Tracing Back a Lineage?
So I was bored the other day and browsing along and eventually came across a family lineage type of website. Now I have seen these types of things in the past so it really wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but on this day, unlike on other days I decided to give it a shot. So I signed up, got my 7 day free trial (had to put in my CC, ugh) and began the search for it all. Luckily for me however I knew most of what I found because my grandpa and I have had some long fireside chats about my lineage, but it was still fun to dig deeper and find out things that I had previously been unaware of.
For instance I found out that one of my long lost grandparents was actually a carpenter, and make a variety of top quality products for those in a position of power. Its kind of tough to put it all into perspective but the reality is that if you are bored on a weekend and want to kill a few hours you should be checking one of these sites out. Ancestry.com is a good one, so perhaps start there and continue onward? I really don’t have any specific advice to offer up, considering that every family will be different so you kind of have to blaze your own trail.
The other thing I found was that to my knowledge I did not have any famous family members, I certainly wasn’t the noles family or anything like that, so I guess it is what it is.
What did you find when you signed up for and used one of these ancestry type of sites? Comment below and let me know!
P.S. I purchased a new iPhone programming book (I know I said I hate them), but this one looks to be just a wee bit different so I am going to give it a shot and see what happens so stay tuned!
iOS Development Progress
Back in November I decided that I was going to learn how to program for iOS devices (iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad). After becoming successful with PHP I figured that was sort of the “next step” in the development food chain. Most people (myself included) believe that mobile is the way of the future, and with Apple gaining such traction why development for any other platform? In any event, I ultimately teamed up with an old high school buddy but after things went astray around January I gave up for a while. Luckily I am back, and with any luck I will document my entire progress here on PeterFoti.com. I realize that I have said time and time again that I am going to rejuvenate this blog to no avail, but I think this time around could be different.
For learning I prefer video tutorials and luckily between iTunes U and Lynda.com their are plenty of them to go around. When I first got started back in November I bought a few books, but I just find it so difficult to follow the illustrations and what not in the texts so I have opted for videos. For the better part of the last month I have been watching and working through the iPhone SDK Essential training title from Lynda.com from Simon Allardice. I had watched his Objective-C essential training video before I started it and I am a huge fan of the way he teaches (I really love all the Lynda.com people for that matter).
Once I finish with Simons’ tutorials I plan on working through the entire Stanford iOS course from this past fall. I had started this course a while back, but it simply moved to quickly for me. It was developed for Senior computer science majors who were required to already know Java and C++. While the two languages dont have a ton in common with Obj-C they are similar in some respects, and very little like PHP.
Once I finish the Stanford courses I hope to release some kind of app to at least get my feet wet, and perhaps even offer up development services to companies who want to go mobile. However the end goal is be able to develop iOS games which require a great deal of knowledge of both the SDK, Obj-C and the graphics behind it all. That is an entirely new area of learning, but something I hope to tackle in the future.
Im not sure when ill write again, but hopefully it’ll be sooner rather than later.
Thanks for reading
Messing around with Penny Auctions
Being the internet hermit that I am, I often come across new things to spend money or waste time on and this week it was the now infamous penny auctions that we all seem to be reading about. I knew that I had to sign up and give these sites a shot before I gave my opinion on them so thats exactly what I did. I went ahead and signed up for Bid Rivals and got to work. Right off the bat I knew how fun this could be and if you didnt take it to serious you could have a good time, and perhaps win yourself something super sick for super cheap.
While I tried out the site (for all of about 8 hours) I did not manage to win anything right off the bat, however I realize that their is a real strategy to all of this. Because of that I have decided that I am going to take a few days and figure out how I can reverse engineer what the winners are doing and then replicate that success on my own. Im not sure how long this is going to take but with the opportunity that is available I wouldnt mind it if took a few weeks or even months before I have a fool proof system. Now this does not mean that if you want to be successful with these types of sites that you need to do this, but I am very methodical about everything that I do so thats what I am going to do.
In other news this is like my second post and the past week and im pretty excited about it! As you all know I dont post much any more these days but thats not to say that I wont in the future. For now I like coming on every now and again to post some tid bits about what im doing, learning, or concerned with. However I would not recommend that you sit by the computer and wait to read any of my new posts because more likely than not I wont be posting again for quite a while. Sorry 
Small Update
Over the years my blog has taken on my faces, and while I would love to come on here everyday to write something of value, comedy, and good fun the time just is not available to me. Over the past few weeks I have begun doing work with PPC marketing, launched 2 new websites, working on 3 more, and whats worse is that I am taking a small vacation starting tomorrow and ending Sunday. So what does all this mean? Well for starters I do not have any immediate plans to take this blog and really work with it to turn it into the blog that I know it can be. I am doing this for a variety of reasons, but the main one is the income issue that is associated with blogs.
If you were to look around the internet you would see hundreds of millions of blogs. Some of these are spam, but for the most part many people blog with intentions of somehow turning a profit in the shorter rather than the longer term. The fact of the matter however is that most blogs (including this one) make $0, in fact most of them lose money due to hosting and other maintenance costs. So why do so many people blog? Well I think people blog for a variety of reasons, but outside of making money I would say the main reason people blog is to gain notice, fame, and whatever else they think can come from blogging. For every 1 Perez Hilton, Shoemoney, John Chow, Huffington etc. their are literally millions of starving bloggers. Thats not a battle I want to fight, and while I do plan on someday turning this blog into something it will not be until after I have most projects on auto pilot and I can devote more time to an audience.
With all that being said what else is new? Well for starters I recently purchased one of those as seen on tv products for my dog. Did you guess it? Yes its the Snuggie for Dogs 
I have a real soft spot for my dog lizzy, and anyone who knows me could tell you that Liz is the champ. Her birthday however is not for a while so I figure I will just give it to her when it arrives in the mail
Other than that, I look to have some fun on this upcoming vacation, you can always use a few “days off” though I put it in quotes for a reason (ill have my macbook pro, iPad and iPhone ready to work on whatever comes up while abroad).
Thats all for now, ill see you in 6 months for another update 
New UK Dating Site
**Please Note, this is a paid review**
For some people the idea, of dating online has not really sunk in yet, but as we move more and more towards a digital world its easy to believe that someday online dating will be its only form. With that in mind, their is a new online dating service in town at We Love Dates.com. From a web design perspective I am very interested when viewing this webpage. The creators did not go out of their way to put a lot of fluff within the site and thus it seems like its overall functionality is very smooth and easy to use.
As a 20 year old I myself have never used a dating site, and at least for the time being do not plan to. Though, I do know of a handful of colleagues that have used them in the past with success. The key to success when using a dating site is to stay persistent and really spend a lot of time talking with the prospective date before hand. Many people recommend doing a skype/iChat before going on an actual date, and I would say that is a pretty good idea. Though I shouldnt be giving away all my tips on online dating, that could be a $47 eBook! Jk of course.
So in any event, while I was skeptical of reviewing this dating site on peterFoti.com at first I realize that this site aims to actually make legitimate relationships happen. Regardless about how you feel towards online dating I think you can see how/why welovedates is a cleaner and seemingly more useful site than something like adult friend finder or one of its knock off brethren. For those of you who would like more information about this site, and what it has to offer I would suggest that you both watch the video below, as well as visit them and sign up today.
