Archive for December, 2006

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When I was your age . . .

Saturday, December 16th, 2006 Part of the idea of this blog was to go over some of my rookie mistakes and hope that somewhere along the line the information here might help others avoid the problems I have encountered, so with that in mind I thought I would cover email accounts. When I first went online it was by using my mobile (cell) phone as my modem, and one of the first things I did was to get myself an email account, which was a good idea as when I went to sign up for a broadband account the next day they wanted me to supply an email address with my information. So far so good. When my broadband account was set up my ISP provided me with another email account to go along with it, and as this was a bigger better one I thought I would use it as my main account. Mistake. I hadn't thought it through properly. It was only 15 months later as I contemplated the various offers other broadband providers were making that I realised that if I was to change providers I would lose my email account with my previous provider, the account that I had been using as my main one for over a year! This meant tha I could lose a whole load of important mail, that all the sites I used or subscribed to would need to be notified and that any products/software that I had registered with that address would have to be told and that I could potentially lose contact with some of my friends, some of whom only had my email address by which to keep in touch with me. When I realised this I then decided to try and get myself another bigger and better email account, preferably a gmail account. These weren't the easiest of things to come by as you had to be invited to open an account with them by someone who already was using the service. Luckily I found someone on one of the forums I use that was prepared to send me an invitation. Then began the long process of notifying all the relevant people and changing my address on the forums I use etc. Eventually I got there though, and now I always make sure that I never use the account set up by my ISP for anything except keeping in contact with the providers themselves. The lesson learnt? Never use the account you are given by your ISP as your main account.

Favicons

Friday, December 15th, 2006 If you take a look above there should now be a little image in your browser bar. The picture is what is called a favicon.ico (Favourites icon), and I think it looks kinda neat. My favicon I put the picture together using Photoshop Elements 2.0, but I still needed to save it as a .ico file which isn't one of the extensions used by this software. I am not sure if the later versions can handle this format, but for a while there I was stymied. Eventually I found this handy little site, chami.com, that has a favicon generator that is free to use. I also discovered that the Irfan viewer does handle .ico files, and as this too is free I thought I would download it and give it a whirl. It seems to work pretty well. If you dont want to make your own favicon but fancy using the standard WordPress logo used on their own sites you can download it from wordpress.org/support by entering favicon.ico in to the search box and hitting enter. Setting the favicon up to work properly was a bit of a trial for my level of competence, but as you can see I got there in the end. Once you have uploaded your icon via your FTP client to your root folder you then have to insert this script: <link rel="shortcut icon" xhref="http//yoursite.com/favicon.ico" mce_href="http//yoursite.com/favicon.ico" > in to the header section of the theme you are using. If you decide to change themes don't forget to add the script again!

This Week:

Friday, December 15th, 2006 I just thought I would try and do a weekly list of what I am up to:

Browncoat Backup Bash

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 Just as an update to my previous post on Flangate, I wanted to say that it looks as though all the 'coats that made it there had a grand old time hanging out with the cast and other people involved with the show, and not just Serenifly folks but other friends of Joss too. Also I thought it would be good to post a link to an account of one of the attendees/organisers as well to give a much more detailed account of the weekend. Browncoats rock!

Flanvention 2

Friday, December 8th, 2006 As a Joss Whedon fan and bona-fide Browncoat I am a little upset for my fellow "Firefly" fanatics, the "Flan 500", who have traveled from all over the world to attend what should of been one of the great events in our fandoms history, only to get screwed over. About a week ago the "organisers" of this event declared that there were some problems arising financialy, but with only a week to go until the event they were still hoping to pull something out of the bag. This seemed a bit weird as this was a "Sold Out" event with all the money already paid up-front. Still, the fans hoped and prayed and it was announced, to everyones relief, that the event was on still, not to worry. Then with two days to go it was announced that the event was cancelled. Then half an hour later to disregard the previous message as the event was still on. Much confusion ensued. Finaly, with quite a few attendees already at the convention hotel and many other delegates in transit, there was a final announcement that: "Booster Entertainment apologizes for the great inconvenience, but due to unforeseen circumstances, Flanvention is cancelled. An official notice will be posted within 10 days." They have now taken their website offline and (probably) gone in to hiding. The Southern California Browncoats and many others are trying to put together a back up bash/shindig, but at such short notice they will face many problems. To the delight of the fans the cancellation of the event has not stopped some of the Firefly stars from turning up. Adam Baldwin and Mark Sheppard, you, sirs, are true Big Damn Heroes! I hope all you guys have some fun this weekend.

Widgetised!

Monday, December 4th, 2006 See that spinning cube to the side? It's got a few of my flickr photos on it, and it is my first real proper widget all safely installed. I finally feel as though I am getting somewhere. . . now if only I can work out where that "somewhere" actually is.

Modifying Themes

Monday, December 4th, 2006 Well, at the end of last week I changed my theme to one that allows for widgets, I was quite pleased with this one but I have modified the top bar slightly. I liked the Black White and Red theme as it suited my (bad) sense of humour, as in "What is Black White and Red/Read all over?", it also goes quite well with the "Firefox 2" theme that I am using at ther moment, "rubyFox", but I wanted alittle more red at the top than was provided. Looks Shiny to me!

Finding my feet

Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 I am still getting used to this new bit of independence, still trying to find my way around with all the options available with plugins and widgets, the widgets requiring that you have a theme that allows these extensions, available HERE. At the moment I am mostly still "window shopping". It's good to know I am not alone in this, though. I came across the Just-Thinkin' blog today, seems the guy has just got past my stage and got a handle on some things that I will need to learn, guess I could be popping round to pick his brains at some point. ;-)

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