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Been pondering adding a "Now" page to my personal website, to note my main focuses in a given period. Here's a link to the website describing the concept. But having thought more I'm thinking I won't. As a female I often have disturbing interactions with folk (usually male!) online, and I'm wary of how much info I put out there. I could easily do to trim it back. But adding a "Now" page feels like a step too far. Had fun browsing the sample "Now" pages linked from the site though, looking at those of Scottish folk. Who are almost entirely male ...
Wish my brain would stop thinking "I'll just look up another 16th/17th century testament (will and/or inventory) to study in ScotlandsPeople" when the website is still down! Hope it comes back ok after its latest upgrade / revamp. And hope it's not as disastrous as some other website revamps inc SP.
To be fair it's not as though I don't have enough existing historical document images on hand to work on. I just perversely want to go to the website - at the worst possible time! - and get more.
To be fair it's not as though I don't have enough existing historical document images on hand to work on. I just perversely want to go to the website - at the worst possible time! - and get more.
Old style web browsing
Aug. 27th, 2024 09:47 amResorting to Lynx in my Mac terminal/shell to read an article today. That won't load in normal web browsers - probably subscription only. But as a last try before giving up I thought of trying Lynx! A very very old text based web browser, that I've used occasionally (but little recently!) since the early 1990s. Unix based, but I downloaded a version many years ago to my Mac laptop, and can run it in the shell terminal. Here is Lynx viewing another web page.
Big Finish update
Aug. 14th, 2024 03:48 pmCrikey, they’re rolling back to the old website and old app. Full details here.
I'm relieved that they're rolling back. Though from a software/data perspective it's also rather a nightmare for them to contend with, given people have placed orders on the new website. But it's probably easily the best option for them now. Albeit drastic. I'm honestly impressed that they've decided to do this. And I wish them well.
I'm relieved that they're rolling back. Though from a software/data perspective it's also rather a nightmare for them to contend with, given people have placed orders on the new website. But it's probably easily the best option for them now. Albeit drastic. I'm honestly impressed that they've decided to do this. And I wish them well.
Now on the Big Finish website - and managed to crash the website when it went live ;)
Meanwhile I am still missing multiple downloads and orders on the new website. I am still hanging on to the old app for now, though it can no longer download additional content.
But I am mightily relieved that I have managed to download those audio files I can from the website, in DRM-free MP3 and M4B format (Apple lossless). 440GB worth of audio files. About 700 audio stories. Which I am now backing up in multiple places.
I would like access to my recent purchases though, currently still missing in action.
Meanwhile I am still missing multiple downloads and orders on the new website. I am still hanging on to the old app for now, though it can no longer download additional content.
But I am mightily relieved that I have managed to download those audio files I can from the website, in DRM-free MP3 and M4B format (Apple lossless). 440GB worth of audio files. About 700 audio stories. Which I am now backing up in multiple places.
I would like access to my recent purchases though, currently still missing in action.
Big Finish car crash continued
Jul. 31st, 2024 09:49 pmCalculating how much space I need to download all my Big Finish audios (DRM free MP3 files and another format), at least those that I can get at. Many are still "unavailable for download", though I hope some will come up soon. The new website remains a mess. Even Chimes of Midnight is currently unavailable to download. I reckon at a hand waving calculation I can fit my 700-ish audios in half a terabyte of disk space. So I can get them onto my laptop initially, which has more than that free. And then plonk them in my NAS diskstation and also get another external drive. But this is not good. I have downloaded many audios before, but haven't worried so much until now. Though I should. But the new website and new app are a car crash. I think Big Finish have done themselves enormous harm with this move. And I wouldn't be surprised if they don't ride it out long term.
How not to regenerate a website
Jul. 30th, 2024 01:35 pmStepping away from the Big Finish website regeneration today, which is erm *not* going well. And not doing the best for my generalised anxiety disorder! On plus I have emailed them to point out one huge problem that no-one else had reported publicly. Which is potentially a huge problem for people with existing CD preorders - like me. But leaving it now. I downloaded lots of audios to work on the old version of the app last week. That app won't work with the new version of the site, but will continue to work with existing downloads. There is a new app I haven't tried yet, but I've seen screenshots, and it's not very iPad friendly.
(Big Finish produce Doctor Who and other cult full cast audio stories, on download and CD version. I own a lot ...)
(Big Finish produce Doctor Who and other cult full cast audio stories, on download and CD version. I own a lot ...)
New personal website online
Feb. 3rd, 2020 01:10 pmI’ve just launched a new version of my personal website. It’s at
https://vivdunstan.co.uk/
(adding www. at the start also works)
It replaces an old website that was 1990s era HTML coding, looked dreadful, and was far too much dense text for people to read, all on mostly one gigantic page.
The new version is coded in WordPress using an existing theme and a set of linked static pages. I’d previously built sites in WordPress for my Coldingham and Melrose one-place studies, and had a number of WordPress blogs. So it seemed like a sensible option for me to use this time. Note this new site doesn’t have a blog built into it. Because I maintain a number of different blogs it instead has a “Blogs” page linking to them.
I have a personal domain name registered with my ISP, so used domain mapping to map the new WordPress.com site from there. It took a little while for DNS changes to percolate through, for the old site to effectively vanish from online, but things seem pretty stable now. Best of all I haven’t broken my email - which also goes through my domain name at my ISP - in the process!
The new website has a number of additions over the old, in particular a dedicated “Interactive Fiction” page to cover the text adventures I write. And longer term it should be more scalable and easy to develop.
So yup, pleased with that. It took remarkably little time, first developing it offline on the WordPress.org installation on my Synology NAS Diskstation. Then on Saturday night creating the version on WordPress.com and importing the site directly from the Synology one’s export file. Then last night changing the DNS setup.
Phew! Feel like another wine now ...
https://vivdunstan.co.uk/
(adding www. at the start also works)
It replaces an old website that was 1990s era HTML coding, looked dreadful, and was far too much dense text for people to read, all on mostly one gigantic page.
The new version is coded in WordPress using an existing theme and a set of linked static pages. I’d previously built sites in WordPress for my Coldingham and Melrose one-place studies, and had a number of WordPress blogs. So it seemed like a sensible option for me to use this time. Note this new site doesn’t have a blog built into it. Because I maintain a number of different blogs it instead has a “Blogs” page linking to them.
I have a personal domain name registered with my ISP, so used domain mapping to map the new WordPress.com site from there. It took a little while for DNS changes to percolate through, for the old site to effectively vanish from online, but things seem pretty stable now. Best of all I haven’t broken my email - which also goes through my domain name at my ISP - in the process!
The new website has a number of additions over the old, in particular a dedicated “Interactive Fiction” page to cover the text adventures I write. And longer term it should be more scalable and easy to develop.
So yup, pleased with that. It took remarkably little time, first developing it offline on the WordPress.org installation on my Synology NAS Diskstation. Then on Saturday night creating the version on WordPress.com and importing the site directly from the Synology one’s export file. Then last night changing the DNS setup.
Phew! Feel like another wine now ...
I run two one-place studies, researching specific parishes and their inhabitants in the past. I've had hand coded websites for them for years, but they're very simplistic, old-fashioned looking, and becoming cumbersome for users to read and navigate. So I've had at the back of mind for a while the wish to revamp both sites. But I was deterred by the thought of building new websites from scratch.
But on Saturday night, about midnight, I suddenly had a revelation. I already had WordPress blogs, for a number of different purposes. And I remembered that people build WordPress sites, relatively easily, including for one-place studies. It wouldn't be that hard to do would it?
Within an hour I had proto sites up and running for my two one-place studies, and within 5 hours I had fully transferred all the old resources into them, and filled them out. This included moving the existing blogs into there, but also all the transcripts and indexes of historical records.
I found it remarkably quick and easy to do, and I like the simple design, and look of the sites. It's certainly a lot better than anything I could have hand coded, without much fresh education. I've had HTML skills for over 20 years, but they are incredibly rudimentary. This end result is vastly better. At the moment the sites are hosted on WordPress.com, with dedicated domain names, but I may move them in future. But the priority was to build the content, and not come up with more obstacles to put me off.
The only slightly tricky thing I ran into was importing the tables for some of the lengthy transcripts/indexes, because WordPress (at least the .com version) doesn't provide any nice plugin or similar to handle those. So you have to fall back on HTML coding for them. But I'm ok with that, and the tables I was importing were existing HTML files ... That was a big "Eureka!" moment this morning when I worked that out, and how easy it would make it. The HTML tables just needed a bit of cleaning up, and they were good to go. It wouldn't be so easy for anyone who doesn't know any HTML for tables, but I was ok. There are also some great online tips for how to do this in WordPress.com, for example on this page.
Both sites are a work in progress, both will have new resources added to them. But I'm very pleased with how they are now, and should be encouraged to add more content in future.
Feedback on the new sites would be very welcome. Find them here: Melrose and Coldingham.
But on Saturday night, about midnight, I suddenly had a revelation. I already had WordPress blogs, for a number of different purposes. And I remembered that people build WordPress sites, relatively easily, including for one-place studies. It wouldn't be that hard to do would it?
Within an hour I had proto sites up and running for my two one-place studies, and within 5 hours I had fully transferred all the old resources into them, and filled them out. This included moving the existing blogs into there, but also all the transcripts and indexes of historical records.
I found it remarkably quick and easy to do, and I like the simple design, and look of the sites. It's certainly a lot better than anything I could have hand coded, without much fresh education. I've had HTML skills for over 20 years, but they are incredibly rudimentary. This end result is vastly better. At the moment the sites are hosted on WordPress.com, with dedicated domain names, but I may move them in future. But the priority was to build the content, and not come up with more obstacles to put me off.
The only slightly tricky thing I ran into was importing the tables for some of the lengthy transcripts/indexes, because WordPress (at least the .com version) doesn't provide any nice plugin or similar to handle those. So you have to fall back on HTML coding for them. But I'm ok with that, and the tables I was importing were existing HTML files ... That was a big "Eureka!" moment this morning when I worked that out, and how easy it would make it. The HTML tables just needed a bit of cleaning up, and they were good to go. It wouldn't be so easy for anyone who doesn't know any HTML for tables, but I was ok. There are also some great online tips for how to do this in WordPress.com, for example on this page.
Both sites are a work in progress, both will have new resources added to them. But I'm very pleased with how they are now, and should be encouraged to add more content in future.
Feedback on the new sites would be very welcome. Find them here: Melrose and Coldingham.
