blog.jerm.ca

Doesn’t it seem just like forever since my last post?
Oh. It almost has been, I guess. New post tonight or Monday. Promise.

I’m busy working on a small web design gig, but a new blog post is coming by the end of tomorrow.

Well damn it all. It seems I’ve been bitten by the HOn30 bug again. After last week’s musings I’ve poured probably far more time into thinking about building a micro layout than I probably should have. I’ve taken my time and done my research, pouring over page after page of the late Carel Arendt’s website and making mental notes of what track plans I like the best. One thing that has struck me is how little this scale/gauge combination is still supported, five years after I  gave up on it. Granted, the new releases from Big City Hobbies are bound to inject new life into it, but most of the websites I used to visit back in the day are now dusty 404 pages and it doesn’t seem like anything is replacing them.

But I digress. After giving it a lot of thought I do believe I am about to set out to build a micro HOn30 layout inside a box or other such container. Times are difficult right now in regards to time and money so I’m laying out some ground rules for myself:

1. The layout must fit in a shoe box or similar container.
2. The layout must have some operating potential either transporting a commodity from point A to point B or serve as a switching puzzle.
3. The layout must cost nothing; spending will only be allowed for the container if required and a minimal budget allowance for scenery (<$10).
4. The layout must be completed within a month.

I was considering an amendment to rule #3 for the purchasing of a locomotive and rolling stock (the BCH 0-4-0, most likely), but after a week’s reflection I’m having a difficult time justifying spending that much when I feel I can probably scratch and bash what I need from the remaining bits and pieces of my last attempt.

Technical Difficulties

Last week my host temporarily suspended my account due to performance issues. Long story short, this blog has gotten big enough to require caching and caching required implementing custom permalinks. I’ve gotten pretty much everything up and running now, but there’s still one little thing off. Reaching this page at it’s “proper” address of http://blog.jerm.ca works just fine. The secondary address of http://jerm.ca/blog does reach the blog, but a missing page on the blog.

I’ve been over and over the support forums so many times now and tried everything under the sun but to no luck. Through the process of elimination I’ve identified the custom permalinks as the cause of this problem and when I reset them back to the default everything is golden. If anyone is familiar with WordPress and this problem, please drop me a comment below. It’s not critical per se, but bloody annoying.