(no subject)

To err is human; to completely forget the date of your annual company meeting during which you may be forced to go out of town for a stretch of four days: that requires a stormdog

My company meeting is actually going to be weekend after next. It remains to be seen whether the software we need is going to be ready just in the nick of time (in which case I'll probably need to go with) or not at all, in which case there'll probably be a significantly lower work-load. At this point, having been waiting nearly four months since the original completion date, I'll believe it's done when I have it on my hot little hard drive.

But on to (hopefully) more interesting things.

In a fit of ambition, I procured copies of not only Photoshop 9.0, but also of Dreamweaver 8. For what purpose have I burdened my computer with such software? Well, as I keep talking about, I'd really like to try some more serious amateur photography. With Photoshop, I can do some high-quality post-production on my images, and with Dreamweaver I can create a website that's fit to show them off. Wish me luck: I have lofty, probably over-ambitious dreams of creating something halfway professional and maybe even earning a reputation or selling a print or two, and I don't think my tried-and-true method of hacking websites together in notepad is going to cut it. However, a pretty steep learning curve seems to be involved in both of these packages. Here goes nothing...

On a related note, I've been looking through a number of photography websites for inspiration. One of my favorites is The Long Hair Site. There are some fantastic vintage pictures in the Xtra length section, and there's a great multiplicity of angles and styles there. Another one, one that wooisme introduced me to, is The Beauty Curve [some non-worksafe content here, though not on the title page], which has another wide variety of wonderful photography. Perhaps in time, I'll be confident enough to ask people to model for me that way. There are at least a couple people on my friends list who do that kind of work and that's part of what planted the seed for me too. Looking at another type of photography, there's a great deal of urban, urban ruin, and abandoned machinery photography that I find inspirational too; two of the places I look for work in that vein are urban_decay and deadmachinery, though there are many others. (Another definitely worth note is Forgotten Michigan.)

Do I have the talent for such an undertaking? I don't know. I've never been the most self-confident person you'll meet, but I suppose there's only one way to find out. I just need to find the time....

What else is new? Not much. My VPN server has graduated to production level. If any of my friends would have a use for an NT account on my box and/or some web-storage space, do let me know. Andrea's pictures have all been moved to the velvetvineyard.fdns.net virtual host, leaving me free to do with stormdog.fdns.net what I will. And finally, I've locked down security a little bit on my server since, in theory, external clients may be connecting in via VPN. Last but not least, is there anyone reading who's familiar with configuring Apache's httpd.conf file? Should I save myself some headaches and just find a GUI to interface with it? Your comments are welcome.

'Till next time:

--Storm