I’ve been a (mostly) happy user of the server named alberni.textdrive.com for around ten years. I signed up as a lifetime
member of TextDrive in the early oughts when I started seeing mention
of the Ruby on Rails framework and though I better check it out. At
the time, TextDrive was one of a few places where you could upload a
Rails project and have it Just Work. They offered a startup deal of
$500 for the rest of your life, and I jumped on it.
Using TextDrive has taught me a whole lot about how Unix servers work
on the inside: this is a “long pants” Unix server, none of your glossy
Cpanel here. If you want to do something specific, very often you will
log in through the shell and type in the command. What you get in
return is the very best performance and the ability to customize the
server to your heart’s content.
Along the way, TextDrive have powered a lot of the Freeway universe.
FreeCounter, ActionsForge and FreewayCast ran there, and FreewayTalk
was developed there and moved to Softpress’s server once it was
finished.
TextDrive has come a long way since those early days (they’re now
called Joyent, and a much larger company), and their latest offerings
are called SmartMachines. These are virtual servers, run on an array
of physical servers and storage devices, and made available through a
network fabric that all but guarantees perfect uptime. Unlike normal
shared hosting, no other user can trample on my service, just as I
cannot trample on theirs.
As part of my lifetime account, I got a new SmartMachine this month,
and finished the transition from Alberni yesterday. So ActionsForge
and FreewayCast are incredibly snappy. FreeCounter displays a list of
sites in a meaningfully-short period of time, and doesn’t stall out
every couple of months. There were some tiny rough patches in the
transition, but overall, it’s a very nice reward for one long day’s
work.
And if you’re in the market for serious hosting, I say look no further
than http://joyent.com
I just wanted to say - and I know that this will be echoed by all here - how much we appreciate all the time and effort you put in to support the FW community.
It is guys like you that make these resources such an essential and valuable part of being a FW user.
Thank you for doing all the amazing things you do!
J
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 24, 2010, at 19:22, DeltaDave email@hidden wrote:
Hi Walter
I just wanted to say - and I know that this will be echoed by all here - how much we appreciate all the time and effort you put in to support the FW community.
It is guys like you that make these resources such an essential and valuable part of being a FW user.
Hear, hear is an expression used as a short repeated form of hear him, hear him. It represents a listener's agreement with the point being made by a speaker. It is often incorrectly spelled "here here"[1]