Categories
ranting

Posts not found

Late last year as I was rushing to get my 2023 Italy photos posted, I ran unto a problem. I was looking include a link to something I wrote a few months before, but for the life I me I could not find it using the editors built in search. The editor’s insert link tool allows you to enter a link or to search for links, usually used to find existing posts or pages on your site. But when I entered the actual name of the post it did not show up. I tried several different combinations, checked spelling, and finally gave up and opened the site in a browser to grab the link.

But the post was not there.

After much scratching of the head and reloading the list of posts that are published, in draft, and even trying the recently deleted I could not find the post and another one too.

I know I posted them as I linked to them via social media posts. But those links now 404.

I think I know what happened. The editor app —Jetpack— has an annoying habit of showing posts having “local changes” when I draft posts and edit them at some point in both the Jetpack app and in the WordPress admin interface. The thing is the app is convenient but not full featured. There are things I cannot do in the app that I do in posts. So I often start the post in the app and finish it in via the webpage. I also move between devices a lot. And the post showing up in the drafts section with “local changes” in the Jetpack app is annoying. So I deleted them. I’ve done it before but —as far as I know— I’ve never lost a post, but this time I lost two.

I have automated backups of the DB but they are 10 day rolling and this appears to have happened longer ago than 10 days. I don’t remember when I did it, other than it was a while ago…

I checked the Wayback Machine, but it did not seem to have the posts either. It has several site craws between when I published when the missing posts were uploaded and when I searched but the ones that load didn’t show the posts and several didn’t load. The Internet Archive was a bit rocky at the time due to the hack they suffered. So after a few days I checked again and the missing posts were there. So, after a temporary bout of amnesia, once again, the internet never forgot. [confusion.cc]… Though there is so much uncrawlable material on “social media” that I really should revisit that statement… the open internet never forgets, capitalism does strange things to that memory.

In any case, the missing posts were restored from the Wayback Machine’s crawl. And I doubt anyone noticed they were ever gone, such is my readership ;-).

This seems like a good time to remind everyone that the mission of the Internet Archive is valuable. Not so I can restore a few missing posts, but for long term historical preservation and promoting open access to information. So much of what is hosted on Archive.org would otherwise be lost or hidden just because it was hard to find.

Donate to Archive.org

Categories
ranting

2024 Recap

Once again, for my birthday, I’m going to look back at the past year briefly. I don’t like to dwell on the past but it’s good to take stock as I celebrate another revolution around the sun.

The best of the year was both my daughters passed their big tests. Olivia passed the PLSE with results she was happy with and got accepted to the secondary school that was her first choice. And Victoria did well on her O-Levels, more than good enough to apply directly to a foundation year program she wants. Congratulations to them, they did well and made it through a stressful year (for them as well as for my wife and I!)

I also visited America for the first time since 2017. I went home for a simple ceremony to bury the ashes of my maternal grandparents. It was the first time I have been home, to Charlottesville, since my dad died in 2017. And the first time I’ve been to Pipestone, where my mom grew up, since 2014. I saw a lot of people, family, I have not seen in years —several decades in some cases. My family is very spread out with people living or working in the far corners of the US —Minnesota, Oregon, Arizona, Virginia, even Alaska. And I don’t know if any are there these days but for a while there were some in Europe, both the eastern and western parts.

On the way I also got to see two old friends in New York. I had planned to see A█████, which was great. We met up in the city and caught up on each other’s lives after a long time. It was great to reconnect with someone I haven’t really spoken with in years. Then I had the most random encounter. While I was sitting in the café of the TWA Hotel [twahotel.com] at JFK, someone came over and said “hello”. I wasn’t paying attention, reading a book so I didn’t notice until they said something. It was M███! Of course! It could only be M███ (see here [confusion.cc]). She just so happened to be in the TWA Hotel as a friend was flying through and had a long layover (the result of M███’s years as a flight attendant). M███ was waiting on the café to brew a new pot of coffee and only saw me because she was waiting around, had there been a fresh pot she would have never seen me. The last time I saw M███ was in like 2013. We spent a few hours chatting before she head to head out and I needed to get ready for my flight.

Anyway, I will put up a proper post of my trip to the US once I get a chance to clean up the photos I took. Nothing much but a good excuse for some photos and a post.

I’m not going to talk about the alarming (in my opinion) shift to the right wing on global politics. I’ve said enough what I think of right wing populism and its evils focusing on the US election (here [confusion.cc], here [confusion.cc], here [confusion.cc], here [confusion.cc] – and even in a timely book review here [confusion.cc]) and more post over the last year that are at least, tangentially, political. It is what it is. Four more years of Trump as president. I hope the world survives.

What else?

I read a lot more last year than I have been. I worked at incorporating a daily 30 minutes or so, many more than I review on Confusion. Let’s see, in 2024 I read:

  • Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edger Allan Poe (it’s a long book, over 1000 pages I started it in mid/late 2023!)
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by J. R. R. Tolkien
  • A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
  • Gene Mapper by Taiyo Fujii
  • The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
  • The Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
  • An Instance of the FingerPost by Iain Pears
  • Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
  • Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer
  • The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer
  • Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  • The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen
  • Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel by Jeff VanderMeer
  • Colorless Tsukuru Tanzanian and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

I also too the time to play some video games. I spend several hundred hours exploring The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and I replayed Hollow Knight getting past 100% (it’s a thing, it goes to 112%).

And of course, as usual, I took an end-of-year holiday. Back to Japan this year to Kyoto and Osaka. I’ll get around to that. Sometime.

Ok this post is long enough. That’s a decent summary of my 2024, focusing on good things. The world might be a dumpster fire but I’m not doing too bad.

Categories
photography ranting

Farewell 2024

Goodbye 2024.

I took this photo while I was in Kyoto on holiday with my family. Sunset on December 16th from Inari mountain, behind Fushimi Inari-Taisha, the shrine with all the torii. The sunset was amazing, I took a lot of photos with the big camera, but this one is an iPhone panorama, edited in Lightroom mobile.

Here is the full photo on Flickr:

IMG_6640

Many more photos from Kyoto and Osaka to come, when I get around to cleaning them up. Hopefully it won’t take until the whole year like it did with my Italy photos from 2023.

Categories
photography travel

Milan, Italy, December 2023

And so, with a few hours to spare before I leave for this year’s winter holidays, we come to the end: Milan. The final post, the last photos from our 2023 Italian adventure.

We didn’t spend much time in Milan, a few days only. We flew into Milan when this trip started but we jumped on a train immediately and went to Venice, saving Milan for the final few days of our trip before flying off.

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As we only stayed a few days we didn’t see everything in Milan, but we did go to the must see sites: the Duomo, La Scala and, of course, The Last Supper.

The Duomo, officially the Metropolitan Cathedral-Basilica of the Nativity of Saint Mary [wikipedia.org], but that’s more than a mouthful, so we will stick with “the Duomo”, is beautiful. I think I say this about almost every cathedral I visit, but it’s almost always true; they are beautiful buildings. A lot of the smaller cathedrals are very similar, but the Duomo in Milan is in the group of great cathedrals that set themselves apart visually. The roofline of the Duomo in Milan is unique as far as I know, covered, almost to excess with floral inspired carvings and statues. It looks like there is not an inch of the roof that is uncovered. But that’s an illusion, there are walkways on the roof. You can climb up to the top and walk among the spires and statues. It’s amazing.

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Inside too the Duomo in Milan stands out. it isn’t stark like and bright like the inside of the Duomo in Florence [wikipedia.org], but dark but airy. I’ve seen photos of the newly renovated Notre Dame [wikipedia.org] in Paris and it’s too bright. I guess its true to the original, but like the idea of vividly painted ancient statues from Egypt, Greece and Rome, it just feels wrong, I prefer the raw marble without garish paint and I prefer cathedrals that soar into the dark high above. The Duomo in Milan feels right, the stone is dark, but the space is vast and it does not feel oppressive. I love the texture of the vaulted ceiling and the shape of the columns.

Near the Duomo we also visited the Galleria Vittorio Emanuel II [wikipeida.org]. I’m not much for the shopping but the building itself is worth a visit. It’s industrial revolution architecture at it’s best. I would say “Victorian Architecture” if it was in England or an colony of the British Empire from the time, but as it’s Italian I’ll stick with “Industrial Revolution Architecture”. It combines the steel work and ornate brick and stone work of the industrial revolution. The central dome is awesome soaring above you.

But, as I said, I’m not much for the shopping. But on the other side of the Galleria from the Duomo is La Scala [wikipedia.org], the famous opera house. It’s not as fancy and magnificent as the Palais Garnier [wikipeida.org] in Paris, but its probably the most important opera theater in the world.

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Another very cool, if small, site near the Duomo that we went too was the chruch of San Bernardino alle Ossa [wikipedia.org]. Specifically it’s ossuary, where the walls are decorated with the skulls and other bones of thousands. This is nothing like the Catacombs of Paris [wikipedia.org], where the bones of millions are stacked up gathering dusk. Here the bones are not just stacked up, but used as materials for decorations. There area stacks of skulls, in the shape of crosses packed into walls of femurs (it think), but also little scull and crossbones and other decorative motifs made of bones. A very cool site.

The last sight we saw, on the last day before we flew back home, was The Last Supper [wikipedia.org]. I’ve seen it twice before, but it’s still amazing. It’s not my favorite painting but it’s history and the obvious technical mastery, even in it’s wounded state after so long, make it well worth the visit. I took a ton of photos, as this is the first time I visited it with a good camera (as it was for much of the things I visited for the second, third or forth time this trip, my first time in Italy I took few photos with a film camera as I was poor and my second time I lost my camera —stolen on a train). I any case I don’t expect I’ll go back to see The Last Supper, or many of the other sites in Italy, there is so much more to see in the world.

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And so, that was the trip. Venice, Florence, Pisa and Siena, Rome and the Vatican, Pompeii and Milan. Retracing my honeymoon 16 years ago, with my wife and this time accompanied by our daughters.

Now I have a few hours to sleep before I head to Japan for this year’s holiday trip. I made it with a full 12 hours to spare! This year I will also be re-treading old ground, this time in Kyoto, as my older daughter was 18 months old when she visited and my younger daugther has not been there before. They both love Japan but this year will be death by temple and shine.

You can see the full Milan, Italy, December 2023 [flickr.com] photoset on Flickr.

Categories
photography travel

Pompeii, Italy, December 2023

Continuing to document my 2023 family holiday in Italy. I’ve already covered Venice [confusion.cc], Florence [confusion.cc], Siena and Pisa [confusion.cc], and Rome [confusion.cc] and the Vatican City [confusion.cc]. Now for the penultimate entry: Pompeii [wikipeida.org], the ancient city buried in the ashes of Mount Vesuvius and rediscovered in the 16th century and still, to this day, being excavated.

We went to Pompeii as a day trip from Rome (as my wife and I did back in 2007). It’s a long day trip taking a few hours to get to Pompeii, via Naples and then a rickety old graffiti covered train around the mountain to the historic Pompeii. But it’s worth it. I would love to visit Herculaneum too and I could spend more time in Pompeii as there is too much to see on a short winters day, but we made a good go of it.

We started in the forum, where the temple of Jupiter, Apollo and various public building are. We walked all the way to the other side of the city, to see the amphitheater and we passed the theater on the way. But these are not what you visit Pompeii for, the real attraction is the real lived in city. The many houses and shops that are so well preserved.

There are so many houses and shops many with spectacularly preserved fresco and mosaics. The main Pompeii page on Wikipedia lists:

And that’s just the houses, and just the one with dedicated Wikipedia pages in English. Check out the list of categories on WikiMedia for Ancient Roman frescos in Pompeii [commons.wikimedia.org], it lists 47 subcategories, almost all of which are individual houses with enough fresco to justify a list of photos and older painting and drawings of the fresco.

We visited several of the houses on the Wikipedia list, and a few shops and one of the public baths. But the highlight of our visit was the House of the Vettii [wikipeida.org]. We went out of our way to rush to this one because it has a lot of fresco but also because it has a particular one next to the main door on the street. Wikipedia declines to display a photo of it, but gives the following description: “The painting depicts Priapus weighing his phallic member on a set of scales” and it does not disappoint:

IMG_7886

Anyway, as I said, I could spend a lot more time in Pompeii, to see each and every house and shop and public building that is open. One day I’ll have to make a tour of southern Italy and Sicily.

Enough for this entry, I need to start working on the Milan, our last stop so I can get them on Flickr and write a post about them ASAP. Less than 48 hours until this year’s holiday starts.

You can view the full Pompeii, Italy, December 2023 [flickr.com] photoset on Flickr.