Updates | Jason Tucker

New website design

Posted by admin on Mar 23, 2008 in General, Updates | 11240 commentsNew+website+design2008-03-23+22%3A16%3A11admin

Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about redesigning my personal website (jasontucker.us) and found this great base to work off of. As of Easter weekend the site looks quite bland but the bones of site are there. I started of doing this reworking on my beta site but quickly learned that working from the actual site would provide me with better feedback as to how well its coming out. It’s hard to recreate an environment after so many years of content is in the database and so many kludgey scripts making it all work. I’ve removed the last of the abstrakone.com’s scripts and I’m starting fresh with this site.

Thanks for stopping by.

Geekery at its finest

Posted by admin on Nov 21, 2007 in Cool Stuff, General, Hacks, Tech, Updates, Wordpress | 9000 commentsGeekery+at+its+finest2007-11-21+16%3A57%3A44admin

I was on Geek Week #4 for the podcast A Geek and his Wife. Kevin and Heather do a couple cast where every other week Kevin invites a geek to be on the show and geek it up. This week its was ME!

We talked about my background, my podcasts, MAME, Xbox hacking, Asterisk, WRT45G hacking (with DD-WRT) and other fun stuff.

Give it a listen:
Geek Week on A Geek and his Wife podcast – Tucker Time
Subscribe via iTunes

Xmas time, podcasting and weird ramblings.

Posted by admin on Dec 11, 2006 in General, Updates | 8080 comments2006-12-11+20%3A08%3A30admin

Hello the internets, its’ been a while since I lasted posted and I feel bad about that. Things at the homestead are going well: Chris and Caitlin are trying their darnest to drive Jen and I insane. Jessalyn is getting bigger by the day, and is starting to create her own words for things. None of it we can understand but its cute that she tries anyhow.

Speaking of GeekFit here are some stats that I think are pretty interesting:

160 is the average number of downloads per day.
Episode #3 is our most popular at 665 downloads last month.
The majority of our incoming search queries include the words “potato” “leek” “soup” – 170 people this month and last found our website because of the post Scott made regarding potato leek soup.
We’ve had 2 phone calls and 1 fax to our GeekFit podcast hot line. One was a wrong number and the fax was a blank page. (206) 350-GFIT. Man, our listeners really don’t like leaving voicemails. Either that they are scared that Steve will call them back!
Our most popular day was on October 3rd 2006 when we were mentioned on Keith and the Girl. That one mention got us 10,000 hits that day alone. What’s funny is they didn’t even link to us on the site. Who says people don’t remember a URL and visit it later?
We currently have 58 people in our Traineo group so far.
There are 22 people in our SparkPeople Team.
Since February of this year I’ve lost 22lbs. I really hope to get down to 225.

After the holidays I’m going to be producing more EverythingTech.tv episodes. I have a ton of stuff queued up for me to work on and I’m pretty excited about it. If you have a suggestions for the show drop me a comment. I also mentioned on GeekFit a small project I’m going to be working on for EverythingTech.tv.
My Mom, Brandon (my brother) and I were part of my Mom’s first Skype videocall yesterday. She planning on moving to Arizona pretty soon so we were testing Skype and showing her how easy it is to use. We tried to add a 3rd person into the videoconference but I guess skype doesnt allow for that without using a 3rd party plugin. Sorry for bugging you for no reason Scott!
I’m debating on turning off my personal email for 2-3 weeks to see if all these spammers will get bouncebacks and leave me the hell alone. I did this a few years ago and it cut my spam intake from 300 emails a day to 10. Maybe I’ll do this again.

Busy

Posted by admin on May 9, 2006 in Cool Stuff, General, Updates | 7241 commenthttp://www.jasontucker.us/724/busy/Busy2006-05-09+17%3A58%3A25admin

It’s been a busy week for me. My buddy Scott and I kicked off a new website called PodcastRiot.com which will act as the network hub for the collection of podcasts we and our friends run. With that comes yet another podcast directory on the internet that I’m working on which will drive some traffic to the site and the podcasts in the network.

I’ve setup a mini studio in my home office to record podcasts. Last week I bought a Behringer UB 802 Eurorack Mixer, Mic stand and pop filter. I installed a second soundcard into my computer (so I can record Steve via skype) and fed everything into the mixer. I’m still having some issues with the routing of cables and im getting some weird looping and echos. Once I get that hammered out we’ll be cranking out podcasts again. We may end up recording the old way this last time so we dont lose listeners.

I recorded an episode of EverythingTech.tv : Tutorials using the new gear and it worked well. I also interviewed Cyngus from Parsed.org, check that out if you into that sort of thing.
PodcastRiot has got me thinking of all the domain names I have registered.. I thought I’ll draft up a list and tripout on what they ended up being or what their current status is:

http://www.hatchback.com – (dropped) it was my first domain for what turned into importstyle. [attempt at advertising]
http://www.importstyle.com [wayback] – (dropped) once I ditched hatchback.com I went with this, it was broader and less of a niche market. This site I ran for over 2 years, we had a forum, car gallery and a models gallery (to drive traffic). The import race scene was in its infancy and I wanted a piece of it. [importstyle.com represent]
http://www.abstrakone.com – (active) my main website. I still own this one.
http://www.saisha.net – (active) Jen’s website its kinda stale atm.
http://www.tuckerfamilytree.com [wayback] – (lost) I lost this domain name due to some webhosting issues and a lame registar. This site was used to house my family tree and to build some genealogy info to share with people.
http://www.rave411.com – (dropped) this was a website that Josh and I were going to start up, we planned on making it a rave and party directory (so the cops knew where to go to bust everyone) we ditched the idea pretty early on.
http://www.needabandsite.com – (dropped) my cousin and I wanted to start a side project and build websites for small bands so they could have a web presence. Bands dont have money, so we dropped the idea.
http://www.jasonandjen.com – (active) I registered this a few months after proposing to Jen. We used it as a wedding page, then converted it to a family website. We now use it to keep our family informed of the latest happenings.
http://www.chrisromero.com – (redirect) I reg’d these just in case the kids wanted to have their own website…
http://www.jessalyntucker.com – (redirect) they currently redirect to jasonandjen.com for now.
http://www.caitlinromero.com – (active) Caitlin wanted to be on myspace, and I didnt want her to so I reg’d this domain and then installed wordpress and added a basic security layer so only her friends and family can see the entries.
http://www.geekfit.com – (active) This is what started everything on the podcast tip. I’m glad steve and I started this podcast it’s taught me lots about losing weight and living a healthy lifestyle.
http://www.everythingtech.tv – (active) This is a podcast/vidcast/tip & tricks website that I’m using to learn new tech and teach people by recording tutorials and videos.
http://www.podcastriot.com – (active) This is the glue that will hold all the podcast websites together. As bandwidth gets cheaper and more people want to do podcasts this is my attempt on getting in on the ground floor of this new medium.

With that said, if your interested in doing a podcast our network, PodcastRiot.com is looking for shows. If you currently have a podcast and want to take the next step and join a network consider us. If your thinking about starting a podcast and need some help, we’ll looking for new and fresh podcasts as well.

Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ Into the future

Posted by admin on Nov 18, 2005 in Updates | 5340 comments2005-11-18+21%3A41%3A23admin

Welp there went another week. I tell ya, my life is on autopilot until i get to work, then auto pilot turns on again until I’m home. I hit the sheets and autopilot turns back on again.

I believe I have become a drone. Like one of those Salarymen in China, 1/2 dead shuffling to and from work almost unconscious. Its nerve racking to think I too am doing this. Except I’m not Asian, I dont smoke like its going out of style and my bedroom is a big as one of their apartments. Anyhow, so I got to thinking “how can I become the Unsalaryman? What can I do to mix things up a bit?” Unfortunately nothing, if I did I wouldn’t make it to work, I wouldn’t sleep, and I wouldn’t be able to see my family and my pretty baby. Its almost as if being on autopilot in the morning is a good thing. I get to work at the same time, I drive exactly the same way and unless I’m stopping for gas or food I arrive and leave at just about the same time.

What does mix things up is once I get home, I have just about no control over what we will be doing. I sorta like that. I mean I’m able to put my opinion in and change the course of things, but rarely the thing were doing something I started. So with that I end up doing stuff I normally wouldn’t do, which is fine my me, I’m boring to most anyhow! I enjoy the fact that other than being at home my life doesn’t have much chaos. Yeah stuff comes up at work, but I’m able to work though those things realitively easy. Having kids, especially older kids adds fun stuff to do, taking them to their friends houses, meeting their parents, listening to their stories and how their day went. I’m glad Caitlin is an active girl, it keeps Jen and I busy. I wish Chris was more active but he’s starting to be like how myself (and I’d image how his dad) was growing up. He stays inside playing video games and watches tv. He doesn’t have a computer or I’d imagine he’d be on that all day. I’m hoping one we get him into a sport he likes this will change a bit. Caitlin will be in softball soon, and having Chris in a sport will give him something to look forward to other than making Tony Hawk do some new trick or whatever.

Anyhow I haven’t been talking much about myself (and my family) in my blog and I realized I need to braindump some of this info in my head. I’m hoping this will generate some discussion in both LJ and my blog instead of me just reblogging about something cool I found online.