Category: Webby Admin

Future changes…

I’ve spent most of today playing around with the new version (2.7) of WordPress with a view to moving this site and blog over to using it in the new year. I love it! I liked the previous versions, but this one is even shinier, and so much more intuitive to use than the newer versions of MT for me. Sorry, SixApart… I’ve been using MT for almost exactly five years, but it’s just not for me any more. I’m going to keep my LJ though, so I’m not completely decamping ;-)

The main trouble with the changeover is going to be preserving permalinks for my blog entries, and recreating my tags. Those, I can’t import. Everything else seems to go across fine, which is good. I’ve already imported the entries from my old blog to test it out, and installed a few useful plugins. Next thing is to create a design / theme. Whee :-)

Of course, I’ll also have to re-theme my photo gallery… I should probably upgrade the version of that, too. I wonder if it’d be easier to do that, or to use a WP gallery plugin and run it all from the one place. Hmmm. It’d muck up all the images on this blog if I changed the gallery to something new, though. Oh dear, the agony of choice!!

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!

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!

Reconnected.

Oh thank …. well, whoever that guy was in 2nd line support who finally figured out what the problem with my internets was. Which was that when BT had done some work at my local exchange on the day I lost my connection (Sat 26th), they had either deleted or not re-added (depending on what they’d been doing) my ISP’s domain to the list of ones that are allowed to connect. I spose no-one else uses that particular domain for their log-in round here – either that or it’s specific to each broadband enabled line. Actually, that would make more sense. Anyway, they’ve now put it back on the system and voila, I can connect. It’s liek magic, only with teknolegdgy *nods* I told them it was an authentication problem the first day it went wrong, but it took 10 days to get someone to figure out exactly where the trouble was. To be fair, the fact that BT were doing work on my exchange threw them off the scent so I had to wait for all sorts of tests and then a BT engineer to come out because everyone thought it was a line problem that just looked like an authentication thing… oh well. All better now!

So anyhow, I should probably get on with uploading the many many photos I have to put up, both for Project 365 and for my knitting progress. Which there has been lots of! I finished the Hedara socks and I’ve taken my Bigga jacket out of hibernation and begun the sewing up of that. Plus I’m still plugging away on the Chevron scarf of DOOM. Scarf in fingering weight = Never Again, as I think I’ve said before. But anyway, that’s all for another post really. I’m off to bed.

Internetless

I’m internetless! Well, obviously not this instant: right now I’m using a computer in C. House to make this post. But at home my broadband died on Saturday afternoon and hasn’t come back yet. Argh! It’s driving me potty. It doesn’t appear to be anything at my end that’s the problem, and my ISP has checked everything at their end as well. So it looks like it’s a problem on the phone line disrupting my ability to connect. :-( I don’t know how long it’ll be until I get back online from home again. What’s almost worse about this is that I only had my broadband upgraded (for the same price I was paying already, mwahah) to glorious speeds only last week. And now, kersplat! No internets at ALL. I don’t think it’s related to the upgrade – it was working fine for several days, and I technically have a perfectly good connection still. I just can’t connect to my actual ISP. Apparently it’s a line fault, so BT have got to check it out. Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long.

On the plus side, I’ve got loads of knitting done – I’m pretty much done on the gusset of my Hedara sock, having started from the ribbing just a few days ago. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone! And while I’ve been knitting, I’ve been catching up on season 1 of Alias, which I haven’t watched for ages and ages. But today I’m having withdrawal, so it’s back to the internets I come. However, there are other people waiting to use these machines, and even though I’m a speedy typer, I have other stuff to do. So I’d better get going. Let’s hope I’ll be back soon!

Where was I?

Both figuratively / mentally and literally…. um…. yes. My train of everything is well and truly lost! Let’s try and get back on track, shall we? This is probably going to be a massively long post, I warn you now! There’s also going to be a fair bit about mental health stuff, so feel free to skim :-)

So, starting from when I vanished back in December… well, for the three weeks leading up to Christmas I was pretty much knitting constantly. So much so that I cramped up my shoulder and ended up with an ouch-y left index finger joint! But eek, I had to get the Christmas knitting done!!! Well, as I already mentioned, I didn’t quite succeed, but I did get Mum’s Fetchings done, and I had a scarf finished that I gave her as well. Also within that time, I went to visit C for the weekend, and having been manic not too long beforehand, I think I ‘overworked’ myself, because once I got home again, I when I wasn’t knitting, I was sleeping. Zzzz!

Then, this site was down from 17th – 26th-ish December because of a server crash. It took the hosting company a while to be able to recreate the accounts and then restore the files. The flat files were about 6 weeks old but the databases were all up to date, so I’ve been able to easily restore the things that were still missing (photos, mainly). So that’s all good. Of course, during that time I had a million posts I wanted to make, and now I don’t remember what they were about ;-)

After Christmas, I crashed like a …. crashed out thing for a good ten days. Everyone tends to, I think, but annoyingly I can’t do anything by halves, so I hit a depressive slump with it: didn’t get up or eat or anything really. I slept, or I read – I got through about 15 books, actually. But mostly I slept. Luckily, I’d arranged with Clara, Ally & co. for them to come over for New Year’s. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have done anything for that… and if I’d been up to phoning them to cancel, I probably would have. But as it happened, Clara rang me and just asked me what time they should turn up. I don’t think she knew I was down, but that really is the best way to deal with me when I’m like that. Don’t leave me room to get out of things! So I pulled myself together, tidied up, and sorted out some nibbles and the like. We had a good time – just a chilled out evening, chatting and playing with little M. :-) After that, I was still down for a few more days, but I started to pull up again at the weekend after C helped me with a plan to get me firing on all cylinders again. Hooray!

Since then, I’ve posted my resolutions, which I’m doing OK with in general, and I’ve started Project 365. Mentally, I’ve cycled into a more manic phase, but overall I’ve been mostly within ‘normal’ parameters. I’ve also done something that I’d been sort of putting off for some time – I’ve gone and registered with the drop-in centre down the road. I think I was resisting it because part of me felt that only people with a “real disability” needed to go to somewhere like that. Or perhaps with a more severe disability than I like to perceive myself having, I don’t know. Ah, denial! I thought I was over you, but no! Anyway, it’s a really nice place, and I can go there as often as I want or need, to use whatever facilities I want to. Mainly, I think it’ll be useful for me to have somewhere to pop in when I know that I’m starting to slide one way or another and need to just be around other people to ground myself, and also it’s good to know that the support and advice services are there if I need them. And I have to admit that it’s a huge plus that it’s literally a minute’s walk (or less) from my front door. They do food too, very reasonably, so if I can’t cook, I can eat there. And I got to chat with three other people with bipolar while I was there, and it’s just kind of nice to have that face to face contact with others in the same boat. So yes. I’m going to keep that up.

Hmm, I think that kind of covers it. I’ve been working away on my WIPs, but I’ll talk more about that in a different post (with progress pics, whee). Oh, and I seem to have my sleeping pattern back to normal, so it’s back to the gym and everything this week as well. I missed Knit & Natter the Saturday before last, but my friend M is coming over tomorrow, and I’m planning to go this coming weekend. Now all I have to do is stick to the plan, but also not overdo it!

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.

Project 365 #1 – Day 1-6: 10th – 15th Jan

I mentioned in my last post that I was thinking about doing Project 365. A couple of days later I decided that if I was going to do it, then I’d better just start before I started thinking about it too much. So I did.

Which means that I will, all going well, be posting a photograph for every day from 10th January 2008 to 9th January 2009. I’m planning to make a post every five days or so. In actual fact, I might post more than one photo for some days – this is to stop myself getting mired in indecision! I’ve set up a specific folder in the photo album for the set of photos to go in, as well. I won’t be putting them on Flickr or adding them to any group sets there, though I have joined the Ravelry group for 365-ers, and I’m intending to join the webring.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling on the theory. On to the photos (click ’em for the full size versions):

Continue reading “Project 365 #1 – Day 1-6: 10th – 15th Jan”

Phew!!

Right now, I’m feeling the urge to run all the way to Dublin and physically cling to my webserver. Oh yes. You might have noticed that my site disappeared for a while there. As did most of my email. The old server crashed and died, and it took quite a while to determine that it was dead forever, and then transfer everything to a new server. It probably doesn’t help that I have multiple domains on here. And once the data was restored, I had some work to do at my end, recreating database usernames, cron jobs, email accounts, resetting file permissions. But at last, here we are: I think I have everything back except for some of the photos in the album. And those, I can re-upload, no problem. Yay!

So, er, Christmas was good! I had a lovely one, although I was a bit zonked out today. My knitted presents went down well, although I didn’t manage to finish Emily’s Chevron Scarf – I showed it to her so far. I probably would have got it done, but I’ve been having ouchy-finger-joint issues. Bah. However, Mum liked the Fetchings I made her, and the scarf – a sparkly gold one – that I gave her as well. Pictures soon!

I’m planning to go to the gym with the bro tomorrow (assuming he’s remembered I said I’d go too!) and get my new year’s resolutions underway early. *g* I haven’t been over there for a while, although I do belong, and I need to get back into the swing of it.

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.