Need some ideas or tips for designing great maps? Check out Cartography 2.0 where the administrators work to set up “an open, online resource and share our experiences making digital and web-based maps.”
November 9, 2009
Relocation
In 2002, I registered a domain, signed up for some cheap hosting, and started a blog. Like most people that have done the same, I started with a level of enthusiasm and passion that was difficult to maintain. Since I wasn’t just blogging about my thoughts, but about the intersection of game design and the brain sciences, I couldn’t just sit down and begin typing. I was no expert in either subject and, for every post that made it to the blog, there were hours of reading and researching behind the scenes as I tried to ensure that what I wrote was at least not embarrassingly stupid. Sometime I succeeded and sometimes I did not.
In addition to the issues related to the actual business of writing itself, there were the administrative hassles involved with managing my own site. True, I didn’t have to configure and maintain my own LAMP operation, but even just my naive admin work was too much for me. Hackers and spammers were the usual butt itches they always are and they overran the site periodically. What discouraged me the most, however, was the incredibly sluggish performance of my shared 99$/year service. I’ve been through three different hosts and really believe that, unless I want to pony up more peanuts, I’m not going to get the speediness necessary to make editing enjoyable.
A few days ago, playcube.org was again hit and I lost my SQL backend. Yes I have backups somewhere but I can’t be bothered to restore them. Most of my posts had become nothing more than assurances regular posting would resume soon. I hadn’t left much around to worry over and, now, I’m packing in the whole idea of paying someone for something that fails to offer me or anyone else any value.
I’ll be redirecting my domain to this blog and see if I can summon up the time and attention to put something meaningful to disc.
