STHS Performing Arts

Welcome to the 2009 school year.  I’m taking some time this weekend to work through the backlog of my personal galleries from the summer, complete my professional site and work on a backlog of video clips and film sets from the previous school year.  The marching band schedule has been up for a couple weeks and the first show is next weekend.  I will have some photos from parents night and the first football game (last week) posted this weekend and possibly some video clips from parents night.

I invite everyone to become a fan of Susquehanna Township Performing Arts on Facebook by visiting http://www.facebook.com/STPerformingArts/.  I regularly post updates on what’s going on, new content, offers and opportunities.  I’m also syndicating the Facebook posts to my professional twitter at http://twitter.com/nrsmedia/ and importing them here periodically as well.

If there is anything you would like to see this year, please come find me or drop me a line.  Thanks and have a great year.

While I’ve fallen behind on design work and filling in the old updates, I’m getting things ready for this year.  I’m working on adding 2009 to all the marching band menus and updating the pricing.  I’ve added the option to frame everything using some standard frames that I’ve found.  I’ve been checking out labs, stores, and attending seminars througout the past couple months and I will try to add more items of interest to the photo ordering soon.  I’ve been wanting to edit that for quite a while and only recently updated the photo info and pricing.  This is based on a new lab and what off the shelf frames I can get my hands on rather than the expensive pricing for custom framing at the lab.  11×14″ seems to be the standard print that you’ll get from the event (at least what I saw in Wildwood) and I am doing my best to offer a better product in terms of variety of individuals and sections, scene and set staging from someone that knows the group and the show, and still offer something for less than the cost at the event.  On top of that, I guarantee that everything will ship flat whether it’s framed or not because I don’t want to damage the photos and I’ve just started trying to frame my stuff that’s been curled in a box for over 10 years and it’s not fun.

Some of the other additions this weekend: I finally went through and processed all of the 2008 season videos that were given to me many months ago by Dave Miller along with the 2008 video from the top of Chambersburg’s stadium.  The quality may not be the best because I propped the camera on something instead of shooting with a tripod.

I’ve released the Susquehanna Township Performing Arts page on Facebook, so check it out and let me know what you would like posted and what you would like to see from me this year.  I encourage everyone to invite and tag your friends, and I will do my best to upload and tag something for all of the students and alumni if I have something in my collection.

Welcome to summer 2009. I have a big list of projects for the summer including the manual import of all the old site updates and old Xanga update posts into this blog site.  Also in store are some possible design changes and the long overdue release of my professional site.  I’m starting to connect with people on Facebook and I’ve posted some offers for free/discounted stuff to promote my work.  While I don’t really have a chance to connect with everyone personally or online I know there are quite a few Hanna groups out there for students, alumni, band, musical, individual shows and probably a dozen things I can’t think of or find right now.  In order to promote the groups and my works I am going to work on creating a Hanna Performing Arts Facebook fan page this summer.  If you have any ideas of what you would like to see, let me know so I can add it.  This is probably going to be an August release or a July release with a lot of small updates.  I registered the page a few weeks ago, but I’m still reading up on the details and advertising perspective of things.

Since I’m importing all of the old material from the sites and Xanga by hand (copy, paste, edit, tag) I’m bound to miss a few tags here and there.  The old stuff isn’t absolutely critical, it’s more for the purpose of having everything in one location that’s a bit easier to read and find.  Once this particular project is done I may go back and review some of the tags and edit where needed, but like most other things there are no promises or timelines.

Please keep an eye on this space for updates new and old and contact me with questions or if you would like help.

As soon as I catch up on all of my work I’ll be adding a blog to my sites to allow everyone to receive RSS updates through Google, MSN and various other sites and sources. I appreciate everyone being patient while I work on all the material I have from this year. I made some server charges prior to the musical that have turned out to be rather disruptive and have been encountering some technical issues with my home equipment which have caused delays and some extra work on my end. At this point all of the rehearsal photos have been posted along with some selections from the show that I shot with a different camera. I am trying to finish the first complete set of show photos today so that I can upload them tonight. With my limited free time during the week it will probably take 2 days per set to finish everything up. Ideally I am trying to have everything wrapped up by the weekend so I can concentrate on the video aspect of things as well as catch up on other projects. Once everything is online I will be making some additions and changes to the list of photo items that I’m offering to include some new things like posters, canvas prints and more. Look for these additions sometime next week, and if there is something you want but don’t see, chances are I can probably have it produced, so contact me with any questions or requests.

Sorry, I’m not home much outside of work and in general since I’ve been on nights for the past many months I’ve rolled into a schedule of apathy in not wanting to do much work on my own projects at home and not keeping a fixed schedule (sleeping, waking up, napping pretty much whenever). I received the 2007 ACCs and Indoor Guard DVDs just before Christmas and those videos are now on the site. I do have other video clips from the band season but have not really looked at them since I dumped them from tape onto my PC. I will add them as time allows, and with the musical and learning my Reading Buccaneers music, I can’t make too many promises.

Musical… I will make it a point to be at a few dress rehearsals and I may get to do construction for at least one weekend anyway. As far as the show goes, I have a Buccaneers camp on that Sunday but I should be there Friday and Saturday. If you are not familiar with Sweeney Todd and are too poor or too busy to get to a theatre (like me), Comcast has the 1997 version in their free movies on demand. It’s not a musical and it’s not Johnny Depp but it’s enough to get the point across.

I’m sorry I haven’t been spending as much time on the sites as I should be. I’m preparing to deploy an upgraded server which will help improve the services I’m offering and also allow me to use it as a terminal server where I can access some important tools to make changes to the sites and work on photos from remote locations if I’m not at home or don’t have all the data on my laptop. I don’t make a profit from this and I enjoy what I do, I’m just getting killed with the cost of travel (imagine how bad it would be if I owned a truck or sports car!). If you like what I’m doing I encourage you to buy photos, memory books or other gifts as they help cover my expenses and I also donate a portion to the music boosters. Yes, I’ll even accept lottery tickets, and if I hit the big one my first goal is 4 new marching tubas

I’m off to a late start mostly due to a variable sleep schedule now that I’m on night shift (not setting an alarm most days is great) and keep up with some things at home. I have photos and video clips from parents night and the first two football games along with the field dedication. I’m going to try to cut up some of the clips and post them on MySpace and Youtube along with the website provided I can secure them or post them in a way that won’t leak the show out to everyone in TOB. I’m probably going to abandoned this as a blog if I open an artists Myspace account (sorry, not giving out my real one) or just install WordPress on one of my sites.

Hopefully I’ll have some new content soon. Comments, suggestions, requests and submissions always accepted. I also could use the services of a graphic designer or web designer so contact me if you have any leads on that

I’ve been doing a good bit of work behind the scenes. I fixed up almost everything for the 2006-2007 season and updated the musical site since the show was announced. I’ve been working on a project to reduce all the image sizes on my sites to 1024×768. I’ve been doing this the hard way using Google Picasa2, but that’s only half of it. Gallery is still reading the original image sizes instead of updating everything to 1024. I haven’t had time to find a fix for this, but apparently I should have tried to make their script work properly in the first place. As time allows, I will fix this so the full size images display properly and go through and take care of any other menu edits and things like that.

I didn’t forget about indoor guard, but I haven’t even watched the DVDs yet. I know I have one more DVD to order and no idea where the money for that will come from or when I will even remember to call the production company. Lately a good week has been when I can afford $50 for a tank of gas to leave the 10 mile radius around my apartment.

The time thing is a big reason why I haven’t gotten Gallery2 working yet. That would solve the image resizing problem and the shopping cart/purchasing plan. I need to fix the test installation of Gallery2 on my tester’s site before I can think about throwing it live again. Now I don’t know how it was working before… I might get to do some additional work on the sites this weekend, I have a test scheduled for Friday so I won’t be around until the first football game. As usual, more news eventually.

Bottom line, I’m out of money and I have only a few days to finish the move. I’ve been working 10-12 hour days and have been away in general so I didn’t really get to do any testing. Unfortunately, I spent all night trying to fix a forum on another site and that’s not done. I made the DNS changes and the sites are running on the new server. I only configured my personal email right now, the rest isn’t really a priority.

At the moment, the only thing that will push this whole process back another month is $205. The fact that I only have 384k up Comcast isn’t helping me get the work done either. Streaming video doesn’t work because it’s not configured. It will be at least a few days until that’s done. I haven’t even started on new videos, and I’m not making any promises. At some point, it will get done, and will be done correctly and completely. That day isn’t today. My main concern needs to be passing my MCSA tests because each time I fail it’s another $100 to retake the test. If I can’t pay for the web services, I can’t pay for the tests.

I made a couple updates to my last entry as my work schedule is changing next month. You’re not going to see as much of me as last season especially since I now live 100 miles away, but I’ll be around.

I’ve been working on a new server on and off for a few months now, and it will be rolling live sometime this week. I shipped it off to the facility yesterday and will be checking things out in a few weeks. Most of the data has already been loaded on the server, but I have to set everything up again, generate some new stats information and do other work. The move will be completed and sites will roll live on or before August 10 so I can avoid paying another month for my current server.

I’m not moving due to problems or mergers, I am moving so that I can work with and manage my own equipment and so I can save a bit of money. It’s only a few dollars if you look at price tags, but when you look at paying “cash” vs running up credit card bills, it’s a huge difference. I was hoping to test Gallery2 and the ordering system on the new server while I was still playing with it at home, but that’s not going to happen. I’ll probably just mess with it using a spare domain before I roll it live. I would like to have it go live by September, but I can’t make any promises.

I haven’t heard anything from BVP and I probably should have gotten the DVD by now. I’ll have to make some calls when time allows.

Various news sources are reporting that Houston has recieved up to 10″ of rain in the last 24 hours or so with another 5-10″ being forecast. All of my sites are hosted in a facility in Houston, but as of this afternoon they were signaling “all is well.” They rode out the hurricanes last year without incident, and none of their connectivity providers reported any issues. I toured the facility in the past and it is on a high ground with a drainage area below it, and their “physical plant” (generators, AC units) sits on a raised platform.

In case there would be a major outage, I do have the ability to bring sites online in an alternate facility. I am not expecting any problems, but wanted to leave this information out there. If you have questions, feel free to comments, call or email me.