Category: Blog admin

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.

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.

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

Finished Regia socks: click for larger picture! 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:

Continue reading “Completed Regia socks”

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.