NEW HOST

My website was hosted on a friend's machine plugged into the backbone of a major ISP. The downside to my great bandwidth was that eventually it would go away with little notice, and it did! After creating a tarball of my entire site (1.7gb) I copied it down with my favorite FTP program (CuteFTP rocks with 4 stream DL ability). Next I looked at some hosts and Mottie pointed me to BlueHost. They charge ~$7/month when you pay for 2 years of service and this includes hosting up to 6 domains on one account. With 200GB of space and 1000GB of monthly traffic I was sold! I switched over my DNS and before I could finish copying over files the domain was rerouted. Blogger and my old static photogallery was up right away but Gallery had some kinks to workout. I had to update my config.php to point to the new location starting with public_html but then once I ran setup it complained the paths were wrong, so I switched them back to the full path and all was well. Success! I moved my entire page to a new location in ONE evening!

I followed up with a quick upgrade to Gallery and have changed my look and feel a bit. The main categories now show thumbnails of sub-galleries. I've also added a sweet SLIDESHOW feature to the main gallery (link in upper RH corner) which loops 40 random photos. I'd also like to use the thumbnail navigation feature for navigating withing an album, but for some reason it's not showing up. Anyone have experience with this?

With my website's new host I'm privy to a few new features. I have increased memory limits on the server and can run stats with Gallery. This lets me keep an eye on new comments and generate queries such as 'most viewed photos'. Also, bluehost has better stats. I have been using webalizer to see who's hotlinking my photos. Mostly a few myspace users like this guy who is using my shot of Whistler windlip as his BG. Oh well it's a nice shot! I also see what search-terms people are hitting me with and what countries/busineses they're from. Shout out to those of you in the US military, Japan, NL, Austria, India, Brazil, Iran and Israel! It's nice to know my tax dollars are paying for people to surf my site. ;) Here are some search terms people used to hit my site in the past day:

#/hits/percent/term
1 13 11.61% blindfold
2 5 4.46% godess
3 5 4.46% tons of cocaine
4 4 3.57% bachelorette parties
5 4 3.57% stoppie
6 3 2.68% ecutts
7 3 2.68% roles royce
8 3 2.68% ticklish
9 3 2.68% videos site:ecutts.com
10 2 1.79% bus

So people like (in this order) blindfolds, women, cocaine and busses! Interesting... anyway, you can see I searched for vids on my site for a blast from the past. There's JMoto, a good friend from Nanaimo on the bmx, and some hilarious wakeboard vids.

CES, iPhone, Somalia and COMICS

Wow, 2007 kicks off with a bang! New technology is showcased at CES, the US sends gunships into Somalia for the first time since "Black Hawk Down", and the weather in Seattle continues to be unpredictable as ever!

If you know anything about consumer electronics, then you know about CES. The show is hosted in Vegas and there you'll find the newest in cameras, computers, biggest and baddest TVs, and more. Everything Microsoft has to offer is shown here at MicrosoftatCES.com. If you haven't watched Bill G's keynote yet then I suggest checking it out for a host of announcements. I most enjoy the portion from 1:04 onward where he looks ahead. It's also probably his last keynote at CES as he's moving on to work full-time on the Gates Foundation charity work.

Steve Jobs' keynote is also of interest. The new iPhone is a cool addition to the Apple product line. I'm not sure about the touch-pad interface yet but I can imagine using finger combinations to type as a new way of doing input. I hope it's customizable. But, all is not toys and gizmos... halfway around the world the US is deploying gunships.

Somalia officials report many deaths, including civilians, after the US deployed helicopters against targets they report as being "al-Qaida" training camps. This is the first US involvement in Somalia since the "Black Hawk Down" episode of the 90s. Seattle-pi has a good story worth reading here. Strafing targets with gunfire seems like more 'shock and awe' foolery. The US defense department is giving very limited information on its intelligence and has used the 1998 embasy bombing as a carte-blanche for its operations in the area. Somalis are unhappy with Ethiopia's Dec 24th attacks which pushed back Islamic militia and now the US attacks are fueling more anti-American sentiment in the area. I predict more terrorist attacks against American and foreign targets due to recent events.

On a LIGHTER NOTE... it's supposed to snow in Seattle tonight. This cartoon pretty much sums up my daily commute during bad weather.

HOLIDAY RECAP

The past month has been a blur. Now that I'm back to the everyday routine of work and play it's time to look back at it all. If you're interested read on...

Dec 23rd was Amanda's birthday and we celebrated a bit early with a viewing of the Nutcracker ballet at McCaw hall in Seattle. It was a formal affair and she looked stunning in a black dress. The production was beautiful and our seats were great. Photos are up in the Gallery here. It was produced by the Pacific Northwest Ballet (pnb.org) if you're interested.

After the Seattle storm and subsequent power-outage insanity Amanda and I had a day or two of work and preparation before heading north to Vancouver Island in BC. The highlights of the trip were visiting family, seeing old friends, and snowboarding. We received some amazing gifts. Some of them are a new espresso machine (mmm lattes), self-heating wok with thermostat, crok-pot, avalanche probe, many new books and, of course, SOCKS! After the Christmas craziness of visiting two families I got a chance to do some snowboarding.

December 27th I made a trip to Mt.Washington with Cathers and we ripped up the mountain. This was my first experience riding the new Outback terrain on the Boomerang chair. The new terrain really completes the mountain with tons of glades and some steep runs. I enjoyed the gulley on far skiers right and some glades and clearings far left. Someday when there's fresh snow I'll have to go back and explore more. Refreshed from boarding and tons of fresh air I was headed back to Seattle for 2 days of work.

New Years arrived and we made the annual pilgrimage to Vancouver, BC for a reunion with friends and partying like rock-stars. Thanks to Shawn and Loni for cooking an amazing steak dinner, Christina for being our resident expert on the scene in Vancouver, Amanda for sticking by my side and dancing all night, Gil, George and Kelsey for the positive energy, and Cam and Opal for the best after-party ever! Much love to everyone involved! Some pics which don't begin to tell the story here.

Well... things are slowly getting back to normal. I'll post soon with a list of things to look forward and build on in Earth, version 2.0.0.7!