Denis' Place

It has been a while since I wrote anything here or even added new photos to my photo gallery. Lately I have realized that none of the photos in the gallery – Coppermine Gallery – are being indexed by Google, or anyone else for that matter whereas the photos on the static pages are right up there in the results so I am going to revert, for all new photos, to static pages again.

This has an added benefit of making me work on designing and creating web pages again, something I have got very rusty on.

That’s where the “waking up my brain” comes in – I need to refresh my knowledge and update myself on the newer stuff before I start making new web pages.

Last year I did a refresh of the WebTech University site but other than that, nothing.

So now I’m busy reading, and reading.

You never know when one of your photos might end up on a postage stamp.

A photo I took of the Auckland Harbour Bridge back in 1961 has been selected for the $1.50 stamp in the Auckland Harbour Bridge 50th Anniversary set.

You can see them here at NZ Post.

You will need to click through “The Sets” a couple of times to see a larger version.

I’ve been busy lately moving web sites. After moving this site to Lunarpages, as mentioned in my previous post, a few days ago I moved WebTech U to DowntownHost.com

Both this site and WebTech U were sharing a server but I thought it was a good idea to have them on separate hosts, partly so I could see which one was the better over a period of time, and also if one server was out for an extended period of time I could swap web sites between the two hosts.

Then of course right on top of this out came an upgrade to the Wordpress Blog software – which I have now done.

Then to add more to the mix, my washing machine died slowly so I had to get a new one a few weeks ago, and today my refrigerator stopped working. Hopefully the problem seems to be the thermostat so the repair shouldn’t be too expensive or take too long.

I’ve moved this site from AussieHQ to Lunarpages today and it all went quite painlessly. The only changes I needed to do to any files were the database info for the Coppermine Photo Gallery and this Wordpress Blog.

To allow for the overlap between the old host and the new host as the Domain Name Servers updated around the world I set up mail forwarding on my email addresses to my other domain of 35SouthOnline.com so any emails that went to the old site could still be collected by me after I began to access the new location.

Everything has worked very smoothly.

I’ve started another photo website over at http://www.35southonline.com/ specifically for displaying photographs of Northland, New Zealand.

This is a beautiful and interesting part of New Zealand and deserves its own photo site rather than sharing with the rest of New Zealand and other items that are on this site.

There is not that much there yet but I’ll be steadily adding more photos so keep checking there, and here also of course.

As a follow up to my post about my new Nikon 18-220VR lens purchase.

This was last Saturday and this morning, 1 week later, I found some water on the laundry floor. The hot water cylinder had started leaking and will have to be replaced. If this had happened the week before I would not have bought the new lens, so one way it was good that it hadn’t happened then, on the other hand I’ve now got an even bigger dent in my budget.

I guess things just happen this way.

It has been a while since I did much with my web site. I think about uploading new photos every so often but somehow just don’t get around to it.

It has been almost a year since my last blog entry – shame on me! – although I have uploaded photos more recently.

I have started making some changes to the web site itself – added random thumbnails from the Gallery on the home page and I’m making some small changes to the wording and so on here and there, just to freshen things up.

Then – I promise – I’ll put more photos in the Gallery.

Some excitement in town today and I nearly missed it all.

Our New World Supermarket caught fire this morning but I did not hear about it until later so by the time I got there only the aftermath remained to be photographed.

Fortunately this isn’t the only supermarket in town so we don’t have to go to the next town for groceries but it sure is going to make the other supermarket and grocery stores busy.

As you can see from the photos it is a complete mess and I expect will have to be completely cleared from the site. Whether a new supermarket will be built on that site remains to be seen as it was a bit small and didn’t allow for expansion.

UPDATE – Almost exactly to the day one year later a new supermarket twice the size opened on the same site. To make room for the expansion some vacant shops next to the original building, which were also fire damaged, were cleared to expand the site.

Photos here http://deniswilford.com/pg/thumbnails.php?album=8

Quick note here. I’ve upgraded Wordpress to version 1.5

I’ll customize it over the weekend when I have some time. Don’t think I’ll change it much though, I quite like the new default look.

I’ve not been here much for a few weeks. Been busy setting up computers, dealing with a reluctant computer, and painting.

Setting up 5 new computers for our local SeniorNet group was not unexpected but it took rather longer than expected. All is done now.

What was unexpected was ending up painting the computer benches and a wall in our computer room.

Over a few days at the end of the week before last I had the new computers at home so I could add extra software and set things up. This was okay as I could work on other things at home while the computer(s) did their thing.

On the Monday of last week we moved the old computers off the bench and cleaned it down ready for the new computers, then someone had the bright idea of repainting before the new computers were set up – we should take the opportunity, right……

So several of us toiled away in hot, humid and damp weather to paint the bench and the wall. Now that it is done it is very nice and well worth the effort, looking very smart with the new paintwork and flat panel LCD monitors.

In the middle of all this my daughter’s computer started misbehaving and I decided the best remedy was a re-format of C: and reinstall Windows XP, with all the subsequent software reinstalls. Still not sure all is well, maybe she needs a new computer.

Almost back to normal although next week we start our first SeniorNet computer classes of the year and I’ll need to be on hand for a few days until everyone gets settled in on the new computers and some new software.