Carnival time!

It's carnival week again, and I'm excited. Whee! I know it's daft, but it does make me feel like I'm little again and it's the summer holidays. *g* Not only that, but the Olympics starts technically-today (I'm going to bed any minute, really), which for me mainly means the Ravelympics. Which is like its own Olympic Games, only for knitting! No, really. I'm going to be having lots of fun with it anyway, and it might make me actually sit and watch some of the actual Games on telly if I have something to occupy myself with knitting-wise at the same time.

Since multiple affiliations are allowed, I've signed up to be in Team TARDIS (duh), Team Dog, Chicken and Aardvark (AKA the Brighton & Hove (and surrounding E Sx) Safari Knitters), and Team Posh Knitters. The 'Events' I'm doing are WIP Wrestling (because my WIPs need wrestling into submission very very badly!) plus the Handspun Heptathlon for Team DCA (yes, I've started spindle spinning, but no, I don't have to do seven sub-events, it's just a catchy title) and the Amigurumi-n-Toys Toss for Team TARDIS during which I'm going to actually try to crochet an Adipose. Well, it's sposed to be a bit of a challenge, you see, so I thought trying two small projects in crafts that I'm a novice at would give me that and also give me a break from wrestling the WIPs so that doesn't get to feel like a chore. There's method in my madness! This time ;-)

Getting back to the carnival, there's been various events going on all week and I've been down to a couple. I got well and truly drenched last Sunday, going down to the gig in the Old Town - elen_ancalima was visiting, so I was showing her the typical British summer seaside weekend ;-) Which of course includes sudden torrential rain! Anyway, I'm hoping to go down to a knitting exhibition thingy tomorrow afternoon, and of course to the main Carnival parade itself on Saturday.

Anyway, I think I'll wrap this up now and get to bed. Zzzz. With a bit of luck, it should crosspost to LJ. However, I have now decided to change how this site works, so alterations to the look (as well as 'my end' of things) will be coming.... er.... some time this year? I have planning to do first! Night all.

Lesson Learned

Note to self: do not turn a sock heel late at night while watching telly and not counting properly. It will only end lopsidedly! Ah well, back I go!

This is, by the way, the third pair of socks for the Sock Knitters' Pentathlon - the Rattlesnakes. I'm loving the twisty twiney cables, I really am. I'll do a proper update soon and post a photo.

Part of the reason I've been so quiet recently, by the way, is that I'm not sure I'm getting on well with this version of Movable Type. Still, if I don't use it I can't get used to it enough to be sure. But the design templating system...hmm... I need to find out more about it. Because right now I'm getting more and more tempted to change the whole site to run off of Wordpress (not just the blog). I think I can do that with MT as well, but I already know how WP works, so. I spose it all bears more looking into, and 1am isn't the time to do it! I'm off to sleep on it again.

Testing Blog It crossposting...

So, after much faffing around, lets see if this really works. Can I post to both my blog and LJ (and Twitter, and the FB feed or status, not sure which yet)? And if so, hi LJ! I'm back!! Well, I'll try to be at any rate. Obviously right now I'm over here on Facebook, and if you want to add me on that you need to know my real name.

Anyhow, I'm off to do some coding for a site that doesn't explode my head before I go knitting this evening. So, not my personal site then. Which I really have to sort out, but zomg, trying to integrate the blog and the photo album and the links and all their various templating methods.... why did I think that setting the site up like that was ever a good plan? (Because I didn't do it all at once, then?) Yet I'm reluctant to abandon MT & Coppermine & Linkster and the hand-coded pages for a single CMS that I'd have to import all that data into because eep, what if I lose something on the way? Oh, it's all too much like hard work for me. I give up!

Fixed it!

Mostly ;-) But the point is, bloggy service is restored, and the comments should be working again as well. I'm not sure where the Typekey authentication part has gone to, but I'm going to look into that tomorrow. This whole site really needs stripping back to the bare code, so I shall get on to that tomorrow, I expect.

Now, I'm off to bed!

Argh

OK, alright. I broke it. But now I'm tired and it's Friday night, so normal blog service will resume (I hope) over the weekend. Right now I'm off to chill out with either a book and some music, or a film and some knitting. %%$£%$$^$ new MT templates. *grumble grumble grump!*

Shiny newness

There's something new around here. What could it be? *g* Nothing all that exciting actually, except a little bit to me in a geeky way: I finally got around to upgrading to Movable Type 4.1. Which is nice. You can't tell much difference from here, except that the Blogroll didn't upgrade and so now all my links are a horrible blobby mess. There are a couple of ways I could sort that out, but the quickest might be to go back to using Blogrolling for now.

The actual reason I finally did the upgrade is that I've been spending a lot of time playing around on Facebook (and I really do mean playing: I've installed a load of irritating page-heavy apps so I can play silly games. Sorry, Facebook flist!) recently. One of the things I installed was the 'Blog It' app, which should let me crosspost to various places including here and my LJ, as well as update my Facebook and Twitter statuses. I know, spammity-spam-spam, make me stop. Anyhow, even though it's a Six Apart developed app, it doesn't want to work for this MT blog... and still doesn't even after the upgrade and me trying a billionty different things. Ah well. So much for that. For now. :-)

If you want to friend me on Facebook, by the way, I should be searchable. I'm using my usual email for this site over there as well, and if you can't find me with that, drop me a line or a comment here and I'll send you some more details.

What else was I going to say? Oh yes: it's WWKIP Day tomorrow, and I'm going to the event in Brighton. Hopefully Ms Charlotte is coming down too. Knitting-wise, I've reassessed what's a current project and what's hibernated, and I've cast on for the February Lady Sweater (actually a cardigan). It's the first time I've tried top-down all-in-one-piece construction, and I'm very excited. No, that's not sarcasm - I really am! There will be no seams! I might actually finish it relatively quickly instead of finishing the knitting part and then stuffing the parts in a bag to languish for years! Poor poor Chunky Jacket and Menace Jumper. I will finish you one day!

I Am Seven!

Oh hey, I nearly forgot! It's my Blogoversary today - seven years, can you believe it? Not that I've been 'active' the whole time, but when I haven't been here I've generally been on my Livejournal, so I have actually been blogging away ever since January 2001.

So anyhow, thanks to Ornery's Wife and Marsha who both stopped by with blogoversary wishes. I appreciate it!

I would wonder if this is when I should expect the seven year itch to set in, but I've been a terrible, unfaithful blogger this whole time: going from Blogger to Greymatter and now to Movable Type, platform-wise. And let's not even talk about my ongoing flirtation with Wordpress, and my mad affair with Livejournal. Tut tut tut! But while LJ might be my virtual social and fandom hang-out (it's the whole friends-list thing, you see), I reckon I'll always come back to this blog, because ....it's home. *cue cheesy music* ;-) And, you know, on my own server and personal domain name and all that stuff.

For some reason, even though I started my LJ less than a year after this, it feels like I've had this blog a lot longer. Perhaps because even after I'd started the LJ, I still mainly used this until my manager at work told me off for mentioning people at work in it. Perhaps because I've had the domain itself since about '99. Whatever it is, I'm glad I still kept this blog up even when I wasn't using it, so that it was here for me to return to now that I have my knitting to ramble on about. Yep. Seven years. That's a good number.

Destashing? HAH!

Today, I've been looking through my stash on Ravelry and trying to decide what I don't want / need. As well as a few odd things, I had every intention of thinning out some of my Posh Yarn and Yarn Yard stash. Uh huh, right. What has actually happened is that I've fallen madly back in love with every single skein and colourway. It's all mine and you can't have it. So there!

I'm also restraining myself right now from running and digging out a skein or two to wind into cakes so that I can cast them on. Oh, they're so pretty! I want to knit with all of them, this instant! But I don't have time. Christmas knitting first! And oh dear, only just over a month to go for that. I've got to get a crack on.

Actually, there are a few skeins that I can bring myself to, ah, re-home. If anyone wants to buy them from me, that is. I really do have more sock yarn than I can reasonably knit in the next, oh, couple of years. And more than once I've bought yarn because it's so pretty... without taking into account that I already have some that's very very similar. I'll think about it overnight and see which ones I settle on.

Before I go to bed, though, I'm going to do a bit more work on the redesign of this site. With a bit of luck I should have it up sometime this week. The design itself is pretty much done, actually.... it's just plugging it in to the various parts of the site. I'm intending to convert everything to php, so I have to work out the most efficient way of doing the templates. I'm not sure if I'm going to change the blog to php, though. It'd mess up any direct links. Unless.... Hmm, I'll sleep on that as well. I'm tired anyway. Maybe I will just go to bed now. G'night.

Pink for October

In case it's not obvious, I've decided to go Pink for October. Ta-daaa!

Well, pink and pinky-purple. And blue. I didn't have time to do a full redesign. Maybe next month - I've been meaning to change this one anyway.

Blogathoning Are Go!

I've signed up for this year's Blogathon, which is taking place on 28th July starting at 6am PST (which I'm pretty sure is 2pm GMT - hoorah, no early start for me!). In case you don't know what the Blogathon is, it's essentially a sponsored 24-hour 'blogging marathon'. I'm going to make a post at least every half hour for the duration of the 'thon.

This means I need something to keep me awake and interested, so as I think I mentioned before, I shall be knitting. Won't that make a change? Specifically, I'll be knitting away as much of my stash as I can into different stitch patterned squares for a patchwork blanket / afghan. I might also knit mittens or a hat for a bit of a change at some point.

The charity I'll be blogging for is MDF (Manic Depression Fellowship) The Bipolar Organisation. As someone with the condition, I'm a member, so I can certify first-hand that they do a lot of good work.

So what I need now are sponsors. Basically, if you're interested in pledging an amount to sponsor me for the event, click on the link in the last sentence and fill out your details. After the event (providing I completed it!) you'll get a reminder email, and it's then up to you to follow the instructions to donate the pledged amount directly to the charity. If you'd really rather, you could inform me how much you want to pledge and Paypal me the money for me to donate on your behalf, but my first preference is to do it the way the Blogathon site suggests.

What do you get for sponsoring me, other than a warm happy glow inside? Well...

• I will of course give huge props to every sponsor (unless you don't want me to name you at all... I can give you an alias so you'll know I mean you).


• If you have a site / blog, I'll link you in my sidebar and links page here.


• If anyone sponsors me more than £20, I'll knit you an accessory of your choice (hat / scarf / arm-warmers / gloves / mittens / something of a similar size), although if you're outside Europe I might need to send it surface-mail depending on weight.


• ... And I'll entertain you with my babblings and in progress pics of the knitting, etc etc.

As well as this, I'll be participating in the fandom_helps LJ group blog, to give me a bit more variety. And to give my hands a rest, because I think knitting solidly for 24 hours is going to give me cramp. And that's it!

I'll put up a "Sponsor Me" button at the top of this page when I've made one, and I'll put a running total of sponsors under the Currently section in the sidebar. So, um, pledge something? Doesn't matter how small an amount. A pound, a dollar, as much as you can afford and feel is worth it. It's for chariteeeeeeeeeeee!

Upgrade.... success?

Well, things seem to have gone off ok, and I must say I rather like this newer version of MT! That everything did go smoothly, however, is not due to the documentation provided by SixApart. :-/ That's what's been making me put this off and tear my hair out for months! But I found a wonderful tutorial at Learning Movable Type, and in the end it took me less than half an hour including uploading everything. Woohoo! Thank you, LMT people!

Anyway, I still have some poking around the new version to do, and I want to explore how the tags work particularly. And see if I can turn comments back on without getting swamped with spaaaaaaaaaam.

I'm actually also thinking about combining the old entries back together with this blog so that it's all in one again. I've seen from the activity log that people seem to be searching for things on this blog that are actually on the old one. Well, I guess I'll keep thinking about it.

Augh!

Spammed! To! Death! Comments are back to Typekey ID-ed only until after the upgrade. *sigh*

Upgrading, eep.

I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade to MT 3.35. I changed the comments back to being moderated but open to all (I'd had them only open to people with a Typepad ID before), and I'm getting spammed to death. I think the newer version is more secure. So here I go. Wish me luck!

(Procrastinating on sewing up that side seam? Who, me?)

Completed Regia socks

I'm only just getting around to uploading my photos, but I finished these socks... um... a couple of weeks ago now, I think. You will notice that the cat refused to get out of the frame - see below for an even better example of that. *g*

Anyhow, these were made in Regia's 'Mini Ringel Color' shade #5217, which as you can see is nice and bright! I made them with 2.5mm DPNs using a basic sock pattern that I got free with some Opal yarn ages ago, although slightly modified since I made them longer (to the top of my calves) so they'd go well under my DMs. Therefore it needed to be a bit wider at the top - I actually cast on 6 extra stitches and decreased further on down, but I think in future I should just start with larger needles. The finished socks are a bit stiff feeling... not too tightly knitted, but the yarn itself. I think they'll soften up after they've been washed though, as my Opal ones certainly have.

In other news, this time I'm trying posting using w.bloggar - let's see how it goes...

Now back to the sock pics:

Xandermog shows me how beautifully he can pose for a photo.... when I don't want him in the shot. If I did want him there? He'd have got up and wandered off, of course. But when I'm trying to take a pic of my feet, he comes and flops down under them. Feline perversity triumphs again!

D'oh!

Well oops - I did notice a couple of days ago that all the posts seemed to have disappeared from the main page, but because I'd been having general computer slowness, I thought it was just me that the page wasn't loading fully for. So when I came back to it today and everything was still missing, I finally started wondering why. Then I noticed that everything was stopping at the BookMooch widget in the sidebar. Aha! Had I accidently messed up the code in the template? I double checked.... and no. Eventually, I twigged: I had an email from my web host a few days ago telling me that they'd upgraded PHP on the servers. I was using the php include version of the widget. It would seem the two aren't compatible. So I've now changed to the javascript version, and all is well again. Hoorah!

In other news, I'm having a crack at writing this post in ScribeFire. I think I do prefer it to the pop-up Quickpost bookmarklet, but it doesn't incorporate the "Extended" post second window (unless there's a way to do that? Anyone?) so I'm not sure how that might work when I want to use that. Hmmm.

Whew!

Alright, I think I've got this blog looking pretty much the way I want it for now. Yaaaaaaaaay! Mainly, I've been working on the right-hand sidebar. PhpCurrently (which was insecure) has been replaced with Lirae's RightNow. I highly recommend that - very simple to install, set-up, and use, and does exactly what I want! *g* There are also a few other interesting scripts on the same site.

Further down I've also added widgets from LibraryThing and BookMooch. Boooooooooooks! :-)

Finally, I thought it was about time I double-checked all the webrings were still active, and updated those, and also my BlogChalk and Globe of Blogs listing. Now I'm just going to go through my Blogroll to prune out any dead links there, and I'm done. Hoorah!

(Having said that, however, I do intend to upgrade to MT 3.35 soon. I really should get on that, shouldn't I?)

You know what?

It occurs to me that I've spent waaaaaaaaaay to much time worrying about how this blog is set out, and how the categories work, and blah blah blah. So I've been sporadically poking it, and not actually made an entry for nearly a year. Hmmmmm. How clever.

So, I've resolved to actually start using this thing again. And here's what you might find here in the future:
- Stuff about knitting (including pictures, when I have them)
- Stuff about courses I study (nothing on at the mo, though)
- Music and gig reviews / opinions / whatever
- Stuff about the books I've been reading, especially now I've started using LibraryThing. Look out for the blog widget turning up in the sidebar soon.

As well as getting going here again, I'm planning to start getting more of my photos uploaded to the photo album. But in future all updates about that (except the knitting ones) will be on the updates page / blog. When I've finished setting it up proper-like. *g*

Anti-spam upgrades

I've been having loads of problems with comment spam, so I've been upgrading to the latest few versions as they come out, and I've also installed the MT-Blacklist and NoFollow plugins. I've set the blog to mostly dynamic publishing, too, which should (a) reduce the load on the server, and (b) solve the rebuilding problems I'd been having. Hoorah!

Back in the 'real world', I've just started one of my OU courses for this year, and will be starting the other at the weekend. No, I'm not completely insane (only partially) for doing more than one course at once: the music course is a 30-pointer*, and the web design course is a 12-week 10-pointer, which will be followed by two more of the same starting in May then October. Which will give me the standard 60 points for the year, all going well :-) They all count towards my degree as well as the web courses being part of the Web Apps Development Cert.

It's also occurred to me... I didn't actually mention on here that I've moved, did I? Which is a bit remiss of me, since it was a fairly big move: in September of last year I came back down here to Hastings, the old home town. And it's very nice to be back, too. :-)

Anyway, that's about it for now. I should be posting much more often from now on, though, now I've got the study-journal thing set up, and this year's courses have started again.

* 120 points is the equivalent of one year's full time university study.