The Free Webhost Runaround

First off, I apologize for not being here lately. I've had some sort of persistent, cold-like symptoms all weekend, and I stayed home sick from school today. I haven't really done anything this weekend; my All-State music auditions, church, CYO (which is pretty much Sunday school), and school were all canceled. It started with a bloody nose on Saturday morning, and... well, I'm sure you don't want the details. The good news is that I'm starting to improve.

Now, earlier today I was searching the web looking for a good website host. I figured most anything was going to be better than Verizon's packaged deal. They offer a pitiful 10 MBs of space, which will not cut it if I start uploading my programming stuff again. It didn't take long for me to realize how hard it is to find stuff for free, however. My needs started simple - I wanted at least 30-40 MBs of storage. I soon added a requirement that I just couldn't handle forced advertisements - If I could get an ad-free blog, why not an ad-free website? This, of course, narrowed my options considerably.

I found a few ad-free options with a good amount of MBs - some offered in the hundreds of MBs. But I scanned their terms and conditions, and a good portion of those placed restrictions on which files you could upload. Namely, most of them didn't allow .zip files, which was simply unacceptable. I also really wanted the convenience of FTP access. And then I also decided that I may want to experiment with PHP in the future, further limiting my choices. Eventually, I found this review site, which had many reviews and a detailed search engine. This made my search much, much easier.

Have I come to a final decision yet? Of course not, but I've narrowed it down to three. Ripway offers a 30 MB deal, and mentions my three biggies right on the main page, in the first paragraph. They seem the friendliest, too, but I worry that even 30 MB may not be enough. ZendURL, on the other hand, offers 200 MB of space and a rather long list of features I don't even know about. (Webalizer WHAT?) It seems like a better deal, for sure, but they also seem to have a bad rep for downtime and for littering popups behind-the-scenes, in the site control panel. They did add a second server recently though, so I'll have to keep an eye on that. The last one is Xanma Free Webhosting. They have the most space of all, 1 GB! But, it's hard to find info about them; only four people have reviewed them and their "about us" page just says "Coming soon." Plus, you can tell they're not U.S. natives. When they mean to say something like "we apologize for the inconvenience", they say "Our excuses for the discomfort."

Well, that wraps things up. I hate doing the runaround like this, but you can't beat free :). At least getting a free domain name afterwards will be a piece of cake - dot.tk all the way!

Don't Even MENTION Nano...

Alright, I'll admit it: I haven't worked on my novel in over a week! I only have about 8000 words right now. I think I'm going to give up. I don't even find my story interesting anymore, which is a real problem.

In other news, I've migrated to Blogger beta, and with that comes another interface change. I've put up my (updated) game list for all to see, whether it be geeky or not. Dreams have been off the radar, but I have been sick a lot lately. I stayed home from school three times already this month, which is about what I average per year. My parents had me take a blood test last Friday to see if it might be diabetes (I had/have persistant fatigue and thirst). I haven't heard back yet, so let's hope no news is good news. :)

Finally, my dad had mentioned to me a couple days ago that he used to have a Commodore 64 and has kept it in the closet. I dug it out yesterday, but I know some parts are missing. I can't connect it to our new TV either, it seems. But I've heard that, for those who can't stand the thought of soldering, that Radio Shack might be the answer. Wish me luck with that, and drop me a line if you know anything about commodores.

Edit: Two little things. First, with the beta comes label technology, so you can zone in on certain categories. It doesn't do much now, with so few posts, but... Also, I just realized that I have this odd tendency to stick elipses into my post titles. :P

It's About Time I feel better...

Ugh... I had started getting a stuffy nose last tuesday, and I stayed home Friday because I still had it. But I didn't actually get the full sickness until yesterday. I woke up at around 4:45 AM and shortly thereafter I started shaking uncontrollably. Needless to say, it wasn't fun and I stayed home that day as well. But compared to what is sounded like my dad had for all of last night, I should consider myself lucky... I only had diarrhea once, but he had it (along with puking) pretty much all night! :(

I'm feeling better now, which is good, but I also had / have a LOT of makeup work to do, which is bad. I'll have to get up early tomorrow to get to jazz band. It starts at 7:10 AM and I usually get to school at 7:30. Oh well. Everything will be fine. I was getting sick of being sick :P.

Oh, wow! I better get offline and go to bed now. The next major event in my life is probably a braces tightening on Thursday. I guarantee that my orthodontist will be furious (hey, I don't know ANY teens who make brushing 4x a day and flossing, and mouthwash a priority, so...). Anyway, I'll be back! I mean, I'm getting better, right? It only took about 1.5 weeks this time!