So, Thanksgiving... Went to the Grandmotherinlaw's place and om-nommed my way through a few traditional novemberween crabs, and a bit of everything else. I made most of a glutton of myself. Well, no, not really, I didn't.

I think tomorrow during the "Black Friday OMG GO SHOPPING" Blitz-o-rama I will be doing my part to ensure that our couches do not get lonely. I don't do much by way of gift shopping to be honest. I mean, when I see something that Candy wants, I Just Get It.

I mean, there are things that I want. I mean, we've got a baby registry on amazon, and really, I'll probably be just buying things off it if nobody else does.

Pondering getting an iTouch to replace my dead iPod. two weeks without it and I'm realizing just How Much I used mine. Sort of torn between the awesome of the 32gb iTouch, and the "haul all my music" 160gb. Along that line of thought, pondering seeing how much a "Droid" phone is, and if they're worth it. We have the Verizon, so that might be something as simple as 'Sure, $$$' or it might be something more "no, fuck you." I'd like to just be able to plug it into my laptop and "Tether" it, but I sincerely doubt any US phone provider would dare let you do that. That would be so very 2003 of them.

Oh, job. Loving it. QA Engineer for the media department at Yahoo! . Basically I sit in my comfy cube and write java/junit tests to do continual integration testing for [movies/music/omg/tv] pages. Someone has to make sure kids get the latest "Lady Gaga" videos...

Found two new bands to want to buy music from, since I get to sit around and listen to streaming audio all day.

Tomorrow plotting that since my dear wife was laughing at me and calling me a geek, invading Home Depot and buying the parts to craft a prop replica lightsaber. I hear you laughing. Yes I do. STFU, I made a sonic screwdriver already, I want a lightsaber next.

Um, lets see. WiiFit 2 is doing well, losing a few pounds a week, depending on how often I get to work on losing weight, as well as just eating right. Oogh, so far to go.

Um, cats. Our cats are cute, I don't know how many we have right now, some where between six and six hundred.

Baby Valentine is still on the way, obligatory 28 week tum shot I hope I look that good soon. Yup, there's a squirmy kicky baaaaaaaaby in there, right on track, growing just along schedule.

Oh, snagged Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" complete. Is this awesome Y/Y?

Any suggestions for what books/videos that -you- would find to be quintessential to give to your kid? I've got a few dozen things so far, just curious as to what other things you'd bring to the entertainment of a kid like candy and I are going to have...

Oh geez.. that's 12 weeks away too.. That's so -very- awesome.

Anyway kids, more later when the mood strikes me. Just remember. Life is meant to be awesome!

For those who know, heard bits of, or knew nothing;

Candy was in the hospital on Sunday night with pains around her abdomen. Regular ones. They admitted her under observation for pre-term labor, which she tested for. As anyone who's been at this state in pregnancy can tell you, its a dangerous time. Baby Valentine is -viable- if born, but not without a very difficult road out of the preemie unit, if not potential disabilities. Candy's Contractions were monitored, put on a fetal heartbeat monitor and so on. Thankfully, the shot they gave her to stop the contractions worked, and after a morning evaluation, she was released, and put on bed rest. She's going into her doctor tomorrow for a follow-up.

As of this writing, she's staying at her mom's while I hop back and forth over The Hill to take care of the house and cats, her mom's house is a full hour closer to the doc and the hospitals. Valentine is still healthy, and everything is seeming to have returned to normal. At least as normal as we get.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes who knew about the now passed crisis.

I've been asked where our Baby Registry is located; And since this is mainly where Candy points people to for "unlocked" information about our upcoming one, I'm going to list it here;

We've been doing our registry through Amazon.com, mainly due to factors I won't get into. If you go to amazon.com and go into the baby department, and look up my name (Ryan Dewalt) under baby registry, you'll find us there.

This link might actually work.

Please don't take this as solicitation of gifts, well, okay, I guess you can say it is, me posting a pointer to our registry etcetera... But really I've been asked where we're registered, and so I'm putting up a simple "Ah, here it is." post. (And knowing me, since most of my family doesn't know about livejournal, I'll post it on my facebook too, but just the once, I'm no spammy fool.)

Story and image beneath the cut;

( Boo. )

Day one at Big Purple. Haven't dug into quite a lot of the documentation and code of ethics and "Blogging Guide" so I don't know exactly yet how much I can talk about. So I'm playing it cool for now just in case.

Love the environment, everyone seems genuinely awesome. More on that when I know how much more I can share. I was -very- overdressed. Probably the only one with a tie in the area.

-----

Past couple of days been able to feel Valentine kick now. At first it was just a *tap* like a finger, but now its been more and stronger kicks. To the point I can even see Candy's tum wobble.


Naturally, the youngun will start kicking, Candy will go "Hey, feel!" and lie down, I'll go over, place my hand on her belly (covering her whole tum, either I have massive mongo hands, or Candy is tiny and... wait, its both) and... nothing, no kicks, nothing. Trolled by my own offspring.

More later!

That's me. The Snuggie Jedi Messiah.

Also, sherman behind me is giving me the evil kitty eyes. About 5 minutes after we took that picture, we had to do emergency cat surgery, he tore a stitch on his ear holding thing, and it flopped over and we thought his ear was ripped and coming off. No, well, a couple of quick snips with nailclips and took the other stitches out, some peroxide to clean him, and ta da, CONE OF SHAME.

Anyway... Hung out with Jonas a bit this weekend, was awesome to see him doing better overall. Hanging out is a rare commodity anymore.

But most importantly.

Felt the kid move for the first time last night. Candy said "Hey, come here, (Valentine) is kicking really hard." Placed my hand on her tum and felt the tiniest *tap* so light I barely realized it. So yeah, I smiled my face off.

Okay, I've been putting together a bit of awesome. But here's the thing. I'm looking for someone who has a better grasp of statistical analysis than my hobby-ist/did it occasionally for work.

I have a pile of data of the form:

Person A recommends Person B
Person A recommends Person C
Person A recommends Person D
Person B recommends Person D
Person C recommends...

and so on.

I'm looking for any references for putting together a "If you like Person N, you may probably also like person Z" type of model.

Anyone out there done this? I've pulled the winning algorithms from the Netflix Prize, but they deal with an additional axis of data, and may not be the best. I have an algorithm to use, but I cannot tell just yet if it is a "good enough" solution.

But Rogue -rarely- ever enjoys wearing shirts when we get them for him... But he's been content and Happy in his snuggie...

When I snuck out tonight to get dinner, I had an ulterior motive in mind. Sneak my Mrs a "As seen on TV" present.

( some images here. )

waiting for an e-mail to get back to me so I can keep on this task...

Wrote more code on the train. Going to launch some new saucepls.info site changes over lunch.

Updated the thing to allow up to five uploads at once. Why five? Because it is an arbitrary number.

I'm pondering releasing an API to allow people to write applications/whatevers to allow folk to use saucepls in different ways.

(For those of you who don't know, I wrote up http://saucepls.info/ as a simple image host for people to use. I make no guarantee that images will stay forever, just stay as long as I can keep them there.)

So if I wrote up a simple API and released it, would there be interest?

Ah, there's my email... More later,

Golly Gosh Shuckydarn.

Happy Wednesday night.

Kid is still in progress. But since my last talking, the gender we thought we were having, is actually not what we're having. Me? I'm going to try to be an awesome dad no matter what appears.

Yeah, that... Few weeks ago I found myself thinking of virtual conversations between me and a teen offspring. A lot can go into the imagination when you drive an hour each way to work. Lately, the conversations are pretty much the same actually.

I'm keeping the journal here "specifics free", no gender announcement, no real name. If you hear candy and I referring to "Val" or "Valentine", that's the kid. (Why Valentine? Because the youngun will arrive Feb 16, possibly Valentine's Day.

My mom said we're "21st century hippies", which I'm still trying to comprehend. I think it was meant as a compliment. She asked me if the kid had a laptop already. I reached under my desk (we were over skype) and pulled a spare one out. Candy and I have been talking about "Computer Behavior" and thing that we need to do different, compared to our parents.

You see, "The Internet" wasn't a practically ubiquitous utility like power and water when I was a kid. I recall when I got my first modem, my mom asking my dad "He's not going to blow up the planet is he?" because after all, Matt Brodrick and his lovely movie made it seem trivial.

The kid will always have art supplies handy. Candy's room is a veritable craft store of art. Will the kid end up artistic like her, or nerd like me? That's up to the kid to tell us.

2010 is going to be the start of even more awesome.

Server move is done, waiting for the DNS to all fall over to the right place.

Hope I have everything, if not, I'll just do it as I find it.

Forumites, stop panicing, the forum is fine. http://65.110.58.12/forum/ until the DNS resolves properly.

Hey gang. Server will go offline tonight sometime between midnight and 2am EST (9PM-11PM) This is for a server move at the datacenter.

If I host your site, and I don't host your domain name, you'll need to contact me to get the new IP address to move your DNS to.

If I host your site and the DNS, I've already got plans to take care of everything for you.

Pass the word around.
-R

Longer one later. Added a feature to 17cats.com Now supporting Livestream feeds. If you have a 17cats account, and put your stream ID in your profile, when you are streaming live, the site will show it in the left toolbar, as well as highlight your front page listing.

Go me.

With Candy's permission, probably the only prag shot you'll see from us.

LJ-cut due to size. 7 weeks vs 17weeks side by side comparison.
( pic under here. )

Thanks for the feedback from yesterday, I took Candy out to dinner and we talked over things.

I'm basically going to focus on one project at a time, use what time I can on the train to work when I can. One day on the weekend is set aside for housework, chores, and "running around" sunday is resting/being creative. When Valentine arrives, we'll adapt from there.

----

Thanks for the feedback on YNA and 17Cats, it helped a lot. YNA, as it used to exist, may never return. I may however put up something -similar- in the future. 17Cats is going to get a facelift. I know I initially designed it "Speed over Pretty" but as it sits, perhaps its time to actually make something that looks slick too. There will be changes pushed to the site as I come up with them. Several very good suggestions will be incorporated as new features as soon as I code and test them. There is a 17cats twitter feed (http://twitter.com/17cats) where I'll post updates as things happen.

Suggestions for 17cats are much welcomed.

OS partition was wiped, and re-installed from a new CD, apache/mysql have been recompiled and put in place. Issue that allowed the hack through is closed. Data is almost all back.

I'll have the server up fully soon enough.

If there was a failure, it was in me.

Okay, since I got hit with 30 IM's and a half dozen e-mails and other notes, I'll throw a pile of answers up;

Yes, the server is down.
Yes, it was hacked.
Yes, I found and closed the hole.
Yes, it was backed up.
Yes, all the passwords are changed.
Yes, it is being rebuild totally. (rather than let a rootkit go un-noticed)
Yes, it will be back as soon as reasonable. (eta: No sooner than 1pm PST, Aug 31.)

No, I'm not pointing fingers, pressing charges, or posting logs of what was done. I'm restoring from backup.

I don't even care who did it.

If they find another way in, I will close it, and restore again. And again. I am made entirely out of stubborn.

For those of you in the know off Candy's journal, she had the first 4d ultrasound today, And gosh golly, even at that age, its a sight to see...

( picture under here. )

I'm still making blinky-omg-wtf-wow-so-awesome faces.

From IRC:
(01:08:16 PM) Artisan: okay, any other place on the internet, and I'd get blank stares, but I have to know.
(01:08:30 PM) Artisan: I've been vacuuming the house, and have a couple of cubic feet of cat hair.
(01:09:08 PM) Artisan: Anyone capable of, spinning it, and knitting a shirt for rogaine (our hairless cat) ?
(01:09:34 PM) Artisan: I just want to have every cat in the house sit on my bed the next day and stare at me with this "We -really- need to talk" glare.

Speaking of Spiders;

Can anyone identify this little fluffy guy? (He was not squished or dead, but more or less released back into the wild.)

From Misc Photography

Any Bug-ologists out there who'd like a small black widow spider? I've got one I lysol'ed to death. Its about the size of a nickel (the body part, the legs go out further naturally) and is in fact quite definitely dead. I can probably pop it in a 35mm film can and ship... probably.

Next step in 17cats, getting people who want to commission artists to come by and.... commission an artist.

Its starting to take off, 38 artists (as of this post) all ready and waiting for someone to say "Gasp! Draw for me!"

Suggestions of places to pimp the site out?

"My baby does not make a Super Mario 1up sound if I pat it."


Sure it does;

http://www.solfire.com/vinci_1up.html

(Sirfox and I collaborated. I had to wait for you to get to bed hon so I could work on it without you working out what I was doing.)

(Warning: not perfect, annoying if you leave it run for long. I'm a bloody hack amateur with Flash, and I whipped that up in 10 min. I couldn't work out how to get it to only trigger on a click like Sirfox wanted.)

Hey gang, I just put the finishing touches on, and launched my latest website that I've been hammering on for the past three weeks;

http://www.17cats.com/



17Cats. A website designed to help Artists manage commissions, help people find artists to commission, and much more.

Please, check the site out, spread the word.

I say... Amazing what they can do now days. Turns out, girls are actually Von Neuman devices...

Does anyone out there have a valid/working Paypal Sandbox account? I've applied for one, but never received the authentication e-mail.

I need to borrow a Sandbox account just long enough to test out my IPN handler. If I don't, I guess I'm going to have to send a few $0.01 transactions to myself.

Uploading a few more things to the server, getting more domains up as I go. Why the delay? I'm also job hunting at the same time.

Anyway, some of you may or may not know, I wrote a small image hosting website, Saucepls. ( http://saucepls.info/ ) Basically web based upload, no-bullshit hosting of images. No account to sign up, no bandwidth limits, no hot linking issues. The name "Saucepls" is Candy's idea.

In a nutshell, its meant for people to drop an image onto, and toss to a friend in a chat window or something. Anyway, that is back up. I don't track anything, I make no guarantees that the files will live there forever, I don't promise that I won't lock it down hard if someone tries to get me in trouble for just trying to toss a freebie to the world. The files will continue to exist as long as I reasonably can keep them there. Which may be a good while, given the new drive space I have free.

I also sat down last night and wrote a Windows Shell Extension bit that adds a "Upload to Saucepls.info" You have an image on your computer to upload? right click it, pick "upload to saucepls.info" and away it goes. (the one f'ing downside is that you might need IE7 or 8, I haven't worked out what parts of windows that wscript pulls things from. Yes, it uses IE, I ain't the most tickled on it, but hey, when I get a better solution, I'll use it.)

http://saucepls.info/saucepls.exe <- Installer. Nothing fancy, and since I've never written an installer, no real uninstaller. But there's only two files and one registry entry to remove, so no giant issue) Free, totally.

Now, I've only tested this in Windows XP. And I make no guarantees other than I ran it on my own systems while developing it. Hell, I even leave the .reg file there so you can examine it and see what I added.

I do not have a MacOS equivalent, because I don't have a Mac to develop on. I haven't done a Linux one, because I haven't had time to make one.

Share and Enjoy.

We were watching "Sesame Street: Old School" Episode 1, for nostalgia sake.

One of the animated sections came up, and she starts singing "The Liberty Bell March" She gets so many nerd points for that.

(The animation of course reminding her of the Terry Gilliam style of Monty Python, hence the song...)

Oogh... Just was heading to bed, went to check her one last time, and she's gone. I knew it would be soon, wasn't expecting it to be this soon... She was laying on her side, not far from where I left her. At least she went with her eyes closed.

Kittens went off to join their mother with their new adoptive family. They spent the day racing around here like little tiny fluffballs of high energy. I've been letting them wander the house, let them socialize and explore under their own terms. One thing that Blitz and Surprise noticed? "I can run -REALLY- fast!" Without a 10x10 room as their whole world, bolting down the hallway, hanging a right, and bolting across the living room lets them get a good on sprint going.

*Invader Zim quote* Gir: "WHEEEEEEE I'm Running! I'm Running!"

But they're off with their new family now.

On the sad side, Kitty Hospice. Pinot Noir, alias Ribsy, is not doing good. She's lying around constantly now, I don't see her moving much. She's lost even more weight, and I've been giving her subcutaneous fluids to help combat dehydration. Tonight gave her about a tablespoon of this high-caloric energy "goo" that is pretty much "Survival Food". In a nutshell, enough calories in a mouthfull to survive for a day, in easy to digest form.

But she's 18, a rather -long- lifespan for a cat. Just doing what little I can to help.

She's our "hospice" patient. Were she in the shelter, she'd be probably ignored. We brought her here so she'd have a loving home for the rest of her days. Every time I get up, or come home, I hunt her down, make sure she's still with us. But it looks to be that she may have made peace, and is just letting things happen.

Its a heart aching thing, knowing I'll find her lifeless body, sadly, possibly soon. But until then, she's getting what care we can give her.

Okay, so it may not be impressive to many people, but it is awesome to us.

I don't know who is on Candy's filter for this one thing, but just a little update. Everything is Okay. She'll update again when she gets a chance.

Started reloading into accounts the backups I have, and set up the what accounts that I've had people e-mail me info on.

Site update;
Wrote code, nearly ready for public launch of comichammer.

For those of you who aren't F5 junkies. I put the strips back up. The entire system is not 100% perfect, but this is the new framework engine.

But take a look:
http://www.pholph.com Jack is online, missing the Side Arcs for right now. Side Arcs are not up yet. "Chicks" pages are not up. Dave's Newsbox, as you can tell, needs to be edited. All in due time kids, all in due time.

http://www.vincifruit.com/ Vinci & Arty is back up and live.
http://www.sixpackofotters/ Six Pack of Otters is up as well.

Dume (http://www.otterdude.com/) Is remaining offline at the creator's request.

The forum will direct you to http://www.comichammer.com/forum/ I am not changing this, since that is the location I intend to keep it. always log in there, so your cookies settle there. There will be more as the time goes by.

(And yes, its the same engine and templating/infrastructure running all three strips. I wasn't planning on releasing this project This -YEAR- due to the fact I've got several hundred more hours of work to go to complete it. But well, the crash of the server presented an opportunity.)

If I host your comic, and haven't talked to you, please contact me.

"Jack" comic uploaded in a locked site for Dave to peruse.
V&A uploaded and just needs some cleanup.
6Pack uploaded, just doing some last formatting of the pages.

Dume... Has anyone seen Jonas?

Whole Arc viewer and Arc List pages have been ported to the new code base. I think that's about it for all the "Custom" code that I had on Jack. And since "Jack" had really all the custom work, I can focus tomorrow on porting everything over and move towards a reasonable launch soon.

Forum is up, in its usual place. You'll notice it goes to http://www.comichammer.com/forum/ well, there is a reason for that, and you'll have to bear with me if I'm vague and don't tell you. Just yet.

Working on getting some issues solved before I finish re-importing the comics. Once they're in and tested, I'll push them live and let the owners see how horribly I've mauled things. Show them how to maintain them in the new engine, and then go from there.

No additional ETA just yet. Still working out a few kinks.

Forum is up.

Thanks to GeneCatlow, I got a monitor to use for the hour I needed to install the OS on the -old- server. Its sitting quietly under my desk right now doing the initial rsync with the current server. Backup Process #2 complete, Backup #1 still needs work.

Strips for the comics are being uploaded to the server as I go.

More later.

First off, I'd like to thank everyone for patience in the downtime.
Also I'd like to thank everyone who's sent in donations to help offset the costs in getting back here.

The forum is up first-most, as I said it would be. I've upgraded and up-ported all the discussions from v2 to v3 of the phpBB software. I've made some minor re-arrangements, and I will be adding more to the site as the days go by. "Jack" has been narrowed into a single forum with several subforums

THIS IS IMPORTANT. Because the forum isn't just for Jack, but for all the comics I host, as for why I'm doing this, there will be more upcoming information soon. The "Comichammer" project that you will see referenced is about 90% complete. Be patient. It will be released fully when it is ready.

No, I am not moving back to the phpBB version 2 code. This is not for discussion. I know there are many people who Hate Change, but this is a decision that was made to bring more utility and robustness to the site. Moderators are who they used to be. Dave, Katie, Vinci and I are the sole Admins. There will be room for more moderators as we go, but -NOT- for more administrators.

There will be more. But for now, the forum.

Any posts not visible, were lost. I only cleaned out the Admin discussion forums, to start anew.

On Spammers; There will always be spammers, Even kittenauth didn't prevent this. If you see one, pm me, and two-mouse-clicks later, and the results are as if the person never arrived.

Anyway, welcome back to the forum.

New forum is in place. Going to clean a few things up on it before I re-open it. But it should be up sometime later today.

The Jack comic will be up hopefully a few hours after that, or failing that tomorrow sometime.

Okay seems a lot of people actually used and liked the Whole Arc Viewer. I'll put that in the list of things to port over before I launch. Shouldn't take more than an hour to re-code it.

Status: Recompiling and Abusing php.
If only the configuration and compiling of php was smoother under FreeBSD, this would have been over and done with. As it sits, I'm abusing command line options to get it working. Recompile #6.

Other Updates:
Got the -Old- machine in the mail, a nice little desktop motherboard with some nice little mods, 1u case. bit on the "Well, nothing fancy" side of things. Now if I had a monitor here at the house (We use laptops...) I could install bsd on it and make the mirror copy of what I want for the secondary backup system. It runs -quite- quiet, may replace the cpu fan with a much quieter one, and just leave it on under the desk.

Forum:
Will be launched as soon as I get php properly installed and locked down, the old posts moved and cleaned up, and so on and so forth. "It'll be launched when its ready"

I'd update more, but I'm exhausted.

Sort-of-Nightly Update on the site.

Arc List code is complete. While not that interesting for many people, since "Jack" has a -large- number of story arcs (108 Arcs and Shorts as of this writing) There's no real simple way to handle it. I wrote a rather nice bit of custom code for it last time, but this is different.

Did anyone use the "Whole Arc Viewer" bit? Where you could click on an Arc, and read the -whole- thing at once, in one big page?

Forum Update;

Jack forum is cleaned up, organized how I like it. Going to archive off a few other forums first (Well, going to clean out the Admin forums) Once that's done, I'll let D&K look it over.

Oh yeah, I'm having a pain in the ass getting all the parts of php5 to compile. Fucking hell. That's another slow down. FreeBSD is nice and cleaned up and locked pretty tight now.

Must check with the ISP, I ran an NMAP scan on it and the thing lit up like a star. Wonder if they have anything automatically showing open ports or something. I -know- the box itself doesn't have most of those ports open.. feh.

Until next time true believers...

Walked into Candy's art-emporium, and she's on the couch with two of the cats. Sherman, taking up more space on the couch than she does, and Rogue.

I notice Rogue is trying to get across, but he's just gently putting his paw on her waistband, as if to step down.

me: "Awwww, Rogue is teaching the offspring how to high-five..."

Its either that, or he's getting a head start on the "I'm not touching you!" games..

Guy I'm contracting for this week, has need of a short-term contract programmer who is versed in Flash. This is outside of my normal skillset, and while I could learn it in a month, I don't have a month.

Job would be in downtown SanFran, most likely a one to two week project.

Any interest, send me an e-mail (rdewalt at gmail dot com) and I'll pass it along.

Hey all, Trying to keep the server updates moving along daily here.

Forum; (Jack Forum, V&A Forum, etc.) 99% ready to go. Converted all the posts from phpBB2 to phpBB3, Going to clean up the way things are, set up a few "subforums" to clean up the look and feel, move some things off to "only here for historical completeness" and generally get everything a bit better.

Yes, I'm going to have one "big" forum for all the comics I host. Reason for this will be more apparent soon. Moderators will be more important than usual, and each comic will have its own set of moderators. There is still possible spammers, but every thing I've seen so far has been a person manually going in and posting spam. However, deleting all of that spamming user's posts? Trivial, two clicks, and the failure was never there.

Comics: Jack comic has been imported into the new framework. Initial re-do of the front page is done. This is a big step, there's nearly 1400 strips.

New Framework?

As a few dozen people know, I've been working on a definite upgrade to the comic engine that runs Jack, Vinci & Arty, SixPackOfOtters, and many, many more. (about a dozen or two actually)

Since the site was about 60% complete, enough to run the comics but not quite ready for full public beta, I'm going ahead with part of the design to stress-test the system by running Jack/V&A/Others on it. Locking off all the parts not ready for public, and I'll release them as I see fit to. It -will- be well worth it. Yes Gene.. -That- project.

I'll update more later. Thanks for the continuing donations guys, Look for the return of the sites sometime this week. No ETA other than "when it is -ready-" I'd rather delay it a week, than launch crap.

Hey gang, update time.

Have nearly complete copies of the Jack site, V&A, and Dume. Going to start testing out the server, make sure its solid before I start rolling out the comics. I won't have it -ready- for "resume normal behavior" for a few days at least, but hey, there's a lot to do, and upgrades are involved as well as rolling out new backups and, oh yeah, remembering to eat.

Many thanks to everyone who's pitched in and donated so far. Help rebuilding the coffers to keep the sites paid for, bandwidth wise once we are fully launched.

If anyone would like to donate, even a couple of bucks, send it to paypal @ solfire.com via paypal. Heck, you can even mark it "for coffee". I worked out how to get donations onto my "starbucks" gift card, so hey, awesome. (I have stupid taste buds, I really can't tell the difference between starbucks and peets and a "we roasted this right over there, steve here picked the beans, and larry's a priest, he blessed them too." coffee. Starbucks just happens to have A: an online form to recharge the card. b: a store in every town I work at. c: food, so I can actually buy lunch with it too.)

Anyway, I'll -hopefully- have the prototypes up for Dave/Katie and Candy's approval/perusal tomorrow, once they've green lighted it, then the sites go live.

Thanks everyone for patience, and making this problem as financially painless as possible.

It will be worth it.

Server update;

Initial install of the software is complete, just doing some lockdowns of the system. Server runs a little faster, upgraded from a 1.8ghz to a 2.0ghz cpu, doubled the ram. bumped up the swap space from 3 to 6gb (Never hit the ceiling on the old server, but with 500gb drive space to play on, an extra 3gb is easy to justify.) Repartitioned the drives so the system and "data" are on two differing partitions. Gives a little more robustness if the system partition fails Second HD is in the system running as a mirror, so there is even -more- resiliency.

Backup System;
System 1) Installing and testing using Tarsnap to backup the data using hourly snapshots. This will shove a copy of things, encrypted, over to the Amazon S3 cloud. (Recurring cost; $0.30 per Gigabyte + $0.30/month/Gigabyte storage (Estimated usage is less than $2 a month, but only an estimate))
System 2) The old server hardware, was destined for the scrap pile by the datacenter. Donations allowed me to aquire the old hardware (for basically a pittance, shipping it, was the expensive part) I will be looking at getting a drive or two to place into it, install it in the closet at my home, and have it do a daily rsync. (Unless its a small/quiet box, then it'll go under my desk on a shelf.)

Still to do;
Restore from Backups - I've gotten in contact with several people who have large collections of the strips, I'll be gathering from them this weekend, doing merges and compares.
Site Re-Build - I've discussed with Dave/Candy and a few others I host. I will be rolling out a locked-down copy of a "nearly ready for public consumption" site, that was slated for "Upgrade path into"
Forum - I'm going to go ahead with the upgrade into the latest version of phpBB (I'd been running v2.x on Jack, and v3.x on Vinci & Arty.) I'm looking for an equivalent to Kittenauth for v3, but as things sit, v3 is -relatively- bot resistant. We will never, ever, truly get rid of spammers, and I'm not going to let a spammer prevent me from doing what I think is best.
Forum Unification- As with the above two, I'm going to do a bit more work with "subforum-ing" things out, so that all comics I host, use one forum, as well as allows expansion for future work. Latest uncorrupted Jack forum backup is from May 13. Posts after that are lost...

Which means;
1: Things will be different. But this is for the better. I've shown Dave/Candy/several others, the New Project. Everyone is happy so far.
2: Not all the custom code is in place. For the "Jack" site, I wrote a lot of custom code, and while it did inspire parts for the New Project, it isn't -all- there yet. (No Chicks page yet, nor any of the custom Arc pages, for example.)
3: Patience will be required. I have a day job, but will be working on this in my spare time, what there is of it. I ask that everyone understand that the site is Priority 3 in my life right now. (1 is family, 2 is my job-that-pays-the-bills)
4: I am -not- looking for a programmer to help with the coding. This is not meant to sound like arrogance, but, this is my beast to tame. I may have need of a css Igor, but nothing beyond that just yet.

Donations; The site is not meant to be "powered by donations", but donations -definitely- help offset the cost. Without donations, I wouldn't have been able to even -start- until tomorrow, let alone get almost 30 hours work into it. I'll be re-setting-up the donations page. I'll be rolling out a better way to show appreciations towards the supporters. If you've been a donor in this little "rush to get things back" I thank you from the bottom of my little nerdy heart. If you'd like to donate, even a buck, send to paypal @ solfire.com

There's still a lot to do.

Hey, I know there are many of you out there that right-click-save-as every V&A/Jack/Etcetera strip that comes by. Anyone out there that has a decent sized collection of the strips? Contact me privately please.

Backup update.

Scanned over two of the drives, the one that had the mid-may backup is, having issues. Windows XP machine is going "I don't see a drive." Linux laptop is going "I see a drive... but the files are not right."

looks like the NTFS thingy shat itself. Using a 500gb drive from an old computer, unknown amount of spindle time on it. Running a few utilities on it, but seems that June is the month of Hard Drives That Hate.

Found a -not- corrupted backup.

from 6/3/2008

Yes, a year old. shit, it was around then I switched to the 'newer' drive, just due to the storage requirement for the backup.

At least I have an idea of how many people were hosted.

More update later. And one about The Big News I hinted at a few days ago.