DIARY
OF A
ROCKSTAR

Some of you may have noticed that Diaryofarockstar.com has been offline recently. No thanks to my hosting from Eleven2 I’ve been forced to revert back to an old version of my site and have lost about 20hrs of work since this (older and inferior) version was created. The previous site I had posted here was the product of about 30-40 hrs of personal time that I worked to get the site live in time for the CSS Reboot event heald last month. Eleven2 decided that since my user account had been attached by a malicious script of some sort, they had the right to go in a remove files without any warning given to me.

I am furious with this procedure. And have contacted the support team requesting a previous backup of my site, and i’ve just been getting fluffy answers ending with your typical “Thanks for your time!” at the email.

Let this be a warning to ANYONE LOOKING FOR A HOSTING COMPANY, ELEVEN2.COM DOES NOT RESPECT THE CONTENT OF THEIR CUSTOMERS SITES. OBVIOUSLY THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTECT THEIR SERVERS AND THE DATA THAT IS HEALD ON THEM, THAT I AM NOT DISPUTING. HOWEVER, CERTAIN PROCEDURES SHOULD BE MADE TO KEEP SENSITIVE DATA SAFE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY LIKE THIS.

One last warning. Eleven2 does not respect its customers. Please look elsewhere for hosting.

Since Tuesday, i’ve been reading, dreaming, thinking, hoping, wanting, drooling over the idea of a laptop. Yes Apple has released their new line of Ibooks now named MacBook’s. They go along with the higher end MacBook Pro’s (used to be known as Powerbooks).

Whats the draw of these new laptops? Cost, they’re pretty cheap considering. Intel, yep, they have an intel chip, which probably is why the cost has dropped so much. Portibility, knowing that i’m going to be traveling quite a bit in the next few months, I want to keep working as a freelance designer/web-developer, so having a portable mac is key. WINDOWS, yes these new Intel mac’s can run windows.. and i’ve heard that they run it better than the “PC” does *chuckles*.

So yes, my plan is to sell my current Powermac G5 2.0 and go to a Macbook or Macbook Pro depending on how much money I can spare at the time. Nomatter what computer I end up with, my 20″ Cinema Display will compliment it nicely *smiles*.

So next Monday i’m heading myself off to BC for a show at Richards on Richards, and possibly one other show. It should be pretty wicked. I’ve never been on that side of Canada before, and I’m planning on at least taking one day to get down to the Ocean to put my feet into the Pacific (cliche, i know, but hey, you gotta do it at least once).

Other things that are going on, are the Europe trip. I’ve been trying for days to figure out how i’m going to do it without putting myself into the gutter. Saving money doesn’t seem to be working, as, i’ve got a pretty brutal credit card bill i need to pay (thanks a lot taxes). Either way, i’m going. If I have to get another credit card and pay for it that way… I figure I’ve got this chance, i’m going to take it no-matter what.

So apparently my site was down for a number of hours yesterday due to a Paypal Phishing script running on my server. Which sucks.. This server’s got a couple of really important websites (to me) running on it, including my online portfolio suite underfire.ca. Its quite ironic, because Ive been sending out emails with resume’s and cover letters over the last few weeks looking for some extra freelance work to finance my europe trip….. The last thing I need is for my website to be down. Garh.. some people (hackers) really piss me off.

I found this great article on pricing a project:

Pricing a Project

To our surprise, on the eve of our actual CD release party, the Birds of Wales EP has been reviewed in the current issue of NOW Magazine. Heres a quick snippet from that article.

Maybe it’s just because summer’s almost here and we’ll all need a new soundtrack for those hot and lazy lemonade-drinking days, but there’s something wonderfully appealing about the soft and comfortable place Birds is able to tuck you into….. Birds of Wales get busy at Lee’s Palace Friday (May 5).
Evan Davies
NOW | MAY 4 - 10, 2006 | VOL. 25 NO. 36

Pretty cool stuff indeed. Things are looking up for Birds of Wales, next….. British Columbia.