Possible Disruption

As of tomorrow, Blogger is discontinuing the FTP service I've been happily using for years. Since I refuse to have my work held hostage on someone else's servers, that means I'm having to migrate to other blogging software (in this case WordPress).

I'm hoping to make a reasonably smooth transition, but things will likely be messy and a bit disorganized for awhile. My archives will likely take a while to get integrated.

Please be sure that from now on you use the correct bookmark for this site:

http://www.somebeaut.com/

and check back to update your RSS feeds too.

Thanks for hanging in with me while I deal with this massive inconvenience!

Felicitous Error

I had set my camera to its highest available ISO the other night, thinking I was going to try to photograph in a darkened room. I didn't. But I forget to set the ISO to something more normal.

So when I took the picture above, the 1600 ISO shot in normal daylight resulted in something I hadn't seen in quite a while: grain. Grain looks different from typical pixels. And I actually think THIS grain is beautiful. Have a look at the big version, which I've made bigger-than-usual.

Quod Severis Metes

Blogger informed me that they are ceasing to support FTP publishing to my webserver in the next month or so. So now I'm scrambling to find an alternative. Looks like it's going to be WordPress.

Y'all don't need to do anything except keep coming back, and maybe update your RSS feed information when the change happens.

Back Again

After about 12 hours of being on strike, Blogger is once again deigning to publish to my server. Thanks, Google!

Blog, Interrupted

Golly, I go away for the weekend and all heck breaks out around here. Long story short, my site was migrated to a new server and BAM, all my DNS settings were rendered el-wrongo and several recent posts evaporated into thin air. I hope I've fixed that. Please let me know if you find anything has gone missing.

This would be a good moment to remind everyone that backing things up is a very good idea, you know, just in case THE CLOUD IN THE SKY DECIDES TO EVAPORATE OR SOMETHING.

Something Beautiful I Saw Today

It's so easy to go through life without appreciation, despite the whole vibrating, pulsing, glowing gloriousness of the world around us. I am embarking on a daily practice of noticing and sharing beauty: one small effort to counteract the laziness of obliviousness, dismissal, and cynicism that can gradually sour our outlook on just about everything.

Some of the things I post will be my own observation, others will be links outward. I hope you will share your response with me or pass on your bits of beauty in the comments.