Category Archives: Site Admin

Yeah, baby — it’s content time!

We’re back. After a week of unanticipated downtime, precipitated by database problems — yes, again — and exacerbated by my being on the road pretty much continuously the last two weeks, I’ve managed to restore the blog to perfect working order. (Remember to back up your work, kids.) Not that anyone likely noticed or anything, this blog having all of about four readers. Anyway, we work again. Yes! A proud moment.

I note I am preparing to plunge into the pit of despair that is Amazon Web Services in an attempt to get back into the “this is a real computer” hosting game. Though perhaps that’s not strictly accurate, since AWS doesn’t actually offer, um, real computers. Sort of. Anyway.

We missed a Soundcheck Sunday, so here’s a late one for mid-week: Florence + The Machine, “Dog Days Are Over”

Ignore the video; it’s really silly. That voice is ridiculously amazing. How I was unaware of Florence Welch and her work before some time last week is clearly somebody’s fault, and I’m going to take it out on whoever that was.

Giving up

So let’s give this a go, shall we? I’m caving in. From brief experimentation, I think this is a much better idea than trying to cram everything together locally. I hate that it has come to this, but… why solve a problem that’s already been solved (and solved much more elegantly than I ever could)?

Forgive me, for I am turning into a Web 2.0 loser.

Learn to suffer

I would really appreciate it if someone could explain to me why I shouldn’t just say “screw it” and spend $24.95 on a Flickr account instead of fighting with locally installed software. Because it’s the manly thing to do? Because struggling with someone else’s design choices builds character? Because I need to rebuild my sysadmin cred? I realize that I will quite rapidly devolve into one of Those People with a Flickr account, and that the true He-Man solution is templating and scripting and a lot of little HTML files and some more scripting glue to hold it all together and publish… but life is short, and so is my patience.

What to do, what to do?

Let's just get the mother up there

Yea, and God said to Abraham, “You will kill your son Isaac.” And Abraham said, “I can’t hear you, you’ll have to speak into the microphone!” And God said, “Oh, I’m sorry, is this better? Check! Check! Jerry, pull the high end out, I’m still getting some hiss back here…

Testing and development in progress. Estimated go-live is 1 May 2009.

Do not be surprised if the schedule slips.

That is all. I AM JOR-EL, MASTER OF SCHEDULING!

Journal spackling

Obviously I’m home now. And obviously there were some, uh, gaps in the journal the past few weeks. That’s because once we left the Cinque Terre, my ability to find an Internet connection — and my ability to find time to do stuff with that connection — began to follow a decay curve that was only really arrested when I got to Dublin and discovered my hostel had free (free!) Internet access. Of course, I was only in Dublin for 35 hours, so..

Anyway, the upshot of this is that I’ll be posting some anecdotes about Provence, Paris, London, Wales and Dublin over the next couple of days. You might even get pictures, depending on how motivated I become!

Speaking of Dublin, I had a very weird experience about 15 minutes ago. While waiting for my soup to warm up I was watching the communal television here at Our Lady of Perpetual Profit, and I came across a Rick Steves episode on KCTS. I find the goober kind of irritating in the way I find earnest people typically irritating, but I stopped because the background looked familiar. Sure enough, there he was, wandering down O’Connell street, babbling about Kilmainham Gaol, and drinking Guinness in the Gravity Bar. And I thought to myself, “Man, this guy is still irritating.” Then I thought, “Hey, wait a minute. I’ve been there.“

It’s a weird sensation. Flying home yesterday there was a moment when I looked at the moving map display (best. aviation. passenger. invention. ever.) and saw Rome, London, Madrid, Paris, and Algeris all identified. And suddenly these places aren’t just points on a map — they’re places I’ve known and, in some cases, loved quite dearly. It’s not a new sensation, because I get that feeling when I see stuff from places I’ve been in Japan — one of the backpackers magazines in Dublin had a guy posing in the gardens around the Imperial Palace in a spot that’s almost exactly identical to a picture I took two years ago — but it was much stronger, and I don’t know what to make of that.

Maybe it just means I need to travel more so the whole world can feel that way. It’s pretty cool.