Web Site Back Up & New Goodies

Those of you who tried to access my web site (or this blog) late yesterday or the first part of today will have noticed that the site was down. Since you are reading this now, obviously everything is back up just fine. The issue, it seems, was one of bandwidth. It seems that the traffic on my site had exceeded my monthly bandwidth allotment.

This has happened to me only once before, about a year ago or so, and I simply bought more bandwidth to fix the problem. I thought at the time that I was purchasing enough to handle whatever traffic my wee little site might generate. I guess I was wrong!

Without getting into specific traffic stats, albanach.org and its dependant sites (such as kilts.albanach.org and this blog at blog.albanach.org) have been slowly but steadily growing in popularity. Over the course of the past year, my monthly average bandwidth use has more or less doubled. However, for some reason that I have yet to figure out, this past month has been a different story. My bandwidth for March increased by a factor of ten! It was such a dramatic rise that I thought for sure it must be some kind of glitch, or maybe a hacker had gotten in and sabotaged my site!

But, no, I was assured by those who know more about this stuff than I do that such was not the case. I really am getting that much more traffic. So for a few extra pennies a month I've upgraded to a new hosting plan that will hopefully be able to handle the volume of traffic this site has been getting. By the way, thank all of you who have enjoyed my site and chosen to share it with others!

And, just so there is something kilt related in this post, I thought I'd share with you some photos of my latest kilt goodies.

Here I am sporting my brand new Harris Tweed kilt jacket and vest, that you read about in a previous post. I couldn't be happier with this purchase. It fits well, and looks great with most of my tartans. Here I am wearing it with my Mull tartan kilt. I've also worn it with my Armstrong, Carolina, and MacQuarrie (Cockburn Collection, muted colors) and it looks great with each. It came in while the weather was still cool, so I got a few chances to wear it before the warm temperatures arrived. I know I'll be getting a lot of use out of it come Fall.

Also, recently, some Balmoral kilt hose I ordered came in from Hawick. These hose are fantastic! The sock itself is made the same was as our Lewis kilt hose (follow the above link), from a Merino Wool / Acrylic blend. Very soft, very comfortable, very high quality (and easy to care for). But the upper is completely hand knit in the colors of your choosing, to tone with your tartan. You design your own look. Below is a pair I designed for wear with my Carolina tartan kilt. I chose the brown hose to tie in with my brown leather accessories, and I think the effect is quite pleasing.

Lastly, below I am pictured with my partner-in-crime at the Museum, Ronan MacGregor. My hose were designed to match my Mull kilt, and Ronan selected his colors to wear with his Black MacGregor tartan (a personal variation of the MacGregor sett that he had woven for his kilt).