S is for Spinning
I can’t believe it’s come round again already, but the Tour de Fleece starts again on 3rd July. Which means I shall be spinning along with many many others for the duration of the Tour de France bike race. I probably won’t be actually watching the race as I spin, because I have other things I want to watch and listen to that interest me more. I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to be spinning yet, but I think “as much as possible” covers it fairly well.
Happily, I’ve solved the missing post button (and tags and categories areas) problem in the edit screen. Of course I went and did all the standard things first, like disabling all my plugins. And then it occurred to me to try changing the screen back to the default 2 column view, instead of the 1 column I had it set on. Oh look, there were the missing areas. I’ve now rearranged and reset it back to the way it was, and all is well. Hoorah!
R is for Reciprocity
Today is the first day of June’s IComLeavWe, the comment-leaving equivalent of NaBloPoMo. Well, sort of – the aim is to leave five comments, and return / reply to one, every day during the week of the 21st-28th of the month. So it’s an equivalent in that it’s a daily goal … thingy. I know what I mean, anyway. You can either leave comments on the blogs of the other participants, and/or any other blogs you like, really. It’s more a self-monitored thing, I suppose, since unless you list all the places you’ve commented back on your own blog, there’s no central record. Anyway! The point is, it’s a cool way to find new blogs and meet new people and all – many of the blogs on the list are ones I wouldn’t normally read. Although I am going to try to make an effort to start leaving comments for the people I do habitually read again. I’ve been rubbish about it, really. Perhaps I should have a try at a little double thing – five comments to the IComLeaveWe bloggers, and five to people on my own blogroll. Could be fun!
In other news, there seems to be a bit of a hitch with this new version of WP… or at least, there is for me. Something has disappeared some of the sections from the Post page (the one that I’m writing in!), including the all-important Post button! I can get around it because there’s a draft-save mechanism, and then I can post from the edit screen, but still. That’s not right! I may have to disable some plugins and see what happens.
Upgrading
(Or, Non-alphabetical Post The Third)
WordPress 3.0 is out – has been for a couple of days, actually – so I’m going to do the upgrade soon. Probably not tonight, but most likely tomorrow morning. I’m glad I hadn’t got too far with the redesign I was working on, in terms of coding, so now I can incorporate anything new to the theme. I’m not sure if there is anything, but if there is, I might as well include it. It’s all good practise, after all.
M is for Markup
Which is a twisty way of saying that I’ve been working on a few tweaks to the new theme that I’ve applied to this site. I’m not entirely happy with my Ravelry progress bars. I dunno. I’m going to carry on poking at it, which is why this post is very very short. ;-)
G is for Gallery
I broke the photo album / gallery on this site ages ago, and since fixing it is going to be a long and arduous process, I haven’t done it yet. But I’m going to set myself a(nother) challenge for this month, to get that finally sorted out, so I can have access to my photos on this site again. Which, you know, would be (a) nice, and (b) useful.
Basically what happened, as far as I can tell (and as if anyone but me really cares), is that when I installed a WordPress gallery plugin (NextGen Gallery) to have a look at, it violently disagreed with my already installed gallery software (Coppermine), which had a bridge WP plugin so I could easily access my already existing photo galleries from there when I was writing blog posts etc. Coppermine had been installed for years, long before I’d been using WP as my blogging platform. Anyway, I don’t know what exactly caused it all to have a hissy fit, but I do know that none of my photos now show up, despite them physically existing on the server. Marvellous! I tried uninstalling NextGen Gallery, but since that didn’t help, I’m now going to move everything across to NextGen instead, and drop poor old Coppermine. It’ll probably be easier in the long run, and I won’t have to be maintaining two databases etc any more. But moving it all across is going to take a while, and be a pain.
If I do it a little at a time, though, it shouldn’t be too bad. I think I’ll try to spend maybe an hour a day on it. Surely that way it should get done pretty quickly?! And also I’ll know for sure how long it does take me, rather than it just feeling unending. I think giving myself permission to stop working on it after a specific period will help, too. Let’s see how it works out.
Merry Christmas everyone :-)
I’m just popping by to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from both me and the Xandermog.
I’m looking forward to spending a lovely day with the family1, cooking together, eating til we feel slightly ill, giving pressies2, and of course watching the Doctor Who special and other Christmas telly. I hope you all have an equally excellent one planned if you’re celebrating, and if you’re not, then have a lovely day regardless.
Do I have a New Year’s resolution? Try to post more often, of course! ;-) Probably also some others, but I’ll go in to that more in January.
In other news, if you’ve been here before you might notice that I have a new seasonal theme for the site. I was going to do a little bit of tweaking to get the Ravelry progress bars working with it, and change the non-blog pages a little, but I haven’t had time, and I think it looks fine as it is anyway. Hooray! Thank you to the Amberpanther team for making it available :-)
1 Mum, brother and new sister-in-law.
2 Which is more fun than the receiving to be honest, since I pretty much know what I’m getting already.
I killed it!
My photo album, that is. Ooops. And yes, this time I think it really is gone – I was attempting to set up the new version of it using the NextGEN Gallery plugin within WordPress, and I guess that clashed somehow with the Coppermine script, because it’s all fallen down and the photos themselves won’t even show up as direct links. They’re definitely physically there on the server, but I’m getting 404s when I try to reach them. I don’t know why that is (though I have a suspicion). So strange.
Anyway, that means that pretty much all of the photos on the blog are broken for the time being. I’m going to try to get that fixed over the next couple of days, but I doubt it’ll happen tonight. I have a concert to sing in! But I might be wide awake after that, so I might make a start then after all. Now, though, I’d better finish getting ready. Concert blacks, here I come…
Where did the photo album go?
Honestly, I have no idea what’s happened: my photo album section has seemed to vanish off the face of the web. Only, all the files are still there, the database seems to still be up and running… I’ve tried repairing and restoring back-ups, the whole shebang, but with no luck. Eh?! The little plugin that links the album script to WordPress is still working perfectly though. You just can’t get to the album via its URL. Not the front end or the admin section. I wonder if it’s a conflict with a WP plugin, or if I maybe need to upgrade Coppermine?
Or perhaps it’s a sign that I should do what I’ve been considering for a while, and import the whole thing into WordPress. Makes the template easier, that way.
ETA: I upgraded Coppermine, and no luck. But then it occurred to me that the upgrade page had displayed, so it must be something template-related (I hadn’t re-uploaded the template files). So I put up new versions of those, and oh look – the photo album is back. I’m still going to change over to using a WP plugin for it sometime soon, though, to make maintenance easier in the long run.
On Giving In Gracefully
So, back in March I made some bloggy resolutions about what I intended to do for weekly posting goals. Obviously, I haven’t kept those up… and then I started feeling like I was in catch-up mode all the time with myself, and oh noes, panic!! Which is bad, since this blog isn’t supposed to be a duty! Therefore, I have Made A Decision: I’m giving myself permission to “give up”. In actual fact what that means is that I’m going to forget about Project 365 this year, since taking the photos already wasn’t working out – maybe I can go again another year, but I’ll see how it goes. I’m still going to do the Friday 5 whenever I feel like it, but not necessarily every week. I am going to try to post more about knitting and spinning and things in general. This way, it’s more of an adjustment of my goals to something more realistic, rather than really giving up.
Another thing that I’ve decided to let go of is taking strict part of the Sock Knitter’s Pentathlon ’09. I haven’t been knitting very fast this year, and I’d ended up knitting nothing but those socks and still not finishing them. It all got a bit too much like hard work! So even though I love the patterns for the first two socks, and I really like the look of the third one which has recently been released, I’m not going to start #3. I do intend to finish the first two socks, but not as my most immediate projects. Instead I’m going to go back to my other knitting works in progress and try to get those finished off. They’d been pushed back while I was knitting just socks. That’s meant that I’ve now almost finished the shawl I’ve been making for Emily (I’m casting off at the moment, but that’s deadly boring so I’m just doing a few stitches at a time then putting it down again *g*). And I’m really looking forward to picking up the projects I’ve been neglecting and making some real progress on them. Hooray! I don’t even feel like starting something new, because my old projects are almost like new ones by now.
I’m also thinking about giving in using Coppermine for my photo album software. Yes, I’ve been using it for years on this site, so it seemed like a more sensible decision to keep using it and integrate it with WP rather than migrate to something else. But there’s a good photo album plugin for WP, and the integration plugin for Coppermine doesn’t do precisely what I want it to do – it’s a great plugin, and it’s probably perfect for everyone else… but I’m picky! Also, I do have to do some tweaking of the source code every time it updates because of the way I have my Coppermine set up, and… well, in the long run it might just be easier to change to using something more integrated with WP. It’ll mean not having to theme Coppermine to match WP, too. I’m going to ponder it a while more, but I expect I will change over.
Why am I mentioning this, when no-one but me cares? Because it kind of fits the theme of the rest of this post: I’ve been hanging on to some things that I should have gracefully given in on a while back. Letting go and making a few small changes will make things easier. Note to self: change is good, and giving up on something doesn’t necessarily equate to failure. There we go, that’s my deep personal insight for the day. Now I shall stop rambling, let go of this post and send it into the big wide world (= hit the publish button)! TTFN.
Project 365, attempt no.2!
Well, I was going to do the Friday 5, but I’m getting a 500 error from the site, so I’ll have to try again later. And in the mean time, I’ll post something else I’ve been meaning to get to – my Project 365 photos. This is my second attempt at this – stuff got in the way so I tailed off last year and didn’t finish it properly. So, here I go again. These are the first two week’s worth, but they’re also up at Flickr in my Project 365 ’09-10 set and in the Project 365 album for this year in the photo album here (you can see the great-big full size versions there). The next few days of photos are up in those places, too. I’ll do another post of them on the blog when I have a full week’s worth, then keep posting weekly thereafter. I hope!!
Anyway, because I’m posting two week’s of pics, I’m doing these as thumbnails. I’m not sure whether to keep on going like that, or to post the medium size and have the pic titles and some exposition below them, like I did last year. Thoughts, anyone?
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PS – I think I’m going to give up on using Live+Press for crossposting to LJ for now… there are two main problems with it for me. The first is an actual bug which should be fixed with the next release (though I don’t know when that is) – if I save a draft post in the WP posting interface, it posts it to LJ, which means I keep accidentally posting half-done entries. And also, I’m not sure if this is related, but I have to re-select the “No Synch” option (the only way to get round the early posting) every time I open the draft: it’s not saving that option, and it won’t default to it either. That wasn’t the second issue though – that is an actual feature of the plugin. I have no way to stop it from crossposting tags into LJ. Which I do in LJXP, even though it has far fewer features otherwise. Oh well, no being able to choose my userpics and moods from here, then. I may change back later, we’ll see how it goes.
Crosspost testing pt2
Testing the Live+Press WordPress to Livejournal crossposter…
Once again, this post may be deleted. Or may not! Oh, the suspense of it.
Crosspost testing pt1
Testing the LJXP WordPress to Livejournal crossposter…
(this post will self-destruct in 3,2,1…*)
*may be deleted v soon
Tadaa: it’s version 4
Version 4 of the site is done at last: all moved over to wordpress, and with a nice springlike design – Sheep in a Field by Nikki Jeske. It feels a little bit like cheating, using a theme by someone else, but I couldn’t resist because look: SHEEEEEEEEP! I have done some tweaking to make it work exactly how I wanted it to, especially since I’m using WP pretty much as a CMS for the whole site.
Anyway, I hope everything is working – please do let me know if you come across something that’s broken!
See you on the other side…
And now, the end is here, And so I face the final curtain, My friend, I’ll say it clear, I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
Yup, the time has come. Not the end of the blog, of course, just the end of this chapter of it! After this post I shall be importing all the entries from my Movable Type blog installation into the new WordPress one. Once I’ve done that, I think I’ll still have to manually edit in the tags, and set up some page redirections, but everything else should come on over.
(I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway)
What that means from an ‘outside’ POV will be a period of radio-silence (so nothing new there, then!!) during which time the MT installation will still be up and running. Then the whole site will go down for a short time while I make the final changeover, and then ta-daaaaa: new site version! It’s taken me longer than I thought, but the new site will be omg so much easier to run and update, so it’s worth it. Hooray!
Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew, When I bit off more than I could chew, But through it all, when there was doubt, I ate it up and spit it out, I faced it all and I stood tall and did it myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy way!
TTFN :-)
Bloggy Resolutions
This is a bit of a strange time to be doing this, since I’m about to import the whole blog to a new system, and who knows what will happen… but I’ve decided to make those blog resolutions that I was thinking about back when I tried the BloPoMo thingy. Assuming all goes well (and right now, it looks like it should!), a NewNew Blog should be the perfect time to start a NewNew blogging habit to go with it. Especially since the new setup makes things like importing from my photo album, and crossposting to LJ, all the easier.
So, this is what I resolve. I will:
- Re-start / resume Project 365, which faltered in about August last year… then picked up again for a bit, but ultimately didn’t make it the whole year. I’ve started taking the photos as of yesterday. Like I said above, the new blog (WP with the Coppermine Integration plugin) will make inserting photos from the gallery quicker and easier, so I should be able to keep up with the whole thing without a whole load of fiddly copy-pasting and so on.
- Be more structured in my posting in general – start doing the Friday Five again, for example, so that I know that I have specific things to be posting about, rather than a big blank space to fill with randomness. Not that randomness is bad… I just want more of a mixture of, er, stuff.
- Therefore, try to be posting 2 – 3 times a week:
- A weekly Project 365 update.
- The Friday Five, or some other meme or similar that makes me think a bit.
- And most importantly, knitting / spinning / other stuff content. All the stuff I usually post, but more regularly, and with photos more often, and … things. Hopefully some things about the course I’m starting soon on Bipolar. We’ll see how it goes.
I think all that’s do-able and should be fun. I have to get the new website version up and running first, of course, but I pretty much have all the background stuff for that done now. It’s just a matter of importing the content from the old site version and making any edits that I want… and there are bound to be lots of those since I haven’t done any actual updates on this site in forever. The thing that will probably take the longest will be importing the several hundred entries from this blog – I’ve actually already done the old-old one (“So Far So Good”) and that went well enough. I’m trying to decide what to do about redirecting the old pages to the new ones… it’s going to be fiddly so I think I might not bother on the most part. This is hardly a big-name website, after all. My own internal links can be done gradually and I can set up some redirections for pages I know have outside links, like my Knitting Patterns category. If I find I get a lot of hits looking for anything in particular, I can sort it out then. I think that’s the most stress-free way of going about it.
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