Website Startup Day 2

As I'm writing this, my main website (akmattb.com) is down... i kind of chuckled to myself as i was just wondering what my long term up time was. The good news is that my provider already tweeted out that there was an issue. Which is very unlike my old one. ;) Aren't I happy i can provide my clients with such a responsive host?

Well as my deep down inside voice told me, i didn't get any calls today from my craigslist ad. I checked today and im still on the front page of it, so i think that's ok.

I did some deep investigation and found mainly two other outfits in my area are also utilizing Craiglist. One of which was from my initial competition checks, the other i never heard of before. His website was basic so i assume his price point and client base is also small. I would rate my price point at medium and small client base.

Today i didnt do much... Except start this blog. One thing i felt i needed to do is hold myself accountable. i think i can do that though this blog. it will be a reflection on what i accomplished every day. There is a subreddit that i've had open for weeks, referencing many times.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/

The style of this one was based on the day to day startup of this guys lawn business, and for some reason cleaning business. Its taken over the whole subreddit. Anyway. its a good read and provides lots of great information.

One of the other things i spent a lot of my energy on today was formulating the idea of how to 'cold call' businesses. Obviously i don't need to contact someone that has a slick website. i need to get the people that have the @outlook.com email addresses. those are the ones i want. not only can i get them to invest in an actual email account that represents their business, not a Microsoft product.

Ill be creating a custom portal for each referral i create which outlines what i can do for their company. Ill need to come up with some verbiage that outlines each of the features. It will be a work in progress for sure.

Website Startup Day 1

so for day one. i knew that i wanted to start this day. but i probably encountered the most procrastination this day.
I waited until the late evening to finish revising my google doc which had some iterations of a craigslist ad i wanted to make.
After sitting down to "better call Saul", i punched out the finishing touches. I also uploaded both ad's to craigslist. its late to so i don't expect any calls until tomorrow.

I've put in some thought into how else to drum up business. I think some kind of small flyer or business card left at coffee shops around my area might be the most ideal choice.

Except places with storefronts, i think most small business owners go to Starbucks to feel like they are doing something.

Not much to Day 1, but i think it might set the stage for day 2, as i hate trying to write stuff for my business. Although, i do think im getting better at it.

Backup Your Space Engineers Dedicated Servers

Hi there,

I needed the piece of mind of knowing i had backups of my worlds. Especially since i was letting other people play in my worlds. I just didn't know what they would be up to.

Here is a simple script that will backup all worlds in your server directory.

@echo off

7za.exe a -y -tzip -xr!*.log -xr!*.zip "C:\ProgramData\SpaceEngineersDedicated\%DATE:~-4%-%DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%-%TIME:~0,2%-%TIME:~3,2%-%TIME:~6,2%-"se-world-backup.zip "C:\ProgramData\SpaceEngineersDedicated\"

you will need 7zip... i have included all the files and 7zip in a download here:
http://files.denalicomputer.com/SEBU/SEBU.zip

 once you have the files downloaded and extracted somewhere they can live, we need to create a task to run the script on a schedule.

click start, search for 'task scheduler'
create a task... (dont start with 'create basic task')
 Here are what my screens look like:

 This runs the script starting at 12am, every 6 hours.

 this is the actions window, it tells the script to actually run

 thats all you need....
for scheduling you can also use the 'at' command from the command line.

Space Engineers Management Console (SEMC) v 1.2

I am very happy to announce a new version of the SEMC... I have added some very cool features and hope they work well for you.

You can download the script here (Full text copy at the bottom of this post):
http://www.denalicomputer.com/fileserver/SEMC.1.2.zip

New Features:

• Start and stop all your servers at once 
• Player Counts on main screen, Counts and names on each server screen
• Show Full Log Files 

Next week I will be adding support for console instances of Space Engineers Dedicated servers. At this time only services are supported!

Prerequisites:
http://akmattb.blogspot.com/2014/06/space-engineers-managment-console.html
Future Features:
http://akmattb.blogspot.com/2014/06/space-engineers-managment-console_22.html

Space Engineers is on Steam Summer Sale! $13.39

its available now on the steam summer sale:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/244850/

its only 13.39 for the next 48 hours.


Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and maintenance of space works. Players build space ships and space stations of various sizes and utilization (civil and military), pilot ships and perform asteroid mining.

Space Engineers Update 01.036 - Fully functional conveyor-connector system, custom astronaut’s suit colour

Summary

The conveyor-connector system is now fully functional. It can be used to connect two ships, share electricity, give access to control panel and transfer items. Also players can now set custom color to the astronaut’s suit.

Features

- conveyor-connector system is fully functional

- set custom color to astronaut’s suit 

- passenger seat

- copy-paste the grids which are connected through rotors

- items ejected from the ejector now inherit velocity

 

Fixes

- fixed weird/purple colors (especially visible on asteroids)

- fixed hand drill issue

- fixed clustered cargo ships in MP consuming server memory causing high ping

- fixed control groups after merging/splitting

- fixed issue with merge block causing CTD and stops Dedicated Server

- fixed issue when switching while in load screen by using ALT-TAB and load worlds list stays blank

- fixed issue when connectors could not connect if mounted to the same ship

- fixed crash when merging small ships

- fixed pink textures on asteroids

- fixed dedicated server crash when socket is already in use

- fixed few instances where mining is not working

- fixed some symmetry is off (Cockpit 3 Large, Cockpit 1 Small.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Avast is reporting a virus in SpaceEngineer.exe in the last update (01.036). It's 100% a false positive, you can add that file to exceptions/mark as a save file.

Space Engineers Management Console (SEMC) v 1.1

Hi all,
Sorry I am a bit late on this one, decided to add a new server crawler. This will automatically find all servers on your computer and make them available to manage.

You can download the script here (Full text copy at the bottom of this post):
http://www.denalicomputer.com/fileserver/SEMC.1.1.zip

Current features:

• Support for unlimited amount of servers!
• See log files for your servers easily!
• Quickly Start and Stop Servers 
• Edit config files right from the interface
• Find all Service instances of your Servers

Prerequisites -

http://akmattb.blogspot.com/2014/06/space-engineers-managment-console.html
Future Features - http://akmattb.blogspot.com/2014/06/space-engineers-managment-console_22.html

Space Engineers Managment Console Prerequisites

Prerequisites:

• Ability to Run as Administrator
• powershell on your computer (I developed this on windows 8, it should work on windows 7 as well)
• an open execution-policy - http://akmattb.blogspot.com/2014/06/ps1-cannot-be-loaded-because-running.html
• (Going Away Soon!!) a SE server running as a service. - you will need to rename the servers in the powershell script to match your own. mine are called 'service' and 'public server.

Space Engineers Managment Console Future Feature List

Future Features:

• Configure services to auto restart
• restart and manage console instances of servers
• Find all Console instances of your Servers
• see how many people are online in your servers
• see who is on your servers
• ability to create servers
• running servers as services without having to use the dedicated server app provided. 

Current Features:

• Start and stop all your servers at once 
• Player Counts on main screen, Counts and names on each server screen
• Show Full Log Files

Space Engineers Update 1.035

Update 01.035:
Electricity is now being transmitted through rotors (inter-grid electricity and communications relaying).
We've also added new world settings (automatic trash removal, limit world’s size) that will help players to manage the increasing number of objects in the world - useful especially for dedicated servers.

Full list of new feature and fixes: http://forums.keenswh.com/post?id=6951539