News & Notes - November 2013

The year is drawing to a close and I'm sitting here doing some much needed house cleaning for the site. While I was overly focused on shoots for the last few months, these last few weeks have allowed me to tackle some other much needed issues.

The Video Clips page image

Design Updates

I covered the majority of this in the "Soles of Silk Design Changes" blog from last week, but I've went beyond what I stated there. In that piece I showcased the new header bars for both the guest and members area as well the new splash page graphic. Well, while I was at it, I'm also replacing all of the page graphics. Until I can get a full redesign in, I just thought the site could use some freshening up.

One of the sets burned to a corrupt DVD

Data Back Up

Man, oh man has this been an adventure, and not a good one! For several weeks I've been thinking about buying an external hard drive. I finally bought a 4TB drive last weekend after doing a bit of research. I wanted to move away from the countless spindles of CDs/DVDs that I've amassed over the years and though that would be perfect. Well, things with computers never seem to go as planned and I'm finding out that some of the CDs/DVDs are having read problems. They keep getting hung up when trying to transfer the files from the disk to the hard drive. From what I've gathered, it looks like poor burns on the disk. I've also read that cheap CDs/DVDs are more prone to these things. Worst part is I always had a friend who told me to stay away from those cheap disks at the stores. Guess he knew what he was talking about.

At present I've been able to grab a lot of the files, but not all of them. One of the disks I'm most upset about is the one that holds Aspen's 2013 Star Spangled Beauty feature model set from from Wu's Feetlinks. That one, like the others, was published, but I always keep a copy of each set at full resolution without the watermarks and such.

Last night I took a trip over a friend's house who has an Apple iMac and at first, all the images loaded little previews - which is more than my PC was getting. I thought I had lucked out, but of course it was too good to be true. A few photos into disk copy the error messages began to pop up on numerous files. The iMac did, however, find a few files my PC did not.

I'm not giving up or throwing away the faulty disks. I'm going to try a few things on my friends computer as well as look into some disk recovery software. Don't know if I'll be lucky or not, but I'm hopeful.

Kayleigh was interviewed and will return soon

New Interviews

I recently sent out interviews to a few of the models. I'm trying to expand the interviews section to include some more specialized interviews too. I always send each and every model the introductory interview, but I want to delve into each model's individual experiences modeling for the site.

Earlier in the week I sent Olivia an interview about the day we spent in Cape May, NJ back in September. She had it back to me that same night and it was a good little read. I playfully asked her if she'd be willing to do all the other girls' interviews who can't seem to get them done. Look for this to be posted once I start publishing sets from that day.

A few hours later, while I was in bed, I saw another interview arrive in my inbox. This one belonged to Jasey Rae. This is Jasey's standard introductory interview, so you'll get a chance to learn a bit about this 18 year old. Well, more than the tease I've already described her as in the blog, "Today's Shoot - Jasey Rae" when she posed for her first sets.

The third interview finished this week was from none other than Kayleigh. As some of you know, Kayleigh moved to Texas almost a year ago. Well, she's back home and I asked her if she'd be up for a little interview before her little feet find themselves in front of my camera again. Of course she was more than willing and can't wait to get back to posing for all of you. Look for this interview on the November 20 update.

Upcoming Shoots

Although I really wanted to be finished shooting for a while (still have over 70 unpublished sets), a well established model introduced herself to me on Twitter. She's not a local model, so we're going to go ahead and meet up for some sets. I'm sure you're going to love this girl's meaty size 9 Latina feet.

Speaking of Latinas, I will be shooting another girl who's half Dominican in the weeks to come. This freshly minted 18 year old is a coworker and friend of mine. When I asked her to pose she admitted to being a little nervous, but I assured her it was easy. I showed her some of Ryan's photos and she loved them. Now she's looking forward to her upcoming shoot and has even been giving me some input on potential ideas. I know one idea I've already thought about: pairing her with Ryan at some point.

Carlin is looking to return in 2014

The 10 Lil' Piggies Project

So, how many piggies would it take to properly celebrate a 10 year anniversary? I'm going to go with 10. And since lil' piggies all seem to have a mind of their own, according to the story, The 10 Lil' Piggies Project is going to be several things all at once. First and foremost, however, it's going to be a celebration of Soles of Silk being online for 10 years.

Like new models? Well the first part of this project aims to debut 10 new models on the site throughout 2014. The two models listed in the Upcoming Shoots section above will make their debuts in 2014. Ryan has also mentioned the site to a few of her friends who are interested in posing. Add in a few more girls from work thinking about it and I'm already over half way there, if all do indeed pose. And hey, should more than 10 new girls want to pose, that's fine by me. The target is 10, but the more the merrier!

How about models you haven't seen in a while? Kayleigh hasn't posed in over a year and in 2014 I want to try and get 10 girls to return whose soles you haven't seen in some time. The twins, Kimmie and Kellie, Cierra, Mileena, and Carlin have also shown interest in doing new sets. If the 2013 returns of Marcy and Mariah are any indication, I'm sure many of you will be happy to see these returns. Now I just have to work on securing a few more. And just like with the new models, 10 is only the target.

Free membership sounds good, doesn't it? One thing I've always tried to do off and on while running Soles of Silk is contests. I always kick the year off with a Year in Review contest and that will once again be the case for 2014. But after that concludes I'm planning to run nine more contests so people will have 10 opportunities to grab some free membership time. I haven't come up with exactly what kind of contests will be ran, but I'm willing to listen to suggestions. Variety would be ideal.

And oh yeah, if you're wondering how I got the name for this project, the credit goes to Charlee. I was discussing some ideas with her for the anniversary when she made mention of my old free site's name. Since 10 is in the title and I'm celebrating 10 years, it felt right. So that's how The 10 Lil' Piggies Project came to be. Guess I owe her a foot rub!