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8 Things You Don’t Know About Me

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 Who Are You?Lisa Sabin-Wilson was kind enough to hit me with a tag for the "8 Things You Don't Know About Me" meme, and in my usual fashion I have failed to get it done when I said I would. Sorry. Now, in rectification:
  1. Family. I am a middle child, but my younger brother was killed in a road accident when he was 6 (I was 9). My older sister has 4 children (1 boy, 3 girls). Parents divorced, Father deceased. 1 surviving Grandparent.
  2. Alcohol. I like Guinness. It's an acquired taste, I know, but one worth acquiring. It took me to the age of 3 to really get a taste for it. Real Ales, Whisk(e)y and Wine are also acceptable forms of imbibing.
  3. Food. I am generally Vegetarian, but not based on any principle, I just never really liked meats. I like to eat Italian, garlic is one of the greatest tastes to exist. Indian food is fine too. I will eat some white meats on occasion for the convenience of others.
  4. Work. I am self-employed working mainly as a commercial window cleaner, though I do some domestic work on occasion. Though never my own, of course! ;-)
  5. Fun. I love movies, mostly on DVD these days since vandals burnt down the local cinema. I don't watch TV, though I do watch some shows on video/DVD that catch my attention. Or the wife makes me watch. I also love reading, Jane Austen being my favourite. I like Fyodor Dostoevsky too, but I am not all 'high-brow', Sci-Fi and Detective novels are my staple. I am not much of an outdoor person, I have enough of that while working.
  6. Pets. We have Joey Cat, which is my wifes first pet as she never had one while growing up. I have had all the usual suspects: canary, Guinea Pigs, tortoise, goldfish, dogs and another cat.
  7. Religion/Politics. Yes/No. I find religion fascinating and politics boring, except wherein the two interact throughout history in forming each other.
  8. General Life Philosophy. To try and leave things better than when I found them. Success and ambition play no real part in my life or desires, which is probably why I am usually very happy and content and have very little stress in my life.
In the time honoured tradition of the meme I am now required to tag some others, so I will nominate Darren Cronian of Blogged Out.

Getting To Know You

Friday, May 11th, 2007 facebehindtheblogDavid Airey has started a picture meme to help us bloggers get to know one another a little better and scare off give our readers an opportunity to see who is talking to them. I was tagged by Paul Enderson over at Reflections to participate in this, so if anyone wants to sue for mental and or emotional trauma over these images he is the guy to contact. ;-)

StevieB at 5 months

StevieB at 5 months of age. Ahh, bless!

StevieB, big sis' Sally and little bruv' Edward

Me with my big sister Sally and little brother Edward (deceased).

StevieB at 11

StevieB at school, age 11.

scan0003

Laura and myself on our wedding day 27th April 2002

StevieB and Joey Cat

StevieB and our Parrot Cat, Joey (Kitchen being rewired 2003).

StevieB Summer 2006

StevieB May 2006 in Milton Keynes

Obviously some of these images have been scanned, in fact I am pretty sure that only the last one was taken with a digital camera, so sorry for the lack of quality. Also participating in this meme are: Gayla at Mom Gadget Char at Essential Keystrokes Paul at Reflections Rob at 2Dolphins Zep at The In-Sect Stixster Sorry if I have missed off any of the other participants, and I tag Lisa Sabin-Wilson (Revenge!) and Carolyn Manning .

Working With ibox

Sunday, April 8th, 2007 Well I tried to use the Slimbox on this site along with Sweet Titles, but unfortunately there seemed to be some conflict between the two, Sweet Titles stopped working if Slimbox was turned on. So now I have changed to the ibox, which I knew worked at the same time as Sweet Titles because I have used them both with a previous theme. Seems the most sensible thing to do. But one of the main reasons I implemented Slimbox was because I wanted to use the iMP Auto Slimbox plugin, saving me the hassle of remembering to add the rel=ibox tag every time I used an image, so I spent some time this weekend rewriting the plugin to work with ibox. Seems to work OK so far.

V W Karmann

It even adjusts the picture size, another problem I was having with Slimbox, so all in al I am a happy (non-easter) Bunny! :-)



Themes Are The Theme

Saturday, April 7th, 2007 Is everyone talking about themes? I guess it's probably because my awareness has been raised as I am in the middle of changing my own theme, but as of late it appears as though every other post I read is looking at the subject. A couple of weeks ago there was a discussion over at Weblog Tools Collection looking at whether two or three column's was best. Mark had this to say:
I personally prefer one column themes with a minimal second column. Most information that is put on my sidebar(s) is extraneous and could be placed elsewhere. I have also found that some of that information deters from the original content of the blog. The landing page concept is nice for search engine traffic where extra links and information on the content might help you draw in the user to explore some more. However, the face of the blog is cleaner and chock full of good stuff to read with lesser distractions.
It's well worth clicking through to see the various comments, plenty of food for thought there. This weekend Lorelle On WordPress has also raised the issue. Her viewpoint?
I believe that above everything else, your blog must “look” like what you want it to look like. It must reflect who you are and what you blog about. The choice of how many sidebars the blog requires must service those points.
I agree with most of the commenter's over there, it's not how many columns but how you use them. Overall I think that more than three columns can be a bit overwhelming, but all in all it is not how many columns you have, but making good use of them. Provide good content in your main column and make it easy for your readers to navigate your site with the side columns, keep them as uncluttered as possible. Obviously advertisements are the things that ruin most sites looks, this is where real care needs to be taken. So far I have not tried to monetize this site in any real way, a couple of affiliate links in posts but I have kept my sidebars clear. The sites that make real money out of blogging are the ones that manage to keep their blogs from becoming to cluttered, allowing their revenue sources to stand out without being too obtrusive, a neat trick but not easy to pull off. I guess this is why a lot of them have custom made themes. Which leads to the next point. Being discussed over at Pro Blogger is the subject of free themes versus custom made. Guest blogger Mathew Coddington from Net Business Blog had this to say:
At one point in every blogger’s career he or she has to make a choice between investing in a custom template or staying the course with a premade, downloadable template. There are important factors that you have to keep in mind with each ranging anywhere from funds to brandibility.
Most commenter's seem to feel that the middle road is the best way to go, customize a theme you already like, which is the way I usually go. It doesn't take too much skill or time to turn a free download theme into something that no one else on the interweb has. And as a final point on the subject, more and more of the free WordPress themes you see on the WordPress Theme Viewer seem to be sponsored, and there were two posts about this that caught my interest. The Blog Herald looks at the pro's of sponsored themes:
I know several designers who give away WordPress themes to blog hosting services for free, so long as they get a link back to their sites. Now this seems to be a great business model for people who want to monetize their theme creations. Not all bloggers can afford to pay for your themes. But there are companies and businesses that would be willing to foot the bill. In the end, everyone’s happy: users get great themes, designers get good money, companies get inbound links.
But there has been some negative thoughts about it too, as expressed by Small Potato over at WP Designer.com:
sponsored-theme designers are pushing it. Let me remind you I don’t have a problem with sponsored theme designers and the practice of theme sponsorship, as long as the designers make it clear to the users of what they’re downloading. However, sponsored theme designers are really pushing it. Some are blatantly spamming the theme viewer.
Plenty of food for thought on both sides, but once again it seems to be not whatis being done but the way it is done. Anyway, enough from me, what are your thoughts? How many columns do you prefer? Would you pay for a customized theme? How do you feel about the sponsored themes that seem to be more and more prevalent? Let me know in your comments.

Up-grading your WordPress blog just got a lot easier!

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 Thanks to Zirona, an open source consulting company, upgrading your WordPress installation has just become a much easier affair. They have released their "InstantUpgrade" plugin, and having just tested it out on my sandbox site I can only say that it does exactly what it says on the box, my upgrade was pretty much instant and hassle free. Zirona are a company from Aachen, Germany specializing in OpenSource web applications such as WordPress, osCommerce and Joomla. Head on over to their site and check it out for yourselves, you won't regret it. Are there any other "upgrade" plugins you can recommend?
clipped from www.zirona.com

The InstantUpgrade plugin

Fully automatic upgrades of your WordPress

Current version: 0.1 There’s no doubt about it: Upgrading is annoying. You must download the new version, unpack it, delete the old files, copy in the new files, run an upgrading routine. Now for WordPress users, much of this is obsolete. The InstantUpgrade plugin provides is a easy and safe way to upgrade your WordPress automatically with a single click! (It is to say that it needs some preparations, though.) You can upgrade to the latest WordPress version, or you can upgrade to a version of your choice.


Security up-dates

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 There has been a lot of posts around the blogosphere about the attack on WordPress 2.1.1 and the need to update to 2.1.2, hope you have your's done by now! Anyways, the good news is that you will probably need to do another update in the next week, Secunia.com is warning of another vulnerability that could be exploited. Oh happy days.
clipped from secunia.com

Secunia - Stay Secure
Description: Alexander Concha has discovered a vulnerability in WordPress, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site scripting attacks.
The vulnerability is confirmed in version 2.1.2. Other versions may also be affected.


Finding the words

Monday, February 26th, 2007 I am having a little trouble finding something to blog about today. I was planning on writing about the divShare WordPress plug-in, but having set up an account with them and installing it I then found that I couldn't get it to work. Every time I uploaded an image and tried to add it to my post it was rejected and the plug-in interface disappeared, so I guess I will have to try and work out what I am doing wrong before I get to do a post on that feature. So I thought as I couldn't think what else to write about, I would write about writing, looking at finding a subject, how to get your post underway, what it should include and how to wind it up.
  • Finding something to blog about
I start off with my Google Alerts in my e-mails, flagging anything of particular interest in Outlook and clicking through to the links that I feel may be of some interest. Some of these get "flecked" by me to look at again later. Then I go to my Google Reader to see if there is anything going on in the news, in the real world or cyber world, that I might want to blog, "starring" those items of particular interest so that I can find them more easily later on. Having done this I can now usually decide what I am going to use as my subject for the day, leaving me to do a bit of "googling" around the interweb to see what anyone else has to say on the subject, saving some links that might be useful later when I start to write.
  • Beginnings
Now when it comes to actually writing my post I always find that the best thing to do is to begin, which may sound pretty obvious but can sometimes be the hardest step. Have you ever found yourself just sitting there, staring at the blank screen with the cursor blinking? Don't. Just start typing, get something down and go back and change it later if you need to.
  • Content 
Every post should have a beginning, middle and end. Once again, very obvious, but having begun it can sometimes be hard to work out where you are going with an article, where you want to end up. A basic guide should be somewhat like this:
  1. Tell your readers what you are going to blog about
  2. Blog about it
  3. Tell them what you have blogged
In other words, make sure that you let your readers know early on, preferably in your title/first few sentences what the subject matter is. Then tell them about the subject. Then in conclusion do a recap, but sum it all up in one or two sentences, don't labour your point, just make sure you have made it. Sometimes when I come to write my ending I realise that I haven't really explained the subject clearly enough, leading me to do a re-write, so I find that technique quite handy. Also, when writing the body of your post try to have a clear idea in your own mind as to why the subject should be of importance to your readers, explain how they will be benefited, how you benefited. If you find you can't do this, maybe it would be a good idea to scrap the post altogether, because if you can't find a good reason to write it nobody will find a good reason to read it. As to length, that will be determined by your subject, but always bear in mind that your introduction should be fairly brief, no more than a paragraph or two, and that your conclusion should not really need to be any longer than one or two sentences, leaving the body of your post to do most of your talking for you.
  • Continuing the Conversation 
And as a final thought, with a blog post always try to leave a question at the end, allowing your readers to be more than just spectators. Putting my own advice into practice, how do you go about finding your subjects, what techniques do you use to overcome "writers block", and are there any particular techniques you use to compose your posts?

Joining The Conversation

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 One of the things that seems to be constantly mentioned in the blogosphere is "the conversation", a lot of the Web 2.0 sites and applications seem to be set up just to do that very thing, whether it be through tracking your comments on other blogs with "coComments" or trying to build a sense of community with "MyBlogLog". Our on-line conversation situation is really no different than that in real life. But a major problem with this is that most of us don't really know how to converse. Conversation is often called "the lost art", many blaming the hectic pace of life in the western world and the evil TV that sucks up so much of peoples leisure time. Sitting around for a whole evening with friends just eating a meal and listening to each other when there is so much else we just "have" to do can at times seem more of a trial than a pleasure. Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger.net has posted a very interesting article about blogging and how to add to the conversation rather than just repeating what we may have read elsewhere:
One of the criticism that is often levelled at the Blogosphere is that it is an echo chamber - that the same stories get blogged about in the same ways by blog after blog - without anything constructive or unique emerging.
This has set me to thinking about some of my own posts and how much value they may or may not have added. I guess I am as guilty as most new bloggers of making that basic mistake, but hopefully having read through Darren's article I will be a little more aware of this and do what I can to rectify the situation. Take the time to go read it, digest it and see what you think you can apply, in blogging and in the real world. This is one of the points that he made that really struck home to me:
I suspect most of us as bloggers don’t really put enough time into our blogging. We want to get posts up quickly - we want to report the news and be first with it - but we rarely stop and hear what is going on behind the story and hear what others are saying about it.
That is something I will be trying to take to heart a little more in the future. Which point do you think you might find most helpful to you?

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