My Life

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This Week . . .

Friday, December 22nd, 2006 Letting you know just how mundane my life is. Also, just to let you know, most of the links will take you to amazon.co.uk if you want to purchase these items, they are affiliate links for my account. Any of the links taking you through to other sites where you can purchase the items are just provided for your convenience, not for my commercial gain.

Blogger Upgraded

Friday, December 22nd, 2006 So they have upgraded Blogger, huh? I haven't been over there very much lately, most of my time has been spent working on this WordPress site and trying to keep up with my life in general. Over the next couple of weeks I will be having a bit of a twiddle with that site, just seeing what the bells and whistles sound like. I will be using the Windows Live Writer to keep that site updated too, hopefully that will encourage me to post a little more! It still doesn't quite seem to come up to the standard of WordPress, but at least they are headed in the right direction now. You can check it out in my Blogroll under Browncoatstevieb.

Christmas

Monday, December 18th, 2006 As I was making my way through town this morning I noticed this poster in a coffee shop window: Christmas Photo Now this got me thinking, as I thought I recognised the sentiment that the company was putting to the fore, "eat, drink & be merry". I was pretty sure that the next bit of the quote went on to say something along the lines of, "for tomorrow we die", the Greek philosophy propounded by Epicurus (341-270 B.C.), which most people would not consider to be very Christmassy at all. But once I got home and did a little research on the ideas behind this way of thinking I began to feel more and more that it was possible this poster might be the most truthful one I was ever likely to see. The philosophy centres around the idea that the pleasure you, the individual, is the sole or chief good in life. As learning, culture, and civilization as well as social and political involvements could give rise to desires that are difficult to satisfy and thus result in disturbing your peace of mind, his followers were discouraged from pursuing such. Knowledge was sought only to rid oneself of religious fears and superstitions, primarily the fear of god(s) and of death. This began to sound more and more like the way people live their lives today. The philosophy was also characterized by the complete absence of any principles, in fact lawbreaking was counselled against simply because of the shame associated with detection and the punishment it might bring. Never break the 11th Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Get Caught"! Virtue in itself was held to have no value and was beneficial only when it served as a means to gain happiness. In fact, reciprocity was only recommended, not because it was right and noble, but because it paid off. Friendships rested on the same selfish basis, that is, the pleasure resulting to the possessor. The conclusion I was drawn to was that Epicurus and his philosophy still has a strong hold on us today. Regardless of whether or not you celebrate this coming holiday as a Pagan festival (which it is) or as a Christian one (which it isn't) the main thrust has become the commerciality of it, what people as individuals can gain from it, the pleasures that it affords. At one point the Christmas celebrations at least had the good of the poor and needy as its central theme, with those such as Charles Dickens in modern times using it as a means to promote a better social consciousness. Not so much in our secularised times.

This Week:

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

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. ;-)

Happier

Thursday, November 30th, 2006

So I realised that the main problem that I had the second time around with my instal of Microsoft's VWD was that in my previous uninstall the .Net 2.0 framework had been uninstalled, not by me directly, at least I am pretty sure I didn't, but more likely as an associated part of the uninstall of one of the other components. Possibly.

As for the posting of an image, Johannes recommended in his comment that I try the Direct Upload and that seems to be working fine, though on my initial instal it didn't seem so keen on the idea. So as a tester, me: mesmlav



Bad computer day.

Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 So me and my computer have been having a bad day. I only wanted to try and install a couple of freebie programmes, one of them being the Microsoft Visual Web developer 2005 (Express Edition), and so far all I have gotten is a load of errors, removed it once and tried installing again, now I am just gonna give up. I did manage to install BlogDesk which seems to run pretty well, but I can't seem to configure the picture up-load through my FTP, it uploads the pic fine, but the file never ends up where I want it to be, no matter how carefully I lay out the path. Still, it's probably just me rather than the programme. I will have another go tomorrow when I am feeling a little less frustrated.

Confuddled!

Sunday, November 26th, 2006
So I had a little look around at some of the suggested hosts, I liked the idea of BlueHost but when I got as far as paying for it and realised they wanted all the cash up front . . . well I did a runner. I took a look at Yahoo too, seemed they were quite happy to take my money monthly, but still, paying out seemed like such a big step to take on something that seemed to work pretty good for free.


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