CHRIS M. - What happened?

Hey Chris, what is the status of you Torch Reviews site? You have contributed so much information about so many different lights!I'm anxiously waiting to see your collection on your webpage and what you think about them.

I see your sig said that you've had some problems with the development of your site...did you really lose EVERYTHING?! Is it that bad?

LEDagent,
I think Chris is going to have to call it
"The often mentioned, frequently hinted at, constantly on the brink of re-opening but rarely actually seen semi-mythical Torch Reviews site"

Let's all just pretend that we've seen it - we should humour him ......

lightlover

Hey Chris, what is the status of you Torch Reviews site? You have contributed so much information about so many different lights!I'm anxiously waiting to see your collection on your webpage and what you think about them.

Oh yeah, I was going to launch a Web site wasn`t I

OK, here`s the scoop. My brain`s tired after a not to pleasent day at work so please forgive me if I get muddled.

At the end of last year I decided to re-launch my web site into a trio of seperate sites. One for Christmas Lights displays, one for light bulbs, vintage electrical bits and tha t sort of thing, and one for Torch Reviews. I set aside about 6 weeks to do it in.

The Christmas Displays site- the smallest of the 3, was started first......and finished 6 weeks later. I thought it`d take a week at most. But at that time I was busy failing my Uni degree again, and put in extra time to try not to fail. I have failed now, so it was a waste of my time . It was approaching the Lighting season and I always go a bit mad then, so in order to afford it I worked exta days too. The result- not a lot of time to work at web building. I then abandoned the whole re-launch idea, as at that rate, if I waited till all 3 sites were ready it would`ve been next christmas before they were done!

Over the holidays I started on the Torch site, but feeling totally worn out and inspiration-less, I decided it was a better idea to give the computer a break, so I did. Exams were approaching too.
Mid January, work continues (although my time was still a bit tight) and it comes on reasonably well, I have a format I`m happy with and works fine on IE....then I try it with Netscape and it f***s up badly- stupid thing doesn`t like the way I did my tables and rendered it all wrong with gaps and things everywhere, so I had to re-do it. Statistics show about 1/4 to 1/3 of visitors to the Bulb museum use netscape, don`t want to prevent them seeing my review site too. So, that format applied to my pages, I make resonable progress and anticipate launch by Febuary 20th- exactly one year after launching my original site.

Anyway, it was about now my computer decided it was tired of life, and kept trying to find ways to commit suicide. It tried everything possible to drive me to throw the stoopid thing out the window including frequently freezing up or crashing for no reason, and corrupting/"dissapearing" directories among other things. The "fixed" cross-brower-friendly pages fel victim to this, and when I tried to re-do it the one night, it failed on me again.

I`d had about enough, so gave up on it till I could sort things out. Launch day came and went and there wasn`t a thing I could do. I`ve re-installed things and run countless surface scans, virus checkers and things like that. It`s sort-of stable now. It still will crash for no reason, just not nearly so often.


As of the last few weeks, work has resumed albeit slowly. I`m working 4 days a week now and am usually worn out by the time I get home (either physically or mentally), some days I`ll read the forums, sort out my emails and just crash infront of the TV. I`d love to have the time and enthusiasm for web building that Craig has, but alas, I havn`t.


Short answer- it is coming but it won`t be this week.


[tempting fate] I think I`ll shoot for April 1st to launch it. What with all the constant delays and put-backs, everyone will think I`m pulling an April Fool when I finally announce "it`s ready", but hey- it`ll be a nice surprise when they follow my link expecting to see an April-Fool message, only to see the Torch Reviews Site there in all it`s orangey glory.

Tip: if you`ve ever thought about launching your own web site but don`t get too much free time, er, don`t! It can take over your life if you`re not careful

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> Tip: if you`ve ever thought about launching your own web site but don`t get too much free time, er, don`t! It can take over your life if you`re not careful <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whoa..i hear ya bro! I understand how work and study can get in the way of the things we'd really like to do! I have midterms comming up as well, and know all to well the feeling of failure. My suggestion is to put off the website a little longer so that you can devote more of your attention to your studies. (All this comming from a person who can't follow his own advise!)

Anyway...Thanks for the response and the time that you have devoted in your site for all of us to enjoy (sooner or later). I hope eneogh time will clear up for you to just RELAX. Also, computers will NOT get any better on their own. I have found that if your system is THAT screwed up, where it crashes periodically, i would just reformat and reinstall the entire system. Sure it might take 2-5 hours of your time, but it will help you out in the long run.

My suggestion is to put off the website a little longer so that you can devote more of your attention to your studies.

Nice idea, but it`s too late. I have failed, and I don`t want to drag this already-extended course out till September when the resits are. Besides, much of my major project work got hosed too and there`s no way I`m going through all that again!


About the PC- I know it`s long overdue a format and re-install, but there`s one small problem. I have a hard drive full of nice programs I use reguarly (Photoshop v4, ACD-See 95, MS Office 97, etc) and no original discs. In the beginning before web sites, internet and anything really, I didn`t want to spend lots of money getting a PC set up- I couldn`t afford it, this was before I had a job too! So I scavenged together a muddle of parts and borrowed a load of discs. My copy of Windows is a CDR I was given, but the rest I had to give back. And I didn`t have a CD writer drive of my own to make copies with.

Not to mention the fact that I`ve a drive full of irreplaceable email archives, photos, web site stuff, other personal files, that sort of thing. I did borrow a portable Zip drive a little while ago and backed up all the important bits- and I`ll be buying my own Zip drive as soon as I can find a decent one on Ebay for a bargain price. They`re handy little things.

Before I think about reinstalling things, I have to go and find originals of all these programs. I know they`re out of date but they (did) run just fine on this thing. Later versions of Office or Photoshop almost certainly won`t run. Not enough ram (I tried upgrading a couple times but for some reason it wasn`t compatible- even though I ckecked I`d bought the right kind), not enough CPU power (almost maxed out the board`s capacity at 166. It may go to 200, not sure).

So, guess I`m stuck for now. It may just be a better idea to buy a new board/cpu/ram/hdd/case and install from scratch on that. My monitor`s OK and the modem, although slow, works fine too. At least if I hit into problems installing something, getting back online or copying files, I`ve still got the old one as a backup.

Not now though. can`t afford it (typically!)! I need driving lessons and a vee-hickle of some sort eventually, and those don`t come cheap!

Chris - my heartfelt sympathy go to you re: your computer problems. Last weekend we went through something similar - HDD crash - FAT files blown to heck... luckily we only lost the OS, not our data files (WHEW!). End result: 1 new HDD and a completely blown weekend...

The wisest investment I ever made with the computer was a CDRW - you can write CDR disks yourself and you can use a CDRW disk like a huge 550 meg floppy - read, write, erase, re-write. Well worth the $150. Zip disks are much more flakey than CDRW's - don't bother...

And you got it right when you said you need lots of free time for a website! I remember wayyyyy back when you warned me that it would be tough to keep up with it, and you were right. So much to do, so little time....

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Chris M.:
About the PC- I know it`s long overdue a format and re-install, but there`s one small problem. I have a hard drive full of nice programs I use reguarly (Photoshop v4, ACD-See 95, MS Office 97, etc) and no original discs. In the beginning before web sites, internet and anything really, I didn`t want to spend lots of money getting a PC set up- I couldn`t afford it, this was before I had a job too! So I scavenged together a muddle of parts and borrowed a load of discs. My copy of Windows is a CDR I was given, but the rest I had to give back. And I didn`t have a CD writer drive of my own to make copies with.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This sounds an awful lot like my computer setup. I have Windows 95 on a CDR, and the rest of the stuff (Gomer, Photoshop V4, ACDsee, 16-bit FTP (32 doesn't work), and a few "bit" utilities) was either borrowed or my originals were lost in an earthquake, so I have no original disks. The computer itself was assembled from parts scavenged from the corpses of numerous other dead computers, and I have no functional backup device. So if I had to reformat, I'd be hosed too.

I do have a few older pictures and Photoshop copied over to another HD, and all of my web material is on the web so I could always use FTP "retrieve" to get it back, but everything else would be a total loss.

My other computer has an internal 100MB ZIP drive, but I don't know if this computer (the one I'm typing on now) has enough resources left to install the driver if I yanked the ZIP drive and popped it in. Might be worth a try - at least I could save the important stuff like Photoshop, FTP, Gomer, all my e-mail, and all of my photographs. The computer has one IDE slot left, so I could run a CD-ROM *or* a ZIP, but not both. So I hope I can install the driver without the ZIP drive actually in place.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Chris M.:

Before I think about reinstalling things, I have to go and find originals of all these programs. I know they`re out of date but they (did) run just fine on this thing. Later versions of Office or Photoshop almost certainly won`t run.:<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

A couple of suggestions if replacing your Office and Photoshop software looks a bit daunting..
As a viable alternative to MS Office, you can download
Open Office. This is a much smaller, office application suite which is fully compatible with MS Office files, and very easy to use. And its totally free! In addition, it doesn't take 100s of megabytes of space like MS Office does..
Instead of Photoshop, you could look at Paint Shop Pro. It isn't completely free, but you can at least get a fully functional evaluation copy. It isn't Photoshop, but it comes very close. Even for $100, it is still great value compared to the retail price of Photoshop..

Graham

PS If downloading large programs like this seems a bit daunting, I'm sure someone around here could download and put it on a CDR for you..

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by The LED Museum:
The computer itself was assembled from parts scavenged from the corpses of numerous other dead computers, and I have no functional backup device. So if I had to reformat, I'd be hosed too.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hey Craig,

If you could use some extra PC parts, software (legit licensed copies) etc, I could probably help you out. I run the IT department where I work, and have lots of older spares and stuff which is not used and will eventually be thrown away... I'd be happy to see if I could send some stuff your way, if you can let me know in more detail what your setup is and what would do the most good..

Graham