I’ve just launched the companion site to flotsky.org, flotsky.com. It’s basically a place for proper bloggy type posts about things, rather than random stuff on my mind like here. Think of this as still my personal site, and flotsky.com as stuff that isn’t just personal. I think that’s a reasonable divide. Go have a look and see what you think. I found a nice theme for it for now too.
Tag: blog
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Blue and Moo
So I decided to change the theme of this blog to something a little more, well, plain and befitting of my current mood for minimalism. I’ve moved to using the Compositio Theme for WordPress, which I like as a nice clean starting point. I’m hoping to firstly grey it up a little, then I might see about adding a few little extra things too. It also looks rather nice on the iPhone, and is legible even without zooming in (well just about, and I don’t have great eyesight).
I also received my Moo cards today, little rectangular business cards with an assortment of my own photographs from Flickr on them. Very please with the results. Only using them to have my blog and email-address on, and for vanity, rather than actual business.
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Like the new look?
I’ve just smartened a few things up on the blog, and made it so the header image changes from page to page (there aren’t loads, and it’s sort of random, so it won’t happen every time). Pleased with it, been meaning to get round to it for ages. I will probably add some more images soon.
I had the opportunity today to walk around the roof of our new building at work. I’m kicking myself because I was thinking of bringing in my proper camera to take some pictures around the new building, and decided I’d leave it until later in the week. Still, it was a good view, and I took a few with my phone that came out alright. Have learnt my lesson, and will take it in tomorrow and plead for another opportunity.
I’ve cut down by quite a bit the amount of time it takes me to get to the new place in the morning, and I was still being careful, so it looks like with a bit of preparation I can end up getting up at nearly the same time I was before. I can’t afford to miss my bus, as unlike the old route they are every half hour in the morning, rather than in bursts of four or five every ten minutes. I should be able to manage that I suspect.
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Was I a proto-blogger?
I’ve been blogging a while, strictly speaking going back to 2002 (I’ll say something worthwhile one of these days). If you go back to the start of this blog, you’ll see I have entries from 1985. However these are absolutely from my earlier teenage diary. A few years later though, is when I believe I started blogging.
I used to keep a small red diary. All the names were sort of changed to protect the innocent. And it had a readership. I can’t remember how it started, but I used to carry it everywhere with me, and I think someone asked one day. And I let them. It was sort of anon, and kind of random, and most of the people that read it were mates that knew most of it anyway. I had a readership. I think it was during English lessons it would happen the most, one of my friends would ask to read it, and they would go off with the diary to catch up on my life to date. I didn’t have commenting, which I think would have been one of the crucial things to have really made me like a blogger back then, but I was pretty close. I still have this, and there are a few entries from that period on here somewhere (may have a dig later on).
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Modern Blogger is Rubbish
Blogger has gone to seed. I was doing some coding work last night on a little project in both Blogger and WordPress, and the differences were very noticeable. For one, the Blogger servers were being just rubbish, and sometimes I couldn’t log in. I was told at one point I had JavaScript disabled, and then a quick refresh proved I didn’t.
These sorts of problems are not frequent really, but happen every month or two. And do seem to be down to volume. Google just don’t seem to be expanding the service at all.
And that goes for technical development as well. Have a look at WordPress sometime. Categories for posts. A much clearer interface for editing your template, rather than one huge single text file. Plugins. A sidebar widget that is being developed at the moment, to make editing this important area of blogging real-estate much easier.
Then come back to Blogger, and realise that you are not only missing these, but that there is nothing that has been added for well over a year. Just stagnation. Oh alright, we got a few new templates, but that was it. I want all the above things, and more, I want a WYSIWYG template editor, made in lovely swishy AJAX, I want lots of integration with the other Google services. Show the public events on my Google calendar? Yes please. Lots of potential there, but it just isn’t being realised. I’d even pay for it, I’d have a pro account if it meant I got better service and features. However I just don’t see any progress coming at the moment, so I am probably moving this to WordPress in the next few months.
