Wednesday, 24 June 2009

Allow me to branch out my horizons...

I've come to the decision that I want to write more, well...random things on my blog. I'll still write about computers no doubt, but let's face it, who really wants to know about all that!

No time like the present.

I must ask myself - what could I possibly write or share here that would interest other people? Do I expect anybody to read it? Is it even intended for an audience? Are these questions rhetorical? The answer to all four...I don't know.

Some people have an incredible gift - they can write their own daily experiences and allow you to immersify yourself in their stories without even having to try.

I have no stories.

However, what I've discovered is that Blogs allow people to vent. They allow people to express their inner anguishes and let the world know about it at the same time. Hoping, maybe, that someone will read their words of anger, resentment, sorrow, and sadness. Hoping, maybe, that someone will notice and offer to help us through, because really, we are too proud to ask.

Pride. The epitome of our gradual downfall, where we could so easily overcome that which oppresses us. Admitting to ourselves, let alone others, that we are fragile and breakable, is no mean feat. Admitting that we need friends, that we need family, and most importantly, that we need God, to stop us feeling desolate and separated, is not easy.

Some people, admitting these things fear they may display weakness. They fear they may allow themselves to be vulnerable. Of these things...they are scared.

We will never have our childhood back. So some people assume that everything associated with childhood must go. But they're wrong. Some things must go - tantrums, selfishness, and attention seeking, amongst other childish behaviour. But others must stay.

Don't be afraid if you have a childlike faith. It's the faith we're supposed to have (Mark 10:13 -16).
Open up your heart, share your feelings, allow yourself to be vulnerable. If you aren't, you run the risk of a cold, hard heart. If you are, you may have more chances of getting hurt, but trust me on this one... *you will get over it*.

You'll be built up stronger than before.

Monday, 15 June 2009

Websites - Back them up, too!

Experience. You learn from it.

Personally, I enjoy learning from other people's experience so I don't have to make the mistake myself. We all know we should back up our data. Especially documents. Who cares if Windows corrupts. After all, a fresh install is just the trick sometimes or after a year or so of running a build. But it would be nice to know that your documents are nice and safe, on another partition, drive, or even on a RAID config.

My experience has led me to realise that websites also should be backed up. At least, the important files and those that are edited regularly should be.
Recently I took it upon myself to edit my Church Youth's website - http://www.youth.firstlisburn.org/
The website was good, but it was too busy and complicated navigation wise. So I got rid of all the clutter and banners and pictures which were actually links.... and made a nice menu type thing.

However, upon completing the Contact page, I may have accidently overwritten the MAIN website's contact page. Well, let me tell you, the file was gone. There's no recycle bin via FTP and if there is, I need to know about it.

Do you ever get the feeling where you think, "holy crap..." and no words can describe how you feel? Not to mention you break into a nervous sweat when you realise you've just done something incredibly stupid? Well, that was me.

Fortunately, before moving to Microsoft's Expression Web 2, I had used Adobe Contribute, which, thankfully, creates backups in the _baks folder on the web server. Also thankfully, I remembered this within 2 minutes of completely erasing the contacts page. Had I not found the backup, the contacts page would have taken days...yes, days... to re-create.

So the lesson for today?
If you're regularly playing about with website editing, or FTP, make a backup of the important files! Don't learn the hard way (and I was lucky!)

Digiman out.