I thought I’d re-allow traffic to the original site for a little while.  Why?  Simple, I need to get some more information from my original sites, including this one! 

The new site still isn’t on the radar screen of all the update sites, so I’m working on that as well.  I just posted a new short item, and Technorati hasn’t updated it yet.  Ugh!

You can check the new blog by clicking this link.  That gets you to the latest post.

Once again, apologies all.  I didn’t want to have to do the site move, but I had to.  For all new readers I have one piece of advice.  Find any hosting provider other than IX Webhosting.  Very disappointing service over the past year.  Shame their services has fallen so far!

The new site is officially operational.  Update your book mark (if you have one) to the following link:

http://blog.richcharpentier.com

For the time being Gadget’s Airstream Chronicles will remain up.  Provided IX can keep the databases up and operational that is.

If you’ve had me linked in on your own site please be sure to update the link to my new page.  I appreciate all the referrals I’ve had in here, and I hope that they continue on the new personal blog!

Thanks for following along here!  I hope the newest site will be just as interesting at the original Gadget’s Airstream Chronicles has been! 

So, the Airstream Chronicles is still here.  And it’s working.

Kind of spooky, eh?

It seems IX Webhosting has finally addressed my site outages.  That is, until the next one.  Then it will be the same all over again.

Not too inspiring.

I have secured a new site, new domain name, new databases….the works.  Now comes the process of the move.  More importantly, it’s decision time on more than one level.  I’ve got a lot to figure out, and I’d like the input of regular readers.  I know you’re all out there, and I know you’ll have some great thoughts.

Currently my game plan involves consolidation.  I’m looking to pool several sites together under one coherent banner.  That banner is RichCharpentiercom.  The domain has been purchased, it’s active, and my account is functional.  I’ve been testing out the new hosting company today, and things are looking good.

The simple decisions have been made.  The tough ones are next.

My intent is to create a primary site that links to all of my interests.  Part of the site will deal with the blogging that you’re so used to.  Another part will cater to the latest photography, and photography sales.  Finally we’ll give a nod to the Digital RV, which helped launch all this stuff in the first place.  See, I’ve already made a few of the hard decisions.  So, what’s so difficult?

This blog is the difficult part.  It’s the hang up!

See, I’d like to carry this blog and all of its content over to my new blogging site, http://blog.richcharpentier.com/.  Ah yes, the structure has been put in place.  And yes, I could upload the content of this site to that one.  Here’s the issue.

Due to hacks, database compromises, etc., this site can be considered “the old house.”  The house is potentially full of mold, we’re not sure.  I’ve dealt with hacks and compromises of the house, but I don’t know that I got all of them.  Bottom line, everything in the old house is suspect.

Now, I have a new empty house at the new address.  It’s a safer neighborhood, and the landlords guarantee I won’t experience the break ins I’ve had here.  Great.

Do I move the contents of the old house (all of the stuff on this blog) into the new house?  Copy the contents of Gadget’s Airstream Chronicles to the new blog, “The Airstream Chronicles Continued?”  Or, do I make a break with the old, and begin anew?

Today I dumped the database that runs this site with the intention of copying it to the new site.  I’m aware of several hacks that have occurred on this site, and I know certain things to look for.  I searched the database dump for the nasty little IFrames that caused trouble the other month, and I found 12 of them buried in the content of my posts in the copied database.  Had I not found them and uploaded the contents of this site to the new one I would have experienced issues on the new site right away.

In total, I discovered 4 different hacks buried in old posts on this site.  No worries, you’re not affected as a reader unless you read that particular old post.  I’ve cleaned all of those up, but I think you can see my problem.

Basically, I just bought a new house because my old house had a mold problem.  I really want to keep the furniture from the old house and move it along with me.  I think the furniture is mostly clean, but I’m not 100% sure.  Do I bring it along?  Or do I make a clean break?

See the problem?

Alright, you’ve read along for a while.  Opinions…thoughts, musings?  Comment away.  Let me know your thoughts.  Hikenbike.net can stay here for a while and redirect folks to the new site.  You’re very capable of redirecting links to the new site.  And you’re still welcome to follow along (there will be a newer format of course).  The Airstream Chronicles will continue in a new house with new additions.  The big question is…..Do I carry over to the new site what launched all of this in the first place?  I’d like to of course, but I just don’t know.

By the way, the photos in this post….shot today of course!  Fossil Creek.  Yes, the last photo depicts a crazy person jumping off of a cliff.  The water was very cold mind you!

Well, today has continued with outages.  As I mentioned yesterday, last straw.

This week I’ll be moving to a new host and creating a new site.  The hope is to carry the Airstream Chronicles over in the near future, but for the time I’ll continue blogging at the new site.

Cross your fingers I can preserve the original Airstream Chronicles!  The new version should be interesting.  I’ll be consolidating several things to the new site.

Oh…..and you’d probably like the address……it’s a simple one!

RichCharpentier.com

Hopefully I’ll have the framework up by Tuesday, August 12th, 2008!

This morning I found the straw that would break this camel’s back.  My sites were down once again!

If you’ve been popping by here over the past two weeks I’m sure you’ve found the site unavailable from time to time.  Well, more often than not it’s been down.  During my free time I’ve been trying to deal with the situation, but with little luck.

I initially put in a trouble ticket two weeks ago regarding the issue with IXWebhosting.  48 hours after I submitted my ticket a help desk person finally got around to answering me.  By that time the site was back up, so they saw no issue.  Go figure, shortly after their response the site went down again.

After a second round of trouble tickets with IX, and another 48 hour response time, I finally used their live chat.  The agent on the other end told me that it was probably a problem with my passwords or my ISP.  Fortunately I had the information available to counter that claim.  I have a web monitoring service that watches my site, and had the outage times available.  The service does not use my ISP.  And give the fact the site was sometimes up and ready…..it was IX’s issue.

At that point the guy actually looked into my problem.  45 minutes later he said he’d hand it off to the Admins.  For a few days the site was working again……

Then another failure, and another.  With each failure I re-submitted my ticket.  And the turn around time was in the 48 hour range.

This morning the site was down again.  And go figure, I received an e-mail saying my ticket was closed.  “Jenny” responded that she couldn’t reproduce the error I logged on Thursday (today is Saturday).  And she sent the response during the middle of my latest outage (2.5 hours).

I just reopened the ticket and thanked Jenny with IXWebhosting for helping me make my decision to leave IX.  Bottom line, even though moving my sites will take a lot of time, I’ve already wasted a lot of time with IXWEbhosting.  It’s a shame really, they were a good hosting company a few years ago.

But, with 48 hour response time, having to prove issues to their tech support, and then getting a “trouble resolved” e-mail during the middle of an outage?  Yeah, if you want a cheap host that isn’t reliable, go ahead and use IXWebhosting.  If you want something that works, go somewhere else!

I’ll post more about the move next week, so stay tuned (provided the website is up).

In the past year a lot has happened with the pictures I take.  For those who’ve been following along I think you’ve probably noticed the changes.  Beyond the look and feel of my photos changing, how I deal with the photos has also changed massively.

If you talked to me a year ago and asked me about Photoshop you would have heard something to this effect….”I rarely use Photoshop.  I use it for cropping and resizing shots, that’s about it.  I’m not sure about editing photos.”

Well, since that point in time I’ve learned a ton about Photoshop.  I’ve also learned how many pros use the program every day.  As I’ve learned I’ve realized it’s just part of the post processing….almost part of the developing process of old.

Other things have changed too.  Last year my friend Lynn sent along a copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for me to try out.  I really didn’t have an interest in the program.  For years I’d been using IPhoto to manage my photos after I offload them to the computer.  Why change?

After getting Lightroom in hand I waited quite some time before I loaded it.  Finally I took the time to load it, and I looked around the program.  It seemed “big”.  More options than IPhoto offered.  Lots of buttons, lots of options, and a little intimidating.

For quite a while I stuck with IPhoto.  Lightroom seemed like too much of a program for me.  Just like Photoshop.  So many options, where do I start?

I spent a lot of time reading around the Internet about Lightroom.  After a few months I realized it might be exactly what I needed to manage climbing photos, so I tried learning the program in earnest.  Unfortunately it wasn’t super straightforward to me.  Finally I broke down, rounded up Scott Kelby’s book on Lightroom, and sat down to really learn the program.

Glad I did it!  Wow, what a photo system!!!

Now here I am a year later enjoying Lightroom.  I’ll never go back to IPhoto, it just doesn’t have the features that I now “need.”  Go figure, just as I’ve settled in, Lightroom 2 has been released!

I downloaded the latest version just the other day.  Much has remained the same, but much about the program has changed.  More developing options, increased web support, better printing support….good grief.  Another book is in my future!

If you’re looking for a great photo management program, take a look at Lightroom 2.  Take it from a guy who has resisted changing his photo programs.  The time savings in my work flow thanks to the program has been amazing!

Oh, and no, this isn’t an ad for Lightroom.  I was just working with it this morning and realized I’ve never talked about how cool the software is!

And you haven’t been where?  Gotta be kidding me!

Well, that’s what you’re going to say in mere moments.  I just planned ahead for your reaction.  Honestly, I have no excuses for my behavior either.  But I’ve finally addressed the issue.

See, I’ve been in Arizona for more than a year.  And in that year I have never taken a trip to the Grand Canyon.  I remedied that oversight yesterday!

Why would you skip a trip to the Canyon?  Last year I had many excuses.  The big one was the job hunt.  Gosh, what a mistake that was.  While I had time I should have spent a week or two at the Canyon.

A week or two?  Really?  Why?

Ummm, the place is cool and I want to take a long hike into the Canyon.  The trails are interesting, the canyon walls are amazing, and I can only imagine what it’s like in the canyon.

Dust off the hiking boots, check out the tent, and get the water purifier ready.  I’ll be planning a Fall hike for sure.

The Grand Canyon is one of those “destination spots.”  Yesterday Sadira and I set it as our destination.  I always thought it was further away, but when I planned the trip I found out that the Canyon’s South Rim was 2.5 hours away from me.  Amazing how close I am to the place.  Even more amazing, I hadn’t taken the time to drive up.

See, back in New England I’d run up to the White Mountains all the time for hikes, paddling, etc.  The length of the drive was the same.  I went there constantly.  Now that I know how far the Canyon is, you can be there will be more trips up.  I can’t wait to hike down into the Canyon!!!

The visit was special to me.  First time seeing the place.  More importantly, it was an important destination to my mother.  After recovering as well as she could from her bone marrow transplant she had a list of must see places herself.  She started addressing her list during the 90’s.  The Grand Canyon was one of those stops.  I’m glad I took the time (finally) and I completely understand why mom wanted to see the place so badly.

The drive up went pretty quickly.  Good company, good music.  You know how it is.  We arrived before 9 a.m., and I sincerely thought we’d beaten the crowds.  Well, I thought that until we stopped at the first viewing location.  Apparently the Canyon is a must see for tons of people, not just me. 

Our first overlook was an interesting experience.  It was, in my mind, a Disney moment.  Not the happy movies we all run out to see.  No, I mean the type of experience you have getting into a popular ride at one of Disney’s parks.  Lots of people, slow moving line, many foreign languages, etc.  Sadira was literally shoved by a woman walking away from the view site.  Nice!  That was 5 minutes out of the car!

That type of behavior continued throughout our visit.  People cutting into line for the rest rooms, folks walking 4 people wide on a foot path not letting others pass in the opposite direction, and more.  Gotta say, I’ve heard about the “Ugly American” going abroad…..guess other folks have taken on that role while visiting here.  I was pretty surprised!

Even with the crowds we enjoyed ourselves.  The backdrop was amazing, and we both wanted more.  There will be a return trip soon!  I’m already starting to plan hikes there, so I’ll be shopping around for some time off.  I rounded up a set of maps and a guide book.  Hike planning is always fun!

Our visit ended early into the afternoon.  Monsoons started up, and trying to view the Canyon during downpours isn’t a useful activity!  Fortunately the downpours made for a few interesting photos!  Nice to see the storm clouds rolling across a huge canyon!

Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday!  I headed out of here at 6 a.m. to get an early start at the Grand Canyon.  That cut into blogging time.   But the trip was totally worth it!

If you regularly stop by to check out the Airstream Chronicles, you might have noticed some issues last week. Actually, issues is an understatement:

The table above was generated by Interseer for me.  They’re a web monitoring service.  They’ve been watching my sites for me over the past few years.  If you look at the end of the table you’ll see, I had 4 outages in a week.  17 hours and 52 minutes of downtime.  Sunday I was down for 10 hours.  Ick!

Now, the report is even worse if you look at it from Sunday to Sunday.  If you look at it that way I had more than 30 hours of down time.

Last week I contacted IX Webhosting and logged a trouble ticket.  After nearly 24 hours the troubles stopped, but I heard nothing.  48 hours after logging my ticket I received a response.  The English was poor, as the support center is not based here in the US.  I was told it was an issue with my ISP (how I connect to the Internet).

Ummm…..my readers had the same problem, and to my knowledge you’re not connecting to the Internet over my connection.  Interseer reported the site outage, and they have a big facility with lots of servers.  But this “support” person told me it was my issue.  That’s the easy way to blow a customer off.

Sunday I had another big outage on all of my sites.  This time I contacted tech support on a live chat.  Once again, really bad English!  Ah well.  After 10 minutes the support person told me that my database passwords and login names must be wrong.  He was going to hop off the chat with me at that point.

I said NO, and I got a little snarky about their support.  The database names, logins, and passwords were all correct, and I wasn’t getting blown off.  There was an issue with their database server, period!

45 minutes later the support guy on the chat told me he could do no more.  “The Admins” were now working on it.  Nice it only took me 7 days to get these guys to look at their servers to find the issue.  Poor quality service is an understatement!  Several hours later the sites were restored.

Apologies for the issues all.  If you know any good hosting companies that are reliable please let me know.  IX claims 99% up time.  When I first signed up with them that was true.  Today, not so true. 

As most readers know by now, I’ve been playing with Photoshop, HDR photography, and my own photo techniques a lot over the past few months.  Each thing that I’ve toyed with has been totally separate from the other things….

What the heck does that mean?

It means that my HDRs are strictly HDR.  No Photoshopping.  It means that what I’ve learned about working a photo over in Photoshop has remained totally theoretical.  I haven’t had enough time to break out marginal shots and see what else I can do with them.  And it means that my strict “normal” photos haven’t been Photoshopped or HDR’d.

I tried to do an HDR of a human being not too long ago…..it didn’t go so well.  The model in question will never look the same in my eyes!  Talk about exaggerating features!!!

Since I’ve finally had a little downtime I decided it was time to combine all the lessons learned into one big ball of wax and see what’s what.  Additionally, I recently finished a Ben Willmore training DVD which left me saying, “Ah, I knew he did something else to his shots!”  Sure enough, he did!

Now, what follows below is completely experimental, incomplete, and I don’t even know if I like it.  For those following the blog who are offended by the bending of photographic reality, turn back now!  I’ve really gone a little over the top!

Sunday morning I took a very early ride into town to shoot around the square and Whiskey Row once more.  My first lesson about shooting in Prescott is a really easy one….

Weekday mornings there aren’t any cars downtown at 6 a.m.  Weekend mornings the square already has people on it at that time, cars are littered here and there along the road, and more people stare at a guy with a tripod and ask things like, “Do you want to take my picture?”

The answer to that question is more often than not, “No.”  If it is a yes, it’s a yes with caveats.  The caveats being things like, “I’d love to take your photo provided you’re standing at the other end of the block staring into the sun.  That way you’ll just be a silhouette.”  Not long ago in Jerome an extremely drunk biker “chick” asked if I’d take her picture.  I told her I only did landscapes!  Worked well, she shrugged her shoulders and walked back into the bar!

Sorry for the tangent.  The morning proved to me that if I want to shoot in town early I should pick something with a Wednesday or Thursday flavor.  I’ve learned a new lesson.

I did manage to get a few series along the Row without people.  Further, I got a series of the Palace Restaurant that I thought might make a neat HDR.  The first photo here today shows the Palace shot with a 0EV.  Basically, what you would get it you put your camera on fully auto at the time.

In total, I took 5 frames of the Palace that morning.  -2EV, -1, 0, 1, and you guessed it, 2.  After watching Ben Wilmore’s DVD I had a few new ideas about additional exposures, getting over exposures almost completely over exposed, and making sure I had lot’s of blinkies on the high end.

You might not know what blinkies are.  That’s ok.  They are non-communicable, and you’re completely save from them.

After combining the shots in Photomatix I came up with a darker HDR (I’ve been toying with the darker styles lately), and it’s the second photo in this post.

If you haven’t noticed lately, I’ve been pushing the HDRs a little more.  Bottom line, I just want to see what happens.  And after all the reading I’ve done combined with tutorials and the fun training DVD I’ve learned it’s ok to push a photo for the sake of curiosity.  You never know what you might end up with.  Then again, sometimes it’s better to have a more true to life photographic style for a print…..  In the end it’s all up to you and what you’re looking for at the time!

Doesn’t that all sound fun?

Now, the HDR came out pretty neat.  But there were a few things I didn’t like about it or the originals.  First off, why are power lines everywhere?  Actually, I know why, but why do they need to show up in my shots?  Gotta deal with them.

The second issue….the haloing around the lamp post.  Pushing an HDR image you’re bound to get halos.  The question is what to do with them?  In some cases they’re cool, and in others they look out of place.  Maybe I could explain this one away by saying there was a guy behind the lamp post with a flash light (same guy who asked if I wanted to take his picture).

Since there were a few items I wanted to fix in the photo I decided it was time to apply all the fun stuff from Scott Kelby’s books and from Ben Willmore’s training video.  And HDR that’s been pushed a little plus Photoshop!  Ah, a high tech adventure.

I started into Photoshop this afternoon looking to brush out the power line, and tone down the halos.  But then I thought that would be too simple.  I needed more!  How about changing the sky completely?  How about something other than blue mixed in with the clouds?

As you can see, the editing went a little over the top.  An orangy reddish sky, additional haloing above the building (like the sky’s glow was being generated by something behind the building), the power line gone, and the halo around the lamp post toned down.  Ah, the halo isn’t gone, the guy behind the post is just using a less powerful flashlight now.

My editing experiment isn’t over, and the photo isn’t “perfected”.  I’m sure many folks won’t like this one.  That’s ok, it’s just my experimental piece.  I’ll be working on it more.

By the way, there’s one glaring issue that’s a problem with this current edit.  Can you see it?  It should stand out like a sore thumb.  Take a look.  If nobody points it out in comments today I might clue you in tomorrow.  Or maybe I’ll do another post of the “final” edited version when I’m done with it.

Ah yes, the elusive lightening strike photo!  I finally got one!  Then I ran to the car fast as the rain started coming down.

Go figure, pulling out of Watson Lake Park the mother of all lightening strikes came down with multiple forks.  Ah well, both my camera and my person remained dry and safe!

Oh, and my website is back up!  Yes sir, IX Webhosting finally acknowledged a problem today after I spent 45 minutes on a chat with a fellow in India.  He insisted it was my ISP (my web connection), I insisted that other people couldn’t get access, and the service that I pay to monitor my site couldn’t get access…….  There’s customer service for you!