Natalie, icons, AOL
The AOL evil has finally crossed its last line.
On Friday, I went to show a colleague a photo...and it wouldn't load. Instead, there was a message saying that "AOL Hometown" had, as of Oct. 31, 2008, closed permanently.
A Short FAQ:
1. Why, for the love of god WHY was AOL ever involved?
Back in the Dark Ages of 1994 when internet access in the spaces between universities was patchy and AOL had just opened the gateway to the wider WWW, the only way to get online to check FORKNI-L was to get an AOL account.
2. Why didn't you get the hell OUT of AOL as soon as humanly possible?
I resist change. And I didn't want to change my email address and have folks not be able to find me. And, in spite of its foibles, AOL did for me what I needed as an internet provider when there wasn't such a thing as "high-speed" or "broadband" or "DSL" and I just needed a dial-up something that wasn't really expensive.
3. Why, you may ask, did I have ANYTHING loaded to AOL space?
AOL had free internet space to upload things even though I couldn't code HTML. And in 2000 I got married and then had babies in 2001 and 2002 and I could have seven IDs at AOL and upload images to all of them through a simple interface, no HTML required, and not have to pester taraljc each time I wanted to share the new facial twitch a baby made that was OMG ADORABLE.
4. So now that you have some HTML skill (everyone offers thanks to LJ), and there are Really Easy Web Page Coding Programs and could move all your stuff to Comcast and/or LJ, and ALL YOUR FRIENDS know how to do this, you still haven't because...?
I still don't know how. And I've never had a clear enough idea of what I wanted to do to MAKE a page. And...when I went to use the web space we get through Comcast, I was locked out of it.
5. But you've had Comcast since 1998, so I'm failing to understand...
Husband was the only one who could change things on Comcast, and only through the Main Account...but when they set it up wrong he lost the random name and password they'd given him so he couldn't give EITHER of us rights to the web space.
6. You fixed this, right?
Yes. About 3 years after learning of it. But they have some weird, "You must use this special thingie" rule and we can't just upload data, we have to have coded web pages which I think have to be coded using a special program/thingie they provide and...I'm all flaily about it. ::iz lame::
7. So your solution has been...?
I've been loading all my stuff to LJ for a while now. ::smiles proudly::
8. Why didn't you just show the colleague photos you have loaded here?
My school has banninated LJ, so I can't check it, reply to it, show stuff uploaded there, show images--even in email--that are saved here, let me see links or stories or, well, anything.
/FAQ
So this brings us back to why the AOL space going away was a pain in the ass...and the good part is that nothing that was there is unique; it's all on my computer and is mostly old. I need to make a space that I can ACCESS FROM SCHOOL that has the things I most often show--childhood photos of Husband and me to show family resemblance, my mom's house with the Huge Wide Open Spaces around it, wedding photos--and learn how to use the other stuff I've got. I mean, since I no longer pay for AOL at all, well, I can see why they no longer want to host stuff for me on server space. Whatever.
Then. THEN. Friday night a former student said, "Hey, where did your mood set go?" And I realized all the Natalie Mood Set images had been saved in AOL space too. I had to tidy those up, re-label them with the correct mood terms, re-crop some, change some, upload all the images to LJ, then re-save the mood set stuff to the custom thingie. FORTUNATELY...there is an interface now instead of a code line (which was even MORE time-consuming and which was responsible for most of the errors in the previous incarnation of the set. So last night and today I tinkered and tinkered with it and finally...voila!
I have a few new images. Several have been reassigned (mostly for accuracy). I plan to go and do my own screen grabs of a few things that I need decent images of now that I a) have DVDs and b) know how so that some of the worst ones can be improved.
But for now, my overhauled (not yet perfect) Natalie Mood Theme/Set is back up and running and visible on my LJ. Hooray!
ETA: My "next steps" will need to include finding old LJ posts with photos that WERE hosted on AOL linked so I can fix the now-broken links.
It has also occurred to me that old posts may well now have...interesting mood images now that the images better match the words that LJ had listed. Oops.
On Friday, I went to show a colleague a photo...and it wouldn't load. Instead, there was a message saying that "AOL Hometown" had, as of Oct. 31, 2008, closed permanently.
A Short FAQ:
1. Why, for the love of god WHY was AOL ever involved?
Back in the Dark Ages of 1994 when internet access in the spaces between universities was patchy and AOL had just opened the gateway to the wider WWW, the only way to get online to check FORKNI-L was to get an AOL account.
2. Why didn't you get the hell OUT of AOL as soon as humanly possible?
I resist change. And I didn't want to change my email address and have folks not be able to find me. And, in spite of its foibles, AOL did for me what I needed as an internet provider when there wasn't such a thing as "high-speed" or "broadband" or "DSL" and I just needed a dial-up something that wasn't really expensive.
3. Why, you may ask, did I have ANYTHING loaded to AOL space?
AOL had free internet space to upload things even though I couldn't code HTML. And in 2000 I got married and then had babies in 2001 and 2002 and I could have seven IDs at AOL and upload images to all of them through a simple interface, no HTML required, and not have to pester taraljc each time I wanted to share the new facial twitch a baby made that was OMG ADORABLE.
4. So now that you have some HTML skill (everyone offers thanks to LJ), and there are Really Easy Web Page Coding Programs and could move all your stuff to Comcast and/or LJ, and ALL YOUR FRIENDS know how to do this, you still haven't because...?
I still don't know how. And I've never had a clear enough idea of what I wanted to do to MAKE a page. And...when I went to use the web space we get through Comcast, I was locked out of it.
5. But you've had Comcast since 1998, so I'm failing to understand...
Husband was the only one who could change things on Comcast, and only through the Main Account...but when they set it up wrong he lost the random name and password they'd given him so he couldn't give EITHER of us rights to the web space.
6. You fixed this, right?
Yes. About 3 years after learning of it. But they have some weird, "You must use this special thingie" rule and we can't just upload data, we have to have coded web pages which I think have to be coded using a special program/thingie they provide and...I'm all flaily about it. ::iz lame::
7. So your solution has been...?
I've been loading all my stuff to LJ for a while now. ::smiles proudly::
8. Why didn't you just show the colleague photos you have loaded here?
My school has banninated LJ, so I can't check it, reply to it, show stuff uploaded there, show images--even in email--that are saved here, let me see links or stories or, well, anything.
/FAQ
So this brings us back to why the AOL space going away was a pain in the ass...and the good part is that nothing that was there is unique; it's all on my computer and is mostly old. I need to make a space that I can ACCESS FROM SCHOOL that has the things I most often show--childhood photos of Husband and me to show family resemblance, my mom's house with the Huge Wide Open Spaces around it, wedding photos--and learn how to use the other stuff I've got. I mean, since I no longer pay for AOL at all, well, I can see why they no longer want to host stuff for me on server space. Whatever.
Then. THEN. Friday night a former student said, "Hey, where did your mood set go?" And I realized all the Natalie Mood Set images had been saved in AOL space too. I had to tidy those up, re-label them with the correct mood terms, re-crop some, change some, upload all the images to LJ, then re-save the mood set stuff to the custom thingie. FORTUNATELY...there is an interface now instead of a code line (which was even MORE time-consuming and which was responsible for most of the errors in the previous incarnation of the set. So last night and today I tinkered and tinkered with it and finally...voila!
I have a few new images. Several have been reassigned (mostly for accuracy). I plan to go and do my own screen grabs of a few things that I need decent images of now that I a) have DVDs and b) know how so that some of the worst ones can be improved.
But for now, my overhauled (not yet perfect) Natalie Mood Theme/Set is back up and running and visible on my LJ. Hooray!
ETA: My "next steps" will need to include finding old LJ posts with photos that WERE hosted on AOL linked so I can fix the now-broken links.
It has also occurred to me that old posts may well now have...interesting mood images now that the images better match the words that LJ had listed. Oops.