autumn tactics

This afternoon I was mucking about in FL Studio, but I kept getting distracted because I’ve had it in my mind to streamline my footprint, both physical and digital. I have plans to collapse the site as it is and fold it back to something much more basic. Right now I’m just thinking photography, the blog, and the wiki. No more college-era neophyte attempts at creation. That past has long since outlived its usefulness and now it’s more of an eyesore than anything else.

I brushed up a very few minor parts of the blog template. Headers should be uniform more or less through all category and monthly archives. I think I’ve figured out a way to fix 90% of the broken image links in the history, I just need to risk a global search-and-replace on the DB. The older blogger titles will have to be done by hand, unfortunately. There’s four hundred and eighty-some to deal with.

I put the search form back, it should work all right, though it’ll bring a harsh light onto all of those stupid blogger title entries. Once I get the older posts all marked up with titles, categories, and slugs I’ll add the most dense category labels to the sidebar.

Yesterday I took a one-day course in dark room printing. It was pretty interesting, though as you’d expect quite frustrating at first. There are so many steps in manual printing that are handled for you digitally, mostly alignment-related things. I have a couple of discount coupons to go again in the next few months, though, so I’m looking forward to that.

WordPress has been updated to 2.6.3. Maybe now WPG2 will actually work so I can stop making custom-sized images for posts with Gallery content. [Notice the sidebar image block is NOT working anymore...sigh.]

馬鹿のは、WordPressのアップグレード手順で、configに新規定数を追加するべきが書いてあるが、DBが既にUTF-8なので、Latin以外表示できなくなった。その他のヘルプに、「新規定数を追加するべきではない」って。アホ。

I have decided to make my blog public again, for various reasons. I’d like to make things more readable and improve the presentation, but rather than wait for a grand overhaul, I’ll just tweak it piece-by-piece. The first part of this is the replacement of the background image, which I’ve used for the first five years of the blog. We’ll see how it goes.

Entries from last November to now will be migrated in, dated retroactively over the next couple of weeks. If you’re really interested in catching them all, I recommend again the RSS feed, or obsessive daily checking and scrolling back to catch entries just before this one.

Peace, happy 2008.

So, anyone bored of the past week looking for us has most certainly noticed that at, as well as the gallery, have been offline. This is what non-dedicated hosting gets you, I suppose. I’ve been with iPowerWeb for a little over two years and have been moved to a different server once every seven months or so; sometimes with warning, sometimes without. At all times data has fallen on the floor someplace and mail has gone out for a while. However, as far as I can tell, this time the only thing not working right now is the gallery (which I hope to have working before bed).

I don’t know how long it’ll last, but this should remedy the MySql timeout problems for a while; at least until this server fills up with 566 other accounts who hammer the query proxy a lot rougher than we do. And then?

I picked up a guitar for the first time in ten years last weekend. I played “Country Roads” and remembered how much beginners hate F. I wish I had my own house with thick walls, but I don’t, so I need to hang out in the park during odd hours of the week. Like I said when I borrowed the dusty Takamine, “Nothing will come of it.” But still, it felt good, if just for a moment. Last weekend was a strange rosary made from calming moments of transparent enjoyment.

This is a short post just so the two or three of you still subscribing to the RSS feed and using IE can read the page on the site again. As pitiful as it is, I have not made major progress in revising the theme for the five months I’ve been on WordPress. I’m very, very, sorry. This is a stopgap measure, for who knows how long. But at least my mother can read my writing again.

Very sorry. Please let me know if something like this ever happens again, ok? Thanks. ^^;;

I am very, very, very sorry. I have a degree in Computer Science, and I have not looked at my blog in Internet Explorer in over five months.

This is a CSS thing. I will fix it very soon.

Until then, use Firefox, please.

最近、まあ最近と言うのは、今年日本語で全然日記を書いてないからです。すいません。引越しが大変だと言い訳を言いたいけど、引越しはもう二ヶ月前に終わったんだ。もう素敵な友達がいっぱい小さな都心の自宅に来てくれました。とにかく、日本語技術が落ちてしまっている気もします。もっと勉強しないと、

近来あまり勉強のチャンスがなさそうだけど、もっと丁寧に連絡のコツを調査中です。まだこのブログは日本語サポートは少なくて、きっとお客さんはあまり深く調べていないでしょう。その気持ちがよく分かります。＾＾；；このサイトはかなり古臭いな。壊れているリンクが多くて、まだ検索の機能は出来ていない。

しかし、写真展示サイト「GALLERY」が段々向上されています。

とりあえず、海外の写真「パリ、バンコク、上海、ソウル」があって、さらに国内の名所もあります「秋田、仙台、足立区」。特別な写真コレクションも載っています。公開写真も、ネット専用もあります。この季節週刊写真セットをGALLERYに追加します。さらに、コメントや評価機能など段々増えていますから、是非ご覧下さい。ご意見をお聞かせてください。それから、もっともっと美しい物をキャプチャーして公開出来ます。

よかったら、日記RSS（サイトの更新情報）を活用して下さい。

では、♪(*´∀｀*)

Around the end of February it seems that iPowerWeb decided to move my account to a different server. This caused all sorts of problems, as you have most certainly noticed, among them bounced mail to ichigoichie.org, ftp server troubles, and last week autumn tactics was knocked out of service (this seems to be a MySQL problem).

I’ve been running WordPress for three months now, and the mix of pros and cons hasn’t made me a fanatic yet, but with my slowly improving understanding of the system, I’m feeling more comfortable about it. I’m not sure what script generated over 50000 queries in an hour, but traffic was up recently and something did, and that’s what brought everything down. I know the sidebar is slow, I mean to look into it, but as you know I still haven’t updated the single post archive or the search functionality yet. Anything other than the top page is broken, and even that doesn’t look right as tabled and linked images don’t align or display borders properly. But, these are the things one has to deal with for increased configurability. I still don’t have a grasp on the concert of CSS and php, and I’m sorry that I haven’t fixed these things yet.

Gallery on the otherhand, is at first less configurable but far easier to use. I realized last weekend that my Gallery page was down, this is the result of the unannounced server move. However, I don’t think anyone really visited it that much so I suppose it’s not that big of a deal. However, I have since installed Gallery 2, which is much slicker looking and easier to use. I got it installed and imported my old albums in just over an hour.

I’ve been meaning to create photo collection pages for GEISAI 10 and the thirty-one days of photography from December, but obviously I’ve failed miserably on getting either of those up in any sort of timely manner. I have a Photoshop file for the Geisai site that I’ve been working with on and off since the move, but my technical skills are still throwing a wall up, preventing me from getting what I want. So, considering the volume with which I take photographs and my recent philosophy to “share the love”, I’m canning the custom collection page format for now, and just going to start making heavy use of Gallery. It’s quick to update, it’s spartan, and we can get a feedback loop going on with the images if you’re inclined to comment. It also supposedly dovetails nicely with WordPress, if I can get a better grasp on php.

So, please enjoy! Take a look at the old galleries from overseas trips. The GEISAI images are up, is last December’s photo special. In the next couple weeks, I’ll be putting up more of the Tokyo Bicycle Wanderings sets from the last several years. I think there is some support of IP management/watermarking that can be extended through Gallery. While not a perfect solution, enough of a deterrent to cull the lazy gankers. Hot-linking should also be disabled at this point. I’m toying with the idea of watermarks, perhaps a small embossing of the site url. For those interested, RSS is currently enabled. From the main gallery page, trick out the sidebar and follow the RSS link. That should cover all updates to any of the sub-albums.

I’m a little hung over from yesterday’s hanami party, so I’m not inclined to talk about why I take pictures right now, but I will say that in the future much more of my evolving work is going to be available for those interested. So I hope that you like it. It’s well-past time that I present my work at another exhibition; I have taken a couple good shots in the last month that I’d love to see on paper.

[A brief conversation on MSN Messenger, sometime last autumn (paraphrased)...]

B: Why don’t you put comments on your blog?
R: Because Blogger doesn’t handle them well, the interface is all clunky and doesn’t look right with my template.
B: Well, it’d be really helpful if you had them. There’re so many things that you write about that I want to reply to.
R: If I had the ability to comment on my blog, you’d really use it?
B: Of course.
R: Alright. It’ll probably be really tough, but I’ll make something happen.
B: Cool.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve updated my blog online, actually about a month. I’v been very slowly tweaking the template with WordPress, but my tolerance levels for using my laptop without a desk are quite low so much doesn’t happen really, and all my blogs end up in the Prism. That’s ok though because by the time that this is readable there will already be a whole truckload of posts from Kyoto; that was quite an adventure for twenty-six hours.

I’m still technically homeless, in the respect that I’m not really living at my apartment, and I don’t have anywhere else to go at the moment. However, today I finished packing so all that’s left really is to load everything into the truck, and give the larger pieces of furniture a thorough wipe down to make sure that the only thing that doesn’t go with me is three years’ worth of dust.

One way or another, I’m past the expiration date on this apartment since I officially filed to move on the 27th of December. I suppose at worst all of this stuff is going into rental storage space if I can’t close on a place to hang my hat by next weekend. So it goes. At least I got a level one clearning job done on the place. That alone has taken an immeasurable load off of my shoulders. I feel more confident, more assembled.

聖誕節和新年快樂

明けましておめでとうございます

메리 크리스마스 새해 복 많이 받으세요

С Рождеством Христовым и С наступающим Новым Годом

Bonne année

Buon Capo d’Anno

Happy New Year

WordPress and UTF-8 rock!

I’ll be up for the next three or four hours working on the site with ETN. If you’re browsing, ping me!

Ok, ok, the cat’s out of the bag. I tried very hard to keep your Christmas present from you until it was complete, and just “ta-da!” wow you with autumn tactics plus seamlessly integrated comments and tags on New Year’s, but it’s clear now that this is going be more than just a one-night effort, unfortunately.

So yes, we’ve finally kicked Blogger to the curb and are using extensible content management software. Oddly enough, Blogger Beta seems to just have figured out tags (that and a lack of unobtrusive comments were my main reasons for leaving).

In any case, I should have the template back to looking like it used to in the next few days, despite being mostly homeless. Top priority now is support for my legacy posts in Japanese, and after that titles. Then I get to learn just enough CSS to get the template fixed. And for dessert, I’m also making the long overdue upgrade to Gallery 2, which dovetails nicely with WordPress.

Let this be the beginning of better-organized, more aesthetically pleasing communication between us.

Just need to get through one more day at work… pray I can find a place to live this weekend.

Good night!

これを読めますか。

Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Feels like it’s just begun

My name is David Ventura, though a lot of people call me Rusty. After finishing graduate school in the spring of 2003, I packed up shop and moved to Japan to embark on an adventure both inwards and out, for both glory and peace; though I admit I probably won’t find the latter without acquiescing to the truthful insignificance of the former.

I used to enjoy bourbon and pizza, now I appreciate green tea and raw tuna. I play a lot of video games, ride a beat-up commuter bicycle, listen to electronic music, and try to take a lot of pictures of things that interest me. Professionally I make commercial video games, though I have a history of research and drama. The most important thing I hope for each day is continual growth and to learn from my mistakes.

In this journal I keep a running account of my thoughts about myself, about humanity, and the things I see. I occasionally create a photo collection, but for the most part it’s just a random shot here and there that I may or may not make the time to edit on the computer. Sometimes what I write about is rather personal, and it may be offensive or depressing, but mostly it’s pedestrian and quite boring. Whatever I do write about though, it’s honest, it’s what I think and what I feel; it’s not for posturing or obligation. If it’s of interest then all the better. But to look back and remember with nostalgia the times both rough and smooth, I’m confident I won’t soon forget what mattered to me and how much I tried to make it work out, so perhaps a little wiser in the long run.

Always moving onwards,
David “Rusty” Ventura

Deep river runs its course
To a warm horizon
Shadows of falling leaves
October moon and rusty skies
Ever changing feelings
The seeds of autumn in my mind

Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Feels like it’s just begun
Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Waiting for summer sun
Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Feels like it’s just begun
Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Waiting for summer sun
Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Feels like it’s just begun