Inbox Zero is a nifty concept. I’d be more impressed if I hadn’t been doing this very thing for the last *eight years*. Possibly longer, but I can’t remember if I had custom storage folders set up at school when I was using Pine. (Does that make me old? Probably.)

It looks like all the problems I was having using my new external drive to backup data on the old and now very dead PC had nothing to do with the drive itself, and everything to do with the fact that the PC was… well… dying. I ran a full backup last night, and after a (very quick) check this morning on my way out the door, it looks like everything ran perfectly.

Makes me glad I didn’t return the external drive a few weeks ago (when I thought *it* was the defective bit).

Thanks to greatwazoo42, I got HomeSite running in emulation mode. (so windows has to turn off the fancy schmancy aero eye candy to do it? So what?) And, two and a half installations later, I have the site view back and running, and ha! My personal software security blanket is back.

Seriously - I have used this program to code 99% of anything I’ve done since 1999. WeBuilder was/is nice (and I thought I was going to be stuck with it) but it’s like trying to write with the wrong hand, or use chopsticks with your feet. Quite sucky when I’ve got updates for the DragonFolk website that need to be done before the weekend.

Oh, and about the weekend… I’ll be up at Faire on Saturday, but *not* Sunday. Once again, I am riding the overscheduled express. :) Anyone who wants to find me can stop in at DragonFolk.

I hate upgrading my computer… it’s a big, expensive hassle I’d have been happy to put off for another year. But old Bessie decided to kick the bucket yesterday (the RAM might have imploded, but I’m not sure.) and I’ve spent the better portion of the weekend setting up her replacement.

For the record, Vista is not thrilling me. The auto handwriting recognition doodad has. to. go.

A faraday cage in your pocket. I guess they’re not just for high security clean rooms any more.

Why embed the LJ into my website when I can make the LJ look (almost) exactly like my website? I win.

And also, am now very tired of wrangling CSS. (Although there are still some tweaks to be made.)

So the backup hard drive has been recovered, error checked, defragged a 2nd time, wiped clean, and a new, fresh backup is running right now. Only problem being that it takes forever to do this for the first time. So, no computer intensive work tonight. Listening to the radio and sketching is a nice way to kill the time though.

I do doubt that anything I sketch today will make it online for a long while. I’ve got the most godawful pile of finished lineart ready to be colored to slog though that I’m trying to impose a moratorium on new scans until I at least get some of the better finished pieces ready for display. (I’m no longer satisfied posting the b/w work, when the finished colored pieces are so much more satisfying. That’s my opinion mind, but hey - this is my world here.)

And speaking of art, I’ve stumbled on two new artists:
Pockybox, discovered quite by accident when someone else posted his idea of a real world rendering of some folks from south park, and ColdBlueInk, who is proof enough that there are still some decent art students out there. (and they should really be encouraged more!)

A few days ago, I started to get some wacky errors from my external backup HD - I/O errors, file read errors, and visible but inaccessible files. Drat, I think to myself, time to buy a new backup drive. It seems, though, that a defrag and two swipes with windows default recovery utility took care of the problem (mostly). It’s still an older piece of equipment, and i will need to buy a new one eventually, but not today. Which is nice.

And speaking of nice, the lovely people at my insurance company actually sent me a check for the unused portion of my now canceled policy. Which, y’know, is the *correct* thing to do, but I try not to expect too much from the world most days.

I’ve been working on that pesky “I want to control every part of my website but I also want the freedom of a normal posting client” problem for literally years. I think I’ve finally found a solution that will let me post seamlessly though LJ (for art and thinky thoughts) and del.icio.us (for random links), mirror the results on my website, and not break my past archives or my brain.

It will probably mean that the old CreateSomething .rss feed will be depreciated, but even my control freak-ness has been getting tired of updating two files by hand every time I want to post.

That solution’s name, by the way, is Feed Digest, and I’m thinking it might just rock.

When it comes to graphics apps, Painter has always come in a distant second to Photoshop for me, but now that I’m doing more line art and coloring (as opposed to photomanipulation) I’m finding myself…. constrained by my beloved PS. I’m dicking around with Painter Essentials 3 (came free with my tablet) and damn but it’s fun. Freeing.

I’m not ditching PS by any stretch of the imagination, but another tool in the chest is not a bad thing. :) results of today’s fun will be up soon.