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Darnit

mim — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:15:18 +0000

So I worked out what the underlying issue was that was preventing me uploading images, and so all my historical stuff is fixed. And then, in a fit of being clever, I added a broken link checker.

All _my_ links are pretty much OK, but the internet has moved on and all _their_ links have changed. HOW DARE THEY!

I realise from looking at my tag cloud that I’m spending more time whinging about being nerdy than I am talking about my life. But that’s about right, I guess. What’s my geek ratio? 3:1? More?

Oh blimey

mim — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:16:05 +0000

I’m at work, and was in the process of creating a new document, when it asked me if I wanted to post on my blog. “That’ll never work” I thought. It’s slightly scary that it does. Genuinely not sure about this joined up computing lark, the distinction between private and public, official and unofficial is just getting too blurred.

Or, if I embrace the joined up, look! It even has my categories! But where are my tags, eh? At least do it properly.

Another step closer

mim — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:59:59 +0000

So I’ve taken down the old blog, and now I’ve just got to move over the pictures and sort out some file locations. Easy. Remind me why I do this again? Wouldn’t giving up and using a hosted service be … Continue reading →

My hand has been forced!

mim — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:28:00 +0000

I’ve been wondering whether to get my finger out and blog more for ages, but now it looks like my hand has been forced.

I like running my own domain, rather than handing over the controls to my blog tool, but the choices are limited. Blogger has been OK, but they stopped adding cool stuff unless you go with their solution. I’ve been researching alternatives, and it looks like a full solution is the way to go if I want to continue having control.

And now, I get an email from blogger saying they’re withdrawing the service I use anyway. NO! Now I have to stop talking about it, and actually get it done.

Of course, given the vast number of posts I’ve made over the past year, I do wonder if it’s worth it at all. My micro-updates tend to be on Facebook, and by the time I’ve thought of something that’s actually worth writing about on here, I’ve forgotten or the moment has passed.

This is where I admire the Fakir – he still handrolls his own site, but more importantly he still bothers to update it, even if it is all about the odd films he’s watching.

So, watch this space for a nice sparkly new look, coming soon.

Blogger, Twitter, Facebook

mim — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:29:00 +0000

So many places to put updates. I’ve found that sometimes it’s easier to just dump something onto my Facebook status, when once I would take the time to come and update the blog. And then Twitter came along which confused things even more.

Should my Facebook status be more or less detailed than my Tweets? Should either hint at things that would be covered in more detail in the blog – if I ever wrote it?

And don’t even get me started on whether I should stick with self-hosted Blogger, or whether I should move onto something like Drupal or WordPress.

Either way, I’m going to be making more of an effort to keep this up to date. If Jim can manage it, I can.

Test Post

mim — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 10:36:00 +0000

On editOK, I’m a fuckwit. Four little letters. h t t p. Doh! Fakir, you’re a genius.

Having some problems with images. They work fine when they’re on this first page, but blogger breaks the links when it archives. I could understand it when I was using relative references, but I tried using absolute references and it still breaks them (www.silvershed.co.uk/files/picture.jpg gets changed ‘helpfully’ into www.silvershed.co.uk/archive/www.silvershed.co.uk/files/image.jpg).

Gah!

FFS, I’ve just used their own add image tool, and it’s still managed to break. Source = www.silvershed.co.uk/files/miriam_small.jpg, but it’s trying to display www.silvershed.co.uk/www.silvershed.co.uk/files/miriam_small.jpg!

There’s got to be a setting I’ve missed somewhere.

And on edit again – now none of these links work because we’ve changed how we do things. But I’ve left this up anyway.

You knit what?

mim — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 13:17:00 +0000

Everyone knows that knitting is the new rock and roll (or whatever), thanks to people like Stitch’n'Bitch. But this means that some people are knitting things that they really shouldn’t.

Check out You knit what? and try not to laugh too hard.

I personally like this cat:

You know he hates you all…

(If you want to see some really interesting knitting, look at this ebay item. Wow.)

Wow

stuart — Thu, 12 May 2005 09:56:00 +0000

Isn’t it strange how we get wrapped up in our own little world. Here I am adding an entry into a blog that is accessible by anyone on the internet and yet I manage to forget that when I am writing it (not in this case obviously). The reason that it has just hit me is that someone called Damo posted a comment about a previous entry.

This is one of the few comments we have had as mostly it is just our friends who read this to check up on us and see that we are alright with no major catastrophes. This is the first time it has become apparent that anyone out there other than people we know actually reads this stuff. Then you get into the self doubt “should I make it more interesting?”, “is it interesting?”, “do people like me?”.

It is like one of the first times I posted on a message board. I was trying to ask what I considered a sensible, and for me an important, question. I was expecting responses letting me know what I could do to resolve my problem (and I did get some of these). Several of the responses basically told me not to worry about it and that I really should get out more.

That shocked me at the time. It was, for me as an adult, the first time that someone was critically assessing exactly what I had written and was responding with no emotional attachment to me and was telling me exactly what they thought. It was a bit like putting a small piece of myself into the public domain and asking what people thought about ME.

This is one of the differences that the web brings. With the right tools you are able to communicate with everyone and anyone anywhere. What that also brings with it is the necessity of making sure that we are communicating what we mean to communicate. face to face and within our own cultures this has been traditionally easy to do with the various facial and tonal nuances that we add to the message.

Facelessly over the web where it is possibly different languages and cultures it is harder. You have to include all the relevant info and make sure you have clearly expressed yourself. This is where things like smilies came from I suppose, there was no way to include a smile with a sarcastic comment until the smiley came along, adding emotion without making it dry to the reader.

After writing all this I cannot remember for the life of me whether there was a point to any of the previous ramblings but I felt it was important to share them with you. Thank you to Damo (who ever you are) for just letting me know that there is more than just my friends out there on the internet.

Also to Damo, do you think that the sorts of people who would discriminate on the basis of email domain are also the ones at school that bullied other people? The sorts of people that had to have the latest (whatever it was at the time) to make sure that that they had it to make sure they were interesting to their friends?

To Ned; is it that you discrimnate or that you make assumptions? I had a dilemma at university as I thought for a while that I had started to become a racist towards one group of people. In the end I realised that I was not a racist. I had become prejudiced towards them because of their behaviour and started to stereotype/make assumptions based on my experiences of them. With one you can get over it, with the other your opinion can never be changed.

Blogging – wow how cool is that

stuart — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 09:34:00 +0000

Blogging. Always thought it sounded a bit weird but here goes anyway.