Archive for the ‘ Site Updates ’ Category

recent events

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I have been busy with work and with busy designing my new look web site. So far all has gone reasonably well. I had a few issues uploading my images of the House Build last night, it seems that my hosting company had a few issues, as tonight the images have gone up without issue.

I will start with the new look site. I have been toying with a number of ideas, but none of them really appealed to me, they also caused me a few dramas with the design. Dreamweaver CS4 has some strange quirks with templates. I have had these problems before on previous versions. Thankfully I have powered on and worked through them, although, I have to say that I am still not 100% happy. Lets say it is down to the end user more than the program. My new site will be based on Photography, Video, Music and design. It will also feature the Mac and a little mention here and there on the PC. The site is still being worked on and toyed with, so don’t hold your breath, as I have yet to finish a web site of my own.

The House build. So far it is going well. There are a few hiccups, as to be expected with builders, plumbers and sparkies. They will always find an excuse to not be there when they are supposed to. It seems that the plumbing has taken a bit of a hammering from the major cleanup today. They have completed the task of putting storm water drains in and in this task have managed to damage 4 of the pipes used for water and sewer. I could understand this if they were just white, but they were sprayed yellow so they would stand out from the grey/white slab. The slab has now been cleared off and all the dirt moved off to fill in the drainage channels dug out to accommodate the pipes. Now residing on the slab is a selection of wooden frames, RSJ’s and other items. Hopefully this week the building will actually look like a house, or at least the makings of a house.

Work. I had to replace the switches in the small rack as one had given up the ghost and the other was old and only 100Mb connection. So off to the shop and 2 x 16 port switches and some new cat6 patch leads. So a complete rewire of the rack and finally get everyone and everything on the network connecting at 1Gb. Some would argue that there is no difference. At this point I would agree as the main link from the small rack is only cat5 cable and is double backing from outlet to rack then back to the main rack. Hopefully soon to be rewired correctly – Don’t ask, my predecessor had no idea.

The Mac…It works and works well. Need I say more?

Posted in Computers, Foto Gallery, General, House Build, Mac Project, Personal Blog, Site Updates, Web Sites, Work, photography | No Comments »

Gallery Update

Monday, February 1st, 2010

I have finally got most of the pictures up in my gallery (see right hand side menu). I have some earlier pictures to upload, but I will dig these out tomorrow. I will re-add some of the other pictures I had up there this week.

Posted in Foto Gallery, Site Updates | No Comments »

Gallery Update / Blog Update

Monday, February 1st, 2010

It has been a while since I have done anything with the gallery, which is linked to this site (and held on this site). I felt it was time to make some adjustments. Thankfully I remembered what my log in was, so I have deleted all the images, albums and categories, as they were pretty messed up. Coppermine gallery which comes as an add-on with my control panel, is a bit painful to upload, add an album. My first attempts were hap hazard and completely unorganized. I am starting to rebuild the gallery, change the theme and re add photos as I go.

Some photos of the house build are located on there, so check back for updates, as this will take a few days to get most of the House pictures on there, then I will add past photos on there and hopefully get the Categories and Albums right this time.

I have added a page to this blog dedicated to the House build, so any updates will appear here as a short note.

Posted in Blogz, Foto Gallery, House Build, Moving Home, Site Updates | No Comments »

New Theme

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

I have chosen this theme for its clean appearance. The only issue I have at the moment is the Archived items. For some silly reason the text is bold and enlarged, this is something I hope to rectify in the coming days. All other items appear to be ok.

Posted in Site Updates | 1 Comment »

stuff

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

It has been a funny start to the year so far. The house build is starting to take shape. I drove by this afternoon after work and took a few snap shots. So far the footings have been laid out and prepared for the concrete, so hopefully sometime in the next few days, it should be poured and left to dry.

Work has been full on with changes and major repairs. I mentioned that the main domain controller died on its ass the other week and left us high and dry. The so called ability to recover data from backups proved extremely hard work and non eventful. You would think that you would be able to recover the data using Windows own version of backing up and restoring, but oh no. Nothing was corrupted, Windows just decided on being an arse hole. So $200.00 or so later and a small but really useful download, I retrieved what data I could. The previous nights backup failed when the server crashed and yes, it was the only time you would wish this had never happened, everyone who needed their latest data…sadly didn’t get it! So off to a Data recovery expert, who worked remotely from the UK of all places to here in Sydney, resolved the problem with our three Raid Drives. Thankfully the amount of money we paid (lets just say it was rather a lot of money), actually worked.

So with that out of the way, a new server was ordered and delivered last Friday. The Server will go into the rack tomorrow and be worked on until such time I have to kick people off the system so that it can become the Main DC. I am also in the process of revamping one of our older servers. Citrix 2 box has been revamped and 2 more Gig or RAM has been added. This quite nicely runs Server 2008. I am just in the final throws of doing updates and organising for Citrix to be put on.

The Mac that has become my new best friend is still charming me into what it can offer. Thus far I am in the first stages of rebuilding my main web site, although for the past 5 years or so, this has been my only creative and active. Hopefully I can rekindle my creative juices in Music and Photography.

The new thing in my life which takes me away from computers and internet is Golf. The two rounds of golf I had this long weekend proved that it isn’t as easy as it looks. No matter how good youget in WII golf, you will never hit 300 metres in real life if you have never played a real game of golf.

Posted in Computers, General, Life Down Under, Mac Project, Music, Personal Blog, Site Updates, Work | No Comments »

XP vs Vista

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

It has been a short while since I last posted on here. I have been busy with Facebook. The reason why I have been busy with facebook is simple. Friendsreunited have gone free, so anyone can register on there and take full advantage of the features. Every now and again I get e-mails telling me that someone new has joined, so I log onto reunited and check out whos who. I managed to find a few more people and drop them a message to say Hi and find out what they are upto these days.

I was told that most of the people I worked with at U-NET/Via Not Works were on facebook, so I edited my profile and added a few people I knew, which led onto a few more and more. I have been so tied up with it, chatting to an Old mate Shaun, whom I used to work Night Shift with, all those years ago. It has been fun stomping down memory lane. So whats this got to do with Vista vs XP or vice versa?

It was easier trying to find these people than it is to find work arounds or do simple things that I could do in XP. I decided that i would try and edit/create my own theme, so I downloaded some server software so i could trial out my ideas and test my own designs on things not relating to my blog. My main site has been dormant for years, I felt it was time to do something about it. Even if its a basic homepage with a few gadgets and gismos, until i can add something worthy of the bandwidth (as if this isn’t).

I tried 2 lots of server apps, Xampp and Wamp Server. Both looking good, easy to install, but windows Vista does like to mess with your head. So having used Xamp before and know it works well, I tried that, no success. Tried installing WordPress and 500 server errors all the time, tried running as Admin, made no difference.

Music Software had serious issues too. Sadly no more as I have deleted them off the system, kinda defeats me having a shiny new fast laptop. So my decision is to replace Vista with XP. I just need to ensure that all the gizzmos work under XP. So tonight I have breathed life back into an old machine, in various states of decay. Currently sitting on a format of 74% so not long to go before Xp begins to install. I used a Maxtor CD to erase the drive and format etc. Now windaz is doing the same. Just to make sure. I really do miss FDISK, such a wonderful tool to have in your arsenal.

Still waiting on Mickey Soft to get back to me, called them 6 days ago, still no response. But hey, i kinda new that would happen. I complained that Vista was the spawn of satan and rather than moving forward, I was taking wacking big leaps backwards. I suppose I didn’t help my cause?

81% and maybe i can do some actual design work and trial it out on a system that will allow me to.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Blogz, General, Music, Personal Blog, Site Updates, Web Sites | No Comments »

New Look – Part Two

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

Ok, lets try this one again. Time for a new look and maybe a new direction. Whilst this blog is a personal thing, that I have somehow managed to keep alive all this months, maybe even 3 years almost. I feel that it could, if not already be a tad stale. So I have been mooching around the web and found other like minded blogs and web sites based on Photography and Music. Whilst both of these subjects are close to my heart, moreso the Music, I thought maybe, and this is purely an idea at the moment, that I should bias the blog towards both.

But. The whole concept of this blog was to rant and rave in both calm and crazy, with all stops inbetween, I think that it would lose some of its appeal. I could include more techy stuff on PC/MAC but I know less than nothing worthy of printing. Lucky I can find my way round a desktop and operate the mouse these days. Patience is a virtue that I sadly lack. I cannot imagine myself sat at a desk with a plantronics headset on and trying to help some poor fool who is worse off than me. That is a picture I refuse to look at, even consider going back to.

The theme issues or Templates as I called them before, this was PMC – Pre Morning Coffee, was based on the fact I was using Dreambeaver to upload files into my blog. For some reason when you move your files or folders within the dreamweaver environment, it will automatically update links. This for the most part is good. However, I think I may have opted for the Do Not Update method and maybe I stuffed a few things up. There, I said it. So I take it back. At least they are creating nice ‘templates’ – Themes for others to use, whereas I dont even create anything. I just type on here, why? God Knows!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Blogz, General, Site Updates | No Comments »

2 days on

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Well, so far so good. i haven’t really had too much time to play with my new toy, however, what time i have spent, has been doing updates…yes Service Pack 1 for Vista. How long has it been out? Well, I only mentioned this a couple of days ago to Sam and sure enough, whilst doing the first batch of updates on this Laptop. Service pack 1 rears its ugly head up. I wonder if when Service pack 2 appears that it tuns Vista Home Premium into Ultimate, similar to what XP service pack 2 did to XP home.

I have managed to transfer most of my crap onto the Hp and have installed some of my favourite, but unused software, Dreamweaver et al. I just need to install some DVD/CD writing software. Sadly it came with bare minimum and a 30 day trial of Orifice.

Now onto the update of the blog. 2.5 has a disliking to IE7. What I hear you say. Well, try uploading an image and adding it into your blog. Unless the skin I am using has issues with WordPress 2.5 I am not sure. I have installed Firefox and have used that to compose my posts, that seems to work without any issues. I have also tried this on two different machines.

Ah well, the only things I need to do now is install my music software and see how it fairs on this little beauty.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Computers, General, Music, Personal Blog, Site Updates | No Comments »

Update to my links

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

Hmm, thought I had done this already, obviously not, but then I have changed hosts since then. Confused yet? I am! And I am writing this. So what am I prattling on about? My Link to my Gallery. You can’t miss it. Its listed under My Sites and there is an image as the link. Pretty cluey stuff this blog thing. Shame the owner isn’t half as brainy :-)

Posted in Blogz, Site Updates | No Comments »

Gallery is up and running

Monday, July 16th, 2007

Here is the link

http://andybarrow.com.au/gallery/

Posted in Blogz, Foto Gallery, Site Updates | No Comments »

« Older Entries