TastyTrixie.com

Archive for September, 2008

If you make porn these days, you really need a system for storing and backing up your photos and video files, even if you just run “amateur” sites with homemade content. We are going through growing pains ourselves, so I’m taking this opportunity to outline some storage suggestions for my fellow webwhores:

*Maintain copies of all of your raw, unedited, full-size photos IN ADDITION to duplicates that you have edited and resized (but NOT optimized/reduced in quality for the web or stamped with a domain name – those versions will be saved with your site). And have backups of all that (basically four copies of each photo).

*KEEP LOCAL COPIES OF YOUR ENTIRE WEBSITE(S), BLOGS, ETC. ON HARD DRIVE. Yes, your hosting company should have backups, but don’t rely on that. Everything you upload to your blog, website, etc. should also be saved offline with you on your machine or wherever. If you create content online (using wordpress, google docs, etc.) download backups to your hard drive. Guess what this means? You now should have at least six copies of each good photo you’ve taken and published.

*Shoot video on tape NOT digital or cd/dvd. Keep your original tapes safe. Like, IN a firesafe. Capture them as AVI’s and keep those, too (we burn ours to dvd).

*Keep your old emails and make backups of them. You are/should be a business-person and keep copies of all of your communications with customers, colleagues, service people, etc.

*Develop a backup schedule and log for recording each of your backups, what you backed up, where you put it, etc.

*Remember that anything you burn to dvd or cd will degrade with time. Don’t have your only copy of data stored on this type of media. Seriously, google it. Also, remember that hard drives fail. It does no good to make a backup copy of your email, for example, and save that backup on the same exact drive as the originals.

*Rent a safe deposit box to store your backups, your will (including what you want to be done with your website(s) and content when you die), and a small flash drive or something like that with backups of your will and all the login information needed to take carry out your wishes plus software licenses, etc. You might consider making private, clandestine arrangements to have this maintained out of the country if you live in a fucked up nation such as the United States of America where the feds can bust down your door and seize everything because you are guilty of making OBSCENITY. If you want to know what that would feel like, you should watch The Notorious Bettie Page for a dramatic recreation of purging your art-porn to try to save yourself from prison. And then recognize it happens still today. The feds ARE searching and seizing, and indie webwhores ARE madly deleting and trashing their archived homemade porn because someone called Child Protective Services or the local police complaining that someone in the neighborhood is having sex AND TAKING PICTURES OF IT AND SELLING THOSE PICTURES!!

Basically you should get twice as much storage as you need to house all of your most precious data once for your safe deposit box, then switch them out; let’s pretend you have 600 GB of photos you want to keep safe so ideally you’d buy TWO one terrabyte hard drives for your backups. Make your first backup and put it in your safe deposit box. In three months make another backup on your second 1TB backup drive with all your old and NEW pictures you’ve taken since then, take it to the bank (or send it to whoever) to replace the backup that’s already there, and bring that one home to use next quarter.

*Insurance. Insurance is tricky because if you’re working online from home and renting, but need to protect your BUSINESS assets (that are in a house that you rent where you’re not supposed to be operating a business). . . well. Yeah. TRICKY. Anyway, insurance money could never totally compensate you for losing photos/videos/original work, so while it’s good to have insurance to replace your cameras, computers, etc. if there was a fire or break-in, money can’t buy back the DATA on your computer so back that shit up.

Is that expensive and time consuming all to maintain archives you will never need if all goes well? Yes, it is. But this is your business and you don’t want to lose all of the work you’ve done, especially if you care about your work and are proud of it. If you don’t have the money, do the best you can, and save up so you can afford the security of having your work backed up and kept safe.

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Do I take my own advice in all of these matters? No, not yet, but I know that I should. Part of the problem is that I’m extremely reluctant to spend money on external hard drives; when you read the reviews it’s hard not to notice that HALF OF THEM ARE NEGATIVE. They fail, they are poorly designed, they’re loud, they overheat, THEY FAIL, etc.

This has some promise though: the Thermaltake Hard Drive Dock. Instead of buying a bunch of external drives (with their funky, clunky, fucked up designs and tendency to fail), installing a bunch of internal drives (which you don’t have infinite amounts of space to house) or setting up a server, you can hot swap naked hard drives which is cheaper, saves space, saves time and is really convenient for maintaining backups especially if you are putting them in a safe or if you don’t want to buy drives with lots of storage just because you feel like you NEED to since you only have so much room in your case. I haven’t bought one yet, but it’s a huge relief just to know it exists. There are loads of other benefits, like being able to access laptop-sized hard drives (I have one of those packed away with stuff I’d like to get at) and being able to switch out hard drives almost as casually as if they were game cartridges.

Yes, I enjoyed watching the dorky little geek porn video.

Any webwhores with further suggestions or people with special insight on this stuff, feel free to comment; I would love to read more advice from people who take porn and blog backups seriously.

From the gallery of 150 photos I posted for members yesterday:

The leopard print dress I bought at a thrift store for around $10. The nylon stockings are from StockinGirl (I can’t remember exactly which style and color they are; they MAY have even come from one of their bargain grab bags). The gold pumps were also bought used from the Portland Red Light on the cheap. The gloves are just the generic cheapies you can buy at costume shops. The “string” style garter belt is from Victoria’s Secret which I chose because it looks better with the orange panties from Ross (Dress For Less) than our nice thick six strap belt would:

Basically there is not one thing in this ensemble that cost more than $15. Unless you count the time it took to shop for and assemble them, which I do.

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Today is show day so if you want to chat with me and watch me masturbate on cam, join my site and go to the LIVE SHOWS page for members. I’ve got a SexCamCentral show at 1 pm Pacific / 4 pm Eastern and another on Camz at 9 pm Pacific / midnight Eastern. Delia has her Camz show at 4 pm Pacific / 7 pm Eastern.

After taking swimming lessons as a kid, I haven’t spent much time in pools, but I want to get in the water more often so I dusted off my old rubber swim cap (barely used), bought a new one (the purple one below) and replaced the old broken rubber strap on my goggles. I tried everything on during one of my webcam chats last week and was extremely pleased with the results:

I can’t tell you how much I love wearing my swim caps — it has all the pleasure of a corset without the hassle and expense. A corset for your BRAINS! They’re snappy, squeaky, thick and delicious and wearing them reminds me how glamorous I thought women were who wore do-rags and turbans when I was very young. LOVE! I am INCHES away from shaving off my hair and wearing swim caps full time (and paired with earplugs it would be delicious deprivation of auditory perception). Except without the hair I don’t know if it would be as pleasurable to remove the swim cap after thirty minutes or more of wear; there would be less hair-pulling, but too much cold to enjoy the slow expansion of the head and hair-floof back to maximum size.

And don’t even get me started on goggles . . . this is my LOOK! I think it’s totally cool when there’s a reflection on just one lens.

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Swimming was fun, but I went alone and was actually nervous about doing something new: would they have lockers and if so, would they provide locks and keys and something to hold onto the key while I’m swimming? Would I have to pay for each scheduled event I stayed for or only the first thing I showed up for? Would I be horribly slow and block faster, fitter people from enjoying their laps?

I managed to go despite these nagging anxieties and enjoyed myself, even if I can’t seem to swim in a straight line and kept kicking the wall during my sidestroke and wound up with a scraped foot. I love being immersed in the water. I love the colors and sounds of an indoor pool. I love everything being muffled and wet and full of vapor. I love floating and turning and being thick and mobile.

I felt calm and heavy afterwards. It’s good stuff. In fact, I went back for more and posted a confession/fantasy today for members that I had about myself and the nerdy lifeguard.

Just a quick post to say that we have family visiting today and tomorrow so some of our cams and audio will be down. It’s been too long since we’ve seen our nephew and we haven’t even given my sister her present for her birthday which was a month ago. It’s a hot pair of peeptoe sandals so in the back of my mind I’m hoping I can get a set of foot-focused pics out of her while she’s wearing them, too. Is that so wrong? PROBABLY!

Some snaps of me from the last time we had company over:

My psychiatrist’s office finally called back so I made an appointment to get back on Ritalin. I got a huge headache yesterday because I’ve been trying to use caffeine instead of prescription stimulants and caffeine? It’s pure fucking evil. I don’t have to consume much over the course of three or four days to suffer nasty consequences.

Even though I was almost totally out of commission yesterday with the headache, I did manage to write and post for members a sicko masturbation fantasy I had. I’m not sure if other people will jack off to it, but it’s an interesting peek into the mind of a woman and how the threat of violence from men is a constantly disturbing companion that can’t be safely separated from sex in our subconscious minds. Our brains are diseased with scary men.