Seldom does one refer to oneself as "Chief Nonce". However, in this case the label is not only justified but also sadly something of an understatement. There are two things dear to my digital heart -- music collection and website content (photies, mostly). 18 months ago I nearly lost my entire mp3 collection (born in the first year of mass downloading, aka Napster 99). I had a dual hard drive crash the same week of losing my ipod. Barry. So I bolstered my backup procedures to things like "offsite backups" (leaving disk at office), as well as using three whole drives for redundant storage.
The theory was that the house could be burgled and/or burnt to the ground without losing data. All of this was coordinated by a backup program, albeit one susceptible to user error. So, in configuring this multiway copying system I managed to switch disks and make an empty drive the master...so all of the website data went the way of allshiv.com. Ever wondered what happened to data that got deleted by a delete method which didn't use the recycle bin (or what happens after emptying the recycle bin)?? So did I. After downloading some "recovery" software I have managed to retrieve all of the smallish files...but of the larger ones, 10% are toast. Notwhatyouwant.
As if that noncery wasn't enough, I managed to pour water over my laptop. After setting fire to the hard drive. This, 2 weeks after sitting on the wee, defenseless gem & squashing the life out of the monitor. Aiiiiieeeeeeee!
Stills from brewing Old Badger, katie b'day, the Penn Siblings' snowlessskitrip and COld times in Feb. Haven't figured out the frosties streaming video solution yet...if I didn't use flickr then am I really going to use youtube?? Apparently I am in the middle of a Tartley-style desire to inflict pain/misery/configuration/development on poor frosties2.
Skis Trees
Tuesday, 09 January 2007
The season started off promisingly -- an abundance of snow & willing accomplices. But the snow has shifted downslope to Denver, also the location my cracked, vicodin-hungry ribs.
Anyway, thanks to Seanie & his anti-shake/post-production skills we have some killer keystone debut footage.
Once upon a time, taking a flight was a thing of considerable, Christmas-for-kiddies excitement. Warm climes + holidays were at the other end of the outbound trip, typically to the Med. At some point in time that turned to mild amusement at discovering various parts of the usa. But now that those cities have been travelled to, the prospect of travelling to a drab conurbation in the US interior brings on feelings of dread & somnolence. Life "on the road" consists of the tedium of getting to/from the airport, the dullness of queuing to check in, the monotony of queuing for security, the joys of declothing/reclothing for security, unimaginably bland food, enduring frequent delays, withstanding the wah-wah-wah of "technology professionals" who broadcast their bluetooth/borg converstaions, waiting for the plane to take off, waiting for the drinks cart, waiting for the dunny to be free, white knuckling it through the turbulence with only Fightclub memories for comfort (go on, break up!), waiting for the plane to land, waiting to "deplane" ("we're just waiting for the gate to open"), waiting for the bags to arrive, waiting for transportation to get to destination, waiting to check into hotel.
That's another one right there!
And that's just the start...how could one forget such beauties as being incarcerated with a television in a concrete, soulless hotel? Having to hang out with co-workers _every_ night? The sheer, unadulterated delight of being dislocated in such a way reminds me of boarding school (without matron). The icing on the cake (the flying experience) is little more than a rehash of school detention. What did I do to deserve this particular DT? Can I not just do lines instead?
After nary a year of owning the Golden Badger it has been unceremoniously dumped from my possession. Looking at rednecks driving trucks or Chelsea tractors I realised that owning such a gas guzzler (15-17 mpg) was an untenable position. So it's gorn, and I will try to make it through winter without. Bike, Lightrail and Greyhound will be the way to go. As well as scamming lifts from everyone. TIA.
Separated at birth?
I have to admit to being deeply affected by the Al Gore flic . The part about ice melting in Greenland, disrupting the Gulf Stream and plunging Europe into another Ice Age was particularly perturbing. Although tree-hugging sentiment should be tempered by more right-wing common sense . In other words, I'm not getting a Pri(ap)us just yet.
Photies are updated, including slick snaps from 2006 and October in Sausalito. Summertime in Ravello-by-the-Pacific, tshirts & shorts while Colorado shivvered in the snow. Except for our burglars, who made off with, amongst other things, the space heater.
Re-Grand Opening
Tuesday, 19 September 2006
frosties2.com
Yes, yes, another 12 months of non-frosties action, the old site gathering dust nicely in New York, the new(er) one tucked away on the campbellappy betwixt London & Denver. I stumble out of 6 weeks of battling to get Auld Frosties snaps into some sort of separate-data-from-presentation thingy (thank you, regex-sed). But then I made the mistake of choosing a "content management system" which was no more than a veneer for addons you had to _pay_ for. More open fleece than open source. All I wanted out of a CMS/gallery system was, a F/flash front end in addition to HTML, a bog-standard blog & a random picture on the front. Not too much to ask for. Unless you use dotnetnuke. So I scrapped it. Re-bienvenue, mambo-joomla/menaltogallery/expose. I had to write a bridge -- sadly done in .NET & so unpostable to open source community -- to get the flash front end. Other barries included being forced to dabble in PHP and learning that you should never ever host PHP on IIS.
Dotnetnuke
Five things should ye know of new frosties:- 1) the photies are in two places 2) Slick Snaps is, well, more flash than slick. But you can't download photos for regurgitating on your own site (JB). 3) Snaps has a pretty cool full-screen slideshow but it's kinda tricky to figure out (wait 4 the java thing to finish & click "Start Slideshow". Click the "loop slideshow". Just once. Well it got me confused, innit). And slow. But you can alter the resolution of the piccies, essential if you want to print out a photo.s 4) PennCharts now has album covers, kind of cool if u don't buy albums & miss artwork. s 5) Players etc still linking back to Auld Frosties (not updated).
Next job is to load 2006 photies, curiously most of which appear to come from June.
One final word of caution. This site is served up from the katiecave on a 6 year old stolen lappy at the moment (what would Napoleon say? Oh yeah, "do not always tell ze truse"), and has UT on it. So it may not be performant. Until a real server has been procured...it stays at http://www.frosties2.com.
Home 
