3-picks for February 21, 2014
Under the wire:
Hover
I've been using Dreamhost for close to ten years for most of my basic web needs–hosting for non-trivial web apps; domain registry; DNS. I've never been that happy with their Ruby support, though. So a few weeks back I asked Twitter for recommended domain registars, as a start for migrating stuff on to services more in-line with what I actually need. I got a lot of great suggestions, but this week had a need to register a new domain and went with Hover. The domain name part was painless. I liked–but did not partake in–the provided list of similar domains occupied by cybersquatters.
Anyway, I suggest giving them a try. I get some kind of referral bonus if you do.
Harvest
The reason I had to scramble on a domain name is I had some contract work drop in my lap—but to make everyone happy I need to invoice as a business and not an individual. So I got the ball rolling on that, but I also needed an invoicing solution. I went with Harvest for a few reasons: (1) The pricing levels suit my needs; (2) so does the feature set; (3) they're a Ruby shop. I have a referral code for Harvest, too, so become a customer and help me save a buck or two.
Hemingway
Enough with the business stuff and thinly-veiled attempts to earn referral bucks. If you write—technical or otherwise—you need to check out Hemingway and discover just how bad your writing is. "Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear" is the promise. Ditch the adverbs, passive voice, and complicated sentences. Note to the developers: I'm not sure about a standalone desktop version, but what about a TextMate/Sublime/Vim/Emacs/etc. plugin? (Note: This post was run I ran this post through Hemingway; any poor decisions are totally my own.)