This site is now on a new host as usual let me know if anything is broken. No it didn’t take just over a year to move Stuff to a new host, I just got distracted by life and have been neglecting this place.
Category Archives: Stuff.za.net
Stuff Header Image
The new stuff.za.net header image (that long photo of the sea at the top of the page) comes from the photo below which was taken in Hermanus on our honeymoon, unfortunately I had to cut my wife out the photo to get it to fit in the header.
WordPress 3.0 & Stuff.za.net update
I haven’t played with WordPress 3.0 much other than running the update, what I have discovered is that I miss a lot of features of the old K2 theme so I’ll be spending the weekend tweaking the 2010 theme to make it work and look similar to the old K2 theme.
Because of the switch of themes you’ll see that “Live comment preview” is no longer working, it was part of K2 and I haven’t found a suitable replacement yet. The other thing not working is “Live Search” which was also a part of the old theme so I lost that too.
The “banner” image at the top of the page isn’t mine either (yet!) and is one of the defaults that comes with the theme, when I get home I’ll go sort through my massive collection of photos and see if I can find any I like and try put together a collection of them I can use on the site.
There is something “off” about the colours too… I’m not exactly sure what it is that I don’t like, but I think it has a lot to do with the heavy black borders and perhaps the location, colour and font of the work “Stuff.za.net” at the top of the screen, I’ll hack that bit of the theme code over the weekend.
I’m still looking for a plugin that will integrate Google Buzz comments into the normal posts, I found one that appears to do what I want called “Buzz-Comments” but it doesn’t work, or doesn’t work with 3.0. I want to try make the site a little more “socially aware” so that it links in with any other tools I might be using to tell people about my life.
Upgraded to WordPress 3.0
Just upgraded the site to the new WordPress 3.0, as usual this has been a relatively painless upgrade bringing a few new features.
Unfortunately the theme I use on this site, a slightly tweaked version of K2 doesn’t support all the new features so I’m considering moving over to the new 2010 default theme, so don’t be afraid if the site suddenly doesn’t look the same.
Quick update: New theme is enabled but not yet customised, so the site looks slightly different now, I’ll keep tweaking it over the next few days until I get it “just right”….
Please let me know if something appears broken…
Site Updates
If you’re my regular visitor (Hi mom!) you’ll notice that I’ve made a few minor tweaks to the site.
First was I finally joined and added Afrigator (you’ll see the logo on the left widget bar of the site). I’ve been blogging/journaling/writing for a long time on this site and yet don’t really “hang out” online with any fellow SA bloggers, I’ve decided though in an effort to increase my readership to start working at changing that.
Next up was I finally joined Delicious and have started using it to store my bookmarks, friends have always said I find the coolest and weirdest sites on the net and now with Delicious I’m able to easily share them. I’ve also started integrating Delicious into the site so you’ll see posts will “automagically” be generated that will contain my bookmarks for the day, hour, week etc.
I’ve done a little house keeping on the blog too and upgraded WordPress to the latest version along with updating all the plugins and cleaned out all the “junk”.
Over the next few weeks I hope to sort things out so that I can post more often and more easily, I’ll still write the long “boring” articles I normally do but want to make it so that it’ll be easy for me to quickly post a short something if I find something really cool.
Visitor Stats
Been too busy with other stuff lately and haven’t been posting as often on this site as I would like, noticed its had a bad effect on the stats for the site over the past few months 🙁
The peaks in the above graph is when I’ve posted something on the site. I need to discipline?my self to post something daily, ideally twice a day. It’s hard work trying to come up with something intelligent to write about each day, but I think at the very least I’ll stick up a few links found that day or something like that.
The really odd and surprising thing as been my new most read article on this site which is the “Awesome Lighter Cufflinks” post which since being posted has received over 200 visits.
I also need to do a little maintenance on this site and add a bit of colour too it, I’m getting rather tired of the plain blue, white and black that I’ve had since starting the site. (Those of you reading this through a RSS reader will never know the difference though.)
Blog comment spam
Almost everyone who runs a blog, website or even has an email address has to deal with SPAM. Thankfully between gmail (Google) and my ISP I don’t get much spam in my email anymore. My blogs are all running Akismet which appears to work very well, although every now and then a comment slips through.
This comment which slipped through made me laugh:
Advantageously, the article is really the freshest on this precious topic. I harmonise with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your approaching updates. Saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the exceptional clarity in your writing. I will directly grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates. Genuine work and much success in your business dealings!
Looks like it was translated directly using a “foreign language” to English dictionary, I’m pretty sure even Google Translate will do a better job.
Uploading Pictures to Stuff.za.net
My new phone (Nokia N78) has the ability to upload pictures taken to Flickr, so this morning I created myself a flickr account, configured the phone and tried it out.
It’s pretty cool, I can take a photo with my phone and then select an option and upload it straight away to Flickr. I’ve also found that Flickr can link to this blog, so now I can take a picture, select an option… type a short message and presto the image taken is uploaded to Stuff.za.net. It’s actually pretty cool, and it seems to work well. I must admit that I’m now slightly tempted to get Flickr Pro account, although I think I’ll wait a bit and see how much I use it first.
BTW you can see an example of all this wizardry with the OMFG post.
Posting on the go
This post is being posted via my new cellphone a nokia N78 and Wordmobi.
Obviously typing is not the easiest and the predictive text is stupid on this phone, but if you can read this then it was a success.
Posted by Wordmobi
I’m still alive
I know I haven’t been updating this site much, but Wedding plans, Dance Lessons (for the wedding), Tennis and Work have been getting in the way. But I’m going to blow the dust out and clean out the cobwebs and try resurect the site over the next few days…
I’ve missed writing to all my loyal fans (fan?) Hi Mom 🙂