using OS’ flickr stream to test functionability… works. now to style

Testing out tutorial on widgetized fat footer – wondering if feature box couldn’t have an option to put it in footer….

For now, this blog will simply be for me to test out Thesis, and WP 3.0 without worrying about corrupting a client’s site, or something more vital than this hodgepodge of knitting, bookclubs and what not thoughts.  If you stumble across this site, that’s about all she wrote for now. Nothing exciting, no tips, no optimization nadda:)

Looks like my spring cleaning project from a year ago went precisely no where. Oy vey. Now that it’s spring again, the Olympics (part 1) came and went, I bought Thesis, the developer version finally!! Am now testing.

To do:

• Upgrade to 2.71
• Figure out why categories, widgets disappeared
• Worry that site was spammed and widgets gone as result
• Get profile pic for Twitter
• Add custom theme, or at least change default colour for Twitter
• Customize this theme.
• TGIF!

passwords that is. After upgrading to the latest and greatest version of wp, I also changed my passwords. Which, of course, I promptly forgot I’ve got at least 30 passwords for different projects, purposes.
I need a new system.
I’m thinking something like sameword_#abc
where sameword is a unique word I always use and # is a number (for that alpha-numeric security stuff) and abc represents the project.
We’ll see how the new system goes.

Since that wordpress spamhack, I’ve gotten more paranoid about passwords. You tend to get lazy with it, and never bother changing them. It’s too hard to remember, and then something happens, and all your senses go on full alert. Kind of like losing weight. Or gaining, as the case may be, ahem.

You don’t really notice you’ve slacked off until your pants are a bit tight, and then a favourite pair is really too small, and it’s time to go back on the wagon. I’m mixing metaphors.

In my case, the exercise front has been sacrificed, not slacked, due to this lingering illness. But today when I was out for a walk, I thought, hmm, perhaps I should be exercising more, not less, it seems to help. I go to my doc on Friday. I’ll see what she says.

Cheers,

I think my Word of the Year should be whatever the precise opposite of procastinate is.

I decided to upgrade (enfin) the version of wordpress I was using, and when I did I noticed a whole heap of spam links hidden in the code. Using the display:none tag, they inserted spamorama in the code. Boy, did that sharpen my pencil and get me going on the upgrade.

The upgrade went smoothly (fingers crossed) and I am looking forward to taking advantage of the new features etc it has to offer. I still had to manually go through posts and delete the spammy links.  Not sure yet I’ve gotten them all.

Reading a variety of links about spam protection helped, but the key question for me is “why is spam not treated like a major vice”? It certainly is a huge hassle, and inconveniences users and receivers alike. Not sure why the fines for it aren’t in proportion with the act.

Deep breaths.

Cheers,

Edited to add: noticed weird accent and funny characters appear here and there after upgrade. More manual deletion to do.

I skipped more than the anticipated 2 days off this 30 day journey of posting, due to a combination of factors.

A work project ended up being due earlier than anticipated – practically as soon as I stepped off the plane,  I had to get on top of things. Plus, not really a surpprise, travelling involved delays, and that takes it out of you.

Bonus: Marc Crawford (the former Canuck’s coach, now commentator for CBC) was on the same flight. He is much taller and stockier in person. Seems like a very personable guy. He was with a young woman, and my first (classically suspicious) thought was “hmm – I wonder if that’s a mistress?”. Upon closer inspection, she looked way too young for that, and indeed, when Mr. O was brave enough to introduce himself and say hello, we found out she was his daughter.  Mr. O didn’t want me to blog about meeting Mr. C, but seeing as Mr. O doesn’t have his hockey blog up and running yet, I thought I may as well provide the feminine perspective:) Mr. C was wearing nice jeans and polished black shoes. Always look to the shoes;) My own were ghastly sneakers, for comfort, plus not having been so well I looked like crap, so was less than my exuberant self.

I haven’t chosen my Word of the Year yet, toying around with the simple and elegant now or the more bold and brave courage. The trick is, last year I chose the word balance. And I finished up 2008 battling (still) a nasty ear problem which is causing me dizziness. Kind of gives me the spooks about how much “the universe” throws at you to help you learn lessons.  So I’m almost thinking that I should select a word that is the opposite of what I want to achieve, eg: poverty.  This WofY is from Christine Kane’s site, btw. You can read all the guest posts’ there, including one from moi.

Running out of time refers to the 30 day blogging goal being completed by now. I’ve got 9 posts left, and unless I want to squeeze them all in the next 24 hours, I won’t meet that goal:( I will continue posting however to meet the 30 days. Then I’ll hopefully be able to figure out just what the heck I do want to blog about! Happy New Year!

Cheers,

MzD

I missed a posting day yesterday, due to not feeling well. Got me thinking about how when you travel you have this idealized sense of time in advance. For me, this meant I packed about 10 skeins of wool with me – with big ambitions for the knitting projects. I added to this horde by buying some cotton skeins here as well (5 ).
Well, with two days left here,  what I did knit was:

• one hat (finished it off here, started in Van – first hat – hooray!)
• 1 pair baby booties
• 1.5 dishcloths

Which means there was a bit of a disconnect between my knitting goals and the reality of the amount of time I’d have here. Partly, this was due to my continuing battle with my ear infection/cold/weirdo dizziness, partly it is due to fact that (again) I have the laptop here, and used it for client projects. I took precisely 2.5 full days off from client work (the aft of 24th to the 26th). This was dumb in retrospect. Doing work eats up a lot of time.

One project absolutely cannot wait as it has a launch date early Jan. Another (direct-mailer) was time sensitive and was completed before the 24th. But the other minor updates et al could perhaps have been left. Perhaps I could have a) sub-contracted some work out – not super realistic when it’s a relatively small amount of work or b) told clients “I am on vacation” .

So work and over-estimating how much free time I’d have to knit was a big factor in the fact that I’m taking 80% of the wool home with me:)

But I think most of us have that tendency, bringing “War and Peace” or some other lofty novel along with us to the pool, thinking – now this will be the moment I finish this book. Or, in my case, 20 mystery novels, where 2 would suffice. Or packing 3 dressy outfits, when one would do.

Travelling, whether or big adventure or a trip home, usually brings with it an element of surprise, or aspects that you couldn’t pre-plan for, and that eats up time. Might be customs, might be simply getting your bearings or getting into the time zone.

Either way, I’m not going to go home disappointed I didn’t knit 2 hats, 2 scarfs, and master turning of the heel (the baby booties used a Debbie Bliss pattern that did not turn the heel). Rather, I learned that scaling back my ambitions for time off should factor in the estimating of time the way one might estimate time for a client project: figure it out and double it! Also, sometime in the next year, I need to take a vacation without the box.

Cheers, and Happy New Year!