The Exchange - Side Links and Other Sites

The Exchange - Side Links and Other Sites

I'm going to be extremely busy with my other websites, my newsletters, and my portfolios (especially my portfolios) for the next few weeks. As a result I won't be able to make updated and current posts here as often as I'd like (I'll be instead working on the sites listed in the Links in the sidebar), but I will still try to post here. What I've decided to do in the interval is to post things I've written in the past, sometimes for the amusement of friends, but have never posted to this blog (or any blog for that matter). I'm also gonna be posting some pictures I have been taking lately, and scenes from my various Vadding and Rudding expeditions. I thought that for some of my buddies currently still stationed overseas these photos and pics and retellings of old Vadding expeditions might remind them a bit of home.

I'm also gonna be converting my gaming sites to either Wiki websites or blogs and removing them from their third party positions. But that could take some time as well.


In other news today I was notified that my Writing Portfolio is now up on a writing site. My own writing portfolio, the Grapharium (which I'm gonna have to be updating with writing samples from both previously published works and with new works) has already been redesigned and is already up (though incomplete) but this is the first time I have ever posted my portfolio to a third party site. However this site was recommended to me as a site clients frequent in order to secure Freelance Journalistic and Writing talent for contracted assignment. Therefore I'm trying it as a marketing tool, to see how effective, or ineffective it might be, and whether such sites are really capable of delivering new and interesting clients and assignments. Only time will tell and I'll let you know as the experiment proceeds.

The other thing I should mention is that I had a bit of a computing and application disaster the other day. For several days every I connected to the internet my and stayed on awhile my computer would shut down and then reboot, meaning all data for that session and all running files were lost. More inconveniently and perhaps disastrously I was left with a large collection of lost clusters and chains every this happened. My immediate suspicion was that it was my OS since it was a Microsoft product. (And who running Microsoft does not immediately suspect Microsoft when their computer software malfunctions? Truth be told I would be running some version of Linux were it not for incompatibility issues with so many of my clients. Though truth also be told I don't really like any current OS and think them all extremely primitive, inefficient, lacking in capabilities, and just plain useless compared to what should exist as an OS in this time and era. But that's a story for another day.) After about the fifth reboot in a week I got really worried and employed system Restore to a restore point at which I knew the problem was not appearing. But that had no effect. So finally I let Microsoft report the problem and they actually suggested a solution. (I couldn't believe it; they suggested a solution not created another problem.) Anyhwo I was running System Mechanic Pro 5 as a utility suite and it was causing the problem so I downloaded the fix and that took care of the errant rebooting. But the next time I went to open my RSS Reader all of my carefully collected RSS links, and their folders were... gone, gone, gone!!!

I tried searching for deleted files, scanning the registry, used every tracking tool I had but to no avail. I lost over three hundred syndications of websites and blogs that I reread once a week or so through my reader. Gawl dangit I was upset. Now I've had to wipe out my RSS Reader (Sharpreader) altogether because although I in no way blame Sharpreader for the problem, and I'm sure it was a result of the SM5 bug and malfunction, I just can't take the chance of it occurring again and losing all of that data and links. The really frustrating thing is that this weekend I had already planned to do an entire system backup of data including those files but lost them right before that could occur. I have some older backups of many of the links but all of the links I had stored for the past three months or so are now gone along with the new category folders. Wiped out due to a buggy app. Very disgusting. See what I mean about modern computing? Imagine a biological mind where neural networked connections of image or thought clusters could be wiped out merely by another cluster of thoughts malfunctioning, or let's say imagine every scientific idea you had being wiped out or altered every time you tired to have a thought about literature. That kind of thing, where one app endangers or alters or disrupts another unrelated app is simply ridiculous, both from an end-user utilitarian point of view and from a design/engineering point of view. And since most programs function without the need to access anything other than a few simple shared files and by occasionally accessing the OS shell it is even more ridiculous because important data could be protected simply by secreting access from other apps, including utilities (short of anti-viral and spyware utilities of course). You could blanket, shield, or enwrap alterable and important data with internal program data-walls (as I like to call them) and protect them from malfunctions in other apps. By devising such data walls you could also greatly limit spyware intrusions, repress viral infection and vectoring routes, and achieve a whole host of other worthwhile security capabilities. It would be an internal program method of data firewalling and access encryption that would protect run over from the OS, from other apps, and from intruders. And that's hardly the only solution an engineer could devise. But don't get me started on modern OSs, software, and computing, cause the whole structure is as primitive as a kid's walkie-talkie set and I want to put my fist through my monitor whenever I stop to think about the damned situation.

Anyway now I'm using Snarfer and RSS Bandit, both of which I like alot (but RSS Bandit the better) and will be creating duplicate files for each program of all syndication links. In that way if I lose one program and even my back-up files then I'll still have a redundant program as secured back-up. You'd think though that by 2006 this kinda totally stupid and unnecessary computing problem could be avoided by OS makers and by app and utility engineers. But no.