tapostrophemo

(a.k.a. I'm cheap when it comes to hosting my hobby sites; I'd like to use Rails, but PHP on shared hosting is much cheaper and less work; suggestions?)

I've recently been working on a small, "hobby" web app - http://yoyocase.net. It's been a chance for me to scratch an itch (I want to show off my collection) as well as to learn Rails.

Finding hosting for my app has been challenging, though. I don't plan on monetizing this, so I really can't justify "expensive" web hosting. Nor do I want to go with a VPS - I don't want to play sysadmin in my spare time.

So, I've also been porting my code to PHP (not raw; CodeIgniter!), and plan to put it on my shared hosting account. Am I shooting myself in the foot?

Alternatively, do any of you know where I could find relatively cheap "shared" Rails hosting - a place where I wouldn't have to setup my own virtual server(s), keep all the software/packages up to date, etc.?

I'm adding a "register->confirm email->reg. complete" functionality to a web app I'm writing. I'd like to be able to unit/integration test my email-sending code.

I don't want to actually send emails. In fact, I'd like to keep all this local to my machine (or at least to my home network). And if I can avoid it, I don't want to install/configure sendmail/qmail/postfix/etc.; i.e., I don't want to install a real email server.

Is there a test SMTP server anyone knows of that's quick and easy to install (on Linux)? Or a clever hack using honeyd to fake out the SMTP communication?

Has anyone encountered or written a Perl framework that is lightweight, yet at the same time includes a lot of useful (for web development) libraries, and most importantly, is fun?

Compare/contrast with PHP: In my mind, CGI => straight PHP, Catalyst (=> Rails!) => CakePHP, CGI::Application (and related plugins) => Zend Framework. CGI is too bare-bones, do-it-all-yourself. Catalyst seems all-encompasing, strict in structure, but heavyweight. And CGI::Application (with plugins, of course) has something for everyone, if you can only remember to include the library; aside from that, it lacks a clear structure for how to go about things.

What I want to find is this mapping:

? => CodeIgniter

What Perl web framework feels the most like CodeIgniter?

---

(btw, tonight I just found http://perlbuzz.com/2008/11/the-evolution-of-perl-frameworks.html, which referenced Mojo/Mojolicious; this might be the one...)

When somebody asks you "Who are your competitors?", how do you find the answer?

Some are obvious - Yahoo vs. Google, Emacs vs vi, etc. But if I'm making a "website that does X", and X is pretty narrow, how do I find the competition? (Beating them is no problem... :-)

I've been reading "Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life" (http://www.amazon.com/Armchair-Economist-Economics-Everyday-...), and the most interesting article so far was titled "Was Einstein Credible: The Economics of Scientific Method".

When reading this I couldn't help but think of YC (and all things YC-related). Any of you read it? What do you think?