to use the data for but for the users and companies it will eventually represent. It is possible I am worried about something that is not a threat and even possible that by mentioning this I bring unwanted attention to myself... I guess the truth is I just don't know until I try, and by try I mean try either or, doing nothing gets me nowhere. That is why I am going to start building my site with the standard old-fashioned HTML, I will see how far it gets me then start integrating PHP, or python to add the dynamic features of the site I plan to make (at least I know those two well enough to get started). Beyond my normal paranoia (can be amazingly crippling at times), I have decided to set up a small server that I will test my site on along with the datasets and how they will work together, I would be ever so grateful if someone out there that knows more about databases would lend a hand I have a few friends I am going to ask for some guidance on this, since I am now putting the pieces together I realize that the quickest and easiest way to get something as big as I want to do done it takes more than one; I used to think I would/could do it all, but there is too much to be done. A little taste of what I am making_ I have long dreamed of systems that verge on the realm of AI, and the many uses of such. Back in 03 I learned of something called A.N.N. (artificial neural network), this was amazing I thought and as I looked more into it I realized that I was wholly unsuited to use, let alone even understand, these new techniques in programming this set me in action to learn because I already had plans for something like this. Now for me learning is slow.... I am always distracted, either really or not, but I have pressed on through the years and in that time things have changed dramatically, many companies and other persons around the world had the same visions for what such a system could do and now you have things like Amazon.com delivering you products that you are likely to buy, Google.com delivers hundreds of thousands of ads (if not millions or more) daily that are specific to what people are likely to want (along with the millions of search results where they typically get what you want in the first 5 results), sites like eBay, PokertableRatings, even CNN and thousands of other sites all use this technology to bring you information and products that either you would otherwise not see or never hear about. Everyone is looking for the next "big" thing and it seems everyone is grabbing for their share of the internet pie. I have a few ideas for sites that I have always wanted to make that use these systems and I hope they work, so as they come out I will post on here about them and we shall see how it goes. Thanks for looking.