Insight of the day? My website is rather large, taken everything together (the years of blogging, with images, have added up, and so do the shop pictures). Which means that if I take backups of the site (a good thing), I should sort of keep an eye on where I put them, and at some point delete them again.

I've been pretty good at doing that on the website/server itself, as there's limited space available there and I would have run out long ago otherwise. Not so good at keeping track of the backup backlog and buildup on my computer itself, where I'll pull older backups (but not so very old) before deleting them from the server, just in case. Or, when there's a larger change on the website coming up or a migration is necessary, I'll pull backups down and do a local install. 

Migrations and larger changes usually mean a generous number of backups, too. And I've been rather happy to close the thing after getting everything up and running when I did those larger changes... which means that the backups stayed in their little corner of my computer. No problem and nothing wrong with keeping them for a month or two, mind you, until it's clear that everything is running smoothly with the new setup.

However... after a month or two, I'd totally forget about having them. Until I've recently come across some, neatly and nicely labelled (as opposed to others) and realised how much space they are eating up, all of them combined.

So I've been doing a bit of maintenance on the side. Just in case you now feel like that might be something you should maybe do, here's my two favourite tools for finding and deleting stuff that has served its purposes:

WizTree - this scans your drive and sorts folders by how much space they take up. There's also a nice visual to quickly show you what you have, and how large individual folders and the files therein are. 

Anti-Twin - this looks for duplicate files and lets you remove them (either by selecting them manually, or by folder, or other criteria). It has not been updated since 2012, but it's still downloadable and does work with Windows 10, and according to the site also Windows 11.

As always, make sure you know what you're doing before deleting things - but don't be like me and hold on to ten year old double backups, just in case! ; ) 

I've looked a bit more for museum collection management software... and I am amazed at how many different options and solutions there are. Most of them, however, will upload or import or otherwise duplicate an existing file. Most of them are also designed to run on a server (though that is something that I could work with), which makes perfect sense for an accessible database, and are accessed through the browser. (Also workable.)

However, it takes a bit of time to skim the documentation for each of the options to see if it might be suitable for my purposes... and that's where I'm still stuck, skimming stuff and figuring out which one may be worth a try. 

That's all happening in little bits of time inbetween "proper" work stuff, though. With extra help from the little cat today (who has been putting her paw down on the touchpad more than usual...). But I won't complain too much about having a fluffy companion while working!

Having the cat relax and hang out on the desk also means that I get to sneakily shorten her claws as necessary. She's not active enough anymore to keep all the claws short enough through wear and tear, and the tendons in older cats sort of wear out as well and don't retract everything as completely as it should be... and that has actually caused her issues with walking. Plus claw snags, which may look funny, but must be rather annoying and sometimes probably also painful. So we got a claw trimmer (human nail clippers have the wrong shape) and now we're keeping her claws short enough that they don't bother her. 

Fortunately she's fine with having her paws handled; the only really difficult claw is the thumb claw, but even that is unsupervised and standing out sometimes, in some sleepy positions. And then, snip!, it is suddenly a little shorter. And Madame is a good bit happier - not strictly in that moment, but overall, since being able to walk without pain is definitely a great factor in personal happiness!

After putting it off again and again, I've finally sat down today and did the long-overdue update of the website again. In the end, it wasn't as bad as I had feared, but, ah, there's always something that gets toasted with a larger update... or something that quietly, with a short sizzling sound, fried itself a while before and then you do an update and discover that something is not looking like it should, or doing what it should. Plus... that it might have been in that state for a while as well!

So, long story short: The last slightly larger shop update that I did, a good while ago by now, totally fried all the template tunings that I had done when doing the migration to the newest Joomla version. That was a lot of work just made useless, and it irked me quite a bit. However, there was no time at that point to sit down and re-do all of it for the new version, so I only did a few tweaks to remedy the worst issues, tried for functionality, and then decided that ugly (or at least not looking like I had imagined) and functioning would be good enough, and is definitely better than theoretically beautiful but offline or looking nice but not working.

Today I was feeling a little brain-dead inbetween, and in that state I figured that it would be a great idea to do the site update. Because, as we all totally know, figuring out website stuff needs no brains at all, right? Yes, exactly. 

Of course clicking the correct buttons in the correct order (backup first, then updates of the extensions, then update of the system) doesn't need much brain power. But afterwards, it's time to check if everything works as it should, and looks as it should, and figure out what needs to be done where in case it doesn't. Which... well. You can probably imagine that these tasks do require some of the grey matter to be online, and a neuron or two here or there able and willing to shoot an impulse somewhere... 

Fortunately my little bout of frustration was remedied by a cup of coffee and some uplifting words from the Most Patient Husband of Them All (who also thinks that not-looking-perfect-but-functioning is a fine state), and then I sat down again with a bit more brain power.

And instead of trying, as I did the last time, to re-do the template more or less from scratch... this time, after the update removed my tweaks, I did some more tweaking in a similar manner, and now it's looking acceptable again, or at least I think so. Hopefully I've also managed, this time, to place stuff into the correct override folder so it will not have to be re-done next time.

And while I was at it, I've also updated the Textile Forum website (which was not that far behind, version-wise...) and finished sending out the latest Forum newsletter. Now I sort of feel on top with the technical stuff again - so tomorrow, I can get back to all the other, not-so-technical stuff!

It has finally happened - I have had to replace my trusty old Powerpoint for a new programme version.

Sometimes I jokingly say that as an archaeologist, I have a deep love for old stuff, and that includes running old (and very old) programmes on my computer. Part of the reason for this is a "never change a running system" approach, part is that I know the old ones so well that I am wary of getting used to a new one, part of it is the lack of desire to spend money on something new if the old thing still does its job, and part is just plain laziness. Probably.

However... I'm now on a computer with Windows 10. My oldest still-sort-of-working programme is CorelDraw, version number 7. That came out in 1996. That was back on Windows 95 - and it's a medium-sized miracle that the programme has been ported from computer to computer and OS version to OS version and still sort of works.

Sort of, I say, because these days (after the last port) it sometimes jumbles up text bits, and some other weird effects happen. I've worked on transitioning to Inkscape for a while now, and I'm almost there. Fortunately the photo editing programme, from the same suite as CorelDraw, still works flawlessly, because there are some processes that just go so smoothly and easily there as opposed to trying to find a replacement.

My PP issues were something else though - my Office Suite is not quite as old (about 3 years younger, actually), and at some point during the last ports it seems to have lost its ability to play video clips. Which is no issue in my usual presentations, but for the Bronze Age garment one on Thursday, the plan was to show a number of short videos, as the work stages are so much easier to explain that way.

So. New Powerpoint. Fortunately (as I don't want to lose my old trusty Word 2000, which also plays along with a very old citation programme, which the newer versions don't) the old Office suite is so outdated that the new one does not recognise it as kin, and I can still run the old one. Hopefully without glitches - I will find out in the next week or so, when I use it properly.

For now, though... placing those video clips where they are supposed to go, and finishing the presentation. Yay!

There's progress. Isn't that nice?

Said progress is going on in multiple areas. First of all, the personal/health thing is one part - I've been tracking all my food, which is annoying and a nuisance and sometimes feels really ridiculous (weighing out salad, thank you very much), but at least it's working. I've managed to more or less stick to the goal of not eating above a certain amount of calories, and it's showing on the numbers of the scale. That is nice, and motivating, and keeps me going even though it's hard at times. There's been a distinct and very lamentable lack of cake these past weeks, and reduced amounts of everything, especially the non-crucial stuff like chocolate. (Well, chocolate is crucial in some regard, but when push comes to shove, it's unfortunately empty calories, and there's not much space for these in my plan.) A few more weeks of this are looming ahead, which is sort of disheartening (soooo long to go!) but on the other hand, I managed to do this for months back in 2016 so I know I can do it. 

What I can definitely say is that it is easier now that I have the HRT to keep me sane, and sort-of-normal, and functioning on a basic level. I did try to do dieting stints in the past two or three years, but just didn't manage to get the necessary motivation and stick-to-it-iveness.While the basic fact remains that it is always possible to reduce calories and thus lose weight, there are definitely life and health circumstances that will make it harder, and depending on all kinds of factors, possibly also temporarily impossible. 

There's also progress on the shop stock overhaul; replenishing things, taking stock and finally getting new stuff into the shop did happen. There's a plan to rearrange some of the storage furniture here as well, which will take place after I've been to the Nähtreff at Rothenfels, because then the storage shelves will be more or less emptied out anyways (as a lot of the stock travels with me to be set up as a market stall). 

The website is mostly up and running, with a few remaining issues to be solved and some articles (that have been taken offline a while ago) to be re-written and placed back online, but none of that is crucial or really time-critical (at least not compared to other stuff), so for now, I'm good with how it works.

Next on the progress list is removing some of the old backups, and setting up a new (better) system; I've been using a backup programme that leaves me not so very confident in its reliability. (In case you're wondering: It's Acronis. The programme puts everything in a huge archive file, and when I try to access them on the RAID, there are sometimes hiccups that need to be resolved, probably due to the connection quality.) This means it's time to re-evaluate, and switch, and make space on the RAID to get the new version going. That's a slow progress as well, but things are happening here too.

Of course, there's the usual long list of stuff to be done - writing stuff, sorting stuff (in my next life, I will be more organised, and less messy, at least that is my cunning plan), organising travel for the next events. Preparing workshops at Rothenfels.

No progress yet on planning the next online workshops, something very high on the list... but overall, it feels like things are going okay. Which is a very, very nice feeling!

As you might know, I have this slight... thing... about backups. Due to the fact that during my working life, quite a few hard disk drives have gone under, so having a backup of stuff is really, really important for my peace of mind. 

Which means, too, that periodically old backups need to be removed. That's something I always have a hard time with - but this time, it wasn't made hard by my internal resistance to deleting old files, no, it was made extra hard by Windows itself.

Before I swapped out one of the drives, I did a full copy to an external HDD, which means that a full, and theoretically run-able Windows installation resides on that disk. Which is not needed anymore, so I told my computer to delete it.

It didn't.

Turns out that the Windows files are not owned by me (even though logged in as the administrator), but by some straw figure thingie called "Trusted Installer". Who does not permit me to delete the stuff.

There's a workaround (of course there is), which makes it necessary to go into the security settings of the folder and swap the owner (to myself, of course). Which I tried to do, but suddenly, the disk was full... and it was not possible to change the settings anymore. Because, well, no space.

I am still confused as to how it could get fuller than before (there wasn't too much space left, but not next to nothing!) but I did manage to find a few things that I was allowed to delete, and now hopefully the owner swap will run its course, and I'll be able to make space again.

Oh Windows. I could have done without these shenanigans...

Today was, again, mostly eaten by website shenanigans - a bit of testing here, a little tweaking there, a lot of finding out what still needs to be checked, tweaked, or resolved. Among that, primarily, is the fact that there are a lot of broken or malfunctioning links due to changes in the URL structure, and it turns out not all of that is easy to fix with a simple redirect. Not because there wouldn't be the possibility of the redirect, but because apparently there's some issue with the multilanguage setup of the site...

The problem mostly impacts the blog, so it's not the end of the world, but it is rather irksome. I'm also not yet happy with how the shop looks, with all the items dancing up and down, and the buttons happily appearing further up or further down, but changing this is not something I can do in just a few minutes.

I'm pretty sure that there is a way to get it all lined up properly, but that most probably requires some more knowledge in css and doing stuff that contains the word "flex", and the main problem with that is that it needs extensive testing, because you tweak things to look good in one browser and with a certain width of the window, and then you switch to something else and suddenly it looks like shit combed over. 

So for now, I'm going to settle with "hey, at least it's functional" and see if I can resolve the issue without too much of a headache, and too much time down the drain. After all, there's workshops coming up that I have to prep for, and there is a rather urgent need to make more spindle whorls, and then there's a presentation being planned for the second half of February that I'm very, very hyped about. More to follow about that as soon as I can tell you!