Sad to say, that seems to sum me up. Yesterday was meant to be Countryfile, Call the Midwife and Musketeers... not much more ... But the Americans seem to have this delight of putting on a spectacular in February, and it is so slow that even I can follow the action. In fairness, I also decided to restore a couple of old websites from the past - picture websites - and found that I was quite capable of doing this while watching the action. American Football has the advantage of having so many repeats and action replays that if you miss the action you can see it several times and get on with your work.
I read a statistic that suggested that the average match lasts about 3 hours 15 minutes and the ball is in play for about 11 minutes overall. I can believe it...
But back to the websites. When the internet was first released to the general populace, with the little modems that hummed and bleeped, and gave speeds on 29kB, companies such as Freeserve, later Wanadoo, decide that they could provide a cheap and almost free service to customers as part of their "loss Leader" marketing. The idea was that you took an email address with them - I took PIGSMAYFLY.Freeserve.co.uk and they would provide you with that email option and also give you 15 MB of website hosting.....
Very early days and if you got your pictures small enough then you could put a couple of web pages together and get it all free. Now, for the new entrepreneur like me - there was an obvious option here. If you wanted to put a Photo Gallery website together, then you would run out of photographs pretty quickly, or rather run out of the webspace to put them onto the web.
I will say that in those days there were no compliers or web creation packages - it was all done by Notepad and a book of HTML code and a few examples stolen from the web. Unlike today - where all your research would be on the web, then it was too slow and data hungry to research ion line - so books were used .... yes real ones with paper!!
But the trick was simple - when you ran out of webspace, you applied for a new email address, PIGSMAYFLY2.freeserve.co.uk adn you suddenly had another 15 MB of webspace. Just make sure that the hyper links from one page to the next jumped to the new domain and no-one would ever know that you were on a different site...
I took a lot of photographs! I mean a lot !! And even reducing sizes and quality to get them onto the websites - there was still a requirement for more domains... And I became good at this...
PIGSMAYFLY 1-9, then a to z gave me the first 35 sites. Then Simplesolutions with similar numbers gave me another 35 sites. Then Wanadoo cam in as a new name - and that allowed another 70 sites...
The downside was that Freeserve and Wanadoo were actually selling email addresses. If you did not use that address as your primary address, then after 90 days they would consider cancelling the address. So everyday, I would have to send a test message out on each of the addresses and get an answer back. This was automated of course, but it still meant that 140 plus emails were sent out and received every day - waiting for the message "Your address will be cancelled in 30 days" which would allow me to go onto the main site and refresh the order for another 90 days.....
Sound complicated ? Yes it was... and time consuming - but it was free!! Huge Photo Galleries over 7 years were built onto those 15 Megabyte sections - seemlessly and free.
Oh, add the 20 or so private websites I made for small businesses and friends and charity - we were soon reaching the 200 emails a day...
Now, think this through... Spam was beginning to be a problem at that time.. You know the messages - not the sophisticated ones we get these day trying to trick you into giving credit card addresses - no we would not have dreamed of using credit cards in those days... This would be messages about the size of parts of my anatomy - though how they knew I will never tell!! But for every ONE message you may have received upon your ONE email - I would receive 200!! Even a weekend away would fill up my in -box!!!
So, as we went in to 2008/9, costs of web domains changed and I took on web space that was paid, and open ended. The business warranted it so the old sites were allowed to expire. All the data was still on my home computer, but the sites became firstly "Cobweb" sites ( old and unchangeable) and then defunct..
But, the data and the photographs are still on my computer. The original Coding is still there, though pointing to non-existent web addresses all of which require changing - all of which takes time.. I do not have the new coding skills to make the web production easier and less repetitive - but I have the old codes - all I need to do is put them onto the new domain and change the addresses.... and find all those elusive addresses...
Yes - all you need is time - and three hours of Superbowl seemed a good opportunity to start the process and recover a gallery - in this case Live Action Role Play Event - Curious Pastimes Renewal 2004
And that also allowed the transfer of the photos onto Facebook as an additional Advert...
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| The First Facebook Gallery |
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| Second Gallery |
So, all updated and ready to watch Gallery One and Gallery Two...
So, back to the Superbowl... Even the half time "Extravaganza" did not appeal to me - Bruno Marz and Red Hot Chili Peppers ? not my idea of family entertainment. The Opera Singer with the National Anthem was over the top, and the game was so one-sided - even I knew who was going to win buy the end of the first quarter....
But the galleries were completed, and many got the opportunity to see how they looked almost ten years ago. .. The Port went down smoothly and a glass of the Scottish water smoothed the suffering of the sports fan....
So.. What I am trying to say is that I did not get up very early this morning - and did not really have much energy for anything - so have had a lazy day....
Only one bottle of Red Chateau 41 left after tonight - may have to seriously think about making some more...
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