I have compiled the questions below from past experiences and inquiries. To use this site's search engine, please go to the home page.
Q. What was your favorite country?
A. By far and away, people who knew me before I left want to know what was my favorite European country. There is no single, individual country I hold as a favorite. I spent a lot of time in the northern part of Italy, I walked across Spain and volunteered for over three months in the Czech Republic. There are many places in Europe that I'd like to return given the opportunity, budget and time.
Q. What countries did you visit in Europe?
A. In no particular order they are: England, Germany, Belgium, Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Slovenia, Wales, Spain, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Austria, The Netherlands and France.
Q. How long were you there?
A. I left in April 2001. I had planned to stay for, at least, an entire year but I needed to come back a little early since my bank went out of business. I returned home in February 2002, but left again in July 2002 and returned home once again in January 2003.
Q. What did you do for all that time?
A. During 2001 I did a volunteer project about every other month, beginning in May. These volunteer projects are also known as workcamps. They are typically 2 or 3 weeks in duration (though the one I did in 2002 was 4 weeks), centered on a general theme like social work, renovation, construction, ecology, etc and loads of fun. Between volunteer projects I traveled. After my workcamp in France at the end of 2001 and into 2002 I made a Camino de Santiago which took about 30 days. Upon returning later in 2002 I volunteered again on a 4 week project and then for a longer period in the Czech Republic, about 4 months.
Q. Where did you volunteer?
A. I have volunteered in the Czech Republic twice, France twice, Switzerland twice and Italy once,
Q. How did you finance yourself?
A. I financed all food, clothing, shelter and other expenses off my own savings. I worked in the IT infrastructure industry. Through the good fortune of my job it was easy for me to save. Making the decision to leave the comforts of my job was difficult, a decision that took about 2 years to make and months to hand-off, close and otherwise resolve open projects that were under my control at the time.
Q. What's with these new ads/banners on your homepage?
A. I am now being hosted at Webmasters.com, as I am very glad to be finally rid of Apollo Hosting. The folks here are highly competent, reliable and provide an industry leading service to the community. I have only placed their banner at the top of my homepage, and a smaller banner at the bottom. If you are interested in hosting your own website with Webmasters.com you can click on the banner. This will place a persistent cookie on your machine to identify my domain as the referrer in the event you sign up with Webmasters.com. In addition you will find banners at the bottom of my homepage that links to SpamCop.net and SpamPal.com.
Q. May I link to your site?
A. Sure.
Q. What's with the unique visitors counter?
A. One of the more useful statistics I get on a daily basis is the number of unique visitors to my site. I plan to update this counter on a monthly basis to display the total count of unique visitors to the site for the prior month.
Q. I also have a lot of photos that I would like to create thumbnails for on the fly. How did you do this?
A. I use two php scripts. Thumbnail.php4 is a self contained, thumbnail image generator that is based on the work originally done by Teekai and later revised by Ian Anderson. RandomImage.php4 is a self-contained, random, thumbnail, image generator that is based on the work originally done by Matthew Dingley, with additional modifications by Ian Anderson and myself.
Q. I also have a lot of photos that I would like to create non-destructive watermarks for the original images, on the fly. How did you do this?
A. I use a php script and additional configuration to my .htaccess file to non-destructively create a watermark on the original images, on the fly. Watermark.php4 is a PHP scripted, watermarking system for graphics files to be used with .htaccess on an Apache web server. The php script is based on the work originally done by Brock Ferguson.
Q. How can I save money on my current Websense subscription?
A. You can save significant money on your existing Websense subscription by completing this online form. Websense provides filtering solutions to help companies productively use the Internet.
Q. I am interested in Websense, where can I discover more information?
A. Websense offers a 30-day evaluation of their enterprise software that can be loaded on a server class machine running Windows 2000/2003, Solaris or RedHat. There is plenty of overview information concerning the benefits, successes and flexibility of Websense that you can browse through at your leisure. If you are interested in Managing employee Internet access, blocking peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, managing instant messaging, managing high-bandwith applications, preventing spyware and malicious mobile code, preventing employee hacking, reviewing management reports, preventing employee viewing of inappropriate porn sites; then Websense Employee Internet Software can help your organization.
Q. Haven't I run into you on a Half-Life server somewhere?
A. It's quite possible. When there aren't enough of us in the office to have a game I enjoy attaching to a server here and there to see how I stack up against the 14 year-olds. Usually they get the best of me..