Updates

The amount of updates that I now have to do to my two main websites the Dirk Maggs and James Follett ones due I think to the new cms software that I have installed to run both sites.


The other reason could also be because both Dirk and James appear to have gone quiet on new productions that I can report on.

Perhaps in the next few months there will be something to report on although you know what is going to happen.

James Follett

I have some how or other found time to do some more work on the James Follett website, which is good as I really like they way it looks now, even if I say so myself.

One thing that I have noticed since rebuilding the website is that some of the pages in the website have for some reason or another different fonts on their pages, I don't know why they have ended up like this but they have.

So I am slowly going through every page of the website to make sure they have the same font, I have not worked out how to get the programme that drives the website to do this for me yet.

I have looked at the Official James Follett site and compared it to mine, both sites look very different and both have a different slant on the information provided and also how that information is presented, my site still goes into far greater detail, which I think is something you would expect from a fan site, and I cover all of James's work, where the official site just does a broad brush.

I think its a good thing to have 2 different sites on the one subject and even better that one of them is independent of James.

I have finally redone the entire James Follett Website using a CMS to store and control the data, so far it all looks okay, all being well the updating of the site will be much easier, somehow or other I have set up a domain redirect, which works so that by typing the normal address for James Follett website you will be sent automatically to the new website.

Cool or what?


Any way the basic site is up there is a lot of up dating that has to happen to make sure all the text ect is the same.

Nearly Done

So 2009 is nearly all done, lots of things have been done, lots has not. I suppose 2010 will be the same, I suppose that I will not be the only one looking forward and backwards as it seems it's something that a lot of folk do at this time of year.

I do wonder if it does you any good all this reflection, and I supposed it must do otherwise lots of people just would do it the once and then give up.

So I think there are a few things that I want to do next year, I just wonder if I will get them all done.

1. is to finish moving the Dirk Maggs website to its new home
2. is to hand over to James Follett the website that I have being doing for over 5 years to him.
3. is to finish a book which book not a clue but a book all the same, which would be good.
4. is to actually get down and compose some music, as it's something I like to do but for one reason or another have not done for some time now.
5. is to enjoy taking pictures again with the camera.
6. is a bit of a cheat in that I already do this but do want to keep doing it and that is to keep reading.
7. is to listen to music and just enjoy it for what it is and not try and work out how it was done.
8. is to have holidays that you can be relaxed at
9. is to update the family tree, I did a lot of work on it a few years ago and then it all sort of stopped for one reason or another.
10. is to just enjoy what I have got and not what I haven't.

As you can see a large list just how many of these goals I will do will be interesting, as some are easier to do than others but they are all things that I do want to do.

website troubles

I have had a slight problem since I transferred my websites for my old internet hosts to a new one, mainly for extra features and also cause it was a bit cheaper, I am now starting to have some doubts about it, as for some reason I still can not get the websites that I have fully working, and I just don't know why.

I have made sure that every file on the site is where it should be, in fact I have gone as so far to upload all the site files more than once.

I still get error 400 which if I understand the error codes correctly means page not found.

One of the problems is that there are quite a few websites that now point at my website and now all they are getting is error pages, I suppose that in the end people will just give up.

My master plan to convert my static websites, Dirk Maggs and James Follett is still some time away from being completed.

At this time both databases are set up and working. Both sites have the password system in and also working. The James Follett site has had some wiki extensions installed and working while the Dirk Magggs one has not.

The James Follett site at this time has about 186 articles and has only got to 1975! so there is a long way to go on adding the content.

The Dirk Maggs wiki is even worse for content, in that all I have at this time is the main index page and not much else.

Part of me want to just redirect all the web traffic to the wiki, but with no content that really is something I feel that I can't do as those folks who have used to internet to find out about James or Dirk really do deserve to find what they are looking for if I have it on any of my website pages.

James Follett wiki

The wiki is doing great, I think, it is growing slowly which is what I expect, to tell the truth as it's a long term project I expect to be saying pretty much that for a while to come.

I have got to 1975 on the content that I am adding to the wiki and I only started in 1974!

So a long way to go.

Wiki pt 2

www.jfw.dswilliams.co.uk is the new James Follett wiki that I am working on, I must admit that at this time it's not very nice to look at and it does not have a lot of content.

Last count today gave it 139 articles, but some of them are very short articles.

I have a feeling that we are talking months before it's got most of the James Follett website.

Changing Hosts pt4

Well just an update to say what I have got working and what is not working.

The subdomains are working now, and I am being to hate cpanel so www.jamesfollett.dswilliams.co.uk and www.dirkmaggs.dswilliams.co.uk are now mostly okay.

www.citrusdreams.info I have a holding page on as I have to decide just what I want to do with it.

What is not working is the flash page I had as the into to the Dirk Maggs website its all there all the files and all the correct links it just does not play, why? not a clue.

So apart from that the new host do give some great toys so that you can look real easy at what pages on the website are most popular.

New website

As I said the other day I am in the process of transferring my websites from one hosting company to another.

Now it's been some 7 years since I had to do this and so far the experaince has been poor and as each day goes by it's getting to be poo.

You would think that by now this sort of thing would be straight forward and well painless. But so far my experaince has not been like that, I have the feeling that one of the causes of the hassle I am having is caused by money.

Yes I said money the reason as far as I see it is companies don't want to loose customers even if one of the reasons the customer is moving on is because the company fail to provide what the customer need or wants.

So the company make it difficult, without doing anything illegal for you to chop and change.

So the result is that my Dirk Maggs site and my James Follett websites have for the first time in 7 years disappeared from the web.

To say that I am upset about this would be an understatement, but that is what has happened.

Both the above sites are or were on my website www.dswilliams.co.uk and for some unknown reason the transfer of this domain from one hosting company to another has so far taken 3 days and there appears at this time to be no end in site as to when this domain will once again be on the internet.

I don't know if it's because of something I have or have not done, as the process of moving a domain is a secret, why?

My new domain which I have got is up and running, the new domain being www.citrusdreams.info the only snag with it so far is that I have to learn how to use cpanel, which is something that is completely new to me.

So tonight I am going to plead stupidity and as the new hosting company why the domain transfer has appeared to have disappeared into a black hole, so wish me luck

Website Updating

As you know if you have looked at this blog, I have a number of websites that I have had since the very early days of the internet, not on the same ISP silly!, anyway these websites of time have got to be ...well large in fact very large, in that they are hand edited by yours truly and he is starting to wonder if there might be an easier way to keep the site up to date.

One of the websites is on James Follett and the other is on Dirk Maggs, both sites are I suppose fan sites in that they detail the work both of these men do.

James Follett used to write very good tech thrillers, but he has over the last few years basically stopped writing, if you discount the stuff that he does on the newsgroups, in fact I have a sinking suspection that, all his time when he could be writing books is now taken up with the newsgroups, its become like a drug to him and that he is hopelessly addicted to them.

Dirk Maggs is a director writer of audio productions and I am glad to say still very active in the field and still producing some very good work.

The problem is that both sites have more the 100 pages each! they are all hand done.

The James Follett site does not get updated as much as the Dirk Maggs one as there is very little new material ( in fact in the last 2 years: none) the Dirk Maggs site gets an update every 6 to 8 weeks or so

The other day I had the spare time to look at the website logs, and to my surprise the website that gets the most hits a day is the James Follett one, this was a bit of a surprise as like I said before it does not get updated very often, also James has not got any books in print at this time.

I have not found out why this should be, but there must be a reason for it.

So why this long blog on websites?

The reason for it is that most of the very early websites, that have not gone on to be huge money making sites are as far as I can see dead, yes that's what I said dead, you may have heard a term pod cast fade, well before pod cast fade there was and still is website fade, and I can tell you it's still very much a live and well and still getting lots of trade.

Lots of reasons have been put forward as to why pod casts and websites die and I suspect that most them have to do with the fact that people get board and also they get no feedback on what they are doing so they give up as no one will notice there passing.

It's a sad fact that most people on the internet are users and not creators, that's just how it is, and as far as mu understanding goes it has always been that way ever since there was stuff that could be consumed by others.

As for my websites, well they are made for me, if others like them use them or even comment on them, that's a bonus,

I must admit that when I get feedback it's nice, but I only have to look at the number of hits I get a day to the amount of feedback a day to notice just how much more consuming goes on compared to creation.

So I am glad that I am a creator.

Updates and all that

It's been a while since I reported on the various projects that I do here and there on the Internet so as I have some free time, I thought that I would do an update on what's been going on or not as the case may be.

The sad fact is that having started a new job with a new company the process of learning new systems and new ways of doing the same tasks has been a bit, well actually, very traumatic and at this time I still don't know when things will settle down, I am assured by those in the know and also those that have gone through this sort of thing that yes indeed it will get better, I just want to know when!

Anyway enough of my troubles and struggles

The main Dirk Maggs Production website has been updated with his last audio production, which was on 1 st April 2009, I did not get chance to hear this live or on playback, which is a bit sad.

I have also done lots of small corrections all over the website that only I can see the results of, but I know that the website is better for them, honest!

On the pod cast front nothing has happened apart from the hosting site loosing everything!

which was a bit of a worry, the good news is that the backups worked, well they did for me and my pod casts are back up, but due the the stuff that I said earlier, I have not had the time to do any more, and to be a bit honest I don't know if I want to do any more at this time, as I have found that talking to a microphone is a very intimidating experaince, maybe I will have to find a book or a website that could help with getting over this problem?

The DMP wiki's both 1 and 2 are still no further forward at this time, but are still working well with what they have, so that's good.

The James Follett website has had a few internal changes that make the site a bit smaller without cutting down on the content, talking of content there has been no new content now for several years as James appears to have stopped any work on novels, radio shows or whatever, but you can see him on the Internet newsgroups winding up lots of very gullible folks, and it's always fun to see some of them walk right into it!

So that's how the projects stand apart for the last project and that is the Dirk Maggs website book.

This book is still stuck in edit hell and I have not got any further forward with it, and as so much time has gone by it is now very much out of date.

So I have decided that the best thing to do is to freeze it where it is and archive it and start on a new version or edition, which at this time without looking it up could be edition 4 or 5.

So my plan for later this year is to get on with the new edition and not have an index or two in it until the main work is complete, as you can always add an index later can't you?

Podcast

Did I tell you that I have a podcast?

No?

Well I have one, it goes back to last year, I am sorry to say that I have not been very active with it as some how or other I end up with no time and a quite place to record the thing.

I have worked out 2 years plus worth of shows if I do a 5 to 30 minute show one a fortnight. I have even got outline for some of the shows done (see I can get some things done, sometimes even books, actually I have so far written 10 books each more than 300 pages A4 size all non fiction)

I have started to wonder if i could do the podcast on my mobile then transfer it sad I know....


You want to know the name of the podcast well it's AE35 and if you do a Google you should find it, I did (ha ha) as I write this I have only done 5 shows so far, one of them lasts just 4 minutes or so ( do you know how hard it is to talk into a microphone?) with luck I will sort myself out and get some more shows done. It goes without saying that I have not told anyone but this blog about the shows, and the other thing is that I have the shows hosted for me on a site that has nothing to do with Dirk Maggs or James Follett.

James Follett Wiki part 4

Well just a small update this time with the item count as I found some free time and added excatly one radio play of Jim Follett's called Jumbo.

Before adding it the count was 114 it now stands at 122.

I think at this rate the item count will still only top out at 1200 to 1500 only time will tell.

James Follett Wiki (JFW) Part 3

Things have gone very slow on the wiki, in fact not one more item has been added since the last blog, the reason being that I have found when looking at other larger blogs that they doing things that I just can not see how with the same software as me they can do.

I did after a lot of looking and searching find that they had added extensions to the wiki, how cool is that I had no idea that you could do such a thing.

So I have spent ages looking at lots of extensions, but so far have yet to download and add one to the JFW. But and this is a dig but when I find the extensions that I think will make the JFW easier either to work on or use I will let you know here.

James Follett Computer Titles

James Follett Computer Titles Did you ever play any of these games, I would love to hear from you if you did, also what you thought of them.

I suspect that I am now getting just a bit carried away with these new tools that I have found. But as this is my Blog/notebook I can do what I want with the pages.