The first post here was July 2006. Posting has become intermittent, but I still find it worthwhile to keep going. Here’s to another year.
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I’ve added a page listing suppliers of art materials whose products I like and who provide good service. Call it the All the Strange Hours seal of approval. Over time, I’ll expand the list.
You might also be interested in these postsI’m working on some changes to the underlying technical structure of this site. So far, I have switched the database from MySQL version 4 to version 5. That seems to have gone surprisingly well so far (given my limited technical skills), and the site is loading much more quickly.
Next, I will attempt to clean a bunch of old, unused tables out of the database. That may cause some problems with the blog and I may have to restore from backups.
I apologize for any problems over the next couple of days. I’ve been avoiding this for a long time, but it really has to be done if this site is to work the way it’s supposed to. Please let me know if you have any problems with the site.
Thanks.
Updates
24 April 2009: So far, so good. The blog is running a lot faster now. I’ve recovered some recent comments that were in the database, but had become invisible. The archives page is now displaying properly. All the posts and other stuff seem to work correctly.
2 May 2009: Still working fine (he writes while superstitiously knocking wood to banish the avenging spirits of tempted fate). I wish I’d done this a long time ago, as it was much easier than I thought it would be.
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I thought I had it all worked out, but apparently not. I created a new install of WordPress, for various technical reasons, and redirected to that site. Unfortunately, the migration of data to the new version just didn’t work the way it was supposed to. Missing features, missing images, messed up database…bleh.
So for now we are back at the old version of the site, which seems to be working just like it always was. I apologize for any problems you may have had here in the last few days. I will test much more extensively before I try anything like that again.
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I’ve been away for awhile, because I got very busy with other projects, including a complete redesign of my employer’s web site.
I think I’m back. I should be able to do some posting, catch up with responses to comments, etc. My apologies to anyone I haven’t responded to in a timely manner.
I’m also considering some site changes that would involve a switch from Wordpress (blogging software) to Drupal (Content Management System). Support request: if there’s anyone out there who could help figure how to configure wp2drupal module so that content could be migrated, I’d be very grateful.
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All the Strange Hours is two years old today. Coincidentally, the blog is also approaching it’s 100,000th page view. As internet sites go, that’s not an incredibly high number over two years, but I appreciate the attention. Over the next few weeks I plan to re-post some “best of” items that might be worth looking at again.
Thanks to everyone who has come by and stayed awhile. And thank especially to those who have contributed to the blog by commenting or—in Katarzyna’s case—by posting.
I’d like to take this opportunity to reiterate my invitation to others who might want to participate here. If you’d like to blog at ATSH about visual art, send me an email and we can discuss it.
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I just made a page for visitors to post questions—you can see a link to it in the navigation bar at the top of each page. I get a fair number of questions, sometimes attached to a random post because the visitor didn’t really know where else to post the question. So now there’s a place.
If you put a relevant question into the comments there, I will respond. Of course, my response may be simply to tell you that I don’t know. But feel free to give it a try. It’s not exactly an internet forum, but it will serve for now.
Update
21 June 2008: Of course, the first question (an excellent one) stumped me. More, please. I’ll have a good answer to someone’s question eventually.
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Now that I’ve been blogging for awhile, I thought I’d post a bit about the process. I understand that many people come here without any interest in the mechanics of blogging. If so, then just skip this post. Others will be familiar enough with technical issues that all this will seem way too simple. Again, just skip the post. If I make any mistakes in attempting to explain this, however, I’m hope someone with more technical knowledge than I have will let me know.
I started out, lo these couple of years ago, using the free and easy Blogger service provided by Google. The old version of this blog is still there; I’ll probably get around to deleting it at some point. After a couple of months I got tired of the limitations imposed by blogspot. I had my own domain and host; after a little digging I discovered that my host would install WordPress with just a button press. WordPress imports posts from Blogger, so I installed it and had it do that. I then had to manually import all of my images. That was kind of a pain, but not hard to figure out. Read the rest of this entry »
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Not sure why. Working on it…
Update
16 February 2007: Working again. Somehow the code to call the “SRG Clean Archives” plugin got lost from the archives page.
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Sorry about that. Life got incredibly busy and I just didn’t have time to blog. Back now, I hope.
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My name is Katarzyna Skonieczna (pron: cathrina sconetchna). I was born in Poland, I live at a little island of Cobh, South-West Ireland and study Fine Art at the Crawford College of Art in Cork. I studied literature, philosophy and theology back in Poland. I always wanted to study psychology but just didn’t have the right opportunity. I used to express myself verbally by writing short stories (and endlessly writing a book, which remains unfinished as for now) and also - visually by drawings but it was only a side interest. Then, after I made myself comfortable in Ireland I got a strong need to deepen my adventure with art; so I applied to the nearest college. My main interests concern - above all - human condition in its purest phenomena - identity, emotions, destiny (all art is about that - said my tutor and he’s right); then apects like colour, form, line. I’m passionate about drawing, oils, photography, printmaking, installation and animation/video art. I feel being inspired by Surrealism, Cubism, German Expressionism and Fanatsy/Illustartion art (eg. Patric Woodroffe). I proposed David (whom I really grateful to for this possibility) my contribution - “Studying Art” where I am hoping to reflect on some basic aspects of studying/discovering art (which puzzle and /or worry me) such as “What’s art and what is it for?” “Can art be taught/learnt - if yes which way?”, “Art in the past and today”, “What’s bad/good art?” etc. I would like also to keep a sort of a diary from my studies - notes, study work, workshops etc. Before I start I have to make you aware of two things - English is not my mother-tounge, so I apologise in advance for any misspelling (no matter how stupid it will look/sound) and for “rusty” usage of words/phrases; and another thing - I may not to be able to contribute on a regural basis - but I will do anything to keep my positive influence on this site.
P.S.
I kindly invite a lively response to my posts, because I don’t believe in writing only to myself and to the Muse. Important part of why I’m doing this is a precious opportunity to exchange opinions and thoughts. Thanks
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As those of you who’ve followed recent posts are aware, I’m opening up this site to other contributors for at least the remainder of this year. The first volunteer is AlienGirl. I’d like to thank her for participating here and I look forward to reading her posts.
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After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to open this site up to other commenters on a trial basis for the rest of 2007. At the beginning of next year, I’ll decide whether to continue in this format.
So if you are interested in becoming a contributor, please let me know. I would very much appreciate your participation. You are welcome to post once or often. If you already have an art blog, you would be welcome to cross-post when that makes sense and to include links to your own site. I would only expect you to post on the general topics that this site has tended to explore, although if you’d like to expand into other areas of visual art, such as art criticism, modern art, other painting media, etc., that would be fine. This should not become a place to showcase your own art or your own business, although it would be fine to post works in progress as a means of showing others what you are doing and how you do it.
If you want to become a contributor, you’ll first need to register if you have not already done so. Then send me an email using the link in the sidebar. I’ll upgrade your account to “Author” status, which will allow you to post to the site. I’ll send instructions—it’s pretty easy. Posts will appear without first needing to be approved by me.
This does not mean, by the way, that I won’t be posting here anymore.
I’ll continue to be the editor here. I won’t allow commercial posts or posts that I think are misleading. If a contributor is participating in a way that I don’t think is helpful, I’ll politely let him or her know that it just isn’t working out. I am, however, quite willing to allow other voices than my own (as I have in comments since this blog started) and I expect to post comments rather than do anything intrusive. I just want to be clear that I will take responsibility for this to be a site where people can go for useful information about making art.
Thanks to everyone who has stayed with this site, posted comments, and sent me email about this site. I’m excited about the possibility that other people’s participation will markedly improve All the Strange Hours.
You might also be interested in these postsYou may have noticed that I’ve been posting less lately. A lot less. Life has been very busy with an engaging job and a one-year old to take care of. Sometime in the next few months I’m going to be enrolling in online graduate courses in order to work toward board certification in behavior analysis—something that’s becoming a necessity if I want to continue doing the kind of work I do. That will take up even more of my time for awhile.
I really like All the Strange Hours and want it continue to be an active site. So I’m considering opening the site up to other contributors. I would continue to be the editor/administrator and I’d still pay the web hosting costs. (You thought this was free?) Contributors could post whenever they like, sticking within the general topic of visual art. You could do one post or many. I would retain the right to accept or reject posts, although I would plan to have a pretty light hand. Regular contributors would have a section of a “contributors” page and links to their site or sites.
What do you think? Is that a good idea or not? Are you interested in contributing to an art web log? Feel free to comment or send email.
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A weblog about drawing, painting, art history, color, materials, methodds, photography, composition, and other topics related to visual art.
Spam, spam, spam, spam
11 November 2009 in personal by David | No comments
I get more than 23 spam comments here for each legitimate one. Spam filters catch most of them, but occasionally one slips through and I have to delete it manually. And once in awhile, a legitimate comment gets tagged as spam, so I have to rescue it. (Sometimes I miss those and they get deleted. If I did that to one of yours I apologize.)
Oh, how I hate those parasites.
In case you’re not aware, comment spam is valuable because Google and other search engines rank sites based on how many other sites link to them. Google tends to filter out any site that’s just a bunch of crappy links, so just making sites solely for that purpose is a waste of time. But a link in a comment from a site Google considers legitimate (this site has a Google page rank of 4 out of 10, which is not too bad for a blog with a limited audience) does count. Enough such links, spread out over the internet, gets a site onto the first page of Google search rankings and decreases the cost of purchasing ads.
That’s worth money, so scumbags write programs to scour the internet, finding sites where automated comments can be entered. They are often written to look kind of like a generic nice comment, such as “Excellent points. Keep up the good work!” with hidden links. If you write a real comment that looks generic like that, it’s likely to end up in the spam filter.
Sigh. Sorry for the non-art post, but it’s kind of frustrating.
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