Portage, or the art of moving a boat overland

[arclight]

Hej,

In the long process of moving all the AIC web assets ("stuff") to a faster machine in Dallas, I finally got the motivation to rebuild the FTP server (thanks Jon; Asaf with the assist.) For those of you with FTP access to upload.austinimprov.com, try connecting to upload57.austinimprov.com and let me know if you have any problems. You should be able to connect with your current password.

Your files are probably not there. Yet. That's what I'm working on at this very moment, moving your files to the new server. It's taking a while since someone (<cough> GGG <cough>) has uploaded a bunch of raw digital camera files which take forever to copy over the stupidly slow DSL connection. No matter. Rust never sleeps and neither do the computers so most of the stuff will have copied over by morning.

The good news is that while all this copying is going on, Jon is quietly revamping the existing AIC website and hopefully he'll succeed where I've failed twice or thrice, to put a fine point on it.

Also, I'm building a little more infrastructure to help manage and back up sites, including all the FTP and database stuff out there. Ideally, you should eventually be able to slurp down your FTP directory and have everything you need to put your site(s) somewhere else - databases, files, software, webserver configs. Boring, boring, boring, always tape machine recording, but it needs to get done so nobody gets hosed by a server crash.

Those never happen.

(I suspect a shitty CPU cooler, but I'm not around to diagnose the box.)

At some point we need to test migrating to phpBB3, "we" meaning however many forum 'power users' want to weigh in with an opinion. Typically that number hovers between -1 and 0. No matter, phpBB2 is at the end of its useful life and the longer we wait the more painful migration will be later.

Sorry I've been so quiet of late. Sweden was warmer than Chicago last week, just sayin'. And for those of you that have never been there, find a way to go. You'll come back relaxed, but with a conflicted attitude, whether to be quietly polite to others or to drown the next Republican you meet.

One last item: If you've run out of good reading material, I suggest Richard Lanham's "Style: An Anti-Textbook." It holds up well after almost 35 years, it's thin and lucid and engaging. I was introduced to Lanham via his book "Revising Prose" which should be on every writer's bookshelf. Better, it should be dog-eared on one's desk or thrust upon a friend with all the zeal of a missionary. In "Style", Lanham takes on the notion of "clarity" in composition, calling bullshit on what typically gets preached about being "clear" in one's writing and showing the fun and necessity of rhetorical devices, attention to meter and sound (rhyme and alliteration), and all the rest of that boring shite you slept through in school. As a bonus, the book investigates hippies fucking. A++++ would buy again!

Thanks for your patience - tack så mycka!