Technology...Up to speed…

Or it’s great when it works…

Hi Guys,

Well here we are with the first Blog of 2008. It would have been earlier but first of all my service provider decided to offer me an upgrade on the Business Broadband line installed here at the Keep…which wasn’t capable of the upgrade due to the distance of the business from the exchange…something you would expect the guys there to already know as they install the lines.

So last week we had speeds of dial-up whilst paying for the privilege of having a super-fast line, whilst we tried to get things sorted. This last Monday saw our systems back up to speed and then just as I was about to sort a new Blog, we lost everything, emails, internet the lot.

Despite further phone calls, which assured us the problem was here at this end, we along with our networking guys knew the fault as with the earlier one lay with the service provider. When all came to all the servers there had all gone down, so our business was not alone. The result of this and the speed issues and noise on the line caused our systems here to shut down completely.

For the first time since we started up Wizards Keep we were totally cut off from the outside world via the Internet. We have now gotten around to answering all the emails and we have apologised to all our customers who ordered stuff from us, but got no response from us in the manner you guys are by now accustomed to. It has been a bad week for us here, technology wise, and we are keeping a close eye on the computers.

Anyhow, Happy New Year again and I will be sorting some new Blogs soon.

One thing that I wanted to say with the earlier Blog is that I spoke to a guy called Randolph Hoppe, who runs the on-line Jack Kirby museum the other day and he agreed for me to put Jack in my Hall of Fame. This was fantastic news and means the Hall of Fame will have a true representation of the artists that have influenced my work the most, or that I feel are due some recognition in a few cases.

The plan was to launch over the January period sometime, although this messing with the Internet has meant emails could not be sent out to some of the artists in question yet, so although we may be delayed a little in launching we are still hoping it can be done this month…more news on this as we get it, guys. We are now two weeks behind with where we wanted to be, and are trying to catch the time back up.

Speaking of Blogs, I can’t believe it’s almost a year since I began this Blog. I will be celebrating a year here on February 10th. Congratulations to my good mate, Lew Stringer, who celebrated a year Blogging last month.

Oh well lots of work to sort here at the Keep so…

Until next time have fun!

Tim Perkins…
January 19th 2008