emchi.co.uk

Now isn’t that telling? The BBC news website uses Movable Type as it’s blog engine… Now if only they’d do something about the load time so I could post a comment… if I can’t get it to post, and anybody is interest, the blog entry can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/03/talking_to_sir_tim.html.  The comment I was about to post is basically “Tor of Cism” is an anagram of “Microsoft”…

Reading between the lines, Tim Berners Lee uses a Mac Laptop, he sees Microsoft as part of the problem, not the solution and that we’re heading for an impase on the internet in less it becomes a lot more open.  Well that’s just my take on what the blog post said.

I wish the post had been a bit longer, and I’m bound to miss the TV segment. 

Somebody please remind me to post something about Google spidering information, for some reason I’m getting tons of hits (quality over quantity here), following this post (over 70 in an hour is un-heard of on this blog) and the one about Huf Haus… You lot (yes the ones that read down beyond the first paragraph), are probably thinking I’m another boring blogger… you’d probably be right there.

UPDATE If you would like to see the map in full, please go to this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/17_03_08_webmap.pdf When printed out, one of the commenters on the BBC blog is absolutely right, the Tor of Cism is right in the middle of Mordor, exactly where it belongs I would imagine.

I’ve been reading blogs today… fun yeah I know, as mentioned earlier, I have no life to speak of.  Well I’ve been reading blogs and drooling all over Christian Louboutin shoes, it’s a feel good thing honest!

Anyway, I’ve been thinking for ages that I don’t really get to blog what I want to blog about because the anonymity isn’t there for me.  Lots of people who know me know I have this blog.  So my whole raison d’être of writing this thing has become somewhat deflated of late.  I write aimless crap about pointless things. 

Part of creating the blog with something like Movable Type was because I wanted the challenge of doing something, I wanted to know if I could  do it.  Guess what… I can.  Only there was nobody there to pat me on the back and say “well done, what are you going to do now?”.  I guess I feel as though I have nothing pushing me.  I don’t make goals to achieve things because being the only person who notices if you do something becomes very boring after a while.

I don’t really have much of a point to get to in this post, I just wanted to get something off my mind that’s kind of been on it for a while.  There are other things on my mind, but those, I certainly can’t blog about.  Which is rather annoying.  Perhaps I should think about  setting up another blog, only this time keeping it a bit more quiet.

What a week… it never rains but it pours in Casa Del Emma I can tell you that much.  Firstly we’re buying our flat, then we’re not buying our flat, then we’re giving two month’s notice, then we’re not giving two months notice and moving out.

We have found our landlord manages to flip flop more than a politician.  One minute he’s giving us our last month free, then he’s doing it with conditions.  He also forgets that he’s written stuff in an email more times than you’d care to mention.  It becomes quite frustrating. 

I’ve been trying to think of things to blog about recently, anyway, I’ve come up with the following things that I can certainly talk about:

Heroes Season 1 - Watched it all, now to blog without giving anything away

Neil Gaiman - Read four of his books now and have a clear favourite

The perils of installing Movable Type 4 - When will the idiots that make it learn they need to write a decent install guide that isn’t based on assumptions.

Facebook - Complete waste of time? or Savior to All.

Time for a change - Reasons to get out of London.

Anyway… I’ve commited myself now haven’t I? So I’ll go away and think some more about it and come back with something worth reading and not sending you to sleep.

Please excuse the mess of the website… clearly I had nothing better to do with my time than spend four painful hours installing the new version of Movable Type.

You’ll notice that if you want to comment, you have to register… the hundreds of pages of spam were starting to do my head in… apologies. 

Anyway, normal service will resume soonish.

Good news and bad news… I’m changing the site. Not just a design and infrastructure change. I’m changing the whole concept of the website. I’m doing an OU course in writing and, well, I really should be writing more if I actually want to be a writer in life. So I’m going to concentrate on the following:

My writing: short stories, memory dumps etc.
Motorsport: I do watch an awful lot of it, I could just comment on it.
News: I read a lot of what’s in the news and I’ve gotten more thoughtful in the way I respond to news items

There will be less of (I hope):
Personal rants, I need to be more constructive with my anger. Find other outlets for my frustrations.
Stupid posts

I’m also putting together a gallery, ok so I don’t actually have any pictures to put in there yet, but I do have a camera now, so I should at least make the effort.

The website will be running Word Press as I’ve just about had enough of the difficulties of installing Movable Type (when my hosting company does the intalls of things like Word Press & Gallery for me). I want to run tags so I need to upgrade to get there. Plus I have a wicked idea for a site design (of which I won’t be putting into place until I can find a designer who can do the work for me).

Watch this space. I expect I will archive off this old blog and start again as such.

Well after much tinkering, and annoyance with Gallery software, we gave up and I installed Coppermine. The install was a dream, I wish Movable Type had been as easy to install. Frustration all round with Gallery, first we got it uploaded, then we found out the hosts wouldn’t allow the modification to the PHP scripts we needed to run the software. Great. So a few weeks later than anticpated, photos are going online as we speak. So finally some of the pictures I’ve taken will be available. Beyond that there are tons of Ross’ on there. Go have a look, there are loads of pics from the Nurburg trip and pictures taken in London a few weeks ago with the new fish eye lense on the Nikon D70.

www . itsnotarace . com (click on the picture or the URL at the bottom to take you through to the Gallery).

As it’s just taken me the best part of 24 hours to get Movable type to work, I can’t say that I’ll be rushing to do it again in a hurry. Anyway, it is here, it is up and it is running for now. All I have to do now is go and tell everyone the new URL as the link is not on my site as yet (that’s got more to do with me uploading the website at home and then logging on at the office to finish off geting MT to work).
Anyway do let me know what you think about the place (anything negative won’t be appreciated… THANKS :o)