What’s in a (Domain) Name?

Fiddling around with the internet and starting a blog has led me into deeper waters technologically speaking than I have the capacity to navigate easily. Six years after starting a blog on Blogger, I find myself with a blog, a photo gallery, a cover web page and a web page of writings. All of these are hosted on a site in Germany, recommended to me by a computer/web savvy friend, Larry Burton.

I have three domains registered with the appropriate internet authorities. Two of the names are the same except for the suffix, incorporealworks.org and incorporealworks.com. From the earliest days of owning a PC, I have used “Incorporeal Works” as the name asked for as either the computer itself, or the business name with which I am associated. There never has been any business called “Incorporeal Works” that I know about, although when I first tried to register incorporealworks.com I found that somebody in California already had that domain name, as well as a couple of others using the base name with different suffixes. Dot Org was available, so I registered that, and kept an eye on Dot Com until this past year it became available, and I pounced on it.

Server Blues

Over the past several months, the hosting service I use has been tinkering with their server clusters, and today reworked the SQL server, which holds all the databases for my blog. My pages were down for two and a half hours, coming up slow and sluggish. I noticed that many of the posts and pages had strange characters sprinkled though the text. So far, I don’t think any actual data has been lost, just some background noise kicking up some extraneous garbage.

Previously, switching my program files from one cluster to another resulted somehow in my Gallery2 program being unable to recognize uploads. So for two months, I have been unable to build new photo albums. I have about decided to upgrade to the latest version of G2, but such undertakings are daunting to a technophobe, but I suppose with proper backups, nothing too bad can happen. Heh.

The hosting service has been pretty good value for the past four years, I hope that does not change.

Mixed Reviews

Another day, additional issues and some progress. Late this morning, my connection to the internet slowed to a crawl, especially the upload part. No pictures went up to my Gallery server, and after a while even downloads became problematical. As of now, things are better, and once again internet connectivity is mine, although still not up to par.

I suppose, considering the complexity of processes that whisk my keystrokes through unimaginably byzantine skeins of wire and silicon, I should be grateful that I can connect at all. And I am.

But, oh, please gods of the internet aether, restore my full connection tomorrow. I will sacrifice seven virgins to the web volcano, supposing I can find that many.

A day’s difference

A fresh day, a few new problems, but all is well with my Gallery installation for the present. I still have to figure out how to embed the gallery into my CMS page, leaving room around the images for text. I should learn just to walk away when frustration goads me into shouting at the computer and cursing software geeks. It is amazing anybody can write software I can use at all. Props to all geeks.

Now, back to uploading lots of pictures. Heh.

A Long Day

I suppose this post will qualify as a rant. I have spent the better part of a day trying to puzzle out how to make several programs do what I want them to do, rather than what their creators imagined they should do.

FTP. A protocol for transferring files from one source to a destination, in my case, from my computer hard drive to a server where I keep my web files. I had used successfully a free program for several years, which lately became purchase-only. I tried to load and use a couple of free programs to avoid paying $37.00 for a real copy of the FTP program that had served me well. Both free programs refused to talk to my hosting service, so after four hours of effort, googling tech advice and checking all sorts of help forums, I finally spent the money for the program I knew would work. Ten minutes, and I was up and running.

Now I have spent the past two hours trying to make a bulk update function work with my photo gallery program. Problems are presently insoluble for me. Too late at night. I will try again tomorrow, when I am more functional mentally.

Somewhere, pimply-faced geeks are guffawing over my cluelessness, I am sure.

Simple Things

…are the most likely answers to computer problems. I spent several hours today eliminating many possible problems which might be the cause of my computer refusing to acknowledge the existence of the internet. I had clicked on MS updater to load XP Service Pack 3, an install which churned on for an hour before crashing. Some message about a lack of memory flashed across the screen, and I re-booted, my main recourse when things go wrong.

That is about the extent of my knowledge of things computer wise, so I don’t know why when I saw there was still a problem after rebooting, I went through so many self-inflicted changes. Finally, tonight when the grandchildren went to bed, it occurred to me to simply run the installation again. After a l-o-o-n-g time (I do have an anemic RAM) the update completed successfully. Reboot, and bingo, every thing is copacetic.

At least this time I didn’t rage and scream and throw things, my second line of defense when the computer goes all sulky on me. Maybe I am maturing. At sixty-four, about time that happened.

Instructions unintelligible-to me

I am fighting the battle of software upgrades again, this time it’s WordPress and Gallery2. I am not sure where the conflict is, but I can’t get Gallery2 to embed in the content management page I set up for photos. One problem I am sure involves my effort to embed Gallery in this CMS page which I have on a different subdomain, but on the same server. Should work, if I understand the instructions. But it doesn’t, so I probably once again am failing Instruction Comprehension 101.

I did briefly succeed in partially embedding Gallery in the old CMS page, which I want to retire, which is in the same subdomain.

Feh. I will tackle it again this weekend, early in the day when a few more synapses are firing. I am not a late-night person for any task, especially tech stuff.

PHP, mySQL, and other mysteries

I have been working on several linked web pages for the past eight or nine months, starting with a blog I set up with WordPress, a blogging software package. The price was right-free-and courtesy of my friend Larry, I found a hosting package which was extremely affordable. I ported my other compatible blog, from Blogger, and have been tinkering with my blog ever since.

I have also used the template from the blog as a pattern for several other pages, a home page with miscellaneous stuff on it, two pages of photographs and a page indexing some writing I did years ago.

The blog template works with PHP scripting on the host server, pulling data from a mySQL database. The other pages I have adapted from the template and stylesheet used by the blog, but rendered in my primitive version of HTML.

I find myself unsatisfied with this mixed and cobbled-together merging of different styles. I have been mulling over the question of whether I could manage to convert my other pages to a setup similar to the blog page. Setting up another database on the hosting server, which already has PHP and mySQL, adapting some of the code from the blog to serve my needs on the other pages. Or even downloading the necessary software to my computer to do local work on the pages, uploading if I actually get the pages to work.

Searching various tutorial sites on the internet on these subjects, I think maybe I could. It would take some time, and lots of mistakes on my part (the only way I ever figure out anything to do with computers) but is should be possible.

Things may get a little messy. Um, they will get very messy. But the experience will be satisfying, I think.

Bilbo and Zambollum

Down the twisting, dripping cave passage, Bilbo made his careful way, drawn by low, muttering sounds just ahead. A dim, grey-green glow outlined a opening into a large room with a stagnant pool covering most of the floor. The heavy, damp air was rank with the odor of rotting food. Bilbo peered around the room and saw that the glow came from an oblong screen in a frame on a slab of stone. Seated on a block of limestone in front of the screen, a vast, sagging form in layers of ragged cloth was intoning a sing-song complaint, peering intently into the screen, on which strange characters could just be made out, scrolling upwards. The figure was facing away from Bilbo, so the hobbit slowly made his way along a outcropping of rock, closer to the figure. Underfoot nasty things were squishing and sliding around, scraps of moldy pizza, twinkie crusts and fried fish sticks, with some rotting fruit to add to the unpleasantness. Mounds of crumpled giant-size soda cups stretched out around the creature in soggy, decaying piles. The odor of old cooking grease and stale munchies was overpowering.

The mound of rag-covered monster was muttering louder now, Bilbo could make out some words, in the Old Tongue.

“Ye-s-s-s-s, my Preciousssss, the tricksey ones hate Zambollum, we knows this, they are nasty things, bad hobbitses, they are always cruel to Zambollum, they would take you, Precious, and Zambollum would be alone, ye-s-s-s-s, alone in the dark, they tried when first Zambollum came to the Cave, hateful, nasty hobbitses, some of them wanted to ban Zambollum, take my Preciousss away, but I knew some of them Zambollum could tell soft words to, make them sorry for Zambollum, they told the others not to be mean, not to ban Zambollum, silly hobbitses are so stupid, Zambollum hates them all but they will suffer, they must read my words, they must, they must, my Precious, Zambollum will make the tricksey hobbitses sorry, I will make more words, and more, and more, the hobbitses will be angry, but Zambollum will wail and cry to make them guilty, ye-s-s-s-s-s, my Precious, it always works, hobbitses are stupid, stupid nasty things, they would take my Precious, would they, I will show them, Zambollum remembers every time the hobbitses said evil thingsss, yesssss, Zambollum does, Zambollum never forgets, their cruel words are all in my archives, I read them over often, my Precious, they are all on your hard drive, the nasty hobbitses have forgotten them but Zambollum never forgets…

Bilbo’s hair stood up on his neck, and he carefully backed out of the room, then hurried out of the Cave. He must warn the other hobbits of the evil that was Zambollum.

Mystery on the Incorporeal Express

For some reason, I can no longer link to my own main page. I am diverted to my “dashboard” page here on Blogger. I can link to previous posts, but never see my main page other than with an old post on it. Trying a new, test post to see what happens.

Feh.