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Moving servers, moving hosting companies, moving content management platforms. Pardon the dust, and if you have any Telltale purchases or downloads or Inconsequential Art orders to make, you'll want to do so before the weekend.
I plan to have Telltale back up and running by the 15th and the rest of my site back up by the 25th or so, in some form or another. I'm factoring in the fact that my my brain usually takes a bit longer to do things these days, but no promises.
A few reasons, really. Can't take responsibility for managing a dedicated server anymore (and can't justify the cost, since it's not bringing in as much money or traffic). Still recovering from a mild traumatic brain injury, and, since I haven't been able to stay on top of outdated scripts (not to mention Movable Type 3.x) and troubleshoot problems that do arise, I've allowed my site to get a bit compromised (script kiddie/URL-injections) during this "break," and I haven't been able to do as good of a job cleaning up afterwards. And since my Movable Type-handcoded PHP/HTML hybrid of a thing isn't exactly going to survive the move anyway (it didn't last time), it's as good a time as any to finally make that jump to a content management system I won't have to keep paying to upgrade and keep secure.
FWIW I've overall been satisfied with my current host, OLM for the last ten years (after a year of a crappy host and, before that, a few years of an ashland.edu student account), upgrading every few years to get from a shared hosting service to the current tricked out dedicated server. But I've had a few recent issues with the performance of the server (namely how I would have to reboot daily because it just couldn't handle the typical incoming spam), and how the company handled it. And whenever I've had to move or upgrade (even though the end result was my paying them more money), they helped to make it an awfully more painful process than it needed to be, and I always say I won't go through that again.
It will be weird to have to share an IP address again, though.
Health updates, etc: Cognitive behavioral thereapy wasn't a great fit for my condition. It's more helpful for dealing with an unacceptable rate of recovery than it is in correcting it. And the specific things I wanted to work on (helping me to relearn how to read printed matter, etc) are outside of CBT's focus. OTOH it turns out I was already incorporating a lot of CBT-type practices into my day-to-day, so the techniques were already helping what needed to be helped, I guess, and I can still be an advocate for CBT without being willing to actually pay for it for myself at this time.
One thing it did help me with was to develop a system for tracking my brain's recovery a bit. With good days and bad, good weeks and bad, and even good months and bad over the last two years (along with trying medicinal doses of caffeine and various short term prescriptions), it's hard for me to see whether I've made any improvement at all (clinical testing hasn't been too helpful here; too easy to write it off as good days/bad days when I did worse on later tests). But now I've got four criteria I rate on a scale of 1 to 10 every day (energy, focus, satisfaction, and sleep quality), and I'll soon be able to start looking at a 60 day moving average to see where I am, where I was, and maybe even where I'm going.
The next step was supposed to be neurofeedback, but it's priced a bit out of my range, thanks (and it's new enough that even if I had the disposable income, I'm not 100% sure that's where I'd choose to put the money). Although... this month I will be trying out a neurofeedbackish device called the Neurosky, made by the same people who created the technology this year's hot-and-outofstock Christmas toy, the Mindflex. I've asked around, and repetition is the most important aspect of neurofeeback, so in a choice between spending a few hundred dollars for just the first session (of 30+, ideally) of professional neurofeedback training and a few hundred dollars on a substandard device I can use repeatedly, the latter is actually the wiser choice.
After that (or concurrently), I don't know. Trying more drugs? Of course, continuing to do everything else I can to maximize my chances of a full recovery, including now putting myself in more social situations, mental fatigue be damned. I'm even about to join a regular role playing group for the first time in ten years. The thing I have to remember is that most of what I'm doing, no matter how much money or time I spend, is that at most I'm bumping up my percentages a few digits. But I'm happy, hopeful, and active, and that's what matters.
Other stuff I do regularly: running, crosstraining, attempting to read printed matter, trying new reading-comprehension methods, audiobook listening, attempting to write, learning ukelele, learning piano, learning to juggle, learning to solve Rubik's cube, crosswords, learning to meditate, prayer, biofeedback, fish gels, Wii, writing blindfolded, eating well, learning to draw, working on a longform comics project for the last two years (photography and digital art), memorization exercises, learning rules of new games, mensa puzzles, attempt to learn second language, etc. There's more, but I'm not remembering presently.
WisCon is a no go this year (as I guess it should have been the last two years if health was the only deciding factor). Already missing those people, but looking forward to seeing them in 2011.
I do have some small publishing news/bits to share, but they can wait until this site switch sorts itself out. Updates continue to be more frequent on Twitter. And please. If you fingerfriend me on Facefinger or whatever, and it's been a while or you've changed your last name or there's any doubt that someone with a BRAIN INJURY will remember you by whatever five pixels of your dog's photo you decide to show in place of your own... include a note/hint when you facefriend, to help me figure out how we know/knew each other. I appreciate it.
I plan to have Telltale back up and running by the 15th and the rest of my site back up by the 25th or so, in some form or another. I'm factoring in the fact that my my brain usually takes a bit longer to do things these days, but no promises.
A few reasons, really. Can't take responsibility for managing a dedicated server anymore (and can't justify the cost, since it's not bringing in as much money or traffic). Still recovering from a mild traumatic brain injury, and, since I haven't been able to stay on top of outdated scripts (not to mention Movable Type 3.x) and troubleshoot problems that do arise, I've allowed my site to get a bit compromised (script kiddie/URL-injections) during this "break," and I haven't been able to do as good of a job cleaning up afterwards. And since my Movable Type-handcoded PHP/HTML hybrid of a thing isn't exactly going to survive the move anyway (it didn't last time), it's as good a time as any to finally make that jump to a content management system I won't have to keep paying to upgrade and keep secure.
FWIW I've overall been satisfied with my current host, OLM for the last ten years (after a year of a crappy host and, before that, a few years of an ashland.edu student account), upgrading every few years to get from a shared hosting service to the current tricked out dedicated server. But I've had a few recent issues with the performance of the server (namely how I would have to reboot daily because it just couldn't handle the typical incoming spam), and how the company handled it. And whenever I've had to move or upgrade (even though the end result was my paying them more money), they helped to make it an awfully more painful process than it needed to be, and I always say I won't go through that again.
It will be weird to have to share an IP address again, though.
Health updates, etc: Cognitive behavioral thereapy wasn't a great fit for my condition. It's more helpful for dealing with an unacceptable rate of recovery than it is in correcting it. And the specific things I wanted to work on (helping me to relearn how to read printed matter, etc) are outside of CBT's focus. OTOH it turns out I was already incorporating a lot of CBT-type practices into my day-to-day, so the techniques were already helping what needed to be helped, I guess, and I can still be an advocate for CBT without being willing to actually pay for it for myself at this time.
One thing it did help me with was to develop a system for tracking my brain's recovery a bit. With good days and bad, good weeks and bad, and even good months and bad over the last two years (along with trying medicinal doses of caffeine and various short term prescriptions), it's hard for me to see whether I've made any improvement at all (clinical testing hasn't been too helpful here; too easy to write it off as good days/bad days when I did worse on later tests). But now I've got four criteria I rate on a scale of 1 to 10 every day (energy, focus, satisfaction, and sleep quality), and I'll soon be able to start looking at a 60 day moving average to see where I am, where I was, and maybe even where I'm going.
The next step was supposed to be neurofeedback, but it's priced a bit out of my range, thanks (and it's new enough that even if I had the disposable income, I'm not 100% sure that's where I'd choose to put the money). Although... this month I will be trying out a neurofeedbackish device called the Neurosky, made by the same people who created the technology this year's hot-and-outofstock Christmas toy, the Mindflex. I've asked around, and repetition is the most important aspect of neurofeeback, so in a choice between spending a few hundred dollars for just the first session (of 30+, ideally) of professional neurofeedback training and a few hundred dollars on a substandard device I can use repeatedly, the latter is actually the wiser choice.
After that (or concurrently), I don't know. Trying more drugs? Of course, continuing to do everything else I can to maximize my chances of a full recovery, including now putting myself in more social situations, mental fatigue be damned. I'm even about to join a regular role playing group for the first time in ten years. The thing I have to remember is that most of what I'm doing, no matter how much money or time I spend, is that at most I'm bumping up my percentages a few digits. But I'm happy, hopeful, and active, and that's what matters.
Other stuff I do regularly: running, crosstraining, attempting to read printed matter, trying new reading-comprehension methods, audiobook listening, attempting to write, learning ukelele, learning piano, learning to juggle, learning to solve Rubik's cube, crosswords, learning to meditate, prayer, biofeedback, fish gels, Wii, writing blindfolded, eating well, learning to draw, working on a longform comics project for the last two years (photography and digital art), memorization exercises, learning rules of new games, mensa puzzles, attempt to learn second language, etc. There's more, but I'm not remembering presently.
WisCon is a no go this year (as I guess it should have been the last two years if health was the only deciding factor). Already missing those people, but looking forward to seeing them in 2011.
I do have some small publishing news/bits to share, but they can wait until this site switch sorts itself out. Updates continue to be more frequent on Twitter. And please. If you fingerfriend me on Facefinger or whatever, and it's been a while or you've changed your last name or there's any doubt that someone with a BRAIN INJURY will remember you by whatever five pixels of your dog's photo you decide to show in place of your own... include a note/hint when you facefriend, to help me figure out how we know/knew each other. I appreciate it.
