My Brain is Awake!

Okay, so it is over a year since my last post about waking up my brain. I have been busy since then keeping my brain active but not so much with photography or web sites, instead with looking after our local SeniorNet Learning Centre in Kaikohe. This keeps my brain very much awake.

I have not forgotten about web pages though – I created a web site for my son’s business which he was forced to start up after being laid off from his job last year. Thankfully he is doing well. You can see it here – CoolSparks

Mostly what promted me to write this new post was a comment through my Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/denis.wilford. That gets about the same attention this blog gets – almost none.

However seems a young lady woke up feeling a bit fuzzy one a.m. and punched in “Waking up my brain” and my blog came up.

Waking up my brain

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.

WebTech University moved to new host

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.

Moved to new web host – Lunarpages

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.

New website – 35SouthOnline

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.

Something had to happen

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.

Time I Updated Things

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.

Fire in Kaikohe – New World Supermarket

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