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marcilled · 4 years ago

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5 years

It was 5 years ago today that a humble little minecraft server first opened its gates. 5 years ago, I started @quixol with a team of 8 friends. Today, only 4 of those original friends are still on our Staff team, and the server is a shadow of its former self.

There’s a lot I could talk about with Quixol, but before I get into it, I just want it to be known that this is a highly personal post from me. This isn’t an official announcement, but seeing as I’m an admin, it’s definitely of pertinence if you are someone who is a part of the Quixol community.

If you’re new to following me, or just don’t know what I’m talking about: Quixol is a trans-friendly minecraft server started by me and a few pals back on November 16, 2015. It’s primarily populated by folks from here on Tumblr, and is an LGBT+ only community. Over its 5 years, it’s gotten over 1600 unique players. And... Well, there’s a lot of history that took place during and after that, I can’t hope to summarize it here. You can see more on the about page on our blog.

So, yeah. Today is the 5-year anniversary of Quixol. Pretty big deal! And... we have nothing in store for today to celebrate that huge milestone. Pretty big bummer. The prior 4 years, the anniversary was the single biggest celebration of the year. We typically tried to schedule large server updates to coincide with the anniversary, just to make it feel that much more special. So, on the day that marks a whole half-decade of being online, why do we have no plans? It’s a long, complicated story. I’ll only be able to tell you my side of it. Everything written below is from my perspective, and doesn’t necessarily reflect how others think or feel.

Regardless of the lonely feeling on the server now, I just want to say, I’m really glad I could host such a fantastic community for so many years. Thank you everyone who has made the past half decade so special.

Long retrospective below (plus, discussion about Quixol’s future):

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Where to begin... All I can say at the start here is, don’t expect anything coherent, I typed this up while sleep deprived just the night before posting this, without much forethought of what I’d say in it. I just feel I need to get these feelings off my chest before I can mentally move on, you know.

Before I delve into this, I just want to put this sort of disclaimer at the top here: Despite how gloomy I make things sound throughout this post, Quixol is and was an amazing place, that I’m so glad to say I got to play such a pivotal role in. I wouldn’t trade my time here for anything. It’s been an honor to serve as an Admin over such an incredible community. I’ve seen countless new friendships forged, plenty of laughs and fun times to be had... I’ve even known several couples that met through their time on Quixol, I’ve known several people that came out or discovered more about their identity/gender/sexuality while on Quixol. It’s a great community, despite its flaws, and what we did over these past 5 years is nothing short of spectacular. I’m forever thankful for everyone who helped make this place as special as it is- you’ve all been such great friends. Thank you.

While I may speak a great deal about some of the lowest lows that happened on Quixol, you better believe it had some of the highest highs as well. Keep that in mind, so you know why I’m spending this much time and effort to commemorate this server that I’ve called home for so long.

I’ll start here with a rough timeline of Quixol... I’ll even include some screenshots for you all.

Old World (Nov. 2015 - Mar. 2017, mc 1.8 - 1.9)

Quixol began back in 2015 like I mentioned- whitelisted at first, but moved on to being unwhitelisted at a later date (I believe it was summer of 2016). Hundreds of people joined after the whitelist was removed, in just the first month or so. We owe that initial success to how much our blog post about the server got shared around, it served as a nice advertisement for the server. It was only posted to tumblr, so everybody who joined then was from the same sort of social sphere of 2016 tumblr. It was pretty lively, and we made lots of friends very quickly. A lot never logged in again after the first initial burst, but a fair amount stuck around.

The server started on minecraft version 1.8, which was before the end update that introduced elytra & all the controversial combat changes. Most people never even saw the server on this version, though, since it was still whitelisted when we updated to 1.9. The world we used back in 2015-2016 eventually got deleted at a later date, however we did provide an archive of this old world to download, it’s... somewhere on our blog, you can go find it if you poke around a bit. (Assuming the download hasn’t been removed from the website I uploaded it to, which would make sense since it’s just 20 gb sitting on some server doing nothing).

While there was plenty of merriment, there was also the fair share of drama. I can’t even hope to recall all the drama that happened in 2016, but one of our og mods got banned completely after the rest of the staff sort of woke up to the realization they were incredibly abusive. There’s lots of other stuff that happened then- I wish I could tell the “full tale” as it were, but it would be so long-winded that almost nobody would bother to read. Plus, my memory isn’t very good, so I would need to dig through old blog posts, discord messages, screenshots, etc etc to jog my memory... way too much work.

Protos (Mar. 2017 - Nov. 2018, mc 1.11 - 1.12)

2017 came around, and that’s when we updated the server to 1.11 and created a new world (Protos). That update happened on March 26, 2017- I remember because march 26th is my birthday, and the other staff made a cute little celebration for me on that day and I literally cried from how happy I was. It was the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a long time. (God, I miss those times.)

A lot more happened during this time period, and honestly I’d consider the period in which Protos was our main, active world to be the most consistently active the server has ever been. It wasn’t always exploding with activity, but the people who joined and played during this time were consistent. And we had a relatively consistent influx of new players.

There was a lot more drama that happened during this time... More staff members left, mostly of their own accord (but never on a wholly positive note). Drama amongst some of the veteran/long-time players, arguments over how to interpret and enforce our rules.

Regardless of the troubles, I’d say this period was overall quite positive for Quixol. We even brought in our first batch of new staff members during this period.

Ghalea (Nov. 2018 - Present, mc 1.13 - 1.15)

I believe late 2018 was when we updated the server from 1.12 to 1.13. We rushed the update to this version quite a lot, which was a shame since it ensured the server had an egregious amount of bugs to work out, and lots of missing plugins/functionality. With this update, we made another new world (and, our current main world): Ghalea.

Regardless of buggy behavior, we managed to hit what I believe is the all-time peak concurrent player count we have ever gotten, which is something like 54-56 players playing at the same time. The server chugged so hard, I’m surprised it didn’t crash. All of those parties were so stressful to put on, but at the same time, incredibly fun and fulfilling to see when lots of people showed up and had a good time.

Funny, though: despite the success of the server, 2018 and early 2019 are the closest the server has ever gotten to absolutely tearing itself apart from internal staff drama. By early-mid 2019, several staff members ended up getting banned one after the other. So that left us with very few staff by that point (only 6 active staff, myself included, if I remember correctly).

2019 should have been a great year for Quixol, seeing as it was what many people referred to as the “minecraft renaissance”, “the great minecraft revival”, etc etc etc. However, the drama amongst the staff, coupled with drama in our personal lives, and just an all around lack of staff members to kick things into gear, resulted in a pretty lackluster year compared to the previous 4 years.

Despite all of that, we worked tirelessly to complete our greatest project yet, Chroma Park, just before our 4th anniversary on Nov 16th, 2019. It took a whole team of builders to complete, and several months in preparation/building.

With such a grand project completed, you would expect it would result in a flurry of new activity on the server... unfortunately, it ended up being almost the opposite. Because we called upon our “build team” to help with it, (several talented veteran players who volunteered their building skills), nearly all of our active players suffered some serious burnout after the major project they just completed. Lots of people just weren’t feelin’ up to minecraft anymore... And, that spelled the beginning of the end, really.

The culmination of this was that, going into 2020, activity on the server just... plummeted. Then, we all know what a shit year 2020 turned into. That just furthered feelings of burnout. I made another personal post about this, back in April- explaining why I had been relatively absent from the server for a while. It goes into more detail about the “hiatus” at that time, what caused it, why it continued so long, and how my personal feelings were at that time. Give it a read if you want. It even goes more in-depth about some of Quixol’s former staff, and how toxic behavior from them may have negatively impacted the community (especially in 2018-2019).

So, basically nothing has happened on Quixol in 2020... I took the time to update the server from 1.14 to 1.15 back in July, just so that the server was on a more stable version of minecraft- but all the effort poured into that resulted in basically nothing happening. Barely anyone even noticed, because it was such a minor update focusing on bug fixes. I hoped it would get the ball rolling again, but it just wasn’t enough.

While I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet, I decided it was for the best if I put any plans on the backburner for a while, and focus more attention on building infrastructure back up again. I spent some time researching sysadmin stuff, and looking into upgrading my PC. I set up a new discord bot that we’re currently using on Quixol, & have in a few other discord servers I’m active in.

Then, I got tossed one of the most difficult months of my life in a long time pretty recently. It’s very recent/fresh, but suffice it to say, a decent chunk of what made it such a horrible month was related to drama within the Quixol friend group, particularly... me being a shitty friend. I made another post about this a while back, but I won’t link it since it’s a bit vague and not super relevant to what I’m talking about here. Just know, September this year pretty much demolished any feelings of hope I had for continuing work on Quixol.

So, that leads us to... Today. The 5th anniversary of Quixol.

Where did it all go wrong?

Now that I’ve laid out as quick a summary of the past 5 years as I could, I want to talk about some of the mistakes we made along the way. The people that made Quixol what it is, and how that history always seems to tie me down.

To tell you the truth, saying that “it all went wrong” sounds horribly pessimistic to me. Sure, I felt pessimistic going into writing this, but... Just looking back on everything we’ve accomplished, there’s never really a point where it “went wrong”. Moreso, Quixol has had its fair share of flaws baked in from the very beginning. But, perhaps those flaws are what made it what it really is. I can’t go back and change the past, and neither can you. Perhaps the best we can do is just accept Quixol for what it is, and acknowledge its shortcomings while allowing ourselves to feel happy about the good memories we do have.

While I’m not going to cast away every pleasant memory I have of Quixol, I must admit I find so many of them tainted and forever changed, just because of how many people entered this community, made their stay known, then left or were cast away on a sour note. There are countless people that were a huge part of Quixol, of my life, my friends, that I don’t speak to anymore. People that hate me. Maybe even some that I hate.

If I go back and think fondly of those times, I remember how the people in those memories largely don’t think fondly of me anymore. I remember all of my mistakes, all of the ways I could have avoided that outcome. All the ways I could have worked with those friends, to work out our differences, to just fucking communicate. Sure... some of those friends, there was nothing I could do for them. Nothing I could do to make things work. But, all the same... it stings, thinking of everyone I used to know. Not knowing who is still a friend, or who simply has no need for me anymore...

So much of Quixol’s history is tied up in knots this way. Complicated webs of emotion, suffocating in the tethers to its past. So many things built on the server, just wasting away, never to be touched again... New players won’t even know it. They don’t know, can’t know the history behind those blocks that were placed. It sounds a bit silly talking about it this way, but that’s how it feels to me. There’s real history behind each of these blocks, all of the little farms and structures and silly signs. So much of it, nobody even knows. But it wears on my heart, knowing all of that history, and feeling so disconnected from it. Feeling cast away by the people who forged those memories.

It’s a disconnect that’s always hurt, to me. Maybe I’m just too sentimental, nostalgic. Maybe I cling to the past too much. But it feels impossible to ignore... So much of what made Quixol what it is today was left there by people who want nothing to do with me, us, anymore. What does that say about Quixol? About me...? About our group?

There’s a lot I could say about this, but it’s stuff I’ve mentioned before. I hang on too tightly to the past, and am often too critical of my own mistakes. But, sometimes the past is just the way it is, and there’s not much that can be done about it. Regardless, I find myself feeling regrets about every little thing that went wrong, and thinking about where all those people are now... Maybe one of them is even reading this right now. If you’re out there, hey. We can still talk. I’m not going to hold a grudge on you forever. It’s ok.

My influence

Since Quixol began in 2015, I’ve tried my best to be nothing more than an “Admin” of Quixol... not the “owner” or “lead admin” or “founder”, just “admin”. I hoped I could encourage the other admins to be leaders in their own rights. While each of the admins we’ve had has been great leaders in their own respect, I feel that every one of them has been, unfortunately, tied down by my influence to some extent.

In most aspects of life, I’m a very timid, indecisive person. I’m incredibly anxious, and lack confidence to a worrying degree. However, a different side of me can be seen in the safe, comfortable environment that Quixol provided for me. Surrounded by friends and people who I felt really got me, I became comfortable enough to show some level of confidence in myself... In all honesty, for a long time, I was never able to recognize this self confidence for what it was. I really was not, and mostly still am not, used to feeling confident in myself or my own abilities. Like, at all. So when I actually feel good about myself, like I actually know what I’m doing... Well, for a really long time, I didn’t even process it as such. I just felt like I knew the right answers, and that was it.

On Quixol, this often manifested in a specific way... Being proud of my own knowledge & skills with minecraft, I would insert myself into any discussion about Minecraft, the server, or just anywhere I could, and offer up my knowledge, opinions & help. This hardly sounds like a problem, but... The problem was just in my unwavering presence. I was everywhere on Quixol, you couldn’t escape me. I dominated the space with my presence. Not that I interrupted people (usually...?), I just would try to put myself anywhere a conversation was happening, assuming it was, like, appropriate for me to do so on some level.

Whenever I chimed in with my thoughts, eventually there became this sort of air of almost... superiority about it. This feeling that my word was “final”, or that I had some layer of expertise on everything, and that if I said what you said was right, that was a pretty good indicator you were on the right track. I didn’t pretend like I was infallible, and I don’t think anyone ever saw me as that. But the perception was generally that if Vivian says it, that holds weight to it. Perhaps this is somewhat unavoidable of a staff member, but... it was this way even amongst the staff.

I never really realized that I was creating this environment within the community, because it happened rather slowly. But as things moved along, other staff began to pick up on this (perhaps subconsciously). Including even the other admins. Quickly, my own insistence on doing things a Specific Way, became “the Right Way” to do things on Quixol... Whether I intended it or not.

Now, this is something I didn’t know until quite recently, but I actually have OCD (undiagnosed, but it’s glaringly obvious to me at this point). My ocd comes out in minecraft, and specifically Quixol, quite a lot. I have very ritualistic ways of doing things, whether it be while building a project in-game, to managing specific parts of the server- we have a very detailed format in which update logs are written, and I have very specific rituals related to updating plugins on the server, taking backups, etc. Even just the way I play survival minecraft has sorts of rituals in a way, like specific patterns in which I place torches. I’m not too educated on ocd, so excuse me if I’m using some terminology of this wrong, or if I’m spreading some sort of misinformation about it. This is just my experience.

Anyhow, with the extremely regimented way I manage things on the server, coupled with my constant presence in things, you can understand how this might lead to other admins, who have their own mental illness issues, to become very averse to doing a lot of admin-related duties. After months and months, years, even, of this sort of stuff... and... yeah. That leads to where we are now.

With my selfish behavior in the past, I’ve unintentionally created this staff environment where people are reluctant to make their own decisions, show their own creativity, etc. And that must feel incredibly frustrating if you actually want to do something to make a difference on Quixol...

I’m not even accounting for all the times I’ve butted heads with the other staff before, either. While much less frequent, I’ve definitely had arguments with folks in the past. And with the great amount of influence I hold over the server, it takes a lot of courage to stand up to what I say.

I’ve always resented that I hold this position of power over everyone else, and tried many times to address it. However, I don’t think I ever quite had a full picture of why things were this way. Now, I think I understand it better. Sadly, it feels too little, too late to make any significant changes without uprooting pretty much everything we have set in place already. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m being too pessimistic here... But, this is how I feel at the present moment.

I’m sincerely sorry to any current or former staff members, who have wanted to do something great for Quixol, but felt they could never convince me to go through with your idea... Or who felt pushed away from doing something they otherwise would’ve liked to, just because the attitude I gave, the environment my presence created, made you feel like you weren’t good enough or qualified enough to do it. You are good enough. I’m so sorry that my actions made you convinced otherwise...

I will say, this sort of mindset of mine, that I have to be the Most Right about anything relating to minecraft, or any hyperfixation/special interest of mine, has caused problems elsewhere, too. I talked about this in another post I made. I’ve only really come to realize all this stuff within the past few months, but I’ve been a really terrible friend to a lot of people. I never even realized until recently just how often I struggle with empathy, and how that’s colored so many of my friendships. Needless to say, it’s affected things on Quixol before, sometimes without me even realizing it.

My influence over the community also means if anybody’s relations with me in particular ever become marred, it must inevitably result in them leaving the community because there’s simply no escaping me. There’s not really anything I can do about this, though, aside from doing whatever I can to become a kinder, more

I’m far from a perfect person, and my imperfections seeped into so much of what made Quixol what it is. However, it’d be silly to suggest that I’m the singular reason that Quixol is flawed, if anything, that would be another form of arrogance- assuming that I singlehandedly shaped the way Quixol took form. No, it was always a team effort, and every single staff and community member held great influence of their own.

The Future

This part is probably why many of you clicked on this post... You want to know what’s going to happen to Quixol. You likely noticed I’ve been referring to Quixol in the past tense a lot in this post. Honestly, I’m not sure why I did that, it just felt the most natural to type it that way. But, I will be honest- the future of Quixol right now isn’t looking very bright.

This is a personal post, so I don’t want to deliver any sort of formal announcement about plans for Quixol here, especially since I haven’t run this post by the other staff before posting it.

For the past 2 and a half months, I’ve been taking a very long break from Quixol. Much greater than any previous break of mine... I’ve neglected to even log in for weeks at a time. I still keep an eye on the discord server, and check the mc <-> discord bridge channel to see which players have been logging in. But I have little to no motivation to play, even just casually.

While I’d love to give you some fun cool news about how this hiatus is ending soon and I have a million and one projects planned, that simply isn’t the case. I’ve gotten to this point where I’m rethinking everything about myself, who I am, and what I’m doing with my life. Surely, I can’t dedicate all my time and energy to running a minecraft server for the rest of my life, even though I do care deeply about this community. But at the same time, it’s not really my call to shut down Quixol, and I’d hate to pull the plug just because of my own lack of motivation.

So, for the time being at least, you can probably consider Quixol to be on a sort of “indefinite hiatus”. I am generally the one to update plugins, do major server updates, etc., and I likely won’t be doing any of that any time soon. I fully entrust the other staff to handle that stuff if they really want to, and I’ve expressed that to them already. But as things stand, nobody else seems to want to pick up the torch right now. Shit is rough for pretty much everyone, and we’re all equally burnt out. We’ve all grown up quite a lot since Quixol began, too. So... Don’t expect anything anytime soon.

If there are any updates, they’ll come in our Discord server first.

As for me, personally... I just need time away from all of this. It’s clearer than ever to me that I have a lot of personal problems I need to work on, and I think that the cozy safe environment provided by Quixol didn’t challenge me enough to really address those issues. I need time to focus on myself & my own growth. At the same time, I also feel like I need more experience being a part of a team, instead of just running the show. I’m not getting the kind of enrichment I need from running Quixol, so I’m trying to turn my attention elsewhere.

I’m doing this not because I want to abandon you guys, or because I feel like I want/need to move on from this community. It’s just... Something I need to do, for myself. And I’ll still be around, I’m still gonna be posting to my tumblr & twitter and stuff, and you can still reach me on discord. I’m just focusing my time elsewhere for once.

What does that mean for the future of Quixol? I don’t really know yet. But, for now, it’s not going anywhere. It’s just... also not changing anytime soon. Not even a little bit. I’m sorry to give you this disappointing news, but I hope you all understand.

I miss the good times on Quixol, too. I really do. Maybe we can share them again sometime? Who knows...

For now, that’s all.

It breaks my heart that we don’t have anything glitzy and glamorous to do to celebrate Quixol’s 5th anniversary... But it would be asking far too much of the staff to set anything like that up right now. Maybe we can have some sort of celebration later...? I dunno.

I hope you’re all staying safe & healthy out there. Thank you so much for reading this. I love all of you.

Happy birthday, Quixol.

#vivi bleats #txt #Quixol #long post

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quoteload109 · 3 years ago

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twatkcox · 4 years ago

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[#2021]

Really, 2020, what has gotten into you? It only took more than a couple of months before everything went haywire and causing a worldwide problem that’s so difficult to manage and control. I’m specifically referring to the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic, which is still ongoing as of this post.

Anyway, let’s take a recap of all the things that happened in 2020:

I’ve published a total of 42 posts on TWATKcox-WP this year, which is slightly higher than last year.

I officially have a new job for the first time in six years, though I’m currently on a pay-per-work basis. Right now, I still don’t have my TIN (taxpayer’s identification number) and I don’t know if my previous company had already filed my TIN application at the BIR office in Makati. Well, I don’t want to risk getting multiple TINs, which is punishable under Philippine law.

TWATKcox’s 7th anniversary post features the seven things about me. Of course, it includes a very serious accident that left a scar on my scalp as a revelation, the last one on the list.

Taal Volcano in Batangas (south of Metro Manila) erupts, causing damage to houses and crops. Surrounding areas were also affected by the ash fall, prompting those living in nearby areas to hoard face masks.

COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019), originating from Wuhan, China (ugh, China!), infects millions of people in almost 200 countries. Several planned events here and abroad (mainly concerts and conventions) were either postponed or canceled for safety reasons.

In late January, I managed to capture some interesting scenes during the Chinese New Year celebration in Binondo, Manila. As a safety precaution due to the possible threat of COVID-19 in the country, I decided to wear my face mask in the area.

I visited the newly-opened Ayala Malls Manila Bay right after Valentine’s day (which turned out to be the final mall-hopping trip before the lockdown), as well as some of the malls (particularly SM Mall Of Asia) in the Bay City area (Pasay). I managed to see my previous employer’s new building along Macapagal Boulevard up close, right next to W Mall (Waltermart).

I bought a lot of manga books earlier this year, including Attack On Titan (volume 9), Nura: Rise Of The Yokai Clan (volume 2), and Buso Renkin (volume 8). Aside from that, I also bought two large plastic storage boxes and four shoe boxes to store my manga collection and my collection of old magazines.

Since March 15, Metro Manila (and the rest of the Philippines) was placed under community quarantine in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. For more than two months, I was stuck at home writing fewer posts for my blog as well as downloading tons of stuff. I find it unimaginable not to leave the house at a time like this, but I managed to do so a few times.

For a while, we have to rely on food deliveries and online shopping sites, mainly for groceries, fresh produce, meat products, and essential items.

In June, an online portal (powered by Weebly) and a third Tumblr site (focusing on my own literary works and fan fiction) were launched. TWATKcox’s Weebly site still remains operational, though no longer updated since last year. Also, all of my Tumblr sites are now using the Strongest theme by Glenthemes.

The Otaku Diaries (previously as The Anime Diaries on TWATKcox-Tumblr) debuted on TWATKcox-WP with a different introduction. I’ve already published a few posts under that series.

In September, I had a third smartphone, a Mi A1 (which is passed down to me by my brother, who had just got a new phone) which is currently running a customized OS that is based on Pixel OS. It took me almost a week to set it up and then I messed it up with a bugged update, As a result, I had to set up the Mi A1 again. Right now, it didn’t get a lot of use since I still have my second smartphone (the Vivo Y53), but I’m actually using it to do various jobs off PC, such as writing various drafts, editing photos, and surfing the internet. Once the pandemic is over, I’ll be using it as a primary phone with the Vivo Y53 as a secondary/music phone, effectively retiring my first smartphone, the LG Optimus L3 II, which I’ve been using since 2014.

I celebrated my 30th birthday with a simple dinner. Nothing special, really. But I think it would’ve end up differently had the pandemic not happened.

A couple of strong typhoons hit the country: Typhoon Goni (Rolly) and Typhoon Vamco (Ulysses). Both typhoons caused serious damage to various parts of Luzon, including Bicol region, Cagayan Valley, Rizal province, and Marikina.

I managed to buy a lot of stuff, some of the items are bought online via Lazada. Among those I bought are a couple of micro SD cards (64 and 128 GB), a 10000 mAh power bank, and a USB hub with SD card reader. My PC got an upgrade too, including a brand new 4 TB hard drive to replace the failing 2 TB hard drive. Of course, I initially have plans to buy some new clothing and accessories, but I decided to hold off for now until the pandemic ends.

I celebrated my tenth year with WordPress. It’s been ten years since I joined the blog-hosting site (WordPress.com) to host my blogs The Kin Keihan Times (second iteration, December 2010 to January 2013, now called The Kin Keihan Times Archives) and The World According To KCOX (since January 2013). More than two years later, in January 2023, the latter will celebrate its tenth year in the cyberspace, another major milestone for my current blog.

As far as Christmas and New Year’s celebration is concerned, I couldn’t enjoy it despite my extreme anticipation for the holidays. Private gatherings are limited to about 10-20 people. Public gatherings are still prohibited, so there will be no New Year’s celebration parties around the country, as well as in other parts of the world.

Before the year ends, I created a new banner for TWATKcox-WP, using one of the edited pics from last year. Nothing special, really.

Right now, I don’t want to get my hopes up (I’m extremely disappointed about my canceled plans for this year, that’s what) so I won’t be listing down any of the upcoming events here. Same thing goes for my upcoming plans. The only things you should look forward to this 2021 are the main blog’s 8th anniversary and a handful of special posts. Whether or not I’ll get to finish the planned literary special and the autobiography will depend on the COVID-19 situation in the country. If things won’t improve by then, I might be forced to drop these projects altogether.

Frankly speaking, 2020 doesn’t deserve a place in world history. I was hoping that this cursed year be erased from this planet’s existence.

The world is greatly suffering from COVID-19 and it will take a while for this pandemic to end. So, it looks like I won’t have a great new year ahead as well.

And so, I won’t end this with a greeting. Just stay safe, stay healthy, and together, we’ll beat the sh*t out of this f***ing coronavirus that ruined our lives. Yeah, 2020, you’re the worst year in history, ever.

#2021 #events that matter... whatever #forecast #aims and plans #year ender post #COVID-19 pandemic #blogging #writing

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lsmithart · 4 years ago

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304: Dissertation Initial Proposal

Lucie Smith

BA (Hons) Fine Art

Working Title

The Artefact and the Intangible: Capturing Memory, Absence and the Ephemeral.

Be concise and explicit. This working title allows you to show what you are thinking of looking at, but leaves you room to develop your final question

Keywords

Trauma / Grief

Trace

Ephemera

Presence / Absence

Symbolism / Signifier

Artefact

Abjection – ‘the state of being cast off’

Phenomenology

Embodiment

Tangible / Intangible

Material / Immaterial

Include here any words that will help you identify the research you want to undertake.

Introduction/Questions

What is the significance of objects and embodiment in aiding human interaction and understanding?

Phenomenology and Embodiment through Objects and Physical Forms in Practice - Art as Artefact - Theodor Adorno (On Subject and Object), relevance of familiar objects and altering viewer’s perception through curation of such objects (Berger – Ways of Seeing).

Marcel Duchamp, Readymades and the Evolution of Objects in Conceptual Art – Influences this has had on contemporary/conceptual art. How art transitioned to allow for concepts to be produce through the inclusion of artefacts and objects. Links with artists including Bourgeois, Emin, Hatoum, Salcedo, Wilkes.

Trace as a Signifier for Memory & Time’s Past – Whiteread, casting and recreation of familiar objects, Merleau-Ponty (Visible and the Invisible), Susan Best (The Trace and the Body), Uros Cvoro (The Present Body etc), Salcedo, Wilkes, Hesse? – fragmenting objects and materials to allude to a narrative. Exploration of the lived experience within art practice. How significant personal items can be utilised within artwork to embody past feelings/emotions as a tool for processing trauma and demonstrating growth. E.g. Louise Bourgeois ‘The Cells: Red Room’, Tracey Emin ‘the first time I was pregnant I started to crochet the baby a shawl’ (1999-2000); My Bed 1998; Cathy Wilkes ‘Untitled’

The Artefact as an Abjection of the Self – Objects as extensions of the self, Julia Kristeva (Abject), Oliver Guy-Watkins (Points of Trauma), Salcedo (alluding to collective and individual identity of trauma victims), Hatoum, Bourgeois, Emin, Wilkes.

Use this section to introduce the questions and any issues that are central to your research. Identify the field of study in broad terms and indicate how you expect your research to explore this area of interest.

Research Background & Questions

Phenomenology – how can certain artefacts (or absence of) be curated within a work to demonstrate significance? How does this allow for viewers resonation?

What is the significance of objects/artefacts? Why are we so attached to them? How does this aid our perception of artwork where its foundation is that of specific objects? Jean Piaget’s object attachment theory.

Is the understanding of the familiar aspects of the work necessary for these connotations to be clearly presented/ perceived by the viewer?

How can the intangible be embodied through the inclusion of and recreation of objects?

The abject – the self and the other ‘the state of being cast off’. How do artefact-based works allow for emotions to be encapsulated into a new form, in turn aiding the processing of these emotions?

“In order to liberate myself from the past, I have to reconstruct it, ponder about it, make a statue out of it, and get rid of it through making sculpture. I am able to forget it afterwards. I have paid my debt to the past.” – Louise Bourgeois

How do we piece together the past through objects/physical remnants? What does it mean when artefacts are absent?

What are the key texts/works in the area you are looking into? Does your proposal extend your understanding of particular questions or topics? You need to set out your research questions as clearly as possible, explain problems that you want to explore and say why it is important to do so. In other words, think about how to situate your project in the context of your discipline or your creative interests.

Research Methods

I plan to use a range of books that will provide critical information that will aid my comparison of the issues and positives surrounding memory exploration through contemporary art. These are the books that I have sourced and feel will be a good starting point:

Theory Books:

Points Of Trauma: A Consideration of the Influence Personal and Collective Trauma Has on Contemporary Art by Oliver Guy-Watkins

Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past by Daniel L. Schacter

Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture by Rina Arya, Nicholas Chare

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Contemporary Art and Memory by Joan Gibbons

Memory by Ian Farr (Documents of Contemporary Art)

The Object by Antony Hudek (Documents of Contemporary Art)

Making Memory Matter : Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art by Lisa Saltzman

The Present Body, the Absent Body, and the Formless by Uros Cvoro

Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates by Bill Schwarz, Susannah Radstone

The Trace and the Body by Susan Best

A Theory of Semiotics by Umberto Eco?

The Visible and the Invisible, Maurice Merleau Ponty

Artist Books:

Displacements by A Huyssen and J Bradley

The Materiality of Mourning by Doris Salcedo

Mona Hatoum by Catherine de Zegher

Louise Bourgeois by Storr, Herkenhoff and Schwartzman

Rachel Whiteread: Shedding Life by edited by Fiona Bradley

Rachel Whiteread: Transient Spaces by Molly Nesbit, Beatriz Colomina and A. M. Home

The Art of Rachel Whiteread by Chris Townsend

The Art of Tracey Emin by Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend

Conceptual Art by Tony Godfrey

Eva Hesse: Longing, Belonging and Displacement by Vanessa Corby

Specific relevant works:

Rachel Whiteread –House (1993); Untitled (Pink Torso) (1995)

Louise Bourgeois – The Cells; Le Defi (1991)

Tracey Emin – ‘the first time I was pregnant I started to crochet the baby a shawl’ (1999-2000); My Bed 1998; My Major Retrospective (1993)

Doris Salcedo – Atrabiliarios (1992-1993); Untitled (1989-2008)

Eva Hesse – Repetition Nineteen III

Cathy Wilkes – Untitled (2019) – Venice Biennale

Mona Hatoum – First Step (1996); Short Space (1992); Silence (1994); Self Erasing Drawing (1979)

Texts/videos summarising the impact and nature of the following artists’ work (specific works to be decided upon):

Art and Memory podcast:

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/pierre-bonnard-781/art-memory

Jean Piaget’s Object Attachment/Cognitive Development Theory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2_by0rp5q0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhcgYgx7aAA

Psychology of Stuff and Things Article:

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-26/edition-8/psychology-stuff-and-things

Memory and Art Theory Websites:

Art of Remembrance Article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/articles/200605/the-art-remembrance

Art and Science of Memory Article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-voices-within/201303/the-art-and-science-memory

Effects of Childhood Trauma Article:

https://istss.org/public-resources/what-is-childhood-trauma/effects-of-childhood-trauma.aspx

Art as a means to heal trauma: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/expressive-arts-as-means-to-heal-trauma-032414

Abject:

Abject Art: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/abject-art

On the Abject: https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html

Artist Reference Websites:

Rachel Whiteread:

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/whiteread-rachel/artworks

Doris Salcedo:

Atrabilious: https://www3.mcachicago.org/2015/salcedo/works/atrabiliarios/

Memory as the Essence of the Work Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOpEO8kq0uE&list=PLTi6OHh9i_g7xVdPaEiaxRaGxHPajsN-G&index=34

The Materiality of Mourning Lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFe5oRC4Dms&list=PLTi6OHh9i_g7xVdPaEiaxRaGxHPajsN-G&index=27

Louise Bourgeois:

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351/art-louise-bourgeois

https://bourgeois.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/red-room-parents

Prisoner of my Memories Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifn0qwTbgcA

Spiderwoman Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkaJ6S0ViXg

Tracey Emin:

My Bed (Turner Contemporary) Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg7wQWN23fo

My Bed (Tate Shots) Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv04ewpiqSc&list=PLTi6OHh9i_g7xVdPaEiaxRaGxHPajsN-G&index=53&t=0s

20 Years Retrospective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8jDyyXHPT8

Cathy Wilkes:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/07/mournful-and-melancholy-cathy-wilkes-britain-at-the-venice-biennale

Dr Zoe Whitley on Cathy Wilkes: British Pavillion Artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c50vWmVbYG8

Introducing Cathy Wilkes for Venice Biennale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDPwKijlGs0

Online summary videos will be helpful in terms of understanding theory; e.g. philosophical ideas (phenomenology; the abject); Piaget’s Object Attachment/Cognitive Development Theory? I have already got some previous research into memory theory from my 201 project and GCOP200 essay that could prove helpful in terms of scientific theory regarding memory.

The essay will be a reflective essay.

Plan

10-12 paragraphs (roughly)

Key Theorists/Writers:

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (The Visible and the Invisible)

2. Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space)

3. Susan Best (Trace and the Body)

4. Joan Gibbons (Contemporary Art and Memory)

5. Oliver Guy-Watkins (Points of Trauma: A Consideration of the Influence Personal and Collective Trauma Has on Contemporary Art)

6. Theodor Adorno (On Subject and Object)

7. Julia Kristeva (The Abject)

8. John Berger (Ways of Seeing)

Introduction

Discuss the main theories and artists that will be explored. Outline what the ideas surrounding how memory/the ephemeral/absence are conveyed through the use of trace and artefacts within art practice.

What is the significance of objects and embodiment in aiding human interaction and understanding?

Main body:

Conclusion

Summarise points made, consider what has been discovered…

Bibliography/References

Adorno, T. W., (1969). On Subject and Object. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. American Craft Council, (2012). Warren Seelig: Materiality and Meaning. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq8LK83Shbk. [Accessed on 20/05/2020] Archer, M., et al., (1997). Mona Hatoum. Phaidon London. Available at http://www.openbibart.fr/item/display/10068/952353. Arya, R., and Chare, N., (2016). Abject visions: Powers of horror in art and visual culture. Manchester University Press. Bachelard, G., (2014). The poetics of space. Penguin Classics. Best, S., (1999). The trace and the Body. The International Exhibition: Trace. A Bradley, F., and Morgan, S., (1996). Rachel Whiteread: shedding life. Tate Gallery Publishing. British Council Arts, (2019a). Dr Zoé Whitley on Cathy Wilkes: British Pavilion artist at the Venice Biennale 2019. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c50vWmVbYG8. [Accessed on 08/05/2020] British Council Arts, (2019b). Introducing Cathy Wilkes | British Pavilion artist 2019 | Venice Biennale. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDPwKijlGs0. [Accessed on 08/05/2020] Corby, V., (2010). Eva Hesse: Longing, Belonging and Displacement. London: I B Tauris. p. 250 Available at https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/1607/. [Accessed on 14/10/2020] Cube, W., (no date). White Cube - Exhibitions - My Major Retrospective 1963-1993. [Online]. Available at https://whitecube.com/exhibitions/exhibition/tracey_emin_duke_street_1993/. [Accessed on 06/04/2020] Cvoro, U., (2002). ‘The Present Body, the Absent Body, and the Formless’. Art Journal. p. 54 Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/778151. Duchamp, M., (1961). The Art of Assemblage: A Symposium. The Museum of Modern Art. Eco, U., (1979). A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana University Press. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=BoXO4ItsuaMC. EdFestMagTV, (2008). Tracey Emin 20 Year Retrospective Mini Lecture. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbEKXlgsJmg. [Accessed on 06/04/2020] Eickhoff, F.-W., (2006). On Nachträglichkeit: the modernity of an old concept. The International journal of psycho-analysis. 87 (Pt 6), pp. 1453–1469 [Online]. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1516/ekah-8uh6-85c4-gm22. Farr, I., (2012). Memory: Documents of Contemporary Art. London: Whitechapel Fernyhough, C., (2013). The Art and Science of Memory. Psychology Today [Online]. Available at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-voices-within/201303/the-art-and-science-memory. [Accessed on 02/03/2020] Gibbons, J., (2007). Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance. Bloomsbury Publishing. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=NsqJDwAAQBAJ. Godfrey, T., and Godfrey, T., (1998). Conceptual Art. Phaidon Press. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=GMXpAAAAMAAJ. Harvard Art Museums, (2016). Lecture – Doris Salcedo and The Materiality of Mourning. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFe5oRC4Dms&list=PLTi6OHh9i_g7xVdPaEiaxRaGxHPajsN-G&index=27. [Accessed on 06/04/2020] HENI Talks, (2018). Louise Bourgeois: ‘A prisoner of my memories’. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifn0qwTbgcA. [Accessed on 06/04/2020] Higgins, C., (07/05/2019). Mournful and melancholy: Britain at the Venice Biennale. The Guardian [Online]. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/07/mournful-and-melancholy-cathy-wilkes-britain-at-the-venice-biennale. [Accessed on 10/01/2020] Hudek, A., (2014). ‘Documents of Contemporary Art: The Object’. London: Whitechapel Gallery, The MIT Press. Lingwood, J., and Bird, J., (1995). Rachel Whiteread: House. Phaidon. Available at http://www.openbibart.fr/item/display/10068/900898. Merleau-Ponty, M., (1968). The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes. Northwestern University Press. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=aPcET3X2zlEC. MoMA | Marcel Duchamp and the Readymade (no date). [Online]. Available at https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada/marcel-duchamp-and-the-readymade/. [Accessed on 02/06/2020] Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, (no date a). Doris Salcedo | Atrabiliarios. [Online]. Available at https://www3.mcachicago.org/2015/salcedo/works/atrabiliarios/. [Accessed on 15/02/2020] Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, (no date b). Doris Salcedo | Unland. [Online]. Available at https://www3.mcachicago.org/2015/salcedo/works/unland/. [Accessed on 09/03/2020] Object | Definition of Object by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com also meaning of Object (no date). Lexico Dictionaries. [Online]. Available at https://www.lexico.com/definition/object. [Accessed on 03/06/2020] Psychology Today (2016). The Art of Remembrance. [Online]. Available at http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200605/the-art-remembrance. [Accessed on 02/03/2020] Rachel Whiteread Artworks & Famous Paintings (no date). [Online]. Available at https://www.theartstory.org/artist/whiteread-rachel/artworks/. [Accessed on 02/03/2020] Radstone, S., and Schwarz, B., (2010). Memory: Histories, theories, debates. Fordham University Press. Available at http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/31578. Rick Walker, (2014). Secret Knowledge Tracey Emin - Louise Bourgeois. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHyAsMdBbH4&list=PLTi6OHh9i_g7xVdPaEiaxRaGxHPajsN-G&index=2. [Accessed on 08/01/2020] RP films, (2019). Louise Bourgeois - Spiderwoman. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkaJ6S0ViXg. [Accessed on 06/04/2020] Rush, M. E., (2019). Eva Hesse and the Physical Touch - Madison Elizabeth Rush - Medium. [Online]. Available at https://medium.com/@madisonelizabethrush/eva-hesse-and-the-physical-touch-9b45526867d2. [Accessed on 11/10/2020] Saltzman, L., (2006). Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art. University of Chicago Press. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3fzIglPkA3UC. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, (2011). Doris Salcedo: Memory as the essence of work. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOpEO8kq0uE&list=PLTi6OHh9i_g7xVdPaEiaxRaGxHPajsN-G&index=34. [Accessed on 06/04/2020] Storr, R., et al., (2003). Louise Bourgeois. Phaidon London. Available at http://www.openbibart.fr/item/display/10068/1004352. Tate, (2015). Tracey Emin on My Bed | TateShots. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv04ewpiqSc&list=PLTi6OHh9i_g7xVdPaEiaxRaGxHPajsN-G&index=53&t=0s. [Accessed on 08/05/2020] Tate, (no date a). Art Now: Doris Salcedo: Unland – Exhibition at Tate Britain | Tate. [Online]. Available at https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/art-now-doris-salcedo. [Accessed on 02/03/2020] Tate, (no date b). The Art of Louise Bourgeois – Look Closer | Tate. [Online]. Available at https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351/art-louise-bourgeois. [Accessed on 31/01/2020] Tate, (no date c). The Art of Memory – Podcast | Tate. [Online]. Available at https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/pierre-bonnard-781/art-memory. [Accessed on 02/03/2020] TED-Ed, (2016). Why are we so attached to our things? - Christian Jarrett. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2_by0rp5q0. [Accessed on 06/04/2020] Townsend, C., (2004). The Art of Rachel Whiteread. olin.tind.io. [Online]. Available at https://olin.tind.io/record/125945/. Turner Contemporary, (2017). Tracey Emin - ‘My Bed’ at Turner Contemporary. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg7wQWN23fo&list=PLTi6OHh9i_g7xVdPaEiaxRaGxHPajsN-G&index=54. [Accessed on 08/05/2020] VernissageTV, (2009). Tracey Emin. 20 Years. Youtube. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8jDyyXHPT8. [Accessed on 06/04/2020] Whiteread, R., et al., (2003). Rachel Whiteread: Transient Spaces. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=oftBPgAACAAJ.

#304

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ariellblogus · 5 years ago

Text

TL;DR: Read logs, delete useless shit, maintain the DB clear.

* Warning: An extended learn! *

Oh properly, I feel like a n00b while typing this but that’s how things roll. I’m not positive if I’ve any regular readers left, as to have regular readers one must be a daily writer, which I am clearly not. (Yes, I wish to change.)

Still, when you go back and stalk this blog, you’ll notice that submit frequency for 2018 has been abysmal at it’s greatest. But yes, there’s a cause an fascinating story behind the same. A narrative which might train you a thing or two about hosting WordPress by yourself internet hosting. It has definitely taught me a lot.

So, it began back in January once I began noticing poor loading performance of the location. Being a self-shared hosted occasion, I chalked it up to poor bandwidth or dangerous optimisation by Staff GoDaddy (not a lot constructive about them). Soon I started getting 503 error randomly on the home page, so it was time to research stuff…

Preliminary findings

I logged into GoDaddy account and went into my hosting status page. Immediately I used to be greeted with an orange banner(hyperlink right here) stating I’m reaching the resource limit and I have to improve my internet hosting plan soon to maintain up the graceful operations. I scoffed mildly to their advertising techniques and opened the boot to look underneath the hood.

I opened the CPanel and took a look over on the system panel on the left. To my amazement, virtually all of the parameters have been either terminal pink or warning orange. I appeared up the labels to know the which means of these indicators.

Pink is often my favorite color

Nicely, clearly, I used to be a bit stunned as I have an expertise of operating WordPress since 2006-ish and I have had run pretty complexly themed blogs on my potato local pc (2006 PC, yeah!) utilizing XAMMP on Home windows.

In case you are a backend guy and skim this line above now (in 2018), you will in all probability cringe more durable than you do on Nicki Minaz songs. Every little thing about that line is WRONG (2006, PC, XAMMP).

Anyway, I had a fond memory of WordPress stack being tremendous environment friendly and respectable at dealing with a mere 100+ blog posts with ~15 plugins. Especially once I was not even posting posts commonly and visitors was on a decline.

Something was improper right here.

I referred to as up GoDaddy tech gross sales help and patiently explained my drawback to him only to get his sales pitch – “Sar, I can see the upgrade banner in your account, so can you. Please give cash, we offer you moar resourcez. Oaky?“. Hmm, in all probability not that brash however you get the gist. I (mildly irritated) requested him to escalate my name to his supervisor or someone from *real* tech help.

Properly, they kinda did. A woman (I am NOT a sexist) picked up the decision and I swear to the odin that she was not capable of perceive something about wp-config and the 503 error and requested me if I have cleared my browser cache. I politely requested her to switch the decision to her supervisor.

…

This time a moderately mature sounding guy picked up the decision and ask my drawback. People, I used to be already 3 ranges deep and 20 minutes on the call. I still defined to him my drawback. He opened his admin console, obtained to my box and disabled all plugins (essential) and my custom theme.

The location seemed to breathe for some time and we have been capable of access the same. He informed me plainly that this can be a basic case of resource overutilization and I have to upgrade my hosting from the essential starter plan to at the least their Delux combo something plan. I made the rookie’s mistake of asking the fee for the same as he immediately stated he will simply transfer my name to his gross sales representative. *facepalm* I held up the connection earlier than they might plug me one other degree deep.

I deep down knew that I want to research this myself earlier than throwing moolah on the desk.

Lazy boi excuses; Half – I

This was February 2018. I stored my weekend free and planned to drill down into my GoDaddy shared internet hosting server to seek out the resource drawback. I used to be positive about some bug leaking memory or some infinite loop sucking out my CPU burst cycles. I deliberate to duplicate the setup on AWS t2.micro free occasion and made an account on the same. It does require a credit card on the file before letting to fireside up ec2 situations. My AMEX CC had some drawback because it debits the verification money however nonetheless stated pending for 48 hours. Truthful enough, I assumed I’ll begin in 2 days…

But all of a sudden (a software program engineer approach of shedding joyful tears!), I acquired a huge venture to work on from scratch at my last job @ Shuttl. (Yeah, I have switched career, yet once more). The venture identify rhymed with XMS. I was pretty excited to build a Python Django venture from scratch along with my 2 gifted senior teammates. I used to be completely satisfied that I will get to study a ton and can deploy an entire challenge reside AND……both of my 2 gifted senior teammates left earlier than even the completion of the primary milestone of the undertaking. Yep, just left. And I used to be struck with lots of legacy code to work on, with a little or no concept concerning the framework. I had a great experience with Flask framework but Django had some things carried out in another way.

I slogged at work and the great half was that I was capable of understand most of the code and received fairly good at Django, carried out a ton of APIs and built a primary dashboard UI. Anyway, that sucked subsequent 2 months of my life and I utterly forgot about this blog, the 503 challenge and meanwhile it stored getting worse as it began opening sometimes and stored throwing 503 errors for probably the most part.

Lazy boi excuses; Part – II

Nah, let’s transfer forward. I’ve shared too much personal stuff anyway. 😛

Let’s start recent? Scrap all shit.

It was around Might 2018 and I obtained some interns and a junior to assist me with new tasks that our product group was pumping out PRDs out at a tremendous price. I used to be working continuous on similar however still a window of private time opened up. Meanwhile, we migrated our code repositories to Github from Gitlab and I obtained to know concerning the idea of gh-pages.

Github pages – A neat nifty venture by Github which allows you to host stuff from your repo as easy websites or blogs. Free of charge!

This appeared like a candy chime to my ears as I used to be drained of the non-existent help from GoDaddy and their incompetent tech staff (free-tier a minimum of). I began formulating a plan to nuke bitsnapper altogether and start from scratch and make a easy Martin Fowler-esque blog.

Clear, simple and nerdy.

So, I created a simple website blog on jatinkrmalik.github.io and even posted some posts (perhaps 1). However because of lack of a lot formatting options and skill to customize stuff, was a bummer.

I lost curiosity in Github pages quicker than America did in Trump.

AND soon I resigned from Shuttl and left in July as a result of [redacted] causes.

A new beginning, AWS method?!

In late July, I joined a really early stage startup referred to as Synaptic.io after what felt like a swyamwar of supply letters. (okay, no bragging). I used to be impressed by the product and measurement of the staff which you possibly can rely on one hand. It felt profitable to get into core group, build one thing great and have an opportunity to witness progress from the within.

Anyway, Synaptic being a data-heavy company, we use lots of third social gathering providers and instruments for automated deployment to staging, prod and so on. Naturally, AWS is the spine of our deployment infra. I acquired a brand new AWS account each for staging and prod, so I started reading about the identical and obtained to find out about Bitnami WordPress AMI which comes preloaded with the WordPress stack goodies and one can deploy with a click on. It was time to reactivate my AWS account and hearth this up.

A couple of weeks in the past.

Initially of August 2018, I was lastly capable of authenticate my AWS account by punching a new credit card. I fired up a bitnami WordPress occasion and did a setup for the standard WordPress installation. Now all I had to do was simply again up stuff from GoDaddy servers and restore right here.

Sounds straightforward proper?

EXCEPT.

IT.

WAS.

NOT.

I logged into my good previous CPanel, received the FTP creds, loaded FileZilla and began the switch. The ETA was in the north of double-digit hours as the website’s public_html folder was somewhere round 1.5 GB which is comprehensible as I’ve lots of media information and videos. Truthful enough. However this once more was going to take rather a lot of time as the problem with transferring a folder is that every micro-size file (<100 kb) takes mere milliseconds to obtain however takes it’s personal sweet time to write down on the local disk when downloading from the web. The apparent means was to pack the public_html folder into a zip file and then switch.

I did an SSH into the box and ran the command zip -rv public_html.zip public_html/ to zip the listing, but one factor which I forgot was that even whereas zipping a listing, I’ll hit the identical drawback of the zip program manually iterating over all of the information (together with microsized one) and can take quite a bit of time to attempt to compress every one. I left it for 20 minutes only to seek out it solely 10% via my all information. Enchancment? Positive but I am not a very patient man.

Why is that this so slow? Oh, wait.

I appeared into the log (because of -v…verbose), and came upon that I had quite a bit of information in my public_html folder in my xcloner plugin directory resulting from some failed attempts to take website backup from a plugin. I found more such folders of some plugins which haven’t any lively position in powering up this blog.

Checking the dimensions of information within the plugins directory.

So, I deleted these folders in public_html/wp-content/plugins and tried operating the zip command once more. It was still slow and I gave up in a couple of minutes.

Clear up.Zip them em!

I google about wrapping information in a zipper with out compressing a lot and obtained to study ranges of compression in zip utility which fits from 1-9 with 1 being least compression and 9 being the very best degree of compression whereas it defaults to 6. So, I attempted again this time with butzip -1rv public_html.zip public_html/ quickly realized the iteration over gazzilion information take extra time than compression logic for the CPU.

Simply wrapping.

I learn more and came upon that making a tarball w/o compression is quicker than zip utility, so it was time to attempt that and perhaps let it complete in its own sweet time. So, I fired up the command: tar -caf public.tar public_html and left it operating.

Unsure if it ever completed…

Then I logged into phpMyAdmin (an internet app to handle MySQL occasion) to take a backup of my bitsnapper WordPress DB. I simply clicked on export and the downloaded file was of measurement 48 MBs which was odd as in UI it was displaying a DB measurement of 1.2 GB. I knew SQL backup can compress some knowledge but of this magnitude? WTF. I opened the SQL file in VS code and clearly, the file was incomplete and had some HTML gibberish at the end which on inspection was the HTML for phpMyAdmin. Bizarre?

I attempted exporting the DB as soon as again from the UI and this time the dimensions of the backup.sql file was 256 MBs. I felt this was applicable but my instinct did a proper click on and opened in my editor as soon as again. Certainly enough the file was nonetheless incomplete with that gibberish. Truthful to say, the backup from phpMyAdmin was corrupted.

prime

I did an ssh into my internet hosting box using the creds in my GoDaddy account and tried every little thing from checking the output of system instructions like:prime, ps -ef, free but the box is properly sandboxed by GoDaddy to avoid any unauthorised access. I even tried to do a privilege escalation with intention of gaining extra management over my hosting account and perhaps restart mysqld however all in useless.

pssudo?

I knew about taking direct DB backups from the shell utilizing mysqldump -h -u -p > db_backup.sql so it was time to attempt that. I ran the command and tailed the backup SQL file with tail -f db_backup.sql to look into its content material because it populated. It began exporting DB nicely and as I started feeling badass and went to seize a cup of espresso, the terminal introduced me with the error message:

man mysqldumpFirst try.

I googled about the problem and it had something to do with the max_alllowed_packet variable of MySQL. The one two methods to vary that was either my modifying /and so forth/my.cnf file (which I used to be positive I didn’t have sudo entry to) or run SET GLOBAL max_allowed_packet=1073741824; query within the MySQL console.

Admin? No? Sorry.

Yeah, both of them didn’t work. Obviously. You want respective system admin consumer access for both.

The roadblock was getting stupidly irritating, and I had to get the backup. I googled more and somebody prompt to cross the max_allowed_packet variable with the mysqldump command as.–max-allowed-packet=1073741824 Tried that too, didn’t work.

With –max_allowed_packet

I was tired and needed to sleep, so I terminated my ec2 occasion and slept.

TODAY.

At present I used to be feeling motivated and deliberate to look into the problem from another angle.

As an alternative of utilizing the WordPress AMI, I made a decision to create the whole setup from scratch. I launched an occasion of ec2 with Amazon Linux AMI. The goal was to know if that is actually GoDaddy messing with me or is it some fault in my database which is leading to the entire shebang.

I used this submit as steerage to arrange every little thing from grounds up.

I logged in once more to my GoDaddy account to be greeted by the orange banner urging me to upgrade. I felt weak and was nearly to click improve and throw some dough to get the straightforward means out. But no, that’s towards the hacker mentality I work with.

So, I opened the CPanel, phpMyAdmin and tried taking a backup again. It again downloaded a 250-something MB file with gibberish at the end. I manually eliminated the last half of the file and uploaded it to my ec2 instance by way of scp and imported it into my distant MySQL occasion.

After importing the public_html information, importing SQL backup and configuring wp-config.php file with DB host and creds, I restarted each httpd (Apache server) and MySQL (DB server) and opened http://ec2-instance-url:80 and to my partial euphoria, it did load up my header and footer for bitsnapper however no posts have been seen.

Hmm… something was missing.

I seemed into the tables on phpMyAdmin and my MySQL server on the ec2 occasion and duh, my wp_xxx_posts table and wp_xxx_postsmeta was lacking. Yeah! So, the problem was that my DB measurement has such giant that Godaddy shared hosting limited bandwidth was not allowing me to take a backup of the whole DB. Clearly, I had to repair this.

I wrote a custom python script to take a backup of the bitsnapper DB table-by-table to avoid hitting the max_allowed_packet limit as observed last week however the identical error mysqldump: Error 2013: Misplaced connection to MySQL server throughout question when dumping table wp_xxx_postmeta stored popping up.

I started my intense googling session as soon as again and queried alongside the line of ‘how you can backup DB from GoDaddy shared internet hosting‘ and ‘GoDaddy + shared hosting + mysqldump + error 2013‘ and by some means by a fluke, I landed on the Backup part of my ….drumroll?….. CPanel! *facepalm*

Facepalm second!

It had every thing I was making an attempt to do above with a flick of a click. I ended all my previous efforts and download the complete web site backup which had each public_html folder and DB backup SQL. The whole archive was nonetheless 2.5 GB which was big for a small blog like this.

Anyway, I did a scp to my ec2 instance and tried to exchange the information in /var/www/html with public_html/ and restored mysql backup by way of mysql -u -p < db_backup.sql and this time it labored with out an error. I restarted my mysql and apache http server by service mysql restart; serivce httpd restart; and tried to load http://:80 and presto! the entire website loads up.

The euphoria this time also lasted for a brief burst as within 2-3 reloads the replicated website again began throwing up the same 503 error and my shell session chocked up.

503! Not again.

I fired up a brand new terminal and tried SSHing into the box however the box just turned unresponsive. I went to the AWS admin console to examine my ec2 instance monitoring for the machine parameters and observed an identical sample as with the CPanel (left panel) parameter console. It was all purple and orange as soon as again.

Clearly, GoDaddy’s internet hosting wasn’t the only wrongdoer.

Real IT help == Self-troubleshooting!

It was then once I decided to shed my worry of peeping into the DB tables because it was a gone trigger anyway and I nonetheless had a partial backup from last yr once I migrated the blog from WordPress managed internet hosting to standard shared internet hosting box.

Boys, it was time to run some queries. The first thing I did was to login to the phpMyAdmin and lookup the tables, schema and properties. I used to be assured that the issue is with the DB measurement and that’s the rationale for slow queries which is chocking up the CPU burst time.

I seemed into tables and located table wp_xxx_postmeta to be around 950 MB in measurement with simply 11000 data. This immediately fired up alarms in my head as I have labored with multi-million row DBs during my stint in Adobe & Shuttl and the table measurement was principally in the vary of few MBs solely. A tough again of the notice calculation said a median measurement of 100 kb per report on this table which was weird because once I seemed up the schema for a similar, it simply was storing 4 data i.e. meta_id, post_id, meta_key, meta_value.

Hey DB, you cray?

It was time to prod this table and understand the info inside it. I fired up a simple query:

SELECT meta_key, rely”text” FROM ‘wp_s4w671g0kp_postmeta’ GROUP by meta_key order by rely”text” desc;

Lo behold, the end result was a bit shocking as till now I used to be considering that this desk may include submit revisions or metadata solely but the query outcome was something like this:

meta_key rely”text” _total_views

1895

_view_ip_list

1892

_jetpack_related_posts_cache

1206

_wp_attached_file

1144

_wp_attachment_metadata

1101

wp-smpro-smush-data

1069

_wp_attachment_image_alt

903

_edit_lock

155

_edit_last

140

_yoast_wpseo_focuskw

118

_yoast_wpseo_linkdex

118

_thumbnail_id

116

_yoast_wpseo_metadesc

114

_publicize_twitter_user

107

_wpas_done_all

103

_total_likes

_like_ip_list

_wpas_skip_3914702

_wpas_skip_11104850

_yoast_wpseo_title

_wp_attachment_backup_sizes

_yoast_wpseo_focuskw_text_input

_wp_old_slug

essb_hideplusone

essb_hidevk

Do you see it? There are some 1800+ data for _view_ip_list, _total_views, _jetpack_related_posts_cache which is principally nothing however data originated from WordPress personal homegrown fashionable plugin – Jetpack. I googled a bit about security delete for these data, didn’t find anything, took a leap of religion and executed:

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_view_ip_list’;

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_total_views’;

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_jetpack_related_posts_cache’;

It deleted some 4,000 data out of 11,000 data it had and look what happened once I refreshed phpMyAdmin?

All cleaned up!

Yus! My wp_xxx_postmeta table measurement dropped from 900-something MBs to 6.Three MBs by just deleting ~4,000 data. What sick joke is that? My complete DB measurement dropped to 25 MBs from ~1.2 GBs, in all probability because of the cascade effect of overseas key constraints of the data I deleted.

Outcome?

My web site was a breeze once once more. The load time went down considerably, in all probability as a result of of quicker DB queries and even the system monitoring parameters on the CPanel went down from Purple/Orange to Inexperienced. I did some load testing by executing a number of curl requests to my house page by way of terminal, and the server was not breaking any sweat.

Take a look at that RAM usage! WHAT? Keep in mind once I talked about operating WordPress stack on my 2006 PC with some 128 MB of memory? Yeah!

So fast much wow!

Classes?

Troubleshooting Godaddy is a long-term thing. You’ll be able to either get into the shit and fix it yourself or you can begin throwing money on the display until you escalate to their core tech workforce which I assume might be by no means for shared internet hosting plans. They could have a terrific help for devoted servers though.

AWS is a f##king superb piece of tech. If you understand how to harden servers, by all means, simply drop these legacy internet hosting providers and go on your personal setup. It’s in all probability cheaper, quicker and extra VFM. A easy t2.micro instance will value < ₹700/month. (Perhaps extra, sigh world financial system!).

Typically, being a smartass isn’t good. Most of the occasions, nevertheless, it retains you protected.

All the time examine logs. -_-

The post Back from Dead

#HowTo #Internet #Blog #DIY #Random Bits

0 notes

moonlifesims4ccfinds · 5 years ago

Text

TL;DR: Read logs, delete useless shit, maintain the DB clear.

* Warning: An extended learn! *

Preliminary findings

Pink is often my favorite color

Something was improper right here.

…

I deep down knew that I want to research this myself earlier than throwing moolah on the desk.

Lazy boi excuses; Half – I

Lazy boi excuses; Part – II

Nah, let’s transfer forward. I’ve shared too much personal stuff anyway. 😛

Let’s start recent? Scrap all shit.

Github pages – A neat nifty venture by Github which allows you to host stuff from your repo as easy websites or blogs. Free of charge!

Clear, simple and nerdy.

So, I created a simple website blog on jatinkrmalik.github.io and even posted some posts (perhaps 1). However because of lack of a lot formatting options and skill to customize stuff, was a bummer.

I lost curiosity in Github pages quicker than America did in Trump.

AND soon I resigned from Shuttl and left in July as a result of [redacted] causes.

A new beginning, AWS method?!

A couple of weeks in the past.

Sounds straightforward proper?

EXCEPT.

IT.

WAS.

NOT.

Why is that this so slow? Oh, wait.

Checking the dimensions of information within the plugins directory.

So, I deleted these folders in public_html/wp-content/plugins and tried operating the zip command once more. It was still slow and I gave up in a couple of minutes.

Clear up.Zip them em!

Simply wrapping.

Unsure if it ever completed…

prime

pssudo?

man mysqldumpFirst try.

Admin? No? Sorry.

Yeah, both of them didn’t work. Obviously. You want respective system admin consumer access for both.

With –max_allowed_packet

I was tired and needed to sleep, so I terminated my ec2 occasion and slept.

TODAY.

At present I used to be feeling motivated and deliberate to look into the problem from another angle.

I used this submit as steerage to arrange every little thing from grounds up.

Hmm… something was missing.

Facepalm second!

The euphoria this time also lasted for a brief burst as within 2-3 reloads the replicated website again began throwing up the same 503 error and my shell session chocked up.

503! Not again.

Clearly, GoDaddy’s internet hosting wasn’t the only wrongdoer.

Real IT help == Self-troubleshooting!

Hey DB, you cray?

It was time to prod this table and understand the info inside it. I fired up a simple query:

SELECT meta_key, rely”text” FROM ‘wp_s4w671g0kp_postmeta’ GROUP by meta_key order by rely”text” desc;

Lo behold, the end result was a bit shocking as till now I used to be considering that this desk may include submit revisions or metadata solely but the query outcome was something like this:

meta_key rely”text” _total_views

1895

_view_ip_list

1892

_jetpack_related_posts_cache

1206

_wp_attached_file

1144

_wp_attachment_metadata

1101

wp-smpro-smush-data

1069

_wp_attachment_image_alt

903

_edit_lock

155

_edit_last

140

_yoast_wpseo_focuskw

118

_yoast_wpseo_linkdex

118

_thumbnail_id

116

_yoast_wpseo_metadesc

114

_publicize_twitter_user

107

_wpas_done_all

103

_total_likes

_like_ip_list

_wpas_skip_3914702

_wpas_skip_11104850

_yoast_wpseo_title

_wp_attachment_backup_sizes

_yoast_wpseo_focuskw_text_input

_wp_old_slug

essb_hideplusone

essb_hidevk

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_view_ip_list’;

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_total_views’;

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_jetpack_related_posts_cache’;

It deleted some 4,000 data out of 11,000 data it had and look what happened once I refreshed phpMyAdmin?

All cleaned up!

Outcome?

Take a look at that RAM usage! WHAT? Keep in mind once I talked about operating WordPress stack on my 2006 PC with some 128 MB of memory? Yeah!

So fast much wow!

Classes?

Typically, being a smartass isn’t good. Most of the occasions, nevertheless, it retains you protected.

All the time examine logs. -_-

The post Back from Dead

#HowTo #Internet #Blog #DIY #Random Bits

0 notes

itstakingtoolongtoload-blog · 5 years ago

Text

TL;DR: Read logs, delete useless shit, maintain the DB clear.

* Warning: An extended learn! *

Preliminary findings

Pink is often my favorite color

Something was improper right here.

…

I deep down knew that I want to research this myself earlier than throwing moolah on the desk.

Lazy boi excuses; Half – I

Lazy boi excuses; Part – II

Nah, let’s transfer forward. I’ve shared too much personal stuff anyway. 😛

Let’s start recent? Scrap all shit.

Github pages – A neat nifty venture by Github which allows you to host stuff from your repo as easy websites or blogs. Free of charge!

Clear, simple and nerdy.

So, I created a simple website blog on jatinkrmalik.github.io and even posted some posts (perhaps 1). However because of lack of a lot formatting options and skill to customize stuff, was a bummer.

I lost curiosity in Github pages quicker than America did in Trump.

AND soon I resigned from Shuttl and left in July as a result of [redacted] causes.

A new beginning, AWS method?!

A couple of weeks in the past.

Sounds straightforward proper?

EXCEPT.

IT.

WAS.

NOT.

Why is that this so slow? Oh, wait.

Checking the dimensions of information within the plugins directory.

So, I deleted these folders in public_html/wp-content/plugins and tried operating the zip command once more. It was still slow and I gave up in a couple of minutes.

Clear up.Zip them em!

Simply wrapping.

Unsure if it ever completed…

prime

pssudo?

man mysqldumpFirst try.

Admin? No? Sorry.

Yeah, both of them didn’t work. Obviously. You want respective system admin consumer access for both.

With –max_allowed_packet

I was tired and needed to sleep, so I terminated my ec2 occasion and slept.

TODAY.

At present I used to be feeling motivated and deliberate to look into the problem from another angle.

I used this submit as steerage to arrange every little thing from grounds up.

Hmm… something was missing.

Facepalm second!

The euphoria this time also lasted for a brief burst as within 2-3 reloads the replicated website again began throwing up the same 503 error and my shell session chocked up.

503! Not again.

Clearly, GoDaddy’s internet hosting wasn’t the only wrongdoer.

Real IT help == Self-troubleshooting!

Hey DB, you cray?

It was time to prod this table and understand the info inside it. I fired up a simple query:

SELECT meta_key, rely”text” FROM ‘wp_s4w671g0kp_postmeta’ GROUP by meta_key order by rely”text” desc;

Lo behold, the end result was a bit shocking as till now I used to be considering that this desk may include submit revisions or metadata solely but the query outcome was something like this:

meta_key rely”text” _total_views

1895

_view_ip_list

1892

_jetpack_related_posts_cache

1206

_wp_attached_file

1144

_wp_attachment_metadata

1101

wp-smpro-smush-data

1069

_wp_attachment_image_alt

903

_edit_lock

155

_edit_last

140

_yoast_wpseo_focuskw

118

_yoast_wpseo_linkdex

118

_thumbnail_id

116

_yoast_wpseo_metadesc

114

_publicize_twitter_user

107

_wpas_done_all

103

_total_likes

_like_ip_list

_wpas_skip_3914702

_wpas_skip_11104850

_yoast_wpseo_title

_wp_attachment_backup_sizes

_yoast_wpseo_focuskw_text_input

_wp_old_slug

essb_hideplusone

essb_hidevk

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_view_ip_list’;

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_total_views’;

Delete from FROM ‘wp_xxx_postmeta’ WHERE meta_key = ‘_jetpack_related_posts_cache’;

It deleted some 4,000 data out of 11,000 data it had and look what happened once I refreshed phpMyAdmin?

All cleaned up!

Outcome?

Take a look at that RAM usage! WHAT? Keep in mind once I talked about operating WordPress stack on my 2006 PC with some 128 MB of memory? Yeah!

So fast much wow!

Classes?

Typically, being a smartass isn’t good. Most of the occasions, nevertheless, it retains you protected.

All the time examine logs. -_-

The post Back from Dead

#HowTo #Internet #Blog #DIY #Random Bits

0 notes

rayskitchen · 7 years ago

Text

A Tale of Three Soups

It was a good plan, but as is the case with all good plans, it did not survive first contact with the enemy, which in this case was the pressure of producing thanksgiving dinner for 8 with not enough time to properly prepare. And so the soup we will spend most of our time on here is soup #3. It started well, with a trip to the local veggie store for supplies:

Soup #1 was a clam chowder, quadrupled from our in-class recipe, (taken from "Clam Chowder” : Foundations Student Manual, Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts, George Brown College, September 2017.) It turned out really well, (and yes Chef, this time I got the consistency correct). I also did ginger-orange glazed carrots and roasted root vegetables, at least inspired by if not stolen from the above same reference, and therefore I had lots of choppings. Hence, Soup #2, a Curried Vegetable Puree. They both got rave reviews from the family, (I know they have to love me, but they don’t have to love my soup, so I think it was sincere praise). You’d think I’d be featuring one of these high rated soups in my blog, but you’d be wrong. No, I had no time at all to document anything that day, and they ate it all or took it home, and so here I am making another soup!

Not to worry, I had lots of leftover carrots, leek, beans, rutabaga and various other bits from thanksgiving, some beans from the last Foundations class, and a mitful of cooked bacon from Cafe Production class. And since, as I believe I mentioned, my no-good family scammed off with most of the leftovers, we found ourselves again with an empty fridge. So Soup #3 is another “Vegetable” puree, with the guilty pleasure of bacon added to the mirepoix, (I did tone down the butter a bit to make up for the fat content).

Other than circumstances, why did I choose to do this soup? Because it is such a simple concept that I have been doing for years, - empty the contents of the fridge into the saucepot and make a soup. I wanted to see if my new knowledge from GB would make a difference, in other words I wanted to have a baseline against which to compare it.

Here’s the recipe, driven primarily, as noted above, by the contents of my fridge at the beginning of the evening, and very roughly based on the Butternut Squash recipe in the student manual (taken from "Butternut Squash” : Foundations Student Manual, Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts, George Brown College, September 2017.) :

Market List

125 g onion, rough cut

70g white leek, rough cut

70g celery, peeled and rough cut

380g rutabaga, peeled and rough cut

500g harvest carrots, peeled and rough cut

57g cooked bacon, chopped

2 cloves garlic, pureed

10g chopped fresh ginger

40g grab bag of pre-cooked and seasoned beans, root vegetables, carrots

40g butter

1.5L vegetable stock

spice bag, - bay leaf, peppercorns, fresh chopped rosemary and tyme, sage

chopped parsley and whipped cream as garnish

salt and pepper to taste

750ml Italian wine, (fuel for the chef!)

Equipment List

Chef’s Knife

Peeler

Cutting board

Stainless saucepot(s)

Ladle

Stainless bowls

Blender

Procedure

Prepare all ingredients as per market list

Melt the butter in the saucepot

Add the onions and sweat, then add the celery, leek, season lightly with salt

Add the rutabaga, carrots, and garlic and continue to sweat

Add the bacon, ginger and garlic, stir and continue cooking 5 minutes

Add stock to cover the vegetables, add in the pre-cooked grab-bag of veggies, drop in the spice bag, bring to a boil, then set to simmer about 20 minutes, season with salt

When vegetables are soft, ladle them into a blender and puree, (multiple runs to avoid overflowing blender), return soup to saucepot, replace spice bag, bring to boil and return to a simmer

Taste test and season as appropriate with salt, pepper

Done!

Garnish with a dab of whipped cream, some chopped parsley, ground black pepper, and a sprig of parsley. Like this:

Yes, I know, it’s an awful picture, but the soup was good!

Taste: It was pretty good! Not as salty as those Chefs at George Brown want, but then I wasn’t aiming for that ;-). The vegetables seemed to combine very well, and the bacon and butter certainly balanced them out.

Smell: I did the in/out test, meaning walk out of the house and come back in. Aromas were wonderful! The soup itself definitely benefited from garlic and ginger, among other ingredients.

Sight: Well, I need to work on presentation. It looks a lot better than the photograph above, but the cream still went off on its own, and the chopped parsley went all chunky. Something to strive for!

Touch: Definitely very good mouth feel, most likely from the bacon.

Hearing: Nothing to report here, it’s a pretty quiet soup!

My wife was the guinea pig, and she quite liked it. She said that this soup, and the two I made last weekend, are definitely a step up from my previous efforts. So that’s progress! She was quick to mention, however, that the thing she still likes most that I’ve learned from GB is to clean up after myself. It used to be that when Ray cooked, there was a very very wide wake!

Somebody else wanted to taste it, but she has allergies, and is not really much of a gourmet anyway, so we will have to get by without her testimony .... but she loved the bits of carrot and celery she got along the way!

So my assessment, based on my own evaluation and that of my wife and dog, is that this is definitely better than my former standard. I think the difference is attention to detail, and following the ‘correct’ process, where correct means a process that develops, nurtures, and balances flavours. Where before I might have just thrown it all in the pot and turned on the heat, I am now following the basic soup making methods I’ve learned, - mirepoix, spice bags, a roux in the case of the clam chowder.

I can’t exactly say there was much challenge here, because I had done all this before, but never in a controlled environment where I had all the time in the world to get it right. I did experiment with differing techniques, for instance over the 3 soups I’ve made in the last week I tried a full-fledged food processor, a blender, an immersion blender, and an immersion blender with it’s own mini food bowl. On balance the immersion blender is easier, but the food processor gave me the smoothest soup, so there is a decision to be made each time on quality vs efficiency. It will probably depend on who is eating it :-)

Next time I will be more adventurous, for instance try a soup using the black eyed peas I purchased, soaked, and then froze because I realized I would not have time to use them. With each soup I make the process and techniques are getting easier, and so a new ingredient and possibly new techniques will be easier to take on.

No more blogging tonight, time to make up a workplan for potatoes.... these slavedrivers at GB never let a guy get any rest!

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anakin022 · 8 years ago

Text

M y most wanted film of 2012 was Prometheus by Ridley Scott. Despite all its mind-boggling flaws, I still enjoyed the hell out of this movie. A thing that initially couldn’t be said about Marc Streitenfeld’s score though. While it’s still very effective and on certain tracks actually really good, it definitely fell behind the previous four scores of the Alien saga (yes, even Resurrection).

Having said that, it kinda grew on me over time and I really appreciate the score now for being able to set the mood. Its atmospheric and unsettling sounds deserve recognition and what better way than to create a bunch of nice custom covers for it. 61 in fact (in words: sixty-one!). I never planned it to grow this big, but over the last three years things got slightly out of control…

#1: Prometheus (Original)

#2: Prometheus (Remake)

#3: Prometheus (Remake)

My first objective was to remake the official cover (#1), because I never liked it that much. In my opinion it was too bright and colourful for such a dark kind of music. In my attempt I tried to keep everything in the shade (#2, #3), similar to the original soundtrack artwork for Alien. I made it as black as possible, while still maintaining the iconic image of the Engineer’s head. This was also the first cover, where I let myself loose completely and tried out countless alternations, because why not.

#4: Prometheus (Custom)

#5: Prometheus (Custom)

#6: Prometheus (Custom)

#7: Prometheus (Custom)

#8: Prometheus (Custom)

I waited for over a year after the theatrical release to start with this custom covers series, as new fan-artwork was continuously sprouting around the web. Also, I didn’t have this compulsive desire to be relevant and release custom covers as close as possible to a new soundtrack release date (a real absurdity!).

No, instead I worked on Prometheus on and off quite arbitrarily – at my own pace and mood. A luxury endeavor, for sure. It had sort of evolved into my go-to-place whenever I felt the need for creative refreshment. And I think it shows, for this might be my vastest collection of custom covers for a single soundtrack album yet.

#9: Prometheus (Custom)

#10: Prometheus (Custom)

#11: Prometheus (Custom)

#12: Prometheus (Custom)

#13: Prometheus (Custom)

#14: Prometheus (Custom)

#15: Prometheus (Custom)

One of the new ideas for this series was the concept of a CD/Vinyl bundle with two matching artworks (#9, #12). I’ve made a similar set for Star Trek Beyond in June of last year, but these Prometheus covers were conceived and designed a long time before that.

I went with two slightly different angles of the same scene, the infamous “Prometheus School of Running Away From Things” from the climax ending of the film. Even though this scene is one of the most dumbest in the whole film (which is quite an achievement), it looks really fantastic on paper. The details are gorgeous and colours eerily beautiful, especially on the widened Vinyl version.

I like to imagine that both editions come with one half of a special download-key which, once combined, gives access to additional bonus content from the web. Maybe I should work in marketing. Or maybe not.

The CD version also got an alternate, less spoilery design as well (#14, #15), using an ultra wide shot of the three main characters with the eponymous spaceship in the background. I’ve mirrored the image to make it wrap around the spine and employed two different font types. For once the feathery “Aviano Sans” and also the bulky “USN Stencil“, both of which were featured in the official promotion material as well.

Prometheus probably’s got to be one of the most stunningly beautiful science fiction films in years and it was a real treat to work with all the official material. One of the highlights in the film definitely was the orrery scene. That’s why I’m presenting four different versions to you today.

In addition to a regular design (#16) I came up with a new entry to my ongoing series of the so-called Limited Signature Edition (#17). Unfortunately this time I had to fake the composer’s signature, please don’t tell authorities. The vintage Movie Score Recording design (#18) was made by my friend Helix who has already blessed this blog in the past with contributions for Nightcrawler or It Follows, to name only a few.

#16: Prometheus (Custom)

#17: Prometheus (Custom)

#18: Prometheus (Custom)

#19: Prometheus (Custom)

#20: Prometheus (Custom)

#21: Prometheus (Custom)

Of course I came up with a special Vinyl Edition (#19 to #21) of my own as well. A vast and really comprehensive library of source material allowed me to dream up numerous distinctive versions of the soundtrack album. So in addition to my earlier introduced vinyl artwork (#9) which was more like one part of a two-part-set, this version here is meant to be the proper stand-alone release.

For comparison with my vinyl sleeve design, below you can get a glance at Mondo’s 2016 vinyl release. The artwork was created by Kilian Eng, who delivered a similar design for Aliens the year before and also Alien this year.

#22: Prometheus (Original)

#23: Prometheus (Original)

#24: Prometheus (Original)

I’d like to switch back again for a moment from vinyl to compact disc, because I’m really delighted to be able to show off my favourite Prometheus artwork from this whole collection.

The following digipack design was only made possible with the help of two very specific source images. An atmospheric promotion image of the engineer’s head (#25) – rich in detail, yet surprisingly simple in composition – and a very special work-in-progress version of the same image (#26). By looking at those two I realized that they would perfectly work as an inner and outer sleeve design. And so another concept was born and it’s safe to say that this particular cover took the longest time of all – primarily due to my meticulous perfectionism.

#25: Prometheus (Custom)

#26: Prometheus (Custom)

#27: Prometheus (Custom)

I came up with the idea of a digipack with a clear plastic slipcase and I was keen on marrying the individual covers into an animated mockup to visualize my idea. It’s safe to say that this was quite an endeavour.

First I had to create each and every frame by hand. Which means to select the Photoshop layers, move them by a few pixels and save it all as a new file. Multiply that 339 times and you’re nearly there. With those individual frames at hand I began to animate, again manually. Using this animated GIF as a reference I adjusted each frame length individually to create a smooth and flowing animation. It turned out that I had to delete a good deal of frames again, especially in the faster middle section of the animation. So I ended up using only 163 of those 339 frames, which I’ve painstakingly made one by one (just to stress it out once again…).

The final GIF weighted in about 755 MB which I was able to cut down to 161 MB. But still far too much for an animated GIF, so I finally saved it as the 31 MB video above. At least the image quality is much better than those 256 colours that are available in the GIF format, so it’s okay that way I guess. All in all you’re looking at 3,32 GB – or roughly calculated six weeks – of work. You’re welcome!

The little gallery below represents all custom covers for this series that didn’t fit elsewhere in this blog entry.

#28: Prometheus (Custom)

#29: Prometheus (Custom)

#30: Prometheus (Custom)

#31: Prometheus (Custom)

#32: Prometheus (Custom)

#33: Prometheus (Custom)

#34: Prometheus (Custom)

#35: Prometheus (Custom)

#36: Prometheus (Custom)

#37: Prometheus (Custom)

I’ve used the most varied selection of source images here. For instance, #28, #29, #32 and #33 were all based on fan-art found on the now defunct Prometheus Forum, a real melting pot for unique findings of all kinds. Pages upon pages of discussions, theories and creative works.

Cover #30 is another contribution from my friend Helix and #31 is an unofficial movie poster from L.A. graphic designer Midnight Marauder, shamelessly turned into a square soundtrack cover by myself.

Others again were based on the remaining official material that was left untouched in my huge collection of work files (#34, #36), accumulated from the most unusual places. I also worked some time on an alternate version of the promo sampler, using my own handwriting. But it didn’t look cool enough.

My final addition to this entry is the one I’m definitely the most proud of. And beside cover #25 it’s also the most expensive effort I’ve ever taken for a custom covers collection so far.What you

Back then when I bought the Prometheus 4-Disc Collector’s Edition, it came with a plethora of bonus material including the massive 220 minutes documentation The Furious Gods, probably the most insightful and entertaining making-of I have ever seen. But the Blu-ray also contained another neat little feature that played a crucial role in this custom covers series: a bonus gallery with countless of rejected and alternate movie posters.

I’m a total buff for posters so when I found that gallery I immediately started looking for a way to export all those images – which was easier said than done. Blu-ray discs are DRM-protected, I couldn’t just pop the disc into my computer and locate the files in the file directory. No, this time I had to go to greater lenghts.

First I went to my local electronics retailer and bought an external Blu-ray burner. With the help of a special software I was able to crack the copy protection and rip the disc onto my computer. Only within this newly generated image file I was able to browse through the directories and extract the untouched images. I returned the burner afterwards using a flimsy excuse and was finally sitting on 109 original and uncompressed bitmap images. What a glorious time to get busy…

What you see below are the results of weeks or maybe even months of labor, trying to come up with the most diverse and unusual collection of custom covers I was capable of. I’ve added trivia info to each image description, so make sure to open up the gallery and click your way through all 38 artworks. Again… you’re welcome!

#38: Prometheus (Custom)

#39: Prometheus (Custom)

#40: Prometheus (Custom)

#41: Prometheus (Custom)

#42: Prometheus (Custom)

#43: Prometheus (Custom)

#44: Prometheus (Custom)

#45: Prometheus (Custom)

#46: Prometheus (Custom)

#47: Prometheus (Custom)

#48: Prometheus (Custom)

#49: Prometheus (Custom)

#50: Prometheus (Custom)

#51: Prometheus (Custom)

#52: Prometheus (Custom)

#53: Prometheus (Custom)

#54: Prometheus (Custom)

#55: Prometheus (Custom)

#56: Prometheus (Custom)

#57: Prometheus (Custom)

#58: Prometheus (Custom)

#59: Prometheus (Custom)

#60: Prometheus (Custom)

#61: Prometheus (Custom)

#62: Prometheus (Custom)

#63: Prometheus (Custom)

#64: Prometheus (Custom)

#65: Prometheus (Custom)

#66: Prometheus (Custom)

#67: Prometheus (Custom)

#68: Prometheus (Custom)

#69: Prometheus (Custom)

#70: Prometheus (Custom)

#71: Prometheus (Custom)

#72: Prometheus (Custom)

#73: Prometheus (Custom)

#74: Prometheus (Custom)

#75: Prometheus (Custom)

This site has become more than just a resource for alternate album art and Prometheus is literally the biggest evidence for that. What person in their right mind would need sixty-one different front covers for a single soundtrack? No-one! I am confident that the vast majority of soundtrack listeners are completely indifferent to custom covers at all. It is an absolute niche market.

Yes there are people who like to have custom covers in their digital music library. And even some crazy individuals who use different covers for each single track (*cough*). But guess what, the original soundtrack album only got twenty-five tracks. Heck, even the complete score has no more than fifty-four tracks. So why do this then? What’s the purpose?

Well, I tell you: I do it just for myself. I’m probably the most frequent visitor on this site and I’m fairly sure that no-one cares as much about this useless shit as I do. This is me trying to give my digital alter ego a meaning. Trying to create something that lasts. To make a difference.

“Prometheus” by Marc Streitenfeld M y most wanted film of 2012 was Prometheus by Ridley Scott. Despite all its mind-boggling flaws, I still enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

#Alien #featured #Marc Streitenfeld #Prometheus

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lyncnews · 8 years ago

Link

I recently was working on a Sonus v2 Cloud Connector Edition (CCE) working with the new hardware, testing the install, etc. when I ran into a deployment snag. In general, I find the there are a lot of post and blogs about when to use CCE and when you cannot, but few on how to properly deploy CCE let alone the Sonus version.

I decided to show a walk through on the process I used to deploy, why I used the names/options that I did, and the errors and gotchas I ran into.

To start, I am working with a Sonus SBC 1k Cloud Link with the CCE package installed. From a Sonus part number, that would be SBC-1K-SIP-E-CL. The Cloud Link version includes an imbedded Windows 2012 R2 Server with 32 GB of RAM, dual Xeon quad-core 1.7GHz (that’s 8 physical cores. 16 logical), and a 512GB SSD drive. All-in-all, not a bad server and very capable of running the “small” CCE build. That, along with the nicely integrated SBC makes this solution simple…as long as you know the answers to the questions.

Starting off the build of the ASM is not any different from other ASM buildouts – the only difference being the Task option on the Cloud Link version shows Office 365™ Cloud Connector Edition vs. Skype ™for Business Survivable Branch.

Selecting the Office 365™ Cloud Connector Edition brings you to the beginning process. The very first thing that needs to be done is getting the ASM an IP. This IP is the IP of the Hyper-V host. It is not meant to be domain joined, and the option is not present. If you really wanted to change the name of the server you could, but even that is not required as again – it is simply the host computer for the VMs.

It is critical that the Remote Desktop enable option is changed to Yes as there are tasks that must be completed from the host server. The server should also be able to be reached from within your network – whatever that means to you. DHCP is an option – I am old school and believe all servers should have a static IP but again, whatever works for you. For me this was my internal server VLAN, internal DNS, internal everything as I wanted to be able to easily manage the server.

After you have configured the IP and RDP, the next step is to create the certificate for the Skype Edge server. This is where you must be careful to enter the correct names. There are references to the deployment requirements on TechNet here Plan for Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition although to me, Sonus solution hid the configuration too well making things unclear. Specifically, step four is where you configure the settings on he CCE including the site name for the CCE. This site name is also your edge pool name – a name which must be a CN or SAN.

In my case, I thought I would be witty and use BCLCCE.bricomplabs.com as the common name. The CSR request simply stated the edge server public FQDN and left it up to me to complete. The wizard also complained if SIP was not in the name so that had to be there too which was a bit confusing sine the DNS name would never point there. In the end, the fields looked like the following:

CN=BCLCCE.bricomplabs.com SAN=DATA-CENTER.bricomplabs.com,SIP.bricomplabs.com, BCLCCE.bricomplabs.com

In the SAN list make sure you have your SITE name (exiting or the name you plan to use), SIP, and optionally another name to which you would be tied to the service (although 100% unnecessary). Remember to configure all of the DNS records publicly to make sure things route.

Once the CSR has been created, have it issued by your favorite PUBLIC CA, and make sure your favorite public CA is a mainstream one – one whose roots are part of the base Windows 2012 R2 OS. In my case, I used DigiCert (http://www.digicert.com) – an awesome go-to CA who works flawlessly.

Step 3 is to import (paste) the resultant certificate. The cert should be in DER format and in the case of DigiCert simply select the option on their page to download copy/paste under Download Certificate. That will expose three text blocks, the one you want will be the top block for your certificate where you can simply copy and paste the result.

You are now ready to begin the configuration of your deployment and a critical junction. Incorrect information going forward means clicking Reinitialize on the ASM and starting over. 😊 Below is a summary of the deployment and the options selected.

In this list, there are some key components that we need to complete. It is also important to note that the defaults are there just because but more than likely mean nothing to your deployment. The first thing you need to identify is the CCE Site Name. Again, this will be the pool name of your edge and will need to be in your certificate.

The external network gateway is in relation to the second NIC of the Edge server – no different from the second NIC of a traditional Edge server. This NIC cannot be on the same VLAN as your internal networking but like a traditional Edge, NAT is supported. In my example the external is a 172.x.x.x/24 address, I am using public Level3 DNS, and because it is a private IP I am listing the Edge server External IP.

The internal network is where the internal NICs on the servers will live. There are three switched networks on the servers – Internet, Corpnet, and Management. The Internet switch and NIC live on the Edge server while the Corpnet and Management live on all the other servers. The Management virtual switch is internal only – for server to server communication and the IP scheme is 192.168.213.0/24 with no default route. The Corpnet is the internal network where the Hyper-V host lives as well as all other internal servers (again, in my network the server VLAN).

The information you are entering for the Internal Network is used partially for the configuration – and partially still a mystery. The Gateway is obvious and is the gateway used for the Corpnet NICs however the Internal DNS is not used (the four servers all use the AD server as they should). The four IPs of the VMs themselves are also Corpnet IPs and in my case, were 10.x.x.10, 10.x.x.20., 10.x.x.30, and 10.x.x.40 – but as long as they are unique and valid, they can be whatever you want.

One you have configured and saved the CCE configuration move on to Step 5 – Prepare CCE. In this process the data that was previously entered is saved locally to the Hyper-V host (C:UXCCECcAppliance) and will be used by the next PowerShell commands.

Assuming no errors and all is ready, RDP to the Hyper-V host. If you have not already, set the Administrator password of the ASM via the web GUI of the Sonus at Settings | Application Solution Module | Change Admin Password. Drop the option down to User Configured, enter and confirm a unique strong password, and click OK. Using Administrator and the Password you just created, RDP to the ASM address set in step 1 above.

One on the server, start a PowerShell command with elevated admin rights. From within the prompt, start the process by entering Register-CcAppliance. You will need to set admin passwords, recovery passwords, and enter your admin login for your O365 tenant. Assuming you have the correct rights the process will complete creating an appliance in the cloud which you can see using the Skype for Business Online PowerShell command Get-CsHybridPSTNAppliance.

The final stage of the process is the installation and configuration of the VMs. This entire process is completed with the simple command Install-CcAppliance. Using previous configuration entries saved off to the INI and the certificate (also saved off), the nest steps are hands free, it just takes time. This is where I ran into my errors due to the lack of pool name in the edge certificate. During the creation process the Edge sever is started and an error is thrown which appears to be a Cyphers issue:

Event ID 14397 – A configured certificate could not be loaded from the store.

Extended Error Code 0xC3FC7D95 (LC_E_VALIDATION_CERT_NO_KEYEXCHANGE)

Should you run Get-CsCertificate you will see your public certificate associated with AccessEdgeExternal, DataEdgeExternal, and AudioVideoAuthentication. An internal certificate will also be seen and associated with Internal. All of this appears to be valid and yet the service will not start. The key to finding that it was a pool name issue was manually assigning the certificate to the three external services again using

Set-CsCertificate -Type AccessEdgeExternal,DataEdgeExternal,AudioVideoAuthentication -Thumbprint xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -Force

Doing so revealed the error that data-center.bricomplabs.com was not a name on the certificate and that’s when the lightbulb appeared. The fix is to undo everything and start over (unfortunately) which includes Unregister-CsHybridPSTNAppliance, OPTIONALLY Remove-CsHybridPSTNSite, and Reinitialize the ASM in the Sonus GUI.

Once the CCE appliance is configured, make sure to run through the SBC configuration - otherwise there will not be anything to link the calls to. The CCE does not use TLS so an SBC certificate is not required, only basic integration configuration as described on the Sonus site (and identical to any other SBC config). http://ift.tt/2ljg4yY

#Skype4B

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