A few weeks back, some entries and some comments vanished off the blog, because there was an issue with the mysql migration. They’ve been recovered, in the form of a database backup, I’m just not sure it’s worth the effort to get extract them and put them back up. It was interesting, because one entry in particular that I was in the process of rewriting was the one that I noticed first as missing. Briefly, I considered the possibility that someone had intentionally removed it. Given the security precautions, that seemed extremely unlikely. Still, it was an interesting sequence of paranoia.
Category: Administrative
Notes on running the site.
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Starlit Citadel, and Advertising.
Starlit Citadel is my FLGS of choice, despite not being all that local to me, having hours that totally don’t overlap with my work schedule, and them being more a warehouse than a store. I met them a few years back at Gottacon, and we’ve run into each other at various places since then. I’ve even helped them move. No surprise there, who haven’t I helped move?
For ages now, I’ve been referring people to their site, though I haven’t actually been using the referral links, so I haven’t been getting the Citizen Rewards bonus points that I should be getting; it’s a pretty nice program, btw… I’ve used it to get a decent number of free games.
Well, now they’ve set up an affiliate program, so I’m going to be adding those links to a couple of places on my blog. Mostly to posts referring to games that were purchased from Starlit, or could be purchased from them now, since a few of my games weren’t originally available from them, but have since been brought in.
I’ve been told that this whole social networking thing can bring in money, and while I doubt that’ll happen in this case, I’m at least curious to give it a shot.
When I initially tried to add their link to my blog, it didn’t work properly, partially because I’m running adblock plus, which I’d forgotten I’d left running. While Starlit aren’t at all excessive in their ads, they’re going through an affiliate company that provides ads to a ton of other companies, which explains why adblock has them blocked. So, I’ll be modifying some of their ads to make them work with my site, and trying to get them to still function with the affiliate code.Below is a sample of what I intend to be using.
Purchased at Starlit Citadel
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tech woes
I haven’t been writing much lately, partially because I had a major technological failure the other day and managed to have both my Nexus 5 and my 14″ chromebook cease functioning.
My ancient macbook doesn’t really have the battery to be of much use as a writing tool, if it isn’t plugged in someplace. My desktop is an option, but the chair in front of it doesn’t seem conductive to great writing.
The backup cellphone, currently can’t log into wordpress, as it lacks NFC, so my security protocols won’t let it on. I could bypass that, but I haven’t really felt it was worth the effort.
I keep thinking about replacing my chromebook, but I can’t decide on a particular flavor, and I keep hearing that the new specs in the fall will be worth waiting for. Though with a chromebook, the specs aren’t overly relevant.
I liked the 14″, but it was a bit big, even if it was lightweight. I could go with a 11″, but will the keyboard be wide enough? My hands are rather large.
My specs are pretty simple. Lightweight, comfortable keyboard, long battery life. Screen quality doesn’t matter much, processor isn’t a big deal; overall, cheaper tends to be better.
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Future Projects
I’m debating making changes to this site, for the purposes of making it more functional. One of the major changes I’m thinking of putting together a link to some of the content I’m more fond of, either as a header or a sidebar. I might also add in a function to sort by category easier. I’m not sure how many people interact with my site, so I’m not sure how much work I should put into making it easier to interact with.
I’m also considering learning how to do some basic audio/video production, and potentially putting together a podcast/youtube channel. I think I’d need co-host/cohort, I’m not sure who I know who has the time.
I’m also thinking of working on more written articles, but the big limitation on that is that I tend to get a bit demoralized when I’m not getting much in the way of feedback on the stuff I’m working on. It’s a difficult balance, because too much feedback can be as bad as too little, since it can make me self-conscious about what I’m working on.
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Mayday…
So, the last while… things have happened. Nothing major, beyond Gram coming back to the house for at least one night, and maybe more. That’ll be a bit different. I suspect I’ll stress in the evenings for a bit, til I get used to her being back here. Mostly just not sure she wants to be alone for that long. Though I know she’s got plenty of friends who will come over and visit, if she lets them know she wants company. For now, I think she’ll want just piece and quiet.
I ended up getting some new hardware, a spare tower from Chris at work, which I’ve yet to actually move components over into. That’s a project I should have worked on today, but I didn’t. Instead I built another website. My third or fourth this week. Though really they’re just wordpress installs that I’m setting up with some minor bits and bobs, and are fairly barebones at the moment.
One of them I set up for my friend Kylie, as a birthday present. I bought her a .ninja domain. I’ve still got a few things to do to get that up 100%, but for now, it’s a start. When she has finished celebrating her birthday, we’ll actually get all the functionality working. aredbaroness.ninja, for the curious.
Today, while having coffee with Julia, and telling her about the site I built for Kylie, we decided to build her a site, so we built juliarants.com, a place for her rants. It’s lacking in content, but given Julia’s passion, I don’t expect it to stay that way for long.
I built a site for work the other day, that I won’t link here, which is going to be a knowledge base, with some internal and external facing bits. I’ve yet figure out the long term of it, but in the short term, I’m happy with it.
Prior to that, I built a site for Nick Black, because he’s been asking for a site to be built for a while now and while I think I’m not worth paying, he was happy with what I was able to build for him. And despite his initial protests that he’s not any good with it, he picked up the basics of WordPress pretty quick. It’s one of those things that is far more intimidating in people’s heads than it is once you sit down in front of it.
While I probably could have billed him for hours and hours of updates, but I’d rather just get him comfortable putting up his own updates. I’m perfectly happy getting paid to create content, but for some reason I’m not a fan of getting paid to move content from one place to another. I think it’s a moral objection. Either I’m not getting paid enough for it to be worth my time, or I’m getting paid far more than the job is worth, and neither of those appeal to me.
Anyways, enough rambling. I’ve built blackandbluebdsm.com for Nick Black, and I’ll be working with him in the future to develop and promote it. My 2/3rds of a marketing degree are going to get put to good use.
My next project, is probably to learn more about how SEO works. Since that’s something I’m fairly clueless about. I should also work on adding the internal sections to the secret new work site, and figure out the security bits on those. Having an easily update-able page for “Known and Suspected Issues” seems like it would be a good thing. Or maybe just a category with posting functionality. I need to figure out the best solution. Well, that’s what experimentation is for.
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Cleaning up my categories.
Just doing some vague maintenance on the site, cleaning up the various categories that I’ve got things flagged under. I probably need to add a few more categories, especially as I add more random posts.
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Domlander 2015
Well, that was a fun night. I wrote a decent piece. It’s up over here, at Erotic Vancouver. And now I’m tired. Tomorrow, I’m going to wander Victoria for a bit. Maybe do some ingressing.
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Live Blog.
Well, I’m about to make another attempt to channel the spirit of Spider Jerusalem once again, and put together a live blog. A stream of my thoughts, coherent enough to be understood and interesting enough to be worth reading. If you’re curious what I’m up to tonight, it’ll be going up over on EroticVancouver.com.
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Obviously, I need to write more.
Today I decided to invest another $100 into my 2009 White Unibody Macbook. I’ve already replaced the main hard drive with an SSD to keep it functional and stripped out the CD room drive for a space to throw in a bigger storage drive.
While my chromebook is my preferred machine for writing on while I’m mobile, the mac, when plugged in, is still a better machine to work on, especially since I can actually load a bunch of applications and have them all function properly. On the chromebook, I’m having to root it, load a xfce shell, and then install the apps inside that. It’s just a bit more work than I want to do most of the time.
At some point, I need to get around to resyncing my ubikeys & lastpass implementations. It’s currently only working on my cellphone and my desktop, and it would be handy to have it available on all my other machines. But that’s my own fault since the password string I used for it is rather long and complicated, as it is a master password after all.
At some point, I need to see about modifying some SIP phones for wifi usage. Those will come in handy.
In the meantime, I’ve set up a SIP account that will be able to reach me as a local Vancouver call, where ever I might be at the time. I’m not sure how useful this number is to people, but it now exists.
Perhaps I’ll change the voicemail and set it up as a call-in number for comments. Or perhaps I’ll get a 1-877 number for that. I can currently get those at a nicely reduced rate.
I should get back to my writing, especially the Drunken Wormhole story. I think I should remove the working title and replace it with something a little more subtle, though I’m not sure what would work. Perhaps something related to grapes into wine, with a biblical grapes of wrath reference. Sowing the Grapes of Suffering perhaps.
I started writing up some of our shadowrun stories, over on reddit, they went over fairly well. Though without the players around, it’s a little harder to write those up at this point. Although, we do have the audio logs for most of those sessions somewhere. It might be worth going through those to pull out some key events.
I’ve been meaning to write up a few more board game reviews also. I played Cthulhu Wars the other day, and Roll for the Galaxy last night, both those could use a review. I’m not sure how well received those are, as I don’t really get much feedback for them.
I don’t really feel like writing when I’m home these days. At least not at my desk. And I haven’t really had much inclination to write when I’ve been out, as I’ve been on the macbook and it’s been in that limbo state. With the new power supply, maybe I can be more confident in it.
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Thoughts on a rainy day
I’ve noticed that it’s been nearly a week since my last post. Well, I posted something in the meantime, but I posted it elsewhere, so that doesn’t count. It’s felt like a busy week, even though not much has happened.
Mostly I’m killing time until the end of the mouth. Gottacon, over in Victoria. Gaming and socializing. And of course the Portal 2 musical.
And then the following month, Domlander. The current plan is that I’ll get set up with a table where I can write about it live during the show. I’m looking forward to that.
Speaking of writing, I bought a digital copy of Volume 1 of Transmetropolitan. The scene with Spider on the rooftop, that was what I was reminded of, when I was liveblogging at Taboo. Not quite the same impact obvious. Much more similar to his rally against the churches in Volume 2. But, the point was, I had a laptop and my words were going out live. If only I was a glasshole, I’d have his ability to snap pictures on command. Still, the ability to take pictures was rarely vital. His key characteristic was the writing. That and his dedication to the truth.
I’ve been trying to get my friends to read at least Volume 1. Especially my friends over at EroticVancouver; Reive, Mikey, that’d be you.
