·:[ NotANerd ]:·
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Back to the non-nerdy stuff soon I promise … but I spent the last week rebuilding a new server .. all because PHP and MySQL ran so darn slow on the on the old one. Now I finally got it running and the old beast (Sun SPARC10 running RH linux 6.1) is on the verge of retirement .. I guess I could turn it into a honeypot to see who’d bother with that architecture but it’ll probably save me more money just to turn it off.

The new server is pretty fast, you can probably tell a bit just from the new journal .. but the main reason is that now I can show off my pictures via Gallery2 … http://www.notanerd.com/gallery2_local now you might even be able to see some pictures before falling asleep.

On the personal front, our nephew Max was here for about 10 days .. pretty uneventful, except for how much he resembles Mike Teevee from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory … that’d be the mumbler… I got to break out the new camera and try a bunch of things .. some of which were interesting but mostly candids.

Lastly Caroline was in town for a short visit, it was great to see her even if it was a short visit, I think she may have OD’d on the OSIM iMedic 50o.

I’d been holding out for years, slinging source HTML and editing my own photos… but then I got a glimpse of the new Gallery2 freeware .. and the upgrade fest began ..I did get the gallery (and php/mysql) running but its really slow (you can try the gallery link under the NotANerd links on the left but don’t say I didn’t warn you).

Since I now had php/mysql running I thought I’d take a quick look at Wordpress to see how easy/configurable this blog software really is. Much more work than I thought, but having easier remote access for updates may mean more frequent updates, but first I need to fix the performance issue .. so I’ll probably build a new machine this weekend and we’ll just see if I can get general performance up to snuff.

Since I haven’t updated since June, lots has happened, Elena went on a 2 week walking tour of England (Hadrian’s Wall), MotoGP at Laguna Seca was loud (pictures to follow when the gallery is faster) Our nephew is visiting for a bit this week .. and of course work’s been a bear. Ankle’s still sore, down to 1 sporting event a week .. but at least I’ve been riding my motorcycle fairly regularly.

Don’t expect much from my MotoGP pictures .. most of the action shot sucked badly, especially compared to my friend Tony’s, so much so that I immediately had to do some research and go off and get a Nikon D70 and a couple of lenses. Yeah, the D70 kit was way cheaper than the Canon Rebel .. but the real clincher was that my sister has a suite of lenses that I can borrow since she’s had Nikon gear for years .. now I just need to practice again with an SLR since its been ages.