Oh man I've been busy the past few days, busier than in a long time. I've gone through virtually all site files compressing stuff... renaming stuff... removing stuff... updating stuff ... adding stuff. I've checked all sites, all databases, fixed a bunch, backed everything up & now, woah, it's DONE. Well not really, it's never done, but I did what I set out to do and the sites should take care of themselves while I'm gone on a three month vacation. Did I say three month vacation? Yes I did, but more about that later, for now let's focus on the tasks that were at hand until very recently.

Since later nights and earlier mornings I've been going through things I should have gone through decades ago. I've been uploading games that have been missing at Blazem for a long time now today, and sorting through the music section trying to freeze time if only for a few seconds so it won't run out on me, and suddenly WP stops working all of sudden. I don't wonder why, it's probably due to some duplicate slugs, or plugin incompatibilities, and I know the Page Navi plugin was working things bad but I haven't had time to fix it so I had to take a while and wait twice for the site to cool down before I could keep on working with it, but I was lucky, the whole thing could've crashed instead, that would have been the tip of irony.

Once the music was revised and reposted I swiped through the settings, plugins & database to kill any bugs that may have been lying around. Fixed the navigation plugin too (seems like it was PHP 5 incompatibility causing the trouble), because I really need to have it working while I'm gone from the site, it's an important aspect for visitors when trying to browse properly. I went through the links page the day before yesterday and yesterday, started on the music page, finished that today, put up a much nicer placeholder than the old "will do" text on the gallery pages, updated the design page with active sites, status & an extra section, quickly went through the poetry, stats & main page... and then I was done with that. Started browsing through other parts of the site in hopes to fix the stuff page, or at least get a part of it done, there's so many hours that need using it seems a bit unreal. I didn't think I'd get the job done in a day, but I didn't think it would take this long either. Still I'm amazed that have done as much as I have in such a short amount of time.

Anyhow, the worst part of the site work today was always not really knowing when the broadband connection would be quitting on me. It's supposed to go down tomorrow, but who knows, maybe they switch it off a little earlier, and that would be a real disaster when I'm in the middle of negotiations and updations and file uploads and all the whatnots. Since I'm going on a three month vacation (yeah, three months, I did say that) we're cutting down on costs by shutting down the broadband connection for three months, and it's shutting down tomorrow. Feels like it's a day too early when I'm so close to getting everything sorted out, but then again I could always stop writing this blog and get on with it instead. ;)

Speaking about ID3 tags (I am now), I've been wondering which version I'm using on my audio tracks and I still have to figure it out, but that'll have to wait. I've updated all tags through the Windows (7) interface, they show up there, they show up on the site, and that's all that really matters at the moment, it's all good. I tried adding tags through Foobar 2000 earlier, and though they showed up in Foobar 2000, after that they didn't show up anywhere else so I really won't be doing that again, haha. Found a pretty good tag editing program but I don't have time to learn how to use it right now, it'll have to wait till after summer, thinking about using Yahoos tag automatic to revise my whole music collection, fix albums, tracks & everything without having to spend time on them one by one, because it's growing pretty big at the moment! Not one of the most important things to do on my todo list though, actually it shouldn't be on my todo list at all.

I created placeholders myself for two sites I'll be starting work on after summer, placed Google ads over five other ones I currently don't have any plans to work on & tried fixing the Blazem database quickly but it seemed to be too time consumable so I did a quickfix to make it work ASAP that will cost me some time when I get back (dragged a few thousand files into the wrong directories, that are currently the right directories since I put in the wrong commands in the SQL db), but at least it's working now. There are about 284 games up on the site for you to play if you like and I have an SQL import with more games already done but I don't have time to upload it now, I'll start working on that too after summer and striving to get up to the 10K barrier, putting all games onsite, and then selling the gamepack for a whole lot of $$$. It'll be selling for about $20, real cheap, so remember that if you're looking at competitor prices this summer.

Fixed the design on Blazem too, real quick, and it's now working. Will make it look better after summer but for now the main thing is that it's functional, and I managed to get some ads up and running there too, and here too btw. Only a little adsense below the site header though, nothing that should bother you much, but it's a good investment, would be nice earning enough to pay for the websites I run. My hosting is extremely cheap right now considering the amount of websites I am hosting, and the fact that I'm running them on a Shared account, a Reseller account & a VPS account, all three of them with one dedicated IP each! All this for less than most people pay for a single Shared account without even hosting as much on one account as I am right now.

Btw, speaking about something completely different again, guess how much bandwidth this site takes up at the moment? Last year it was around 50GB per month, right now we're up at 150GB, and that's this server only. At least to me it seems like we're starting to stir up much heavier traffic all of a sudden. Why is that, you ask? Well it's all thanks to WordPress! I haven't mentioned it before, but having it as a base script instead of that old engine I had earlier (scriptet myself) is so much easier. Speaking about that old engine, I've been working on some BBcode for the old smilies, and it's up and running now, you might see some smilies occasionally, and guess what, they're all made by me. :) The code to include them is made by me too! [:D And what's even better, if I type in a traditional text smiley like this one :D it doesn't turn into an image any longer, so I have two custom sets of smileys for every post I post, hehe. ;) ;) I'll be improving the system a lot after summer, but that shouldn't of interest to you, should it?

Anyhow, it always feels great achieving so much, I've been working both day and night lately and I'm tired 24/7 but it seems I'm still efficient whilst in a days. Daze, I mean, that typo is a perfect example of what happens when your tired. I write things backwards, I type words that sound similar, I speak about random bullcrap like right now. :) But, deadlines are great, especially ones that you can't trespass, like when they're shutting down the broadband connection, like now. I really have to get all shit fixed before then cause I really can't do any more work after that. So that's a good deadline, makes me feel stressed as hell right now, but at least it makes me work hard(err).

About university studies, I finished enough courses, but I haven't finished all the ones I've started. I plan on just studying half time after summer so I have a chance on finishing all the projects I've started (and I'm close), finishing the courses that aren't finished I hope (though the deadlines are long since passed) and do some great things I've been planning to do but haven't gotten around to yet cause there's so much old stuff left unfinished. Though I'll have time for plenty of greatness on my three month vacation. :P

Back to CDB business. All the music files have been encoded with LAME (there are 977 of them) to 65kbps with fast VBR, don't know what it means exactly, but what's important is that they are much much smaller and they still don't sound all that bad. It's a balance between size and quality. I also added titles, years (that took some research), numbers & artist/album information for all of them, and you better believe that took time!! The music page is now done, the links page is refurnished, the design page is adjusted, the gallery page has a nicer under construction sign & I'll be working on the poetry and stuff pages for as long as I can before I get disconnected ... or until a few minutes after midnight. Cause if it doesn't shutdown at midnight I might as well get some sleep and get up early instead.

In case you haven't figured, I'm posting this right before midnight in case the provider does follow schedule. After this I'm getting the sleep I haven't been getting in a couple of weeks now and tomorrow I'm just going to chill, really, chill, ideally. ;)

Also, check out those new sidebars, pretty fresh!