Blog

Upgrade is complete. It’s taken a bit of tweaking, and playing but I’m now running WordPress 1.5. I think the biggest hurtle was my customized layout. Sure, the new version of the template system, is much more convenient to switch but, a pain if you have you’re own template. But, all in all, the features they’ve added are nice.

While I was at it, I made some other changes I wanted to as well. You might notice some changes, or you might not. Regardless, here is a run down of what might be different

• Calendar: this is my biggest peeve, but, it’s personal. I like Sunday – Saturday calendars. Well, this one isn’t. They say it has something to do with mySQL. I’m looking into that so I can get it back the way I want it.
• Sidebar: the sidebar has a different order.
• Single View: the new template system allows me to have different layouts for a single post view. So I’ve used it.
• Feeds: this was for fun. I’ve fixed the “more” and the “next page” in the feeds. I’ve also added in category links.

So that’s pretty much it. I’ve still got some minor things, like I just found out it doesn’t validate to XHTML, so I’m going to be working on that over the next little bit. But all in all, pretty good.

O.K. So I’ve taken a bit and I’ve pretty much started from scratch. I’ve decided to build it again…but, give me 10 day’s and I make good progress. The code behind the scenes is a little cleaner. I’ve still got lot’s to go, but at this rate, I should hopefully have something to actually be proud of by the end of this month. Who knew a little financial pressure would be such a good motivator…..

Now, that all of that is said, i need some feedback. so if you could please answer this:

• Which template do you like?
• Does it make more sense to go right into the results rather then that first page?
• Is it faster?
• Could you navigate well?
• Does the navigation even make sense?
• Does the jump to form work?

I’ve got loads more questions but these are just a few I could think of. Again, please feel free to post you feedback in the comments.

• Site Version 1
• Site Version 2

Thank you!

So, since my last little break I’ve been building the site. Yes, PHP is much nicer for me. Although you can’t see it yet ( but don’t worry you will ) the progress is much nicer. In a matter of day’s I’ve made the same progress as a month previously. It has to do with my lack of perl knowledge of course, so there was a learning curve, but still. 1 week to 1 month? Why pay more?

I’ve still got the question of how to manage the listings of course, but I’m putting something together to hopefully make it all work out. Any suggestions, feel free to post them.

3 weeks ago I started a personal program called The Artist’s Way. I’ve known several people who’ve done it, and one year I even got the book as a gift. For years I think I’ve started and stopped little bit’s of it, but I haven’t really committed to doing it until now. I haven’t written anything about it yet but, I’m sure as time goes by I’ll probably mention more. After all I’m only on week 4.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing about it this week, is because of an interesting exercise for the week. No reading, including t.v.. So, news aggregator is closed; msn off; email is … email is … off. Mind you ( bad me ), I’m going to do a periodic scan on subject’s for business only. ( I’ve hidden the message view so I actually have to double click to read the email. ( Coincidentally, I noticed Steve made a post about email reading and something similar to increase his productivity. ) )

Although there is some difficulty in this exercise, it reminds me that every spiritual path ( at least that I know of, correct me if I’m wrong here ) has some period of depravation: The natives and their fasts; Christians and the whole Lent thing; periods of silence in pretty much every spiritual belief. It’s good to go without.

• Build Character. “If I can do this, I can do anything!”
• Removing Distraction. “Think of all the things I would do/think if I weren’t [ fill in the blank here ].”
• Increase Appreciation. “After not [ again, fill in blank] for so long, it makes it so much better!”

For me the best thing is removing the distraction. I am the master of distraction. I sometimes will do absolutely anything to squirm my way out of something. Sometimes, even something simple like going for coffee. When I was doing the 9-5 I could go for 8-12 cups in one day. Did I really need that much? No. It’s just that it took me 10 minutes at a time to do so. Did I go for 8 cups on a good day? Nope.

So, my suggestion to you, is take a look at your day and see what you use to distract yourself from your own truth. Once you’ve figured it out…go without. See what happens.

For those of you reading my site using one of my handy dandy feeds, you’ll notice I’ve made a slight alteration. I’ve included the permalink, comment link and trackback.

Over the next little bit I might be making some more alterations. I’m thinking maybe I’ll include things like the category info. I also noticed the the “more” link or “page” links don’t work if the post has them. So I might fix that.

Any problems with any feed, just post a comment somewhere and I’ll work to try and fix it.