They Took My Web Site Away

One of the minor disasters that transpired unnoticed during the time of my surgery and the early recovery phase was that my ISP unceremoniously terminated its free Web page support. As a result, the Farm House Journal is currently offline.

To review, the Farm House Journal (FHJ) is the precursor of, and companion to, this blog. I started it in 1999 with no comprehensive plan in mind, and so by the time I approached the end of Chapter IV, in early 2011, it was a chaotic mess, both textually and in terms of Web design.

From chapter to chapter, I would alternate between a present-tense journalistic style and a past-tense narrative style. The page layout also kept changing, sometimes within chapters, and navigation was awkward. Worst of all, I kept falling farther and farther behind in the story.

By the time I started Chapter IV, I had finally figured out what I wanted the FHJ to be, and I resolved to go back and re-write the first three chapters, but I was still clueless regarding how to fix the navigation, and in the event I was far too busy to undertake such a job at the time, because I had at last begun the exterior restoration in earnest.

And so, I started this blog, just to get a fresh start with current events while I figured out how to get the FHJ back on track. Added benefits were much easier and quicker posting, plus the ability to post video. After going on to complete Chapter IV, I just left the Web site to languish, while linking to it from here occasionally.

Once I realized that the FHJ was offline, I at first resolved to get it back up as soon as possible with a new hosting service. When I reviewed it, however, I quickly changed my mind, because aside from its textual and navigational problems, its Web design is fully twenty years out of date.

I created the site at a time when people were still using dial-up modems and CRT monitors with a 4:3 aspect ratio and at best 1280 by 1024 resolution. Moreover, the Web browsers used at the time varied wildly regarding how they interpreted HTML. I thus kept things as simple as possible, so the site would load quickly, with a consistent appearance across all platforms.

The situation now is quite different. Today’s high-resolution, widescreen displays render my 1999 design almost unreadable, with tiny fonts and long, long lines of text. The site is even less readable on cell phones and tablets.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

On the other hand, today's HTML gives one far more control over presentation, with fairly uniform look and feel across all platforms, and virtually everyone is using the latest version of their preferred browser. And by “virtually everyone,” I mean everyone but you, Nik.

And so, the FHJ will remain offline for the time being, while I take this golden opportunity to re-write and redesign it, and redirect the links to it from here. Of course, before I do this, I must learn how to code a modern Web site. This process is likely to take some time.

Please bear with me while I work to get the FHJ back online, and remember in the meantime not to click on any links that go to it. That way lies madness.

* * *

"Non legit illud. Non nimis longum esset."

Whahoppen?

Wow, bummer. The world didn't end after all, so I have to keep on painting the danged house.

Now, before I go on, let me make clear that I'm not making fun of Christians here; that would be to make fun of myself, too. No, I'm making fun of idiot publicity-hounds. For the record, this whole Jesus-is-returning-on-date-certain is un-Christian on its face. Jesus himself said that we won't know of His return beforehand. You can look it up. So this "preacher", whoever he is, will have a lot of splainin to do when he gets upstairs for leading his flock astray.

Anyway, I was going to say that I can at least understand why people might think this was the end times, even though people have been thinking that for at least the last 150 years or so. I mean, the weather alone is enough to raise suspicion. It's been horribly devastating in other parts of the country. Hereabouts, thank goodness, the weather has merely been odd, sometimes bordering on the bizarre, since the beginning of Winter. 

Goodness knows it's slowed my work down considerably. Rain has stymied me for weeks at a time. Even the threat of rain has done so when I'm ready to paint. Truth be told, I've caught very few breaks since I started the project. Even now, just when I'm really beginning to enjoy writing this blog, a number of issues have arisen involving my computers that have really put a wrench in my desire to bring you more multimedia content. 

As of today, it's even prevented my bringing you pictures of the work. I uncovered the big knothole I was telling you about, and took a lot of pictures. Some were to show you, and others were just for my reference, with a ruler held across various spans to assist my preparing a patch. I brought the camera in and put the flash card in my laptop, waited for them to copy over, then ejected the card, put it back in my camera, and erased the images in the camera so that I'd not get crossed up regarding which were new. Then I went back to the laptop to process the pictures, and they weren't there. This is just the latest incident in a run of erratic behavior, and I can read the handwriting on the wall: the thing needs a complete disk wipe and re-loading of Windows. All you Johnny Appleseeds, smirk here. 

No problem, right? I have my desktop as a backup. Uh, no; its hard disk is completely full, with nothing I can delete, so I have to install another hard disk. So I have two big computer projects, and no time in which to do them. You know, sometimes I suspect that somebody up there hates me.

I'm afraid, Dear Reader, that this all spells H-I-A-T-U-S for this blog, until such time as I can take care of my computer problems. There's not much point to my posting without pictures. I'll do my best to take pictures as I go along, so that when I do return here I can catch you all up with the proceedings.

Until then, Mazel Tov, and have a great Spring!

Hey, You, Get Offa My Cloud

Well, dang. I don't like meta posts, but the good folks at Blogger, the friendly blog host, had a disaster, and the result is that I haven't been able to post for about 24 hours, and one of my posts has gone to visit Richie Cunningham's older brother upstairs on Cloud Nine. But never fear, dear reader: if the post does not return, I have a copy.

See link below for even more metaphysics.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger is back: "What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal..."

Oppressive Comments Regime Deposed

When I set this blog up, I didn't look closely at how the comments were to be handled. When I started to hear back about difficulties in commenting, I found I could post my own comment without a problem.

The thing is, I'm a registered Blogger user, so I got right past all the barriers that were there to keep out the hoi polloi without noticing them. Happily, at last my wife Lydia investigated the matter and smartened me up.

I have removed all barriers now, so posting a comment here will no longer be like buying Sudafed. In the "comment as" dropdown box, simply choose "Anonymous". I'd get rid of that box altogether, but that doesn't seem to be an option.