Saturday, 21 December 2024

Bring it back?

Recently I had to do an update to my www.scratchpadgames.net site to stop them charging me 10euros a month to continue to support what they call an outdated PHP version.

So I did as requested, logged on to the providers site, selected update and it was done.. no more 10euros a month charges... but also, no more forums..which seemed to need that outdated PHP. which is a bit of a pain as the forums are how my book readers contact me with any issues they have. I can probably update the forums from the site content on the old PC.. but its not my main skill. I may have to junk it all and start again.

Now granted its been a while since anyone has had an issue, the book is a bit out of date now, so only a few die hards or people who left it on the shelf a couple of years, have tried to do anything with it. Also as I am working on an updated 2nd edition, the site itself is in dire need of an update.

But... the site was designed and maintained on my old warhorse PC which now lives a quiet sedentry life upstairs, seldom if ever being used.

But now I need it, and of course it really is old, and refuses to do some of its basics, like start... it does get there in about 30 mins, but its very slow..theres clearly some online update happening which upstairs has almost no internet speed.

So it needs to be refurbished while still somehow maintaining most of its software..

Though honestly since its not been actively used for 3 or 4 years, whatever software is on there is not needed or used any more on that system,  but there's some source code  and pics and so on I want to transfer

So I've bought a new GTX710 graphcis card, not exactly cutting edge, but more than it has currently and I have an unused 512GB ssd, to get windows 10 onto.. so once I rescue the website.. I will transplant some new life into the old girl and get her working again. The current drives can be used as long as it boots from teh SSD now.

If nothing else I'd like to use it for making videos and writing content... since there's room up there to keep reference books and I can go back to using my big, but, normal ratio screen that will make videos more useful. My Samsung widescreen is useless for making videos on as they stretch too much on YouTube.(Its great for coding though)

On the subject of YouTube, I've had an ok from our Creative media dept to help me make some nicely edited and shot videos to support the new book, and set up a moderatly technical teaching channel I want to continue with even when the book is been and gone. I can cover some of the topics, that students seem to find very hard in a bit more detail on a video, than I can in a class where they are falling asleep or busy watching music videso...yes Joeren, I'm talking about you...
I've made a few simple test videos myself, but meh, Im shit at this kind of content, so I'm going to get some of tomorow's pros, to help me. 

So this weekend, 1st weekend of the Xmas holidays I am working bloody hard to get upstairs into some level of organisation and ressurect an almost dead PC... wish me luck.

Ahthankyew

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