Today just flew by really fast, as soon as I got here. I did more reading then drawing (and, if you’ve seen the twitter/twitpic feed on the AP hub, just looking out the window because it’s a really nice view from up here), but that’s okay. I’ma see if I can just do this every Tuesday.

One minor point of annoyance, though… I get that libraries and such would use filters. But why, WHY is Ayarane Project blocked and considered a Malicious Site? ;_; Even weirder is that this only affects the hub: the Ramen subdomain still works. WTF. This just means that I’ll have to, er, wait until I get home to reverse-tag any entries I make, blah. I wonder if there’s a way to petition Websense to get me unblocked, it’s just silly to tell my spaceship to GTFO. :( I have pictures of KITTIES, for smoo’s sake.

Anyway, time to pack up Dinah… once I get home, need to crack open Blastoise and put in his Blu-ray drive. About freaking time. :P

The great irony of Ayarane Project is that this hub and all its offshoots is one ginormous vanity show… this despite my fervent HATRED and utter aversion to being perceived as self-absorbed. I am not a secretive person (and I’m far too boring to have much that is even secret-worthy, the few things that ARE redacted and obfuscated are merely done so as a courtesy to others who would object) but at the same time I am not the type to actively shove every mundane detail of my life in others’ faces.

I suppose the existence of Ayarane Project would also constitute a happy medium– lay everything out, but don’t feel pressured to go parading it about. Of course, there’s the question of “what about potential employers?!” because, of course, it’s expected that in applying for work you’re bound to be Google’d and such. To them, I say “do your worst.” There are many, many reasons for this… among other things, the biggest would be that it spares me the incredibly uncomfortable burden of having to talk about myself LIVE. (Fellow social phobics, PLEASE tell me you understand what I mean.)

And, of course, I do not drink, smoke, use drugs or otherwise participate in things that are blatantly illegal or would make me look bad-silly. Hooray?

In all seriousness, though… one of the secondary purposes of this hub is to identify, itemize and archive the otherwise intangible aspects of me. This is both for your amusement (or lack thereof) and as part of an ongoing process of self-discovery/identification/blah blah blah. Years ago, most people would do something along these lines by stringing together a bunch of pages and calling it a “personal site.” (If you’ve followed Ayarane Project WAAAAAAY back since I first bought the domain, you would certainly recall my many attempts at those.) But in this NEWER era of blogs, Twitter, YouTube and the like, to get the same point across requires a distinctly… different form of execution.

Hence, we have this current form of Ayarane Project, a WordPress blog that pulls the bulk of its fodder from my LiveJournal (if only because I am too lazy to write the same thing for two separate spaces, and it’d be redundant anyway), but integrates the rest of my presence on the internets via the many widgets on the sidebar. I like widgets– I’m not the type to add them willy-nilly, but occasionally I’ll find one that would, you know, actually make sense to loot and deploy here.

This, of course, does not pooh-pooh or otherwise rule out the use of separate pages. (See that “about yoshi” link up there, for one. And, at the way bottom, you’ll find another that profiles my two machines Blastoise and Dinah.) There’s still quite a bit to identify and catalog… it’s a matter of figuring out how best to do it. And yes, I’ve actually entertained the thought of doing it as a wiki, if only for the whole “interconnected” thing.

Also: The YouTube channel’s not seen much action lately… I know I still need to finish the captures of the Phase battles from the first four .hack games, except I appear to have misplaced my GameBridge. o_O;;; I know I lent it to Bren a few months back but I also know she returned it… But, I’m not too worried since I’m considering getting this capture box since it can do HD and appears to be the only HD-capable capture device out there that isn’t HORRIBLY-obscenely-priced. Beyond finishing those captures, I’ve some penciled plots on nefarious things I could post but nothing coherent to elaborate on yet.

Anywho… other recent tweaks to the hub:
- The title is now a graphic, just because. For the curious, the handwritten font is “Tony Steidler-Dennison,” and I looted it off some blog several years ago. Based on the name, I would assume the font was constructed based off someone’s handwriting? (Presumably, this guy.) Googling shows that the font is no longer available for download anywhere else, and I love to use this font as a header, so this is one of those rare files I take EXTREMELY special care to back up whenever rebuilding my machines. The pixel font is another one that I looted from a free font repository long long ago… It doesn’t so much have a name but some alphanumeric code: “04b03,” if you feel like googling for it or others like it.
- New widgets: Randomly Yoshi-Factual displays a random detail about me, just for the hell of it. Then there is also The Eternal Poll, which is an ongoing query about how you like your Yoshi fix.

This is totally an exclusive for those viewing this from the main Ayarane Project hub. As in, this very server. Lucky you! Actually, it’s because it’s only relevant to this version of the blog and thus makes no sense to appear on the other variants.

I was SUPPOSED to go attempt sleep, um, 3 hours ago but decided on a whim to go diving through all the 150-ish posts that have been streaming here since the server change in late October of last year and add tags to all of them, since the stream widget thingy that pulls the posts off LJ won’t carry over tags and… yeah. Clearly Yoshi is very bored. From hereon I’ll try to go back and tag streamed posts (and fix the ones with YouTube/NBC video widgets since, again, the stream widget kinda forgets to import those) as soon as possible, just because it’s cleaner that way.

You’ll also see that in the byline there’s an “ITP” field (ITP being “in this post”) with the tags used. Also the Yoshi link should take you to the about page rather than another useless archive.

Why do I do this? Certainly can’t be because I’m stupidly amused by things like, oh, TAG CLOUDS and such?

What else… ah… I may replace the title text with something more graphical. But that I’ll do another time, when I am less sleepy.

I always forget that after I do something drastic, like change servers, I end up feeling like I did something along the lines of selling my soul for a cookie. Stupid, obvious observation much? :P

Been poking, nudging, setting ablaze, fusing, breaking apart and hacking at the frontend of the new Ayarane Project server for much of the evening. While, graphically, its front page won’t be complete until I replace that background with something a bit more… Yoshi-flavored (like, ramen!), for the most part it’s got everything pretty close to how I want it. :D

Streaming this LJ over to the AP front page isn’t perfect… since it’s being piped via RSS, things like icons and tags and extra stuff won’t transfer. Oh well… I guess if you really want to see, you could just click through! (You have to do that if you want to comment anyway.)

Of course, with this server move, I’ll obviously have to change the way I actually post Instant Ramen serverside. As I said before, from hereon, Instant Ramen files will be posted on the subserver ramen.layer-infinity.net, which now has its own gallery software (because fiddling with Across Universe has TOTALLY spoiled me on automated thumbnailing). The good news is that no more will I have to worry about FTP clients since I can post it from the Ramen CP… the bad news is that anyone who wants the full-sized version is either going to have to click through to loot it themselves, though not that it’s all that difficult anyhow. :P As test fodder (and also because it really was the most recent Ramen), DenRoll was the first to be added under this new subserver.

The only thing that concerns me is not a single thing has touched my primary mailbox all day. Usually I get, like… at least one YouTube notice, or something from the Obama campaign, or spam… but, nothing! Weird, considering that the DNS switch otherwise went without any complaints, so it’s not like anything could have still gone to the old server mailboxes. Then again, it is a weekend… hmm. Well, at worst, all my mission-critical emails are piped into my Roadrunner mailbox.

And we’re off. HostRocket will be the new host for Ayarane Project. However, I’ll be keeping the Interscot account open either until the end of the year, or until I am sure that everything that people wanted moved over has been (whichever comes first).

I’ve copied the following folders from the server:
/artwork/ (contains all Instant Ramen and Slacker Sketchbook)
/camera/ (self-explanatory)
/thumbnails/ (also self-explanatory)
/twilight/ (the RT “work” folder)

Copying those didn’t take as OMGLONG as I thought… of course, that’s just downloading. Uploading, well, that’ll be a whole different story. But all in all, it’s barely over 600MB for all that put together (and if I drop the junk _vti_blahblahblah folders, I can probably shave off another 50MB or so)… basically, just an “upload this crap while I sleep” thing.

As far as email accounts go, it looks like only mine’s getting ported over since all the others are basically forwards or abandoned. :P (BUT… new server should allow me to enable self-registration if, for some reason, somebody wants a layer-infinity.net mailbox. Just saying. :P)

To my knowledge, seraphzero, aethereall, golgicomplex, phrotus and muralasa all have stuff on the Ayarane Project server. If you want to back up those files, please do so as soon as possible. If you want to put them back on the new server, poke me so I can get subdomain accounts created. (And, uh, if you forgot the login for the current server, poke me and I’ll get you that, too.)

I kinda feel bad that I’m going to drop Interscot at the end of the year… they’ve housed my little cardboard box since freaking 2001. Silly, yes, but even breaking customer loyalty is a little sad. :( But, alas, they could not keep up with other webhosts that are floating around. (Something tells me I’m not the only one thinking this.) In the end, this move will be much better for me.

I’m just waiting on the welcome message so I can start the uploads and get WordPress loaded and such. (Oh, that’s going to be interesting… hacking the smoo out of a prepackaged template to make it nice and Yoshi-flavored. Ah, reminds me of when I would clone the look of game menus as blog layouts for Mugendai.) I’m thinking that not only could I stream my LJ, but also my dA posts… fun times ahead!

Still haven’t decided if I’m going to register ayarane-project.net or some variant of it… well, that’s something I can do anytime, really. :P

EDIT: On an unrelated note!
Mmm, pet insurance.
VPI’s gonna reimburse me for half of the neutering fees. At first I was kinda “wha?” when I looked over the explanation (they’re giving me back only $100 for the actual neutering charge, out of $220-something) but then I remembered that they would probably only cover enough for a basic neuter, and mother piled on a ton of extra services. :P

But, hey… half of a total $650 bill? (Remember, I had both dogs done at the same time.) That’s still pretty freaking nice.

LAWL @ mother, though. “Maybe we can get away with NOT neutering Wilson” (the English Bulldog that Evil Stepfather’s buying her for anniversary) Yeah, right. I can see why if you’re a breeder… which mother is most certainly NOT. Fontana freaking charges you 6 times the normal licensing fee if your dog’s not fixed. What the hell… NOT neutering? That’s just absurd.