@ScottSwezey/Blog
The more I learn, the less I know.
Dear Jonathan Burdon (AKA J.BURDawg)
Jul 14th
I decided it would be cool to steal some of Robin Williams content by linking you to it.
Dealing with Heroku startup lag
Jul 25th
So, if you haven’t tried Heroku yet, you really should. It has got to be the most awesome way to deploy and manage a rails app that I have ever seen. But this article isn’t another Heroku review, instead it is my attempt at getting around one minor pitfall with Heroku.
The problem? If you’re site doesn’t get much traffic, and you are on the free “1 dyno” plan, your dyno’s (rails processes) tend to go offline. This means your next visitor sees your page load for a few seconds before they see anything. It’s not terrible, but I wouldn’t call it ideal, either.
But I think I have found a simple solution to ease the “pain” of this “problem.” (Sarcasm intended): Heroku serves static files from varnish… no delay on those while we wait for the rails app to start.
So what’s happening? Someone comes along to www . my cool site . com, but there are no active dyno’s. As expected, they get sent to index.html, which fires off an AJAX request to the rails app. As soon as it gets a successful result, it redirects the user to the /home path within my rails site. Assuming there are active dyno’s, this all happens very quickly. If the dyno’s are off, a loading message fades in and a few seconds later they get redirect.
I know it isn’t perfect… but it should work until my site gets busier and I can pay for more dyno’s.
Would a reasonable individual believe that everything I post is fact and none of it is my personal opinion?
Jul 24th
So it seems that on my own personal blog I’m not allowed to voice my opinions should somebody else disagree with them. While I find it odd that somebody would think that a large portion of what I write on my personal blog is not merely my personal opinion on whatever I’m writing about…. I’d really like to hear from you!
Do look over some of my posts here (there’s what? 22 of them as of this writing) and let me know what you think! Do you think that a large portion of what I’ve written and posted is my opinion. Oh, and I know I get a lot of traffic [lol] so I do expect at least a few thousand comments!
Yes, that's a peak of 81 and an average of around 7 visitors per day...
The Jonathan Burdon Chronicles
Jul 24th
Jonathan Burdon of Marion, Kentucky
An update for everyone who is watching things unfold.
I have complied with previous requests made by Jonathan Burdon, not because I believe he has any legal standing, but because it gives me a reason to rewrite any content on this blog. Please reread each of the articles as they may have changed… you know… to comply with his “requests.”
Just kidding. I really only decided that I should probably spell his name right.
How to get a Cease and Desist Letter: An exploration of what not to do.
Jul 22nd
Jonathan Burdon of Marion, Kentucky
I am writing this post as a recount of my journeys and dealings with someone I believe to be a scam, who I believe to be a hypocrite, and I feel is committing fraud against the web hosting industry. Everything in this article is 100% purely my opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt. (I’m only one guy, right?) I encourage you to do your own research and draw your own conclusions once you have read this post.
Please note: This post is NOT related to Dr. Jonathon Burdon, who is located in Australia. It is about Jonathan Burdon, who lives in Marion, Kentucky.
In the beginning…
So I’ll start our journey off at the beginning. It starts with a friend of mine. A very hard working, upstanding guy who happens to run a web hosting company. He goes by the name of MikeDVB and runs MDDHosting.com. Mike is a smart guy, so as he was doing his monthly affiliate reports one month, he noticed that a particular affiliate had an outstanding conversion rate. Now like I said, Mike is smart… so when he saw this, his first thought was to find out what this affiliate was doing and how he could get other affiliates to do the same, or maybe borrow some of these ideas himself. Mike wanted more business. Who wouldn’t?
Unfortunately, what Mike found wasn’t a key to gaining more business. He found Jonathan Burdon and AlreadyHosting.com. At this point, I could go into details, but I think you’re better off reading this part of the story direct from the source. Mike wrote a blog post, and I would encourage you to read it. It’s tiled: “Beware of hosting review and top 10 web host sites.”
(Take a moment to read the above link. Continue here when you get back.)
Ok, so being a friend of Mike’s, and someone who wants the web hosting industry to do well, I decided to do a blog post linking to Mike’s article. It was a simple post along the lines of “MikeDVB from MDDHosting just wrote a great article about web hosting affiliate scams. You should check it out…” and it contained a link to Mike’s blog post, the exact one I just had you read. You can read this blog post here: http://www.scottswezey.com/blog/2010/beware-of-web-hosting-review-and-top-10-web-hosting-sites/
Happy Times.
Things since March 21, 2010 went pretty well. I can’t say if Mike ever saw any flack for his article, but I know that I didn’t see a thing. That is, until July 13, 2010…
On July 13, 2010, I received an email from Jonathan Burdon. It stated that he was currently engaged in litigation against MikeDVB and that linking to his original article could draw me into the fight. He nicely asked me to remove the link, but it was obvious what he was hinting at: “Remove the content, or else!” (At least, that is what I felt he was stating.)
At this point, I posted another article sharing Jonathan’s email with the world. He quickly responded saying that posting his emails was a copyright violation since his emails were his creative work and protected by copyright law. The result, I rewrote this blog post as a parody of his original emails. You can read this post, and I would encourage you to do so, here: http://www.scottswezey.com/blog/2010/i-think-jonathan-burdon-wants-to-sue-me-for-linking-to-someone-who-doesnt-like-him/
Very Annoyed
Jonathan Burdon
So at this point, I was obviously in a bad mood. From what I can tell, this jerk-face college kid seems to be using very questionable, unethical, and possibly illegal practices to make money at the expense of several respected web hosting companies. But worse than that, he was finding any straw to grasp at to force me to remove content from my website. The first amendment of the United States of America gives me the right to share my opinions with whomever I wish, and last I checked, blogging was a form of speech. So I stopped rather low, I posted this blog post, entitled “Dear Jonathan Burdon (AKA JBURDawg).” (Warning, NSFW link) It wasn’t my finest hour… but I was annoyed at what I felt was BS attempts at abusing DMCA law and the US legal system.
July 19, 2010
Mike posted an article entitled “Jonathan Burdon – Apparently posting facts is a “Smear Campaign”.” If you haven’t read any of the links I have given you yet, READ THIS ONE. In this article, Mike links to an article posted on another website where Jonathon attempts to salvage his reputation. Unfortunately for him, Mike posted a video of cookie stuff related to MDDHosting (Cookie Stuffing defined) and other evidence of the techniques Jonathan used to collect affiliate commissions from a variety of web hosts, Mike’s own company included. Of course, I felt that this article was worth sharing with the world, and I felt that Jonathon was being hypocritical. More than that, it was my opinion at the time that Jonathan Burdon was being a scammer, a fraudster, and was harming the web hosting industry. But as they say, that’s just my opinion.
July 22, 2010.
I get a blank email from a law office in Kentucky. No subject, or content… but it does have an attachment. Unfortunately, my anti virus detected the attachment to be a virus and deleted said attachment. I can put two and two together, though. I assumed Jonathon found a lawyer to send me one or more of these:
- My very own DMCA Takedown notice for the parody of his emails
- A collectors edition C&D letter telling me to stop sharing my opinions of Jonathon Burdon and his websites (MangoOrange.com and AlreadyHosting.com) with the world
- Some other threatening legal mumbo jumbo saying how expensive it will be to defend myself from them and how I should simply shut my website down and let Jonathon keep doing whatever it is he does.
Given that my web host hasn’t contacted me with a DMCA takedown notification, I can only assume it is the Cease & Desist option.
I really don’t want to go to court with anyone. I just want people to earn an honest living and honest people to not get ripped off (which I think is what is happening here).
The sad truth of the matter is that Jonathan has a blog with useful information and articles (See the note near the bottom of the review). But I doubt anyone ever sees it. I figure someone chooses a web host, googles for a coupon, find’s one of Jonathon’s web site, automatically gets the affiliate cookie from his website, then goes on their merry way still looking for a coupon code. Of course, when they sign up, Jonathon probably gets credit for it. That’s what I don’t like, along with the other unethical business practices*. So Jonathan, here’s my proposal: Make a living based on your good content, and not off of your unethical business practices*, and I will remove any and all content from my website about you… Quit the cookie stuffing and other similar techniques and I will gladly remove all content about you from my website, no expensive lawyer required. Hell, make your site useful and I will even link to you as a good way to pick a web host.
So, friends or enemies. Paying overpriced lawyer scum, or not paying overpriced lawyer scum. (Insert Dick Cheney lawyer joke here). The ball is in your court.
*My opinion of “unethical business practices” includes, but is not limited to: Cookie Stuffing, Black Hat SEO, posting useless reviews, creating links that appear to be to coupons but send the user back to the web hosts website, and anything else generally considered to be against the rules, or in violation of most hosting companies affiliate TOS.
FFXIV Official Specs
In case you missed it, SE Posted the specs to play FFXIV: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/#/about/game_info
In other news, its a good time to invest in PC hardware manufacturers.
I think Jonathan Burdon wants to sue me for linking to someone who doesn’t like him.
Jul 13th
Update: This post has been completely rewritten to better comply with possible DMCA issues.
Please note: This post is NOT related to Dr. Jonathon Burdon, who is located in Australia. It is about Jonathan Burdon, who lives in Marion, Kentucky.
Jonathan Burdon of Marion, Kentucky
The following portions of this contact message are automatically appended by my blog software and included in the email to me, they were not add/written by the individual who was trying to contact me.
To: Scott
From:
Jonathan Burdon
jonathan.burdon@gmail.com
Here is the message he sent. To ensure that my site is not taken offline for 10 days while everyone decides that this is would have been a fair use case, words of phrases found in (parenthesis) are me editing what he said, changing the words around, etc. The intent and spirit of his message are left in tact, but it is NOT the email he sent to me.
(Hi), I am (presently) in legal litigation with MIKEDVB who wrote (a post) that is (linked to) on your (website):
http://www.scottswezey.com/blog/tag/alreadyhosting/ .
(I will drag you into our legal battle if you do not remove the content for your whole website.)
(If you don’t do this) in a satisfactory time (it will result on legal action against you.)
Please respond confirming that you have removed the trackback.
Thanks,
Jonathan
My website included the following information, so I could do things like verify that he is who he really says he is.
Sent from (ip address): 173.24.185.133
(173-24-185-133.client.mchsi.com)
Date/Time: July 14, 2010 1:11 AM
Coming from (referer): http://www.scottswezey.com/about/
Using (user agent): Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5;
en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6 GTB7.0
I think his post, and my response (this), speak for themselves. Also, you can find the original post he is complaining about here: http://www.scottswezey.com/blog/2010/beware-of-web-hosting-review-and-top-10-web-hosting-sites/
Update: Johnathan replies (This too has been editing, just as above)
(It’s funny, I claim that I am suing) MIKEDVB (because he copy/pasted) an e-mail conversation between (MIKEDVB and myself), (and you can’t post emails without permission of the original author because they are copyrighted)
(I’ll not hold you responsible so long as you remove the article immediately). however, posting (the) email (I sent you) is a direct violation:
(Link to this very page you are on was located here.)
(You should know, You can’t reproduce or publish any email.) We have no intention to press charges against you as long as (Bend over and fall for this crap. [Oops, wait, that was me talking, not Jonathan; He talked about removing the "material"]).
His signature, which I hope is not a “creative work” that I am stealing:
Jonathan Burdon
So there you have it, my parody of the emails sent to me by Jonathan Burdon, because he is claims he is trying to sue “MIKEDVB” (Hint: MikeDVB has a real name). I have heavily edited and parodied his two emails so they could be posted here.
Furthermore, I am having trouble with my IMAP server. If anyone would like to assist me in fixing it, please let me know (But you better not try to read the original emails Jonathon sent me!! Well, I guess I wouldn’t be reproducing or publishing them in that case… so on second thought, have at it)
iterate through each child association of a active record class
Jun 20th
I came across this today while trying to find a better way to deal with error messages in rails. IMHO, it is genius and just what I was looking for. More >
A new perspective on the Arizona “Paper’s Please” law… Sonoran Desert outside Tucson, AZ
May 21st
[Editors Note: The following is copy/pasted from my E-Mail inbox. A friend forwarded it to me and I thought it was worth sharing, even if I detest the way Arizona is going about fixing the problem. Please spread the word!]
Subject: AZ Sonoran Desert outside Tucson, AZ
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 19:53:02 -0700
This is sooooo awful…….and sooooo sad!
Enjoy the view!!! AZ Sonoran Desert outside Tucson, AZ
Where in the hell is the SIERRA CLUB on this???
Hey everyone out there!
The people in Arizona, know you’re boycotting us — but you really should come out here and see our Beautiful Sonoran Desert.
It’s just gorgeous right now! We know you’d love it and maybe you can share what you saw with the rest of the country so they can love it too!
This is on an ‘illegal super – highway’ from Mexico to the USA (Tucson) used by human smugglers.
This area is located in a wash, approximately 1.5 miles long, just south of Tucson, Arizona. If a flood came, all this would be washed to the river and then onto the sea!
It is estimated over 5,000 discarded backpacks are in this wash. Countless water containers, food wrappers, clothing, feces, including thousands of soiled baby diapers. And as you can see in this picture, fresh footprints leading right into it.
As we kept walking down the wash, we thought for sure it was going to end, but around every corner was more and more trash!
And of course the trail leading out of the wash in our city, heads directly NORTH to Tucson, then leads to your town tomorrow.
They’ve already come through here. Isn’t Arizona just beautiful, America?
Why would you boycott us???
Our desert has basically been turned into a landfill.
The trash left behind by people illegally crossing our border is another Environmental Disaster to hit the USA.
If these actions had been done in one of our Northwest Forests or Seashore National Parks areas, there would be an uprising of the American people…..but this is the Arizona-Mexican border.
You won’t see these pictures on CNN, ABC, NBC or the Arizona Republic Repugnant newspaper. Nor will they mention the disease that comes from the uncovered human waste left in our desert.
However, with respect to CNN, ABC & NBC, they do offer us “Special Reports” on cheating celebrity spouses….
This information needs to be seen by the rest of the country.
