Wesley's Tool-Box

The website went through a bit of overhaul. I've implemented a working tagging plug-in, so that the posts can now be organized by tags. The tag cloud on the lower right side of the website shows popular ones. Currently, posts from 2012 onwards are tagged, a total of 167 out of 1382 (12.1%).

Also, some Twitter plug-ins were put in, as well. The sidebar features a simplified Twitter feed from my @namuori timeline, while each blog posts now feature a "Tweet This" button that you can click to... tweet the article on your twitter timeline.

There have been some network issues in the last few days. The major culprit turned out to be the 100Mbps Ethernet hub I've been using for more than five years (NEXT-8305SH). It doesn't "switch" the network connection over the ports properly anymore.

That has now been replaced with a ipTIME H5005 Gigabit Ethernet hub. I don't think the internet connection is that fast yet, but it's better to futureproof things. However, I've been noticing that the connection to the server is lost after some idling time after the new hub has been put into place. I'm not sure what's causing this and am trying to find out now.

Today marks the return of The Toon-Box, the comic that ran for four years from August 23, 2005 to July 29, 2009 and went into hiatus for more than four years since. With Comic Life software that made the comic possible available on iOS for some time, all it needed was motivation to resurrect the comic.

So yes, now the comic is fully created on my iPhone, and uploaded to the server. No need work on my Mac, since the photos are already on the iPhone anyway. Enjoy!

Wesley's Tool-Box was offline for a 53 days since February 2, 2013, when the iMac (Early 2008) that ran the website since May 2008 broke down.

Replacement system was sought, and a souped-up Mac mini (Late 2012) was chosen to pick up the task. Unfortunately, there had been a few issues - recovering the files and database from the iMac didn't go as smoothly as planned; Mac mini didn't get along with certain brand of SSD; family stuff.

All that's behind now. Enjoy the site once again - thank you for your patience.

One week I leave the server let roam free, it goes down in 8 hours. Heh...
Sorry for all those of you who tried to access the website this week. I've gotten it running again now.

I have relieved the old G4 Mac mini of its Tool-Box.info web server functions for the final time on 7PM, July 10, 2008, as all my websites have finished transitioning to iMac. The Mac mini faithfully served as the server for Tool-Box.info for 1100 days - just over 3 years.

Come to think of it, I don't think I have ever owned a system lasting that long fully intact in my 20 years of computing life. Emphasis on 'owned', since some systems that I gave away to other people have lasted longer. The things I keep around rarely last over a year. One big exception was this Altec Lansing speaker set that I kept around for 9 years until iMac's internal speakers made it unnecessary. Anyway, the Mac mini was originally bought to be modified into a portable system. But in hindsight, I'm glad I didn't butcher it as a part of my ongoing experiment with small form factor computers. I might have moved back to Windows world after tinkering with it for a couple of months if that happened.

Instead, the system served me well as a solid desktop Mac platform - it took me a while to get accustomed to the Mac way of things, but once I cleared the entry barrier, I found more interesting things to do with it, especially because OS X is a UNIX. Using a Mac became part of my life and Mac mini was no longer just some compact computer to toy around with - it became my primary system. It became my web server.

It had an excellent run throughout all these times, and I hope it will find new purposes (or perhaps a new owner) eventually, since it's working fine just as ever.

The recently acquired 24-inch iMac system will be the new server for future hosting of Tool-Box.info website. The site has seen significant back-end updates (I think the comment function is un-broken now, for example) with the transition. However, I'm not willing to completely turn things over just yet.

Therefore, iMac will be connected on XiGL.net line for the time being while final testing is done. Old site on Mac mini will still be on Tool-Box.info line, but it will not be updated. All new entries will be put on the new server as of July 9, 2008. The testing is in progress if you're looking at this entry and are at XiGL.net instead of Tool-Box.info.



One of the things that didn't quite work was the image uploading part. After about 3 hours of struggling, it seems to be functioning correctly. Hopefully, this will be the last show-stopper.