Tag: web design

Here’s the Thing

Some time ago, I hit the point where I just don’t like the theme I’m using any more. In fact, it’s now gone all the way past “don’t like it”. I hate it. H-a-t-e it. I’ve been away from blogging for, you know, years. I have a stack of draft posts I’ve written over that time (some no longer relevant, of course). The main reason I didn’t publish them was, ridiculously, because I don’t like the look of the site. Ewww, can’t put my shiny new words on that thing!

It’s not like it’s difficult to change the theme, either. But using a pre-made theme means it’s not going to be to my exact specifications! Whatever those are. Ugh. So I’ve been meaning to make a new theme, but I haven’t been well enough, and blah blah blah. I may as well just slap a pre-made theme on and deal with it. And if it’s near enough, make a child theme to tweak it. I can’t hate it more than what I’ve got right now, right?

Coding Fun

I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before – probably not, considering how infrequently I’ve actually been blogging!

But anyway.  Coding for fun!  Some time last summer (I think) I discovered CodeAcademy and I’ve been playing around on there ever since.  At the moment I’m going through their revised / new Javascript course, even though I’ve already done the original one.  Because I’m a geek and it’s fun.  I’m also working through the “Code Year” track, and I’m planning to do the PHP and Ruby ones after that.

Codeacademy profile
A bit of my profile.

It’s good for keeping my brain in gear. :-)

Mind you, I haven’t done much over, again, the last six months due to wonky-brain issues – more on that another time.  I’ve just started up again this week, though.  Unfortunately, where I picked up was right at the end of the original JS track, and I’d done something weird with my code.  Oops!  I haven’t tracked the bug down yet, but I’ll go back to it later on.  Doing the easier exercises on the new track should help me get my head back into the right place for that.

The Good, The Sad, and the Dusty

I know, I know.  It’s been ages.  Again.  I won’t try to update on everything that I’ve been up to, so here are five things: three good, one sad, and one dusty.

The Good.

1.  I have a new blog!  What on earth for, when I hardly ever post in this one, you may ask?  Well, this one has kind of got too unwieldy for me, so I’m taking out the ‘Review’ categories that I never use, and narrowing the focus of this blog to be… well, what I actually do post about, which is knitting and bipolar, for the most part.  So no real changes, except to how I think about it.  Never mind, it helps in my weird brain.  So the new blog, Frozensoul.net, is my review blog.  So far it’s all book reviews, but it’s for whatever I feel like reviewing.  TV, movies, music, podcasts, gigs, events, stuuuuuff.  I’ll probably go back to posting general life stuff and fandom rambling at Dreamwidth / Livejournal, as well.  There may be some crossover there, though.

2.  I’m going to be an auntie!  My brother and sister-in-law are expecting a little girl this summer.  Yes, I am knitting.  Mwahahaha!

3.  The doctor (psychiatrist) reckons I’m well enough to start back to work gradually!  So I’m going to be looking into the Permitted Work scheme, and speaking to the Bridge-builders worker at Together, as she has info about all of that.  So far, the vague plan is to get back to freelance web design part time, and see how that goes.  Fingers crossed!

The Sad.

My lovely fuzzy Xandermog has moved on to hog the big sofa in the sky.  He was really ill last year, and he never completely got back to full health, although he was happy and active and pesty up until he got ill again last month.  It was all very quick, and he went peacefully – lovely Adam the Vet did the necessary while I was stroking Xander.  It’s very strange and quiet to be mogless, even though he wasn’t a noisy cat most of the time.  But I’d had him for over 11 years, so I spose I was used to his presence.  I shall probably find a new furry dictator to arrange my life fairly soon.

Xandermog

The Dusty.

I’ve been spring-cleaning.  Or really, I spose it’s getting on towards summer cleaning by now!  It’s an ongoing project.  My allergies aren’t impressed, but I’m sure they’ll be happier with the final result.  I’ve sorted out a whole load of things that I was hanging on to for no good reason – hairbands and scrunchies when I’ve had my hair short for over a year with no intention of growing it again, and so on.  Old make-up, random bits of paper and fabric… so much clutter!  I seem to have all manner of things that I’ve stashed away “just in case” they might come in handy some mythical day.  But no!  I need to get rid so that I can do the re-organisation of my living room that I’ve been planning for months.  I will get it done!

And we’re back

I thought I wasn’t going to get to post today, because the website has been down since about midnight last night, and it wasn’t looking hopeful!  But then my host fixed everything (hooray), and although I had to restore a couple of posts again, at least I had a backup of my own this time.  That’s right, I got cautious.

So today, while I’ve been working on the site design, I’ve only just uploaded it, and… well, a couple of things aren’t quite working yet.  Ah well, try again tomorrow.  I’m happy enough with most of it.

Now, I’m off to bed, as I am library-ing in the morning.  Good night!

Coding, Comments and Connectivity

I’ve been faffing around with the design of the non-blog pages on this site today and yesterday… and I’ve made a right hash of it! That’ll teach me to try modifying someone else’s code rather than writing my own. I’m going to take a step back and do some rewriting – it’ll make more sense to me that way, and hopefully even work!

In other news, today is the start of this month’s IComLeavWe, and marks a year since I first joined that group! Maybe I’ll try for Iron Commenter status this time around. I’ll have a crack, at any rate.

IComLeavWe
IComLeavWe: Join the Conversation

Comments awaaaaaaaaaay! (If only the website will stay up; this server move seems to be taking longer than I expected… Apparently there are now some issues with SQL that’s causing database connection errors. Which temporarily eats this site! Hopefully that will be fixed soon.)

I fibbed

Well, sort of – I said I would post pictures of the finished shawl today, and I haven’t got around to taking and uploading them yet.  What I do have is a sort-of, half-finished, almost new blog design.  Yeah, I know, but it’ll do for now – there will be many more adjustments to come.  It’s a fork of the Thirty-ten WP child theme.  Pictures by me, some things (like the Rav bars) not working yet.  Maybe tomorrow.

All work and no play…

… makes Loopylou something something?  Except it’s not like I do work in the traditional “going to work” sense, so never mind.  The reason I’m vaguely on this topic is that the theme for October’s NaBloPoMo is “Play”.  You can take any possible meaning of the word: playing an instrument, the play’s the thing, the play of something (light on water, for example), or simply playing a game and generally having fun.

I’m a couple of days late in starting, but I shall go from here.  I think for the most part, I’m going to try for the latter interpretation and make it my goal for the month to do at least one serious thing and one fun thing every day, then blog about it here.  That should mean I’ll get necessary things done, but also get a little reward in as well.  I might end up incorporating other meanings of the word, but we’ll see.

I think I’ll also finally play around with a new blog design (or two?), which comes somewhere between the categories – it’s something I’ve been meaning to do, but coding is fun so it’s not going to be any great hardship!

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.

N is for Nothing Much

I seem to have hit the mid-month blogging slump.  Although on the plus side, I’ve also reached the middle of the month and I’ve blogged every day.  Hooray!

Today I went to the Bipolar group / course.  Looks like it’s going to be good, and a nice group of people.  It’s a sort of self management and education course, rather than a support group.  There is one of those, but it’s down in town on a Wednesday evening – that clashes with KnitJam some weeks, and anyway there aren’t any buses after about 6pm.  Which is a bit rubbish.  So anyway, I haven’t been along to that, and I probably won’t.  I’d rather be knitting ;-)

I still haven’t quite solved the problem I was having with the Ravelry progress bars, but it’s near enough so I’m going to stop being so picky now and leave it.  Time to go back to knitting, I think, or possibly spinning.  Although right now, I’m off to bed.

L is for Lazy Sunday

I really have done pretty much pants-all today.  I should make some kind of effort to at least get ready for doing things tomorrow – put the sheets in the washing machine so they’re ready to go, or something.  We didn’t have dinner over at Mum’s today as we usually do on a Sunday, because we’ve met up twice this week already (and are therefore sick of one another ;-) ).  I think the only other thing I really want to do this evening before I go to bed is catch up with yesterday’s Doctor Who episode.  Also, I just realised that Casualty was on.  I’d thought it wasn’t on because of football, but it seems I was wrong.  I expect it’ll get cancelled at some point during the world cup, though.  But anyway, that’s another show I have to catch up with at some time this week.  I love a bit of cheesy hospital soapudrama.

I’ve also been thinking about changing the design for this site.  I could just plonk a new theme (by someone else) on for a while, while I’m coding up my own one.  It’s an idea.  One which I shall have a think about!  Some more.  Yes.

A is for Ambition

I’ve decided that a good way to keep myself going with the daily posting is to do the meme / exercise that I’ve seen on some other blogs, and do a letter of the alphabet each day.  Obviously that leaves four days, so I’ll do a week of alphabet then a day of either something random, or doubling up on a letter.  I’ll decide that part when I get there!

So, A is for “Ambition”.  Which can be broken down into both short and long term goals:

  1. Maintaining the daily blogging through this month, and also doing IComLeavWe at the end of the month.
  2. Possibly do 750words.com (depending on time).
  3. Sort out the photo album on this thing!
  4. New site design (also for here).
  5. Finish at least one knitting project – try sewing up the Menace jumper, for example.  And keep working on the Clapotis.
  6. Make some blog posts updating my knitting progress – what I’ve been doing over the last few months as well as what I’m doing now, since I haven’t posted for so long.
  7. Write up the patterns I’ve designed. Finally!

“Ambition” also works pretty well for the NaBloPoMo prompt for today – I may or may not do these every day, it depends what appeals to me. But the one for today is:

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a teacher.  Boring, I know!  Specifically, I think I wanted to be an English teacher, because I loved reading and writing.  On slightly more mature reflection, I decided that the idea of dealing with a classroom full of teenagers was an appalling one, so I changed my mind to librarian.  Needless to say, I’m in neither profession now, although I have done some one-to-one music tuition and enjoyed that.

A bit of a catch up

Oops again: I managed not to blog for yet another whole month, and missed my 8-year Blogoversary in the bargain (thanks for the ‘versary wishes!). So what have I been doing?

Well, I’ve done a couple of websites for my brother and another group in his year at uni, for one of their group projects (no, I wasn’t doing the work for them! They’re allowed to ’employ’ people for various jobs that they can’t cover themselves in the group). Gave me a chance to do something new-ish with embedding streaming video and audio, and play with some CSS3 as well. Hooray!

Talking of websites… I still haven’t got the redesign for this one sorted out. Really must buckle down and do that. I had to delete the (MT) search script for the blog because it was being hammered with spam and overloading the server… hopefully when I switch over to WP I won’t have that problem. However, I want to get the new design done before I change over (so I don’t have to faff around turning this one into a wp theme as well), especially since I’m going to be running the whole site apart from the photo album through it.

Other than that, I have got some knitting done: I finished Em’s mittens, and I’ve even managed to blitz through the rest of the WFS [RavLink], which is actually Mum’s birthday present… from last year. Ahem. But it’s done now! All except a bit of weaving in, and the all-important blocking, that is. I’m thinking I’m going to evict the cat from the bedroom tomorrow, clear off the bed, and use that for blocking it on. If it doesn’t get dry in time, I can always sleep on the sofabed for one night. I’ve actually been quite organised with my knitting so far this year: I still have several unfinished projects, but I’ve put most of them to one side and worked on just two or three… which has meant I’m finishing, or getting towards finishing things! My final pair of SKP08 socks, and the gloves I’ve had hanging around for ages with just one done are both well on their way. No pictures today, though. Site redesign first! Off I go again to work on that :-)

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!!