Akismet is a joy
and has caught over
33,476 spam.

When widgets were
grafted into the trunk I leapt with joy.
No longer did I need to
ssh then vi in to tweak things.

WordPress, I <3 you!

…

Ok ok. I’m sorry for the very bad poetry. I really did have another post intended for today, but wordpress has really been rocking my worlds so I thought I’d give it some public love. At one time I wanted (and could) write poetry.. I also goofed on my schedule and found myself arriving home much later and hungrier than desired and with a client call that I’ve not yet prepared for. It’s my own fault. I forgot how the crowds in the city at the holiday season take much more out of me than they do at other times. I hope after the call I’ll spend some time with my multiple wordpress installs and get this one a bit happier. Do you like my new Ravelry progress bars on the side? I know, the entire sidebar needs some TLC but it’s getting there. (If you have a nice book icon I can use (and what it’s licensed with) please let me know!)

And actually I still am not positive where we are going. I have some ideas but I’m not positive. E has been taking the atlas into our private reading room nightly so we’ll see.

Yes I’m playing around with site redesign. This is supposed to be purple not pink (yuck) so i’m going to play around with it. I thank you for your patience. Remember, I am not a designer — I hire designers when I need to! I know the usability is a bit wonky, I am working on that too and hope that some larger changes should fix that up as well. This design is a little closer to what I envision for the site to look like. Now to start generating the content I desire…

Today’s post is about a very simple “tool” to keep [photopress:monkey24may07.jpg,thumb,alignright]dpn’s from well, poking out of your bag while you are grocery shopping and begging for you to buy all the sugary foods you shouldn’t eat. I picked this up from Sheri at the Loopy Ewe and I’m going to pick up a few more soon because they are just great. I wish the cord was expandable from 4-8" but I’ll take this! It has already saved the life of some socks. Sorry for the poor camera phone picture, my camera is currently getting some nail polish to keep my lens cap on (it’s really the only reason I own nail polish) so I am not touching it until it dries. Oh and please don’t ask me about sizing. It’s a tad confusing but I apparently guessed right!

Because I can’t resist — this was Monkey on Tuesday:
[photopress:monkey22may07.jpg,thumb,pp_image]

I upgraded to WordPress 2.2 tonight and added a plugin which puts an icon with each post of the main index page. Sorta a la slashdot but not perfect yet. I’m currently looking for some 16×16 icons for yarn and other things which I post about.. I’m not totally pleased with this plugin but I haven’t found one I really like yet. I know it’s out there. I’d prefer one that automatically posted images based on the categories I selected .. I should just roll my own. *sigh*

I also have noticed that some of my stats are adding one or two new readers. Welcome, I’ll try hard to scare you away with my senseless irrelevant incoherent dribble.

Also: I’m slowly updating the library generated by my now reading plugin with images that are stored properly on my server and fixing the authors to be lastname, firstname so I can store it “properly” by author.

Tools. Right. Uhm.. I knew I should’ve drafted this post while I was thinking about it! I think I finally figured out twitter … and why I didn’t grok it for a while… It’s an interface to all our IM away messages! Remember in college when we’d set it as away even though we were just procrastinating and doing nothing? That is totally what twitter reminds me of. I was never good at setting good away messages so that’s why I have a hard time with it now. However, Corrie and I were emailing & twittering earlier today and she introduced me to tweetbar (hey, I never said I was totally on top of this stuff..) and now… well, we’ll see what happens.

Other tools… All those things on the side bar? (it was on the right, now it’s on the left … as I’ll probably switch the theme again.. who knows where it will be!) In any case.. there are some fun things there. I have many too many rss feeds I try to follow. I read them quite diligently in Google Reader .. anyway .. I can share posts I find interesting … I like that. There are clipmarks too sometimes (I forget that a TON) .. And the books I am reading all lots of fun stuff.

Next week will be better posting content wise. I hope. :) There are quite a few things I want to write about.

Lastly, if you have emailed me recently and haven’t received an answer in about 24 hours? Try again. I’m not sure if I’m mistaking the email for spam or why I’m not seeing some… I get a TON of email and much of it can be deleted. I worry that I’ve been over zealous on that front.

Donna has a great energy and she doesn’t snuff on crochet either (YAY!!) .. she’s slowly getting in more sock yarns for all us sock-geeks… ok.. more later

(also: I just discovered how horrid this site looks in IE 6… will work on it)

There are currently 764 posts and 274 comments, contained within 50 categories. Woo hoo!

(some of those posts were automatic from my del.icio.us feed, but i’m leaving them as I think there were some comments on them.)

(update at 8:50pm) A redownload and reupgrade fixed the export problem so let’s see how long it takes to import. There may be some duplicate posts… I’m not sure at all how it will work out. First up is upgrading this site to 2.1. Then import.

(update at 8:30pm) I’m still working on this. I’m having issues with the export feature on the old site so I’m holding off on upgrading here.

Within the next hour I hope to upgrade to wordpress 2.1 and import the remaining of my content from the old site. I upgraded on the old one with little problem (except for the export of the content) and hope for a seamless upgrade and import here. I have no idea what it will do to the RSS feed, so please be patient and understanding. I’ll update this post when I have completed. Hopefully with success. :)

What was done?

1) I installed the excerpt reloaded which will auto truncate front-page posts at 180 words.
2) On the sidebar, I installed Eric‘s new clipmarks plugin which I offered to help him test. What is clipmarks? Find out more here. I hadn’t really been using clipmarks that much, despite hearing about it for eons. Maybe this will give me a push. (btw on that site, I am found here). Any ugliness in the CSS is my doing. Eric has great design sense. I don’t.
3) I cleaned up some of the CSS in the posts and on the side bar. This has a long way to go but it should be a little more readable. Please let me know any issues you may have. I also pretty much have only tested in firefox at this point. I’ll fire up safari later in the evening and then find some IE to test in.

What still needs to be done?

1) Importing of the rest of my old site (which I’m no longer linking to because I just want it *gone*).
2) Adding “share this” links to posts.
3) Testing for web standards and accessibility.
4) Write coherent and proper posts. ;)
5) many many more things.

I also feel I need to say that I feel most yarn/spin/fibre shops charge quite fairly for their classes. I just don’t have the ability to justify it after paying my grad school tuition. I wish the distance between the mid-and-west coasts were shorter so that the wonderful advice I’ve been given could include a thank you in person.

–
I’ll be playing with the format of the site for the next few hours (until probably 10pm EST). Expect things to be weird.

Thank you!

update @ 2:31pm: It’s looking better. I’m having weird issues with time and my server. Mini posts aren’t formatting how i’d like and there a millions more tweaks I’d love to work on but there are other projects I’m looking into instead.