Head Rambles

Grandad July 17th, 2008

I am an inveterate meddler.  I like tweaking things.

This week, I have been tweaking this site, and this morning I added a new thingy to the site.

There is no reason for it.  It was just an experiment to see if I could.  And it worked.  Maybe I’ll take it off again sometime, but I’ll leave it for now to see if it locks up the site.

So what did I do?

I added little pictures onto the comments.  I believe they are called Avatars or some such silly name.

So how do they work?  Where do the pictures come from?  How come some people had pictures as soon as I installed the code?

The pictures are associated with your email address, so if you have an email address you can have a picture.  The service I used is one called Globally Recognised Avatars, or Gravatars.

I registered my Gravatar a while ago, and it’s appearing in a lot of places now.  My Woopra software uses it, for example.

If you want a Gravatar, just nip over to the Gravatar site.   You just enter your email address and you can then upload your image.  It can be any image.  That’s all there is to it.  And it’s free.

So nip over and try it.  Then come back here and leave a comment.  That’ll show whether it has worked. 

Or not.

And if you want to install ‘em on your own site, then fuck off and don’t bother me.  It involves writing bits of code, and I’m not going down that road.

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Grandad July 15th, 2008

Nobody is reading this at this time of night, so I can write any old stuff I like.

I have finally started on some housekeeping.

I upgraded Wordpress when I thought no one was looking, but some poor sap came in  in the middle.  It was a bit of a bloody mess when he hit the scaffolding but he is reportedly recovering nicely in hospital.  These accidents will happen.

If anyone notices anything strange about the site, then it is your computer that’s at fault.  Don’t blame me.

I have also cleaned a fair bit of crap off the site in the vain hope that it will load a bit quicker.  Who cares what directories I belong to anyway?

I have also dumped my A-List Blogs.  That was an elitist bit of bullshit anyway, so I am adopting the Animal Farm approach.  We are all equal, but I’m a little bit more equal than the rest of you.

The Awards banners have been moved up, not because I am bragging, but because I was told to.  I have also shifted the Monthly Award badge onto each post, just as an experiment.

I have removed a few dead links, but if I have accidentally removed one or two non-dead ones, then let me know.  For a small fee [€50 notes only.  Non refundable.  Brown envelope], I will reinstate them.

Now I have to decide which links to add.  Oh my God, the power of it!

If anyone wants a link, just let me know.  I will give it careful consideration, before rejecting it out of hand.

You have been warned.

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Grandad July 15th, 2008

Bugger!

There is yet another update floating around today.

Why the hell can’t these people get their act together and produce something that works first time?

Can you imagine a world where every now and again you have to return all your books to the publishers, so that they can be updated?  Or you have to return all your underwear to the shop every month because the stitching isn’t safe?

Anyway…..

The new version of Wordpress is out.

If any of you run your own sites, then upgrading is very easy.  I suppose that’s something to be grateful for?

I just did a trial run on Herself’s site.  She doesn’t use it any more so it’s a great place to see if it goes down in flames.

The first thing I did was to download the new version 2.6 from Wordpress.org.  It’s amazing how many people overlook that step when upgrading.

Next, I connected to her site, and backed up everything.  They say you are supposed to do that in case anything goes wrong.  Who are these wimps?  Don’t they like living dangerously?

Then I deleted most of the files on her server.  This is the tricky bit, because if you delete the wrong ones, you are fucked royally.

The rule I use is to delete everything beginning with ‘wp-’ EXCEPT ‘wp-config.php’ and the folder ‘wp-content‘.  If you delete the former, you are really up shit creek without a paddle, because you will have lost the way into your database, and unless you are very clever, you will have to reinstall the whole damned thing.  Than means you will have lost all your posts and everything else too.  If you delete ‘wp-content’ it isn’t quite so disastrous, but you will have lost your theme, your images and all your plug-ins.

Anyway, having deleted the files, I then uploaded the new version.  All of it.  It asked me if I wanted to overwrite ‘wp-config’ and I let it’.  It only overwrite files that are already there, and that means that themes and plug-ins are untouched.

The last thing I did was to run ‘/wp-admin/upgrade.php’ by typing into the address after grannylosttheplot.com.  It muttered a couple of warnings but I just told it to upgrade, and it did.

I then checked the site.

The fucking thing looked exactly the same.  I hoped there would be some improvements, like better content, or that it would appear in three dimensions, but I saw no difference.  They say that all the improvements are visible in the Admin area, but I haven’t got time to play with her Admin.  There is a page that explains it all, and I’m not going to repeat it.  If you want to see the new features, just head over to here.

I may update this site later, so if you visit and find a pile of scorched rubble, you’ll know I didn’t follow my own instructions.

But I like living dangerously.

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Grandad July 2nd, 2008

Do you get many comments on your blog site?

Do you have a little moment of excitement if a comment arrives?

Do you reply to the comments?

Do you reply to them individually?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to these, then spare a moments silence for this poor woman.

Just take a look at how many comments she got on a little piece she wrote only two days ago.

Now how do you feel about your own?

Heh!

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Grandad July 1st, 2008

It’s a small irritation in the grand scheme of things, but I hate the word ‘blog’.

If I crapped a billiard ball, I would call it a blog.

If I cross-bred a blackbird and a dog, I’d call it a blog.

A Blog.

But I just hate it for what it means now.  It’s a geeky word. It’s a tacky word.  It’s a nerdy word.

‘Blogging’?  Barf!  ‘Blogosphere’?  Shudder!

I have a web camera and was tempted once or twice to make a video instead of typing.  But then this would become a ‘vlog’.  Jayzus!  It gets worse.

Of course, I could turn it into a ‘phlog’ or a ‘moblog’ or even a ’splog’.  All these ghastly terms exist.

Why the hell couldn’t they call it something else?  Something that means something?  Something you can shout in a crowd that won’t be met with sniggers?

I think of this as my own little web site; not a ‘blog’.  The trouble with ‘web site’ is that it gets confused with all the other crap out there.

I could call it my little Show Site, or Shite for short.  I wouldn’t be embarrassed telling people I was a Shite Writer.  Would you?

Has anyone got any suggestions for a better name than ‘blog’?

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Grandad June 28th, 2008

Apparently Head Rambles is now considered amongst the media elite.

You read it here first, folks!

I just received a mail announcing that the Irish Times is to be free of subscription as and from Monday.

The move to irishtimes.com is designed to make the newspaper the dominant media website in Ireland in the 21^st century. The change from a subscription model to a free newspaper on irishtimes.com is a further instalment in the biggest editorial development programme in the history of the newspaper embarked upon last February with the redesign and modernisation of The Irish Times and the launch of new supplements.

Ireland.com is to be rebranded as an entirely new website -

The new ireland.com will combine relevant content across a range of channels, local services and search functionality in a manner that has not been seen in Ireland before. The new site is aimed at Irish internet users or people elsewhere with an interest in Ireland and all things Irish.

The mail was sent to such luminaries as RTE, The Independent, Business & Finance and the Guardian.  There were quite a few radio stations in there too.

And a small clutch of bloggers, including Damien Mully, Twenty Major and [for some strange reason] myself.

I can truly say I have arrived.

I’m on the same mailing list as Pat ‘The Plank’ Kenny.

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