THE WORLD WIDE HEADACHE

by Jez Bond

It’s so convenient when things are running smoothly in one’s online technological world but god how frustrating when the system collapses! I continually teach myself computer skills at the eleventh hour – see our new RSS feed today. Given a dedicated amount of time and google at your fingertips there’s not much you can’t decipher. When our server went down this morning I began to piece together a recovery strategy. But WordPress, RSS, Twitter and website templates are one thing – synching multiple imap email accounts with computers and iphones and a crashing server is something else – or at least it was today.

Tell a plumber there’s a leak and if doesn’t occur when he’s called round, the problem might as well be in your head. Close the door, watch that blue boiler suit exit the gate and cue the dripping pipe. My email was up, it was down, I could send but not receive, then receive but not send, then I lost my mails, then got them back. Of course anything I write now seems banal and, quite frankly, trivial. But having build PCs from scratch, retrained my brain to the now much loved Mac, plumbed and wired my flat and mastered editing in Final Cut Pro for the life of me I could not solve this problem.

I can’t really describe how working for 10 hours without any outcome whatsoever feels, though I suppose I know now what Sisyphus felt like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus) Having said that I didn’t even get the boulder up the hill in the first place so perhaps Sisyphus had it easy! Well, problem still not solved. I’m writing this now – but, Houston, we may loose contact again tomorrow. Perhaps that’s it – I’m orbiting the far side of the moon (good show by the way, Robert)…

One of two things need to happen now. Either I become an absolute wizard at computer programming or we move our hosting package to somewhere with better service and tech support. I suspect, given I am trying to build a venue at the moment, the latter will be the case – and that we’ll do this soon once the website becomes business critical. I’m off to take a cyberprofen…