Making Haste Slowly (from Baltimore to Pittsburgh)

For the last three years my web-hosting needs have been taken care of by Pure Energy Systems of Baltimore. While they have been most helpful, and have provided an eminently reliable service, I have recently found myself bumping up against their disk-space & bandwidth maxima, and have consequently opted to secure some more capacious on-line premises elsewhere—courtesy of Pair Networks, Pittsburgh. I’ve spent this week hauling my web-stuff the 195 miles between the two. A couple of hours ago I changed the name-servers for spamula.net, and it looks like the change is starting to take effect.

I would have preferrred a near-invisible transition between hosts, but it has happened that, in setting up the new Movable Type configuration, I have changed the Giornale’s archiving preferences: the upshot of which will be that old links coming in to individual entries here will go dead. There will probably be other problems too, which I will attempt to resolve in due course—you have my apologies in advance for any inconvenience. I will endeavour to observe the motto Festina Lente and ‘make haste slowly’ a precept illustrated emblematically above (from Alciato, emblem 20) by a javelin, representing swiftness; and a remora, illustrating restraint. Even with the best of intentions, though, one may instead end up making sloth, hastily; and, not having done this before, I am apprehensive of just ending up with the on-line equivalent of a dead suckerfish & an icky javelin…

The remora features in another of Alciato’s emblems, one which warns how an apparently minor hindrance can halt an endeavour, or, as Alciati moralises, how tiny temptations may lead people astray: Small as a snail, the remora is able by itself to stop a ship. It’s disdainful of the force of wind and oars. So some petty circumstance can check in mid-career certain men who are, by genius and by virtue, headed for the stars. Likewise a tormenting law-suit, or a passion for a prostitute, draws youths from their distinguished studies.