all things me

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.

Thank you il Filosofo! Now I can blog from my mobile the way I want: not via email (a haven for spam), not through a WAP page (I want to make the most of this amazing screen) and definitely not through an external service. The fancy WP admin interface prevented me from posting an image as I learned the last time, but while I was doing research on various ways to moblog I stumbled across Old-Style Upload plugin. Now I can upload images directly from the phone!

Now, if only I knew how to copy the image path from the browser…

Remember to convert database export into UTF-8 before importing

Luckily I’ve been playing around with local installations of WordPress and I just noticed the special characters (ä, ö, etc.) which really aren’t that special (you darn ASCII Americans ) turn into questionmarks when I import. I remember noticing it before and I guess I’ve corrected all the questionmarks in the past (have to check, actually) but after the amount of posts increases, I don’t really feel like flipping through every single one of them.

Finally last night I started re-doing my X-Files site — literally ‘night’ because I couldn’t stop before 3 am. The current layout is horrible, cluttered, and framed. Now I’m making a really nice layout — if I may say so myself — which is only for CSS-aware browsers I’ll have to think of something for IE. I’m using position: fixed which makes it a no-no for IE. Actually, I downloaded beta version of IE 7 but when the installation starts it says to back up all files first. “All files”?! What’s that supposed to mean? All 80.2 GBs?

Here’s a screenshot of the layout:

The faces of Mulder and Scully are above everything else — the content text scrolls behind them. That took a bit of tweaking to get it work nicely but I’m pleased with the result.

I’ll have to try and keep the site uncluttered. All the awards and fanlistings have to go. I want it to look more sophisticated and grown-up. Guess what a shock it will be for the visitors when they stumble across my alien collection! The collection is the apple of my eye and it’s not going anywhere from XAMM.

I’m building the site on WordPress, and I found the greatest image plugin! It replaces text inside a variety of elements and you can restrict the replacement to classes, too.

Today I noticed that the X-Files is on a break (with no end in sight) because of the most idiotic show, the Bar. I’ll have time to watch some old episodes and add content to my brand new site. I’ll try and open it soon.

Oi, how some people complain every time there’s a new .x upgrade to WordPress. “Why couldn’t they make it good enough the first time around?” “Upgrading is such a draaaaaag.” So, you’d rather have an upgrade every 2-5 years at most? You’d rather wait that long for a cool new tweak in a feature or a fix to a flaw? Why is it so difficult to grasp the concept of an on-going open source project where the users actually have a say in what the “product” is going to be like? (And at the same time everyone complains how Microsoft and Mr. Gates are so dictatorial.)

After theme structure was introduced to WP, upgrading changed from pretty simple to very simple. Unless you want to go hacky-hacky with the core code, I don’t see any problem with deleting a couple of files and uploading a couple. Sure, there are some files and folders you’re better off not deleting, but there aren’t so many you couldn’t remember them all. All the important stuff is in the database which you don’t touch during the upgrade.

Simple.

Or am I just too happy-go-lucky?

On January 22nd my domain’s been up for a year which means it’s expiring on that day. I just wrote an email to the hosting company, hoping to get a response that “yes, your site is not going to die”. I’m afraid, very afraid. I’ll have to back up everything by the end of this week — just in case. I don’t have much to complain about the company, but people haven’t been getting bills to pay. There has also been a couple of MySQL problems, but at least I haven’t bumped into one in a while. They now supposedly have servers in Europe which sounds good.

That’s all. Over and out.

Oh yeah, I love my phone!

[update Jan 19] They automatically continue the domain+”account” so I have nothing to worry about. [/update]

Our dog has a blog and even though I rarely write in it, I wanted to give it some time in the limelight. Well, it may be permanent – that box on the main page. There are some pretty photos and cool changing header image on the site. It’s a sort of sandbox for WP stuff — the rare occasions I have the energy to play with it (nowadays — or currently).

Hope you like it.

I can’t believe I forgot new WP was released on Monday! This lazy bum here is now going to upgrade. Keep yer fingers crossed.

@19:45
Whoa… no glitches yet and all the plugins seem to work. Please let me know if you bump into something odd (technology-wise, not content-wise )

Don’t mind the odd shaped intro box up there (appears by clicking on Intro). I have a thing going on there Now I gotta go watch Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital