Course, the minute I ‘launch’ the site something goes awry, this time it’s the instagram integration, which was working a treat up till last night. While I try turning things on and off again bits might be out of place here and there. If you see pictures of sushi that means things are probably working again. Thanks for your patience.
I finally got round to updating the many WordPress blogs on this site to 2.5. Somehow along the way agaveweb.com‘s database disappeared, but luckily google had cached the site and copying and pasting was ridiculously easy in the visual editor. The pagerank might suffer, but it’s better than total collapse.
Anyroad, while updating I added a couple of new features to the blog. Namely the “email this to a friend” link at the bottom of each entry and page caching for faster loading. Also my photoblog is probably about another week away from being resurrected, plastered with more google ads than before and with smaller pictures!
[flickr]photo:2420485044[/flickr]
Now I can insert photos from my Flickr stream with a great little plugin which also uses lightbox… Go on, have a click on the chameleon car above and thrill to the ajaxy goodness… That’d be a good scrabble word.
I had to transfer the links in the blogroll by hand, so if I’ve missed you off, it’s by accident and shoot me an email and I’ll add you right back. On the plus side, there’s now categories once again.
I’ve been using FireFox 3.0 Beta 5 for a week now and can’t recommend it enough. It’s faster, stabler and altogether more of a gem. Favourite feature you ask? The address bar and its in-built search function. Once Firebug works on it I’ll be uninstalling FF2.5.
Sita’s had some big news lately which may well necessitate another move later in the year to a place beginning with P. Get in touch if that sounds intriguing. We’re still in negotiations but it’s looking very promising.
Yahoo! can’t make their mind up as to when they need professional English speakers, so unless I get yet another email I’ll be in Santa Clara next Monday…
We’ll probably be going to Downey in a week or so to catch up with Sita’s dad who’s had a very painful run in with gallstones and a spell in hospital. He’s on the mend now though, but we wish him all the best.
Just came into a load of new albums. In no particular order: Goldfrapp, REM, Portishead, Vampire Weekend, & Hot Chip. Most of which I’m enjoying no end and it’s reassuring I haven’t stopped liking new music just cos I’m 33.
While I’m youtubing… here’s Vampire Weekend
And another photo!
[flickr]photo:2420478618[/flickr]
You’re forgiven if you choose not to send this post to a friend. Cheers!
Flash publishes a traditional meme at the end of each year. She posts the first sentence from the first post of each month from the preceding year. Here goes mine, and I’m going to make a comment after each one…
J: England was great, lovely to see all me nearest and dearest in person and share a pint or three. I shan’t leave it so long next time.
Can’t believe a year’s gone by without getting back 🙁
F: Well, what with having bought another car and signed a 12 month lease on our apartment, we’re here for the long haul.
So young, so naive
M: Yep the 3:17 vowel-consonant ratio means it´s Saint David’s Day again.
And it was lovely to catch up with Ian and Yuri and their kids
A: This blog’s been a bit abandoned of late more due to an overload of work and little time to update it but in brief, saw Carrie Fisher’s show Wishful Drinking last Thursday.
And blimey, it was bad
M: The problem with not posting for a while is that it builds a certain level of expectation that the next post will be somehow life-affirming and brilliant.
Then I went on to announce Sita handing in her dissertation. I really ought to consider newspaper style writing, most important bits first, details later…
J: I just passed the 10,000 photos mark on Flickr.
And I’m at: 11,290 items / 65,673 views, but who’s counting?
J: We interrupt this prolonged silence to recommend this course to you in the Fall Autumn… Check out the last professor on the Faculty link too… Sign up now!.
And who knew that 6 months later I’d have admin privileges to edit that very page…
A: Greetings from our latest ZIP code!
I’ve forgotten what Alameda’s zip was now… seems like a long time ago
S: According to Peter Trigg’s Calendar – “My kind of Somerset”, it’s the first of September, meaning we can look at a grainy picture of All Saints’ Church, Aisholt for 30 odd days
I shouldn’t criticise his calendar. I’m just jealous.
O: Posting direct from Flickr… Here’s Nostromoo’s 2nd batch of Welsh Cakes… and evidence of probably the first time anyone has printed my blog out on paper.
7 months after St. Dai’s Day, we were all getting our Welsh on…
N: I’m off to watch ‘democracy’ in action with DrSita in a mo…
And lo and behold, Obama was elected that very evening. Oregon had an impressive 86% voter turnout.
D: Word Magazine just published an advent calendar with links to videos and suchlike, I thought, I could do that:
Presenting Countdown to Xmas with ‘Cus
And a calendar was born. Hope you enjoy Day 24
When I get a chance I’ll do a first photo from every month type post too…
Mornin’ all. Mum and Dad flew back to blighty yesterday and just rang to say they’d arrived safe and sound albeit with no hot water in the house. Atticus is at sixes and sevens searching for missing members of the household. He’s a bit more resigned now but he’s definitely going to miss his hour long ‘come-let-us-adore-him’ sessions in the morning, bracing off-lead walks around the Oregon coast and thereabouts and regular family-sized left overs.
Yesterday I took them to the airport and then caught up on 3 weeks of missed episodes of this (The Office) that (Dollhouse) and the other (Simpsons) on hulu.com. It’s a well handy resource that hulu, though I’d swap it in a heartbeat for full access to the BBC’s iPlayer. I also went to the cinema and saw Gran Torino, which I thoroughly enjoyed and I’m not a Clint fan usually. Gangs are bad and grumpy old veterans are redeemable it appears. Watchmen last week rocked, no matter what anyone tells you.
Today I’m hard at work and catching up on my various social networks. Facebook has reinvented itself in my absence by removing all kinds of useful options like see more/see less of this person’s updates, and “What are you doing” is now “What’s on your mind”. If you’d like to see what’s on my mind and don’t do facebook, my statuses go to the lifestream page here. I still can’t get the hang of twitter. I’d like an option where you can see a day’s activity in one place including both sides of any conversations and in chronological order of the conversations, rather than the present ‘reverse’ view. There’s probably some kind of web app that’ll do that, but I’m not there yet.
Thanks to one of Maryl‘s updates I’m discovering Emiliana Torrini, an italian/icelandic singer songwriter who lives in Brighton. Lovely stuff.
And finally, vfxy.com has featured my little blog as their photoblog of the week which is quite an honour, considering the level of quality over there. Can I interest you in an email subscription?
from Skippy about the new blog format- “your new blog page looks uber slick, do miss the star wars effects tho…”
Fixed.
DrSita comes back late this evening and in the meantime, I’m baking bread. Sudarat gave me a bread baking stone and it’s getting it’s baptism by yeast today. When DrSita rang yesterday she seemed to be reeling from culture shock from visiting New Orleans, and this morning I turned my computer on and got this Skype message:
[6:21:11 AM] WIFEY! says: i can’t believe i forgot to tell you: i ate alligator!
I dunno, you let her wander off for 48 hours and this kind of thing happens…
What else? I went to Bertie Lou’s this morning for breakfast, had a long chat with Stu & Anne yesterday, watched Cloverfield last night, Hancock the night before, and life’s pretty quiet all in all.
I got tagged by Colibrí and El Charro Negro for an “upload a photo and say 16 things about yourself” Flickr meme thing, so i have to do that. I didn’t realise it had to be in Spanish though, and thinking of 16 things to say was harder than I thought so I just googled about for ’50 questions’ type posts and came up with the following:
1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?
Jesus, that’s a lot of white hairs in me beard. Time for a shave…
2. What is your favourite ringtone on your phone?
Any of them are fine EXCEPT the one that I used to have as an alarm at 6am meaning it was time to commute to Sunnyvale for Yahoo(!). Still gives me shivers when I hear it.
3. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Hoping DrSita was alright in her haunted hotel in Louisiana. Wishing the Colbert Report would go on a bit longer, and mulling over the implications and repercussions of time travel in LOST.
4. What’s a word that you say a lot?
In English, anyroad
In Spanish, orale
5. Favorite age you have been so far?
23 was a good vintage.
6. What is your current desktop picture?
Laptop: That Ubuntu heron thing
Home PC: Bokeh-y grass
Work PC: Yes we canine. On black.
7. What do you do when vending machines steal your money?
Pump the return me money button, rock the machine a bit, send another coin in after it, swear, weep.
8. Last magazine you bought?
Word magazine. Best music magazine on the planet. If we lived in the same country for more than 10 months at a time, I’d subscribe.
9. Can you cook?
Now and again. I can follow a recipe if it has pictures of what the result’s meant to look like. The House Speciality is Shepherd’s Pie. And right now I’m 6 hours into a bread recipe.
10. Last movie you watched?
Cloverfield, 2 hours ago. Monsters rock!
11. Do you like marmite?
Hellz yeah! ‘cept nowadays it gives me terrible acid indigestion.
12. Favourite crisps?
US: Funyuns
UK: Quavers
Mexico: Lays, amarillo
13. Do you own a donor card?
Yep. Help yourselves.
14. Are you a collector of anything?
We move too often to amass a serious amount of anything, I’ve 11 and a half thousand photos on Flickr though and I think my two dual lens vintage cameras might be the start of something bigger….
15. Do you believe in ghosts?
Nope.
16. Have you ever done anything more self-obsessed than this?
Can I interest you in my blog..? agaveweb.com/blog
Now I have to translate all that…
Last Thursday. I shifted my hours at L&C to a bit later so we could explore the area a tad. It was a misty morning & Atticus was full of beans and came with us.
I thought the park by the Sellwood bridge would be pretty atmospheric what with all the fog so we had a little wander round there before heading up to Tryon park next to where I work. We managed a fairly large loop of the trails there, the mist had more or less disappeared but the sun was low in the sky and casting some nice beams through the trees. I also took advantage of having two experienced dog handlers to pass Atticus over to so I could use my TTV contraption. Here’s one I liked:
We walked briefly around the L&C campus then I went to a meeting about the new CMS we’re going to be adopting at the law school. It’s an impressive system and will eventually make everything run more smoothly… but I think the changeover is going to be a little bumpy. Nothing too severe though, and I likes a challenge.
After than we went CD & poster shopping round Hawthorn way. Word Magazine cost 17 bucks. But it’s rarer than hen’s teeth in Oregon so I bit the bullet and paid up. I shall read it very slowly…
In the evening, ‘tapas gringas’ and beer in Clinton with everyone + a Spanish friend of ours.
Lovely. Anyroad, off to try step #5 in Leif’s recipe…
In a few short weeks, Sarita’s book will be launched (and ready for christmas stockings everywhere). In the meantime, in addition to our Tequila Quiz, I’ve wrangled an introduction-to-computer-science-client-side-javascripted Tequila Name Generator… behold!
Nada con exceso porfa…