Site

You may’ve noticed that my site has been a bit wonky the past few days. Last night I noticed a bunch of PHP errors in my blog but wasn’t even able to log in because everything was forbidden and write-protected. Everything should be ok now.

Luckily, this is a small site so no harm done.

I always wonder why some people feel obligated to update their blog. (I mean that they take it too seriously.) They get nervous breakdowns if they are unable to produce several full-blown articles every day or apologise from the bottom of their heart if they are busy in other areas of their life or if they are going to take a week off from their hobby! Jeez, do they really think they’re that important? Or, are there actually readers who expect too much from someone’s pastime? I would understand just a notice that “hey, it’ll be a bit quiet here for a few weeks” (although that’s an invitation to hackers or spammers) but I’ve actually seen people apologise for the inconvenience their absence may cause.

It’s a whole different thing of course if you blog for a living. But even then, you should be able to take the normal holidays — or at least weekend(-like) breaks.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go make me some tea and something to eat. And I may not blog for a while if I can’t think of anything clever to say.

I have miscellaneous recipes all over the place: saved from the net, cut out from a magazine, written down on a tissue.

So, I had an idea: I should start collecting them in a cookbook. But what is my first thought how to implement this? WordPress on a USB stick!

I didn’t think of a plain old notebook, binder or a card index. Nope, not I. I was already checking out USB sticks when I decided that maybe I’ll just make it a local installation of WordPress for now.

But I think it’s going to be great! WordPress 2.3, which should be released tomorrow, is going to have tags. Categories and tags will make for excellent browsing. Categories for appetisers, main meals (maybe divided into vegetable, meat, fish, soups, special e.g. Christmas), desserts (this might need subcategories, too), and drinks (coffee, fruit drinks… all non-alcoholic of course). Tags for the ingredients. So, whether I need a certain type of food or feel like a certain ingredient, it should be easy to find inspiration. A search box finds the ingredients of course, but sometimes it’s easier to pick from a limited list.

My recipe collection isn’t extensive yet but I think it’ll have to be unless I want to eat spaghetti bolognese (let alone tv dinners!) every single weekend…

Luckily among the dozens and dozens of dirty spam comments that are caught in the blocks, and just drive me crazy, there have lately been these gems from “Daniel.”

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Disappointment, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Movie Meme, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.

I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Defeating Sudoku in five simple steps, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong

Oh, Daniel. You’re a moron.

On July 11th, 2004 I switched from Greymatter (after barely a month using it) to WordPress 1.2 “Mingus” which had been released in May of 2004 (had to take a peek in the developer blog on WordPress.org to be sure, but I had a hunch I jumped on the WP wagon¹ with version 1.2).

So, I made the switch on July 11, 2004.
The first anniversary I remembered on July 13. I may’ve been using version 1.3 then, with the amazing theme system.
In 2006 I didn’t mention the anniversary at all! I hope that doesn’t mean the era of the Puppy Love had ended.

Now, it’s three years later and switching to something else has never even occurred to me.

Well, only in part. I often find myself scratching my head when shopping: I stand in front of a bookshelf or a DVD shelf and can’t for the life of me remember if I’ve bought a specific book or a specific movie.

B.N. (Before N73) I used to carry a small note where I’d listed all the King books I have and, more recently, all King movies I have. Nowadays it’s easier for me to remember which King books I don’t have (that is, only Cycle of the Werewolf and any recently released — currently Blaze), so the book list is pretty much unnecessary. I haven’t listed other books I have because books are things I remember more easily. A.N. (Anno N73) I’ve surfed to my Stephen King site, to the Bookshelf page and waited, waited, waited for the pretty pictures to load. I don’t have to worry about moving too many bits because I’ve never come close to the 25 Mb per month I pay for, but it’s the wait that bothers me.

My “Achilles heel” in the remembering department are movies. Although my movie collection is small by movie-buff standards, I often buy a DVD and put it on the shelf without watching it right away. I also record quite a bit from TV. And I don’t usually have my sister with me (she remembers my movie purchases better because she usually watches all additions as soon as I bring them home; movie-deprived, that one).

Therefore, I decided to create a mobile-friendly version of my movie and King book collections. Possibly in the future I’ll make the different pages modular so I only have to update one or two files but for now the mobi site is plain and simple HTML. I set the font size to 60% so that I don’t have to zoom out on the phone. (I view pages at 50% zoom.)

Without further ado, I present:mobi.all-things-me.net. Pretty much for my viewing pleasure only. The movie collection isn’t complete because I haven’t listed all my VHSs (bought and taped) or all movies I’ve recorded from TV.

Here’s a snapshot of it on my mobile:

I don’t know if you noticed it at all, but this definitely wasn’t my intention:

During the upgrade, link and post categories were merged (stupid feature; at least I don’t understand it yet) and I had two identical slugs for my post category “(Odd) People” and my link category “People”. WP merged the two and kept the post category title, causing slightly embarrassing sight.

Now, I don’t consider ‘odd’ a bad thing to be, quite the opposite, but if you were offended, I do apologise.

I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.1.2 and I haven’t had time to inspect all the pages and how the old plugins work. If you see any errors anywhere in the blog, do let me know.

I just finished making a new start page for my domain. It uses JavaScript to hide the descriptions by default and when mouse is moved over the icon, description is shown next to it. If JavaScript is disabled, the descriptions are visible all the time.

Yesterday I went to see Hannibal Rising with my sister. It was alright, quite interesting and unlike some critics, I don’t mind that Hannibal’s evilness is explained by his childhood. It’s the story that counts and Thomas Harris has made the story like that (I suppose, I haven’t read the book yet). I didn’t quite understand why the mask was a sort of a “costume” for Hannibal. He tried a mask on that looked a lot like in the other movies:

But he had to wear the mask in prison to prevent him from biting people!

Oh well…

Finally I have my domain and my blog back! If you want to read about my trip to Australia, you’ll have to go to my temporary blog at WordPress.com for now. I’ll copy all the posts and images here at some point but currently I’m just too run down from the travelling (and I start working again tomorrow…).

I’m switching web hotel providers — hopefully — but no one has bothered to fill me in on what’s going on. I hope I’m going to be in the middle so that I know when to back up for the last time (I back up every time I change something so it doesn’t really matter).

Today I noticed the server is working v e e e r y s l o o o w l y — I was uploading a plugin but it was going so slowly that I cancelled it. (False alarm, seems to be fine now.) I’ve requested termination of this place for 21st/22nd and the new place is waiting for information to be able to do the switch but I haven’t heard from the old provider. (Except for a support email asking that I’d send my termination request to one of their other email addresses. Hm, I wonder where the support’s ‘forward mail’ button is located…) 22nd is getting close and I’m afraid something will happen to the domain. They better get this sorted out soon because I don’t want to have to deal with this from Australia.