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| Servus A Manu posted by Viktor Randell on 04-15-2007 12:06 | |
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Nearly two months ago I first proposed my newest project. I again return to these boards to announce that it is completed, or perhaps more accurately, that it is sufficiently put together to warrant being used. Completed, as a word, has too many connotations of finality. Without further babbling, the website is ServusaManu.com. With luck it shall serve admirably as a companion website to this one. Neither is meant to dislodge the other, however, that one shall, at least for a time, be the better maintained of the two. In that sense this post is also a notice of sabbatical, though my presence has never been particular constant. Servusamanu is more than capable of introducing itself, but I would ask that everyone give it the occasional view. ~Robert Drake |
| A Return posted by Viktor Randell on 02-20-2007 20:39 | |
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I have not written in quite a while. I would offer that I have been inordinately busy, but that is a poor excuse. It has not been time that has prevented me from being consistant in updates, but rather motivation. I find it difficult to spend the time necessary to write something worthy of being posted for seemingly no reason at all. The surroundings do not justify the effort. That is not quite true, but it is an easy pitfall. The solution is partly a matter of being more disciplined, but to some extent a change in direction is necessary. It is thus here that I am announcing a few sweeping that changes that are planned for the next few months. Firstly, the present site will remain basically the same as it is. It shall continue to be updated with works as they are granted. The only change that this site may experience, is a different URL. Instead of being VikRandell.com it may go to some other name. That is not yet decided and generally unimportant. When I'm ready to make such a change I'll announce it. The more important update will be the creation of a separate site. This shall remain on my current hosting and merely be a second block of organization placed under yet another URL. That name is likewise undecided. This new site is in essence to allow me, Vik Randell, out of the Drakonian Shadow. This new site shall consistant entirely of a blog format such as this. In fact the main delay in implementation is not actual site design (which will be weeks at a minimum), but rather finding an acceptable way to create and organize this daily content. And daily it will be. The goal is for each day to have a topic. Ex. Monday will be politics, Tuesday video games, Wedensday... In this way I'll have a bit more structure in my own posting, but still hit a wide variety of topics. Likely one day, Saturday perhaps, will be something of a grab back. Further, I'd like to make Sunday, or at least the occasional Sunday, something of a guest day. Instead of putting my own short essay up I'll throw up someone else's work. That'll give me a day off, as well as add some needed variety. In the new page content will consist solely of the previous week's essays being archived by day. Thus there will be almost no content initially, but it will very quickly grow. As it is now, these posts of mine tend to be lost. The new page shall hopefully be a corrective for that. Thesee are plans of mine are rather ambitious and I have not even yet begun to implement them, but I see the process as a logical continuation of the general improvement this site has made. I mention these plans as a foretaste of what it is to come and as acknowledgment that posts will likely be sparse until such time as it's completed. |
| Rain and Snow, oh my posted by Viktor Randell on 01-31-2007 18:17 | |
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About a week ago, (the 22nd) it briefly snowed and then rained in Phoenix. It's a rare enough occurance to be noteworthy and in this case...image worthy. It also gives me an opportunity to see how powerful this blogger script really is. Thus far it's served me well and it's high time I start messing with all the features. I have no intention describing each picture (This is a rainy sky in phoenix...this is phoenix while its raining...this is rain...in phoenix. etc etc.) The first picture however is my foul-weather friend. This nameless cat has been extorting me for cat food for the last few months. During the rainstorm he decided that my apartment would be the perfect place to hide out. He left soon thereafter, but returns faithfuly every day for his handful of crunchies...hrmph. No gratitude. Without further ado... |
| The Onion posted by Viktor Randell on 01-28-2007 12:46 | |
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This article has been cracking me up all day. |
| A Tale of Two ISPs? posted by Viktor Randell on 01-27-2007 20:13 | |
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I have Qwest internet. It is the only internet available to me at my current locations. Locally, two companies provide 90% of the service around here. The first is Qwest, the other is Cox. Cox is well known for being the faster of the two. Whereas I top at 120kbps at 4am in the morning, Cox regularly dances around 300kps. Cox however is also well known for losing service regularly and being the more tyrannical of the two concerning types of traffic. (Rumor has it they throttle bittorrent down.) Side note* Bittorent, best known for that service people use to download music and videos illegally, also happens to the best way of transmitting large files to the public. (Hence why its used for music and video.) However, illegal music and videos and video games, are not the only large files out there. ISOs, aka disc images, aka the type of file you download with most Linux Distrobutions, are also large files that benefit from bittorent. If anyone ever tries to tell you bittorent is for pirates, feel free to disagree vehemently. Back to the story. I've always been pleased with Qwest. They may not be particularly fast, but I do enjoy the fact that my service never goes down and never has any problems. Except today. Today my service cut out, and didn't reappear until the evening. Big whoop. First time, that's not bad. One catch though. Although my service came back, it required me tweaking my router to get it back. Now I'm not sure how "widespread" this outage was, (Probably just me.) but...should anyone from Qwest ever read this, an email would have been appreciated, even after the fact, explaining what was going on. This is doubly true if restoration requires user intervention. I knew enough to log into my modem and tweak certain settings...not sure what percentage of the populace could say the same. I'm not hating on Qwest. They still have my service, but for future reference, some notice (before or after, unexpected things do happen.) would be groovy. |
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