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International Shipping Meltdown

US Post Office, what are you doing to me? The USPS Click-n-Ship service has always been cumbersome, but it’s the only practical way to mail packages outside the USA via First Class Mail, which is the...

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Supply Chain Snafu

Where and how do you find the parts needed to build your hardware? Selling Floppy Emu on a small scale has introduced me to the difficulties of managing a supply chain, and I’ve discovered it’s more...

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Outsourced PCB Assembly and Testing

Help request! If any reader has experience taking a hobby-scale electronics project to an outside vendor for assembly, I’d love to hear from you. I’ve been talking with the fab in China that makes the...

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Taking Care of Business

Today was time for some especially gruesome business-related work. I knew I was overdue for collecting California state sales taxes on Floppy Emu sales, and my recent investigations into having an...

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How to Manufacture a Widget

So you’ve designed an electronic gizmo, it works nicely, and the public wants to buy it. You’ve built one, or ten, or a hundred by hand until your soldering iron wore out, and now you’re ready to have...

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Business License Hell

Nobody ever said selling Floppy Emus to the public would be easy, but for an operation that’s barely one step above an eBay garage sale, the amount of legal hoops I’ve had to jump through is...

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Mail to Japan Hurts my Head

A good fraction of my product orders come from people in Japan. That’s great – I’m happy that the things I’ve designed appeal to people all over the world. What isn’t great is the way the US Post...

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Web Site Hacked

Web Site Hacked Web Hack Analysis Part 2 Web Hack Analysis Part 3 It’s Monday morning, and the BMOW web site has been hacked. In fact all six of my web sites at my shared hosting service have been...

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Web Hack Analysis, Part 2

Web Site Hacked Web Hack Analysis Part 2 Web Hack Analysis Part 3 Yesterday I described how the BMOW web site had been hacked, and my efforts to clean it up. Today I began looking at some of the hack...

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Web Hack Analysis, Part 3

Web Site Hacked Web Hack Analysis Part 2 Web Hack Analysis Part 3 I believe I’ve identified how the hack on my websites occurred, and it wasn’t a WordPress vulnerability. It looks like the hacker got...

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Kit Biz Profit and Loss

Have you ever wondered what life is like in the “kit biz”, with a part-time business selling electronic gizmos to hobbyists? Maybe you’ve thought about selling one of your own creations, or were just...

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WordPress, https, and Canonical URLs

About a week ago, I added an SSL certificate to the BMOW web site, in preparation for some improved shopping cart features. With an SSL certificate signed by a certificate authority (free from Let’s...

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A New BMOW Storefront!

At last, BMOW is moving into the modern world with a new online storefront! As I mentioned in the Profit and Loss discussion a couple of weeks ago, the old solution of PayPal payment buttons and order...

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New Project Ideas

It’s high time for a new project here at BMOW. These days I spend so much time on Floppy Emu, it’s hard to squeeze in anything else! A new project would help stir things up, and get the creative...

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Crikey! USPS International Shipping Costs

Running a mail-order business gives me many opportunities to think about the cost of shipping. I’ve just made a change to the BMOW store that enables small, lightweight packages sent within the USA to...

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Lower International Shipping Costs!

Good news for BMOW fans from outside the United States: international shipping costs for most orders should now be substantially lower than before. I wrote about the pain of international shipping...

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Falling into an Email Blacklist with DreamHost

A blacklist can be a powerful tool for identifying spam email senders, but if you find yourself unfairly blacklisted, it’s maddening. Since sometime last September, roughly 30% of all my outbound...

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Hobby Business Time-Lapse Video

This time-lapse video shows all the steps needed to fill six typical BMOW hardware orders. Running an electronics hobby business can be lots of fun, but can also be highly time-consuming. If your...

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Case Packing Time Lapse Video

Frosted Ice cases for Floppy Emu are back in stock at the BMOW store, and I took the opportunity to make a time lapse video of the case packing process. Where does all the time go? Last week’s video...

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BMOW on https

The entire Big Mess o’ Wires site should now be usable via the encrypted https protocol. I had some trouble with this a year ago, when I unintentionally enabled https for the blog and discovered that...

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