On August 24th, at approximately 10:15pm, the dontasq.com server experienced power issues, causing an outage of both web and e-mail services. All services were restored a short while ago.

Under normal circumstances, this would have been a very minor issue and the downtime would have been barely noticeable; however, the server is not currently hosted where I have direct access to it. When these circumstances happen, I cannot resolve them myself, but need to contact someone else (who may not necessarily be available). As a result, the outage lasted 18 hours rather than 18 seconds.

The reason for hosting dontasq.com offsite is that my ISP does not yet offer a certain network configuration that is needed to access the server at all. (Techspeak: My school recently started giving private IP’s rather than public ones. I need to apply for a public IP to run a server, but this system apparently isn’t in place yet.) As soon as this is available, the server will be moved back on-site. This will result in another (shorter) downtime, but I will announce this no less than 24 hours in advance.

A major downside to running a revenue-free website is that all costs come out of your own pocket; on a college budget, this means everything has to be cheap. Professional hosting would likely eliminate these downtimes altogether, but I simply cannot afford it at this time. I have the technical ability to host (for free) out of my own apartment, so I’ve chosen that route instead. Of course, I would gladly accept any donations toward an upgrade.

I apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for understanding.

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I’d prefer to avoid writing constant updates about projects which are personal rather than global in nature (by “personal” I mean those which only directly involve me — currently, all of them). Don’tASQ is not about me but about us, and it’s important for readers to understand where that focus lies. Nevertheless, I also feel it’s important to keep you informed when I virtually disappear for a month without warning. In this roll-up, I address the status of all current and a couple of near-future projects — not to explain where I have been (though that will be answered), but to give you an idea of where we will be going. (more…)

I have a problem. Two problems, actually; two problems that, when combined, form one particularly nasty problem.

1) I am a perfectionist, especially with my own work (even more so with writing).
2) I am impatient.

Such problems can be detrimental when one is trying to change the world… or provide content for a website. Sure enough, I often run into major difficulties when writing a new Don’tASQ “blurb.” I may spend several hours drafting, revising, and nitpicking any given article, only to get sick of doing so and release it “unpolished.” Or worse, I may write part of an article, save it as a draft, and refuse to finish it when I realize that the first draft just didn’t live up to my standards. (There are three such drafts hidden in the database at this very moment.) I have yet to actually publish an article that hasn’t been written in just one session. Combine this with the fact that I’ve got 30-40 ideas sitting around on post-its and paper scraps which I still haven’t fully developed, and you may wonder how I ever get anything done at all. I often wonder that myself.

Enter Creativity Boot Camp. The process is simple: Just write something — every day. I’d thought about such a task numerous times, but something about that post inspired me to actually do something about it. (I’d highly recommend giving it a read if you’re into any sort of creative work.) And I’d never considered making it into a full-blown project… until now.

*ahem* Introducing… Write, Write, Write! In short, I will write at least one Blurblog post every day for the next 30 days. I will make every attempt to write quality material, but I obviously won’t be able to put in the time I would normally prefer. These posts will all be included in the “Write, Write, Write!” category, and I cannot guarantee that they will be insightful, unique, or even sensible… but I will take full credit if they are. Otherwise, not much will have changed (other than the frequency of new posts, obviously). Hopefully, this next month will allow me to dust off some of my notebooks and whiteboards and bring some novel ideas into the limelight. And I hope Creativity Boot Camp is more enjoyable for you than it will be for me!