On Top of the World

My computer is really pissing me off. Virtually every time i turn it on, I have to turn it off and back on again because it doesn’t turn on properly the first time. I’m worried that one day it won’t start at all, so I’m in the process of burning all my photos (and eventually other important stuff) to DVD. I’ve lost everything off my computer once before, and I don’t want it to happen again so now is the time to pull my finger out and get organised.

The first disc has been burning for a bit over an hour, and it’s still got 19% to go. Then there’s another disc to burn, which will probably be another hour. Bah, waiting sucks!

But, once the burning is done, I’m going to get stuck back into my photo gallery (there’s a link in the sidebar too)! I’ve moved it to a subdomain and upgraded my version of Coppermine, and I think the transition went very well indeed. *pat on the back for me*

I’ve got photos all over the place, and some duplicates I think, so I’m going to put everything in the one spot, even though it’s going to take forever. Most likely I’ll do 60% of it and think that’ll do because there’s only so much photo manipulation you can do before you start getting bored. But something I will do is put up photos of the overseas holiday we went on last year! Yes, we’ve only been back for 10 months - have some patience, ok? I’ve set up the albums, so now I just have to resize everything and plonk it on.

Jack has decided that he’s had enough of those tablets. It was quite difficult to get him to take it tonight, and my hands are getting somewhat scratched, so I think I have to come up with a new strategy. If he decides that after every week he’s going to be difficult, there’s three new strategies I have to come up with before the tablets are finished. And he’s sick of the food now and doesn’t want to eat it any more. I keep trying to get him to eat because if he takes the tablet on an empty stomach, it can upset it and make him sick. It’s all a bit depressing, and I can’t wait until the month is over so I can go back to being relaxed and enjoy my cats rather than worrying about how much I’m traumatising him by making him take drugs he doesn’t want, and how much of the skin on my hands will still be there after it’s all done.

*****

You may have noticed that the first word in my post looks like a link. I’ve installed a new plugin where you can make a list of words or phrases that you use often (but that people might not be familiar with), and the plugin pops up a tooltip with a bit of information when you hover your mouse over it. Since I’ve been talking about my cats lately, I thought that that was a perfect use for it, so I’ve put a picture of him in it. I’ve also made one for Frisky. So now I can just mention them without wondering whether I should explain every time who they are, because the tooltips are there.

*****

It was another good lesson at tafe tonight. I mentioned that last week’s class was spent watching people doing their assessments. Today saw the rest of the class doing theirs. To follow on from the wine and cheese from last week, someone showed us how to make cocktails. She made a Mad Cow and Japanese Slipper, and gave us all a little sample of each. I really enjoyed the Japanese Slipper, and think I should get some Cointreau so I can make one (I’ve already got the Midori!). Yummy.

As you may have noticed, I’ve made a few changes to my template. I’ve kind of gone a bit bananas with plugins as well.

So… the most obvious change is the new themes. Or, rather, the ‘new’ themes, since I tried to get back some of the ones I had before I upgraded. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m so happy that I’ll mention it again - installing themes and plugins was so much easier now that my version is consistent. It was just so much smoother, although some designers didn’t code their themes consistently so I made a couple of changes to neaten them up. Anyway, at the moment I have 3 themes, and you can change them by clicking on the links at the bottom of the sidebar. Whichever one you choose should be remembered for the next time you come back. Most likely I’ll add more themes as I find ones I like. Maybe I’ll even try to write my own, but I really have no imagination and every time I try to come up with something, it ends in failure.

I’ve also updated my weather section in the sidebar with the latest version, which has lots of customisable parameters in it and some new icons. I had a teensy bit of trouble with it, but I guess that that’s when being a programmer comes in handy. And speaking of my sidebar, I’ve got my mood back! The original creator of the drawings took down the site last year, but they’ve been revived by someone else, so they’re back again. Originally called Unkymoods, they’re now back as Punkymoods.

The other changes I made are in the commenting. The first thing is fairly major - I’ve taken out the comment verification stuff. Yay! Yes I know you loved typing in a code every time you left a comment, but I’m afraid you’ll have to try to live without it. I’m using a comment security thing embedded in WordPress, and so far it’s going ok. So I’m hoping I won’t have to put the verification back in.

Secondly, I’ve added a little flag next to each commenter’s name according to the country they’re in. It’s not infallible (or so the developer says), but the comments I’ve looked at so far have all had the right flags, so I’m happy. I think they’re quite cute really. If you want it, it’s called IP to Nation.

The final change is one that I’m not sure how much I’ll use (if at all), but it’s there anyway, and if you want to use it, please do! The plugin is called Quote Comment; next to the timestamp in each comment is a link called [Quote]. So if someone posts a comment that you want to refer to in your comment, you click on the link, and the other comment will appear in the comment edit box above your comment.

That’s it for now! I’d write more, but my hands are so numb with cold that I’m having difficulty typing. Time for bed. Aaaah electric blankets are wonderful.

I’m in the process of trying to upgrade my version of WordPress, so if you read this and then can’t get to my blog later, that’s why. Hopefully it will go all right but we’ll see. It will be nice to have an RSS feed that actually works, just for completeness. It hasn’t worked for ages because I didn’t do a proper upgrade last time and have still got leftovers from an old version hanging around. So this time I’m starting from scratch, which I’m hoping will be the easiest way to go about it, rather than wading through all my files, trying to work out what I should keep and what I need to get rid of.

Tafe was good today - we had an assessment, and since I did mine last week it was a relaxing class spent watching other people do theirs. The topic of the assessment was showing the class how to do something that they probably didn’t know how to do, and we had to bring appropriate props for our demonstration. For mine, I made a paper boat (extremely boring but it was all I could think of). I bought some paper and gave everyone a sheet, so they all made a boat as I attempted to sign the instructions. It went well, with most people not having any difficulties, and it was kind of cool after I was done, looking around and seeing all these little boats sitting there.

Oh, brief interruption while I try to upgrade WP. Back soon I hope.

Update: I’m back and it worked! I’ll try to get a more interesting theme shortly, but fortunately everything went as smoothly as could be hoped. Starting from scratch is good, but of course it means I have to set everything up. But now that I’m consistent, future upgrades will be a lot easier (that’s the plan anyway). Oh, if you are subsribed to my RSS feed, it’s now working but you may have to unsubscribe and then resubscribe to get the latest posts (that’s what I had to do when I was testing it).

So, back to what I was saying about tafe. One woman brought everything required to make cottage cheese, and got a couple of ‘volunteers’ to help her out. She even brought crackers and wine, and since I hadn’t had any dinner other than the cracker, I felt a little tipsy after a few sips of wine. I wasn’t the only one, though, because the teacher said she hadn’t had any dinner either and was becoming slightly affected. We only had a tiny bit of wine though, so the effects wore off pretty quickly. But it was the best assessment I’ve been to for a long time.

As you may or may not know, I’ll be going on holiday soon - only three weeks to go! YEAH! Since I’ll be gone for around 5 weeks, I’ve asked some cool bloggers I know to guest post while I’m away. And, wouldn’t you know it, they said yes!

So, starting in 3 weeks, you will be able to read posts by fellow bloggers Fashmagslag, Steph, Nicole and Yayaempress, and incognito - a dear friend of mine who doesn’t have her own blog at the moment (maybe this will make her change her mind) but has kindly agreed to help keep mine warm for me.

Thankyou so much guys! If I get the chance to post while I’m away I will, but if I can’t then I’ll travel happy, knowing that I’ve left my blog in such capable hands

Oh, and if any of you are going to be in London, New York, Los Angeles or Las Vegas in the next month or so and want to meet up, let me know and hopefully we’ll be able to work something out.

I’m drunk again - I had a glass of wine with dinner. Mmmm cheap drunk.

Anyway, instead of having separate pages for photos, I’ve finally got around to setting up a gallery - the link is in the sidebar, or you can click here. I haven’t put captions for everything yet, but I’ve done a couple of the albums, and a lot of it doesn’t really need explaining anyway. I’ll try to do the rest sometime soon, but for now, I hope you enjoy the pics!

I am so FULL. M and I went out to dinner with some friends tonight, to the Red Ochre in the city. It’s a great restaurant, made better by the fact that we had a Festival of Food brochure. So that meant that we got a 3-course meal for $27.50 each. Excluding, of course, the bottle of wine we got and the side dish of mushrooms. But it still worked out a lot cheaper with the brochure, so it was good. But we didn’t get any bread! So we’re tight-arses using a brochure to get a meal, but surely we’re not so repugnant that we’re not worthy of bread? Having said that, though, I was completely stuffed at the end and was ready to fall asleep on the table.

True to my recent (lack of) alcoholic form, I was feeling quite tipsy after one glass of wine. I don’t know what has happened to me over the last 5-10 years or so, but any tolerance I developed for alchohol during my somewhat restrained university years, has completely vanished. I think I’m turning into a fogey, because I’m not really that interested in drinking any more; I like a glass of wine with dinner, but I don’t like being drunk. Someone get me some knitting needles and a rocking chair. Not that knitting makes you a fogey. Oh whatever, you know what I’m getting at.

I’ve been told by a couple of people (literally) that they’ve been having trouble commenting here. Now, with the small number of comments I get, I appreciate every one of them, so today I found a new way of fighting automated comments. So now you don’t have to enter a code any more, but you will need javascript enabled for the comment to post. Other than that, it should work *fingers and toes crossed* The extent of my testing so far has been to write ‘test’ in the box and click Go, and it has posted successfully, but if it doesn’t work for you, please send me an email and let me know. But I hope it does because if it doesn’t then I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry, I’ve tried to fix it! I’m trying to make you happy! We’ll see whether it does block unwanted comments - hopefully it will. If not, then I guess I’ll have to go back to the other way, or find a different one again.

I’ve tried skinning my site… not with any designs I’ve created (yet), but just ones I had already. So if you’re sick of the black template, you can always go back to the poppy one I used to have a while ago. If you find a problem, let me know. And then I’ll cry quietly for a couple of minutes. But after that I’ll try to fix it.

***

A few days ago we got home from work and there was a message on the answering machine. It was from a guy called Sam, thanking us for our help that day after the accident, and saying that even though we might have thought it wasn’t much, he really appreciated it.

As far as we could recall, we hadn’t come to the aid of anyone involved in an accident that day, so we figured it was just a wrong number and let it drift to the back of our minds.

Yesterday when M got home, there was a package that had been delivered via express post. It was a box of chocolates, with a card thanking us again for our help. Obviously the guy hadn’t called the wrong number, as the package had our names and address on it, but there was still a mistake somewhere.

M rang the guy today and found out that he wasn’t sure exactly who had helped him, so he’d made a guess based on where he had the accident. We thought it might have been the people up the road who helped (the ones whose mail we get all the time), so when we went for a walk today, we took the chocolates up there. Noone was home, so we still don’t know if they were the ones who helped, and in the meantime we”re stuck with a box of chocolates that we’re too paranoid to eat because we’re worried they’ve been poisoned (even though they’re still sealed in plastic). Mmmm forbidden chocolate.

I’m writing this on my PDA. Ha, I’m way too sophistocated for email posting - pfft! Straight from the source, baby. WiFi rocks! Except it’s taking ages to write & I’m tired. Goodnight.

I’ve done the upgrade, but as you can probably tell, it’s not quite all working yet. So, in true programmer fashion, I’ll comment out the stuff that isn’t working Hopefully I’ll have everything fixed soon, without breaking it.