Category: Important

An Amazing Compliment

An Amazing Compliment

Yesterday I was on my Flickr page checking to see if I had any new comments, when I found this on my Crumbling Venice image.

Crumbling Venice

“Hi Lee…..that is one amazing shot….i just had to sit and soak in awe of how captivating it is to the eye! You are amazingly creative and have captured multitudes of stunning shots! Textures, DOF, color…they are all breathtaking! Thank you for sharing your incredible gift of creativity and talent…perusing through your photo stream is the pause that refreshes! I hope you never tire of hearing the “Wow” about your work….I am sure people don’t tire in saying it! Grateful for the walk through your masterpieces!! I”

Wow,  this was amazing and it made my day!  I’ve had a lot of great and nice comments on my images over the years, but I think this one has to be one of the top!

Phone Number

Phone Number

I have now managed to arrange to get my phone number changed to a different supplier.  This is in progress, so the number at the moment is still out of action but will be live again soon.

This is all sorted and back to normal now.

Number Issues

Number Issues

I have now found out that the contact number shown on my Website and all of my products, currently isn’t working.

I found this out at the end of last week and am not too sure when went wrong, but I am currently getting this fixed.

There are still a few issues with any short links that maybe be used in a few places, EG xxx.com/gifts or /coasters.  This is being worked on by the hosting company, but the main links on the site should still work ok.

What a day!

What a day!

Yesterday was one of those days!

After the storm earlier that mornng and before I went to work, I noticed that the phone wasn’t working and the Sky planner feature was very slow!

On returning home, things just got worse! The phone still didn’t work, but next doors did. The broadband connection didn’t work, my printer didn’t work (at this time I thought it was broken, on reflection, I wished that was the case and not what was to follow!) and sky was still slow.

I switched USB cable from a different printer, and it worked! Great! Then I noticed the mouse didn’t work!  What with everything else that was happening that day and the uncertainty at work this was the last thing I needed.  Then all USB devices stopped!  I thought, I know, I’ll do the same as I did last time that happened.

So after connecting a serial mouse and rebooting the PC to think about do the fix, it hung on initialising USB controllers. Now I’m concerned.  No USB, means, no internet, if it worked!, no mouse, no upload/download of images, no printing and no backup device. What with a craft fair on Saturday, and visiting a new customer on Sunday, I now must keep some relevent goods back!

I think what has happened is the lightning in the storm has effected the phone lines.  The broadband was connected to the modem and the modem to the PC via USB.  I think the USB controller was fried and on using the PC last night, it just then killed it. It did work though for a while so that is strange. All mains connections are surge protected, so I wasn’t concerned about them.  One worrying thing is the USB connections I think are on the motherboard, I hope it hasn’t effected anything else.

I got sky resolved, turned it off at the wall and back on again. I’m going to try that with the PC as a last attempt, otherwise its a replacement USB card in the hope that that will fix it. How simple a duff printer would have been.

I think the moral here is, as soons as you are woken up in the night by thunder & lightning run to your PC and not only disconnect the mains, but also remember to disconnect any phones or modems, or atleast the connection from the modem to the pc!

One final thing, I have been looking at a new laptop, and did some more research today. So I went to check the Comet website again, and even that seems to have been removed from the website! Now I’m a positive person, but even I have my limits.  I though a new laptop might help solve the usb problem, until I could fix them. One positive thing is that I found out the laptop I was looking at, the 5 in 1 card reader, doesn’t support compact flash, so maybe its telling me not to by that model!!?

I.T, Dont you just love it!

I.T, Dont you just love it!

I think 2 of the most annoying IT problems you can have are, Printing issues, and Internet/Emailing issues.

Well last night I had the latter!

After having months of trouble free email and internet issues, last night they hit in anger.

Its always the way, just when you really need or want to do something Murphy reminds you of his law!

I had a problem that any email I tried to send from this domain, LeoPhot****hy, was instantly being blocked.  I had also recent heard that some people had found my emails being marked as incoming spam. Please make sure my domain (whole domain, including dot com) is in your SAFE list so my mails dont end up in the bin.

Now, I know a bit about IT, having taught it, and been working in it for 10 years, but do you think I could get the mail to go! After 40 frustrating minutes, really wanting to send a mail, I had to resort to using the web client instead. 

I think I now have the solution and will test it again tonight, so hopefully I can send mails again.  But please remember the SAFE senders list.

So whats next.  Well I am finalising some craft items in preparation for the next Alton Craft fair on the 8th July.  I have lots of new photos, and will be posting them on the website in the next few days.

The weather outlook for the weekend is good, so who knows, more photos perhaps?