Tag Archives: zx81

Bah!

So there I was, trying to be a good Internet citizen. I updated my web server to use the latest version of Linux and… Boom! It would display the first post and then just peter out.

Unfortunately I don’t have the time or patience right now to track down exactly what the problem is — presumably something to do with PHP — so here you go: a new theme. It’s one of the ones I considered before I switched last time. A bit more minimal, more monochrome than last time. I like the minimal, and the lack of colour makes the pictures pop a bit more so it’s not all bad.

I just hadn’t planned on switching just yet…

My delicious.com bookmarks for February 26th through March 7th

Nine Best Posts of 2010

I didn’t think that I had blogged very much this year, but now that I look back over it seems that I’ve done quite well. There have only been a few PhotoFriday challenges that I’ve missed and I’ve managed a fair few travel and even the odd technical blog.

None of this years blogs have done especially well in terms of page impressions but here are a few that I liked for various reasons.

In terms of travel, I had more than my fair share of problems. A trip to Turkey was cancelled at the last minute due to the infamous ash cloud. A strike very nearly meant that we didn’t get to New York for a wedding. And a heavy work schedule and a new job meant that my annual November trip was in jeopardy.

  • Salisbury. Not quite as glamorous as Istanbul, but given the lemons of the ash cloud I thought we did pretty well with the lemonade of Wiltshire ((Not sure that works but you know what I mean.))
  • Paris. I spent quite a lot of time in Paris this year so I had to include the post about it
  • New York. Like Paris, I’d been to New York before. There’s something to be said for “hanging out” in a city that you (vaguely) know

For me there’s a thin line between “photography” and “travel” blogs but I do occasionally post images that are not directly connected to a trip.

  • Early Snow. This year has been book-ended by heavy snow. I should be getting good at taking pictures of it by now…
  • Corked. I like this because it’s very simple but effective, and not the kind of thing that I normally do
  • The Perils of Working from Home. As with the above, I often get ideas but don’t find the time to actually implement them. This one took longer than you’d imagine but I thought it was quite funny. Yes, I should probably get out more

And, finally, there were even some slightly more technical posts.

  • What is “polish”? I wish more people would understand that there’s more to a good iOS application that pretty icons and slick animations
  • Delicious Debrief. This five part post allowed me to vent my frustration over Yahoo!s handling of some changes they implemented late last year
  • Communication. I had this post in draft form for several years, but I couldn’t figure out how to finish it. I’m not sure this is the best post I’ve ever written but I include it here because I did eventually get it out the door!

I’d also like to add honourable mentions to my Sleeping Japanese and Saving State posts. And, finally, a big thank you to you for reading.

My delicious.com bookmarks for November 16th through December 1st

  • The November Plan – Post now updated with my recent trip to Austria.
  • Apple’s Mistake – "How much of the goodwill Apple once had with programmers have they lost over the App Store? A third? Half? And that's just so far. The App Store is an ongoing karma leak."
  • The Daily Shoot – A great idea to help people (myself included!) to take more pictures. I think a lot of us have the will, just not the time or inspiration. Time is hard but inspiration just got a little easier.

New Host

Welcome to ZX81.org.uk’s new host. It may look the same as the old one but will hopefully be more reliable!

If you missed the full story, here’s how I reported it on the old server:

If you came here a day or two ago you probably found that ZX81.org.uk was missing.

It turns out that this was not just an extended outage but a planned maintenance activity where they moved my account from one server to another.

Not that they told me — or their own server monitoring tool — about this.

This lack of communication meant that the linkage from the name to the actual server was broken and that no-one, myself included, could access it.

The link has now been restored and if you’re reading this is working correctly.

Hopefully the next change will be a little more seamless. Next change? Yes, frankly this was the final straw and I’m moving ZX81 to a new web host. Hopefully things will be a little more reliable from now on.