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Changed Hosts Again
Feminists Destroy Hearthstone
Changed Hosts Again
3:00pm, Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Current mood: calm 
Hosts I Have Known
Since I first created this website back in 2005 I have changed webhosts 3 times. I started this adventure with SmartyHost who were an Australian company taken over by MYOB and now apparently owned by NetRegistry. They were hopeless and I should have learned my lesson about Australian hosts at this point and never had anything further to do with them... should have... Anyway, in 2006 I moved to BlueHost, one of the largest webhost providers in the world, based in Utah, USA. In the main they were excellent and I stayed with them for a long time, but a few things began to irritate me:
- After some years their fees increased greatly even though their advertised price was still low. This was obviously to get people in, and once they are locked in, hit them with 200% increase or more. Sure, I understand that this is marketing but it still REEKS of "Screw the customer!" As a customer I don't like being screwed. I expect to pay a fair price for a decent product or service but I do NOT wish to be RIPPED OFF for the sake of a minor increase in the company share price just because some damn board member figures he can get away with it. I confronted their sales department with this several times and threatened to go elsewhere if they didn't adopt a more reasonable approach. The first time they made a deal, the second time they did not. I asked a sales girl: "Would I get the introductory deal if I cancelled my subscription and took out a new one". She said "Yes!". However this would have meant deleting my website and going through all the rigmarole of saving it all locally and then getting it all back up.
- After a run-in with one of their support staff over a minor issue I found that my email inbox was suddenly full of spam. I felt that this was a case of malicious interference as I had made no changes to my setup and had not had significant spam troubles before my disagreement with this person. Sheer coincidence? I doubt it. Anyway my spam troubles were now MAJOR and no amount of fiddling with cPanel would fix it. I confronted them with the situation but they denied having anything to do with it and claimed that they were unable to detect any bad settings or foul play.
I had lost faith in them by this stage, even though my site still functioned fine and I figured I could do equally well elsewhere. When my renewal came due I ditched them and chose Crazy Domains to take their place. I had used them for my domain name registrations since I got sick of the sleazy practices of GoDaddy and they had seemed reasonable and claimed to be Australian based. Their starting price was expensive but no more than I was paying at Bluehost so in 2018 I went through the troublesome process of saving and reinstalling all my stuff. 
It quickly turned out that I had made a bad choice and I should have remembered my lesson about Australian hosts from the Smarty Host debacle. Compared to businesses in the USA Australian businesses over-charge, offer a second rate product and don't care in the slightest about the customer. (The last part is stupid when you think about it, as it is simply cutting your own throat, but that is Australian businesses for you.) 
Here are some of the factors that made me leave Crazy Domains after less than 1 year:
- They offered only the basic webhosting features, even though the full raft of cPanel features are standard in the major hosts. For example site traffic monitoring was an extra which I declined to pay for.
- The bandwidth to my server was so pathetic that it would take me 10 seconds to display or delete an email. Some days it was impossible to send an email as I would simply get an "internal error occurred" message. I complained to them and demanded that they fix the problem but although I had no trouble getting a human being on the phone they were unable to do anything useful. It turned out they were leasing space on someone else's server in the USA and on-selling it to me, presumably at a greatly increased rate and removing speed and some functionality in the process.
- Then some idiot on their staff decided to go through and delete all the mp3 files on my site without consulting me. Yes, I am a producer of musical content and some of it is on my site. You don't just go ahead and delete content from your customer's site without asking them!
- Bill payments were handled in Dubai and I incurred foreign exchange fees each time I paid. Clearly something dodgy is going on there and IMO at least, a company is not really an Australian company under such circumstances.
Ultimately the inadequate email situation forced my hand. You can't have a host that can't do email properly! It's a daily essential, not some fancy extra! To their credit they did eventually agree to give me a refund for the 2 years I had left. (After I threatened them with a trip to VCAT). 
So I checked out prices and products and chose to sign up with HostGator, another USA based company who are one of the largest in the world. Their pricing and product is very competitive and their introductory offer was too good to refuse. I have done the dance once again and for the moment at least all is as I would wish! 
HostGator - One of the world's largest webhosts.
The Process Of Transferring To A New Webhost
You can get your new host to do the transition for you. Presumably they copy everything holus-bolus over the net from one server to the other. This sounds like the painless way to handle it but I didn't feel like chancing it. I suspect their are too many things to go wrong. Also, just as with reinstalling Windows, I like the idea of a fresh install. You clear out any extraneous crap that has been built up and you avoid all the little incompatibilities that you just KNOW are going to cause trouble... more trouble that starting from scratch. This is the sage computer tech talking! 
For a complex site like mine with numerous pages, add-on domains, forums, email addresses and heavy webmail usage there is much to do and I find the transition process takes nearly two days from go to woe. Here is my to do list:
- Sign up with new host and wait until your account is active. In many cases this will be almost instantaneous.
- Forward your emails to one or more external accounts, (such as gmail or hotmail), while the transfer is in progress. This means you will probably still get a copy of emails sent during that time even though you aren't logged on.
- If you store your emails on your webhost back them up to your local HDD. You can use FTP to download entire relevant mail directory on server root or you can compress the directory on the server and download it as a file. (You should do incremental backups of this directory regularly anyway.)
- Backup all databases on server database to local HDD.
- Put a notice on front pages informing of the move in progress. I admit that I did not do this. I probably should have but couldn't be bothered. Apologies to anyone that may have been affected but I figured I would only be offline for a few minutes.
- Add your addon domains to the list on your new host.
- Redirect your domains on your domain registry to new host name servers.
- Set up all your email accounts on your new server. You can use the same old passwords if you trust your last host but it is a good idea to change them from time to time if possible. Make sure you allow plenty of quota for your stored email database. Use unlimited, (if available), for any accounts that are really large.
- Enable Spam Assassin and set auto delete spam to on.
- Set up email forwarding if you use it.
- Upload your web sites to the new server. Make sure you put your primary domain in the public_html directory and your add-on domains in the directories that have been setup for them. File manager will work but it allows only one file at a time, so you must compress the entire website, upload it and then decompress it in situ. Alternatively you can use FTP which can handle hierarchical directory transfer. It will be slow but should work. Support should be able to give you the FTP details of the relevant server and you should be able to upload your sites while the name server change is still propagating across the web. If all this fails you will need to wait until redirection propagates then use your web address for FTP, which could be up to 24 hours. If using FTP ensure you set “preserve timestamps” otherwise all the uploaded files will have today's date.
- Check all sites & pages work. Re-upload those that don't.
- If required, upload the saved email database to the server and store in the appropriate place in the mail directory (using either File Manager or FTP).
- If you use a webmail client bring up your chosen client, (I use RoundMail), by going to cPanel/email/access webmail and make sure the entire email collection is there and can be accessed as usual. Save the login page to your bookmarks toolbar for quick access.
- Import latest saved contacts list into your webmail client.
- Send emails to all your hosted accounts from an external source to ensure that all passwords and names are correct and that any forwarding you may have set up is working properly.
Transferring A phpBB Forum To A New Webhost
The above is the main gust of the job done. It takes me about 1 day. The worst part, (for me), however is the process of getting my forums back up on the new host which takes me the best part of a day on its own. Here is my list for that. (I run pbpBB): 
pbpBB - an excellent board to use but a pain to transfer.
- From the old system, backup your forums database AND backup the forums directory, since it contains avatars, styles, mods etc. Take a copy of the actual mySQL files if you want to go the shortest route.
- Make a note of the EXACT version of the bulletin board system that you are running. Check whether this is compatible with the latest release. If not, convert it to the new version and make sure it works properly BEFORE you download it. Keep a backup of the entire forums before and after the upgrade.
- (a) In theory if you have all the necessary mySQL files you can simply place these in the appropriate directory and copy in your old forums directory and possibly it will just work... Go ahead and try it if you like...
(b) In theory you should also be able to simply upload your old forums directory, get into the board and restore the database from your backup. Good luck with that...
(c) If these work for you, great. For the rest of us: Once again, in the real world it is always best to make a fresh install. This is how to do it: - Download the latest bulletin board software in compressed format from their website.
- Create a new mySQL database with the same parameters as on previous installation.
- Upload the new software to the forums directory on your server and decompress.
- Follow the installation instructions for a new installation. Hopefully it will complete properly. If not, you have problems! (But that is computing...) Don't delete the install directory yet, even though they tell you to, you may need it.
- Upload the old avatars, ranks, styles and smilies to the appropriate directories.
- Upload necessary mods to the appropriate directories. In my case this includes the "adduser" mod, (required since the pests at phpBB don't allow a user to be added manually (How stupid is that?)).
- Fire up the bulletin board in your browser and run database restore from board administration. Hopefully your board will then come back.
- If the fresh software is a different version from your previous installation you will need to run update. This requires the install directory... Lucky you didn't delete it huh? If all has gone well to this point and the update completed fine you can NOW delete it.
- Browse the board to make sure all is working properly.
It may not sound that hard but believe me: unless you run a vanilla board it is a real pain in the backside. It would help if the developers would attempt to remember that the end user wants to transition smoothly from one installation to another and from one version to another and does NOT want to fucking around for hours or days with incompatible versions, inexplicable alterations and unnecessary limitations. The board is there for the end users after all, NOT for the amusement and self-importance of the developers!
To the phpBB developers: Yes, thank you for an excellent product, (once it is installed). No thanks however to the idiots that decided that:
- Styles will be incompatible in the new version.
- Certain mods will be incompatible in the new version.
- Users may not be added manually except by 3rd party mod.
- Upgrading without a clean install first will not actually work, except in some miracle situation or by using some arcane process.
- Smilies PAK format shall be changed to a new incompatible format for no good reason.
- Smilies may not be duplicated within the board administration, therefore requiring significant external fucking around. (so that :( will get the same icon as :-( for example).
To you wrong-headed pests: 
Job Done
Anyway. The whole process went reasonably smoothly. I expected phpBB to fuck me around so I wasn't surprised when it happened. I solved all the problems and nothing took an absurd amount of time so I can happily say that I have transitioned once again, everything is working properly and I can now return to focusing on generating content again...
Pour me another champagne Anna! 
Currently watching:
Black Clover by Yuki Tabata, Pierrot.
Feminists Destroy Hearthstone
2:00pm, Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Current mood: calm
Hearthstone is/was a Massively Multiplayer Online Collectable Card Game (MMOCCG) by Blizzard Entertainment. I began playing from the time of its beta release in November 2013 and enjoyed it until I found that it was impossible to compete properly without owning most of the cards. In theory Hearthstone is a "Free To Play" game, (FTP), and you can eventually get all the cards for free by doing quests and dusting duplicates, but the reality is that unless you are extremely patient and willing to do every quest you will not have the cards you need to build a competitive deck. Without a competitive deck you will lose most of your games and you will have a miserable time and will quit the game in frustration. Since a buy-in was some hundreds of dollars I stopped playing except for some FTP single player content. "Kobolds and Catacombs" in particular was a real blast!
In March this year I deemed the time was right to buy in properly, as all the "Year Of The Mammoth" cards were being rotated out including the absurdly overpowered "Frozen Throne" hero cards which had dominated the game for the past 18 months. Principal designer Ben Brode, whose OP designs had unbalanced the game, had left the company and the new designers seemed to be returning the game to its roots. I shelled out around $500, which is a LOT for a computer game but I figured it would be worth it as I would be playing it for years.
For a while all seemed good. I got most of the cards and was able to build most of the top tier decks (sometimes short a legendary or two, but close enough to compete). My ranking dropped from level 20 to level 11! I was in the game and level 10 was within reach. I watched the champions stream their games and studied the Grandmasters League avidly. I began to understand the game in a way that I had not previously and I began to realise that "Legendary" ranking was not impossible. It was taking up a large slab of my life but I was enjoying it... Then things began to go wrong. 
The new designers began to make changes to the "Classic" cards. These were supposed to represent the core of the game. A set of cards that showed what each class was about, that were powerful enough to hold their own with the cards from each new expansion and would never rotate out. There were a lot more of them (245) than the amount from a typical expansion (135) and they were thus an expensive investment, but they were essential and they were permanent (one thought) and they were worth it...
The first to go under the new regime were Naturalize, Doomguard and Divine Favor. 3 Classic cards that were firm favourites from their respective classes and had stood the test of time. The loss of Doomguard was particularly upsetting as it left the Warlock with virtually no good demons; a complete reversal of what the class was supposed to be about. This was a red flag but I was caught up in the trill of buying in and ignored it.
The first "Classic" cards to go in 2019.
One of the best things about Hearthstone in comparison with other Collectable Card Games was the standard of the artwork. Blizzard hired many of the best fantasy artists in the world and their results were generally superb. Deserving of special mention was Alex "Horley" Orlandelli whose paintings were IMO just amazing! Among the vast array of muscular heroes, devious villains, horrible monsters and evil demons were a fair number of scantily clad, beautiful women in alluring poses. As an unashamedly heterosexual man I rejoiced in these sexy cards whether they were politically correct or not. I assumed that they were just part of the game and that those in the classic set were there to stay. I was wrong... 
Aviana, Confessor Paletress and Silver Hand Regent: Some of the sexy cards of the past. (Click to enlarge).
When the "Rise Of Shadows" expansion came out, (the first under the new guard), I was a little surprised that there were no new sexy cards. There were a few attractive women but they were all covered up with thick clothing. Again, this should have been a red flag but I just ignored it.
Recent female cards: attractive women well and truly covered up. (Click to enlarge).
This was a true indication of where the new bosses were taking the game but I was well and truly blindsided when out of the blue they went and de-sexed the last two sexy cards of the Classic set! The Secretkeeper had long been regarded as one of the sexiest cards in the game but breaking the tradition of years the feminists in charge turned her around and made her sexless.
The Secretkeeper: Before and after. (Click to enlarge).
This was inexcusable but even worse was the fate that awaited the sexy Succubus. She was erased ENTIRELY and did not even go to the Hall Of Fame. She was replaced by the RIDICULOUS Felstalker. SHAME ON YOU BLIZZARD! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! The Succubus was a Demon in the introductory "Free" set, and a staple of the Warlock class. She was well balanced and was doing no harm. What a fucking disgrace!
The original Succubus and her replacement. (Click to enlarge).
Then they brought in a new female card: "Sally Whitemane" from World Of Warcraft. People had been waiting for this for years as she was considered one of the sexiest women in WoW if not THE sexiest. Fans had produced numerous pieces of art celebrating her sexiness and animated porn videos likewise. Women had cosplayed her and she was the BOMB! Check out the Google images if you don't believe me. Much of her allure came from her gleaming naked thighs. Blizzard's prudes went and covered her up!
Sally Whitemane as she was in WoW and as she is in Hearthstone. (Click to enlarge).
In addition to these contemptible acts of prudery the feminists in charge made a raft of other unnecessary changes including de-sexing the Mistress of Pain and the Windfury Harpy, (not that the Harpy needed it as she was too ugly to be sexually interesting in the first place), and some absurd violence reduction art in cards such as Headcrack, Deadly Shot and Bite. 
Initially people thought that these changes were a sop to the prudes in the China Communist Party but this was not the case. In an interview with PC Gamer, Lead Mission Designer Dave Kosak said that after reviewing the full Hearthstone set, Blizzard decided that the art on some of the cards simply didn't meet its standards, and that Blizzard wouldn't print those same cards today.
Clearly this new attitude comes from Blizzard itself or more likely: the Hearthstone design team acting of their own volition. But why would they do this? I wondered. They're all hetero men with normal hetero desires and most of the customers likewise... Aren't they? Then I saw this promotional video starring Hearthstone Developer: Hadidjah Chamberlin and it all fell into place. If she isn't a dyke then I don't know what one is. No doubt she is full of lesbian angst and radical feminist ideology and is determined to put right the "Sins of the Patriarchy". How the hell did she get onto the design team? I can only imagine her influence at team meetings. There was clearly little push back from the men on the team and when you look at them you can understand why.
Here are the designers that have put their faces forward on YouTube this year so far: Dave Kosak "Lead Mission Designer", Hadidjah Chamberlin "Hearthstone Developer", Peter Whalen "Senior Game Designer" and Chadd Nervig "Initial Game Designer". There is not much testosterone on display there. The only one with any real claim to manhood would be Dave Kosak and he's still a lightweight. No wonder they allow a single dyke to push them around and don't want to please real men anymore! 
