More plastic? Stereo Vinyl Cruiser Skateboards in stock at Skate-Parts.Com

November 17, 2011Matt No Comments »

I’ve just gotten in the new Stereo Vinyl Cruiser skateboards in at Skate-Parts.Com in all colours from Stereo Sound Agencies. Colours included red, blue, green, pink, yellow and black. These cruisers are inspired by music, skateboarding and fun, drawing on Stereo’s roots in American Jazz and Blues. It comes with ABEC 7 bearings, stickers to customise your board, and a free set of matching sunglasses! These boards are plastic injection molded just like the popular Penny skateboards re-issued from the 70′s, in fact, the mold is almost identical. There are a few differences though, they are a bit longer, half an inch to be exact, the deck features a vinyl grip inspired by vinyl records instead of the honeycomb hex grip, it features the Stereo logo, and the tail has a water drop indent rather than a square or P indent. Otherwise though, the shape and feel is very much the same as a Penny. Even the colours are the same as Penny’s, in particular the first generation Penny’s.

Check them out below, or click for bigger images on the Skate-Parts.Com website:

Black Stereo Vinyl CruiserBlue Stereo Vinyl CruiserGreen Stereo Vinyl Cruiser
Pink Stereo Vinyl CruiserStereo Vinyl Cruiser - RedStereo Vinyl Cruiser - Yellow
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How do you put a Drupal website in maintenance mode via the database?

October 22, 2011Matt No Comments »

I recently had a website that we proving quite problematic, it got to the point where I couldn’t even access the Drupal maintenance page without getting memory errors (I suspect the result of a well and truly oversold shared server). It became necessary that when migrating it to a new server, to ensure there were no sales or anything like that get missed, to put it in maintenance mode somehow.

After a bit of hunting around, I came across two options, one via PHPMyAdmin, and another that required shell access. On this particular server, I did not have shell access, but I did have access to PHPMyAdmin (though changes made there only seemed to actually take effect about 33% of the time).

Pixel Play had a great little run down of the necessary SQL commands to both put the site in maintenance mode, and to take it out of.

Enter maintenance mode via PHPMyAdmin

Simply enter the following SQL into the query box for your database in PHPMyAdmin to put a Drupal website into maintenance mode:

UPDATE variable SET value = 's:1:"1";' WHERE name= 'site_offline';
DELETE FROM cache WHERE cid = 'variables';

Exit maintenance mode via PHPMyAdmin

Just as simply, enter the following SQL into PHPMyAdmin to bring a Drupal website back online, or out of maintenance mode:

UPDATE variable SET value = 's:1:"0";' WHERE name= 'site_offline';
DELETE FROM cache WHERE cid = 'variables';

Maintenance mode via the command line / shell

Samat Jain has put up an article on running the same SQL queries via the command line. I won’t copy it in here as the background surrounding it is probably helpful, just check it out on his site.


Interesting Tabs I Need To Close

October 13, 2011Matt No Comments »

I have a few tabs at the moment that are quite interesting but that I haven’t thoroughly investigated yet and unfortunately need to close for the time being, so here they are (note, these are more or less completely random and don’t necessarily have any relation to any other links, or they might):

That’s about it for now.
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To Move or not To Move

October 12, 2011Matt No Comments »

I’ve been thinking about making use of this domain for what I had originally intended it for, displaying my fractal art, and possibly selling prints. This blog is really a personal one though, and I’m not sure it is still relevant to have with a fractal art gallery. As such, I’ve been thinking, maybe I should move this to one of my other, relatively inactive domains, such as matthewbrown.id.au or something like that. What are the ramifications though?

As this blog is on a sub-domain, my thoughts are I can just 301 redirect the entire sub-domain to whatever domain I end up migrating it to, which to my thinking should redirect everything that needs to be automatically. The other things to consider though is that then the name is not really relevant on a different domain, thus if people are looking for this blog in the future, it would not be where it previously was or named what it previously was.

This makes me think that perhaps a better option is to keep this here as it is and just simply make new blog posts more relevant to my fractal art and setup a blog on another domain to take over as the more personal blog. After all, the root domain is where I would be setting up the main site, which presently has just a landing page.

What do you think? Is moving it inherently bad? Is there anything else I should consider here?

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Now’s the time to get a Penny Skateboard!

October 4, 2011Matt 1 Comment »

With the distribution of Penny Skateboards increasing and them now available in Europe, New Zealand and the USA as well as Australia, competition is heating up and you can now pick up one of these fantastic plastic Penny complete cruisers for just $125 from Skate-Parts.Com (RRP $149) with free shipping anywhere in Australia. That’s a pretty decent discount if you ask me, and if you find them cheaper, just let me know at info@skate-parts.com or here and I’m sure it can be beaten.

If you haven’t seen them already, check them out:


New Logo For Skate-Parts.Com

October 3, 2011Matt No Comments »

I’ve been looking at getting a new logo done for Skate-Parts.Com for a while now and finally decided to give 99Designs a go as I just am out of ideas to play with for it! There ended up being a number of options that I really quite like and I’m having a lot of trouble picking. So, I’m giving the poll option a go and we’ll see what everyone else thinks! If you would like to have a vote that would be fantastic!


EFTPOS Fee Change Thoughts

October 2, 2011Matt No Comments »

According to news articles I’ve seen cropping up this week, it looks like EFTPOS has implemented a new fee schedule. According to their press releases, these were actually first mentioned back in March and clarified in early September, so I’m not sure why there wasn’t more mention of it back then. Maybe I just didn’t notice.

In reading through the news articles and press releases, it seems to me like EFTPOS is spending money in the wrong ways. I’ve noticed their advertising campaign around this year as well about pressing CHQ or SAV and about how EFTPOS is the safest way and so many people use it, but the simple fact is, I rarely, rarely ever use it and that campaign hasn’t changed that. If retailers choose to pass on the new EFTPOS fees then I’m going to use it even less.

According to the press releases, ePAL keep mentioning their growth into the cash market and such, and their wording all seems to me like they are targeting cash as their main competitor. This doesn’t make sense to me. To me, it seems their main competitors should be Visa, Mastercard and American Express. These are the dominant players in plastic in Australia, especially Visa and Mastercard as they have debit card options available through many banks. These cards allow me to purchase online, or to sign for purchases if I can’t remember my pin, which happens given that there are 1 or 2 cards that I rarely use. If I use EFTPOS, I can’t purchase online and I must be able to remember my pin, if I can’t, then I have to use the credit card instead.

I certainly prefer to spend money directly from one of my accounts rather than credit, but EFTPOS just doesn’t make it as easy as they seem to think they do. Visa and Mastercard are much easier, especially with the new PayWave/PayPass technology.

From a merchant perspective, EFTPOS is certainly cheaper than credit cards. At Skate-Parts.Com it costs 1%-2.5% per Visa/Mastercard transaction depending on the type of card, plus 10c per transaction from the bank, plus a 50c transaction fee from the credit card gateway. So on a $100 purchase, that’s between $1.60 and $3.10. To accept American Express is slightly higher. According to the ePAL press release, this same transaction would be 5c. Under $15, say a $10 transaction, this would be between 16c and 31c for Visa/Mastercard and free with EFTPOS. There is a big difference there. Unfortunately though, EFTPOS is not available for online transactions or I would jump at the opportunity to accept it. Debit Visa and debit Mastercard’s can be used online though, which means the closest thing available to EFTPOS is a bank transfer, which is not as easy or convenient at all. I don’t really accept cash either. Even in our shop we don’t accept EFTPOS, because we would need to run a second terminal and this isn’t cost effective at present, and we don’t really do much cash there either. So there is not really any cash for EFTPOS to compete with. Only Visa and Mastercard debits.

I also see the move as a bit anti-competitive given that the fees, to my understanding will not apply to Woolworths and Coles, both of which are part of the consortium that makes up ePAL, and both of which who control an enormous part of the retail market in Australia across a diverse range of markets. Due to their ability to purchase at substantial bulk discounts they already have a competitive advantage over small businesses. By not having this fee applied to them, it puts them at an even greater competitive advantage. If however it simply means that Woolworths and Coles will not be passing fees on to customers than this is fine, but if they don’t have the fees at all, that hardly seems fair to other businesses.

Despite information indicating growth in the EFTPOS market, this move seems like it’s an attempt to extract money from the technology without really improving the service or providing any benefit to customers or merchants. The only benefit that I can see is to those behind ePAL, the banks and the retail giants Coles and Woolworths.

If the move included measures for online transactions, I think this adjusted fee scheduling would make much more sense. At this point though, I can’t even see any indication that there has been any thought go into making EFTPOS available online.

What do you think? What do you use more? EFTPOS or debit Visa/Mastercard? I’d love to hear some other perspectives on it!

 


Painting with lips and lipstick?

September 2, 2011Matt No Comments »

This is kind of cool, and definitely unusual, Natalie Irish painting using her lips and lipstick by kissing the canvas to create portraits.

Check out the video:


Don’t talk to police!

August 28, 2011Matt No Comments »

My girlfriend showed me this video the other day that they watched part of in one of her law lectures. This guy talks so fast, but the message is certainly pretty interesting, well worth the watch if you have some free time. It’s USA focused, but it’s just as relevant here in Australia in regards to the issues that can arise from speaking when you don’t have to.


Helpful Magento Theming Links

July 24, 2011Matt 1 Comment »

I’ve been teaching myself Magento themes as I’m planning on setting up my new websites, MJB PhotoArt and U-Scrap using Magento as the e-commerce CMS.

So far, I’ve got the following handy links in no particular order. These are pretty much all that I’ve read so far and have helped me get my head around the theme system and extension system of Magento. They have also helped with ensuring Magento is configured correctly for Australian use. Not all of them are completely current in what they say, but they are still helpful nonetheless:

Magento Theme Reading

Magento Extension Reading

Handy Extensions

  • Magento Blog Extension by Aheadworks (I haven’t used this yet, but I have installed it and it looks very promising).
  • Magento Australia Extension by Fontis (adds various Australian things such as ABN support, Australia Post integration, direct deposit & BPAY payments).
  • Canonical URL’s for Magento by Yoast (adds canonical URL’s to Magento page headers).
  • Maintenance Page by ArtsOn.IT (adds maintenance page functionality that allows the logged in admin to see the website).