JamesX

It seems like forever since I last touched the blogosphere and I guess it has been quite a while. But for those who are still visiting the site - yes, I am still alive!

So what’s been happening in the past six months? The short answer is: a lot! Looking back, the last entry I made was before I took on my new job and since then it’s been a whirlwind journey that has kept me pretty busy (if that was at all possible). But that being said, I am enjoying myself and I love the challenge of taking on something new. With each passing day there are new things that need fixing and although the list seems to be ever increasing, there’s a great sense of satisfaction that comes from crossing something off.

The difficulty I have when it comes to my blog is finding the healthy balance between keeping the content interesting, while not compromising my position in the grander scheme of things. That’s part of the reason it’s been so quiet around here. It’s perhaps an excuse to help cover my laziness but in all honesty, I have been missing the chance to rant about things and read the comments my visitors leave behind.

I’m going to make a bit of an effort to post more regularly and if you’re reading this now, you’ve obviously been hanging around for the day that I do - so thanks and keep on visiting!

For all those bloggers out there, Wordpress 2.5 was released today. Of course this means that there’s time for another round of updating files, tweaking themes to match, and inevitably finding updated plug-ins that work with the latest version. Because of this, normally I’d hold off for a while, but I decided about a week ago that I needed to fix up my hosting (due mainly to the speed of the old one) and so while I was moving all my data across, I thought I might as well bite the bullet and upgrade Wordpress at the same time.

The result is what you see here!

• A new host, thanks to LemonJar - bye bye Dreamhost (although they were good to me for two years). The site is much, much faster so hopefully you’ll notice the difference.
• A new theme (it’s based off Aperio prototype - I stress it is a prototype and will need a little tweaking)
• A new Wordpress - It’s now running version 2.5 which has a host of new features that makes everything worthwhile.

As usual, feel free to leave comments. There may be the odd broken image around the place. I’m still fixing some things up. :)

There comes a time in every blogger’s life that you have to face the dreaded upgrade. Tonight I decided it was about time I drag Wordpress (the engine behind this blog) up to the latest version. It’s usually about every six months (at least) before I can be bothered updating because it’s such an effort to do that you need to set aside about two hours to do it properly.

So why update in the first place? Well the fact is that if you don’t, you end up getting so much spam and open yourself to security risks that, well, just aren’t worth the risk. :) Plus you get a handful of new features with each version and when you take so long to update, that’s a lot of versions. So sit back, relax, and enjoy Wordpress 2.3.3.

Oh and I managed to fix the AJAX (real-time) searching too so I turned it back on. Go take it for a spin!

You’ll be pleased to know that I’m no longer at the airport (as seems to be the running joke around the office) and I have found time to update the blog. I’ve even been kind enough to backdate a few entries to fill you in on the past month. Maybe it was a non-blogging phase or just maybe the new Mac has been too much of a distraction!

It’s been about a week in the making, but I think it’s pretty much ready to be unleashed upon the world. Ben Mulligan has finally decided to get a blog which makes his online self (Myspace + Facebook + Blog) complete. I helped him get it up and running on Wordpress, and after a crash course in cascading style sheets, Ben has taken it upon himself to style it up. I dare say that he’s done a pretty good job. You can find the flashy new thing at www.benmulligan.com - hard to remember, I know. Best add it to your favourites bookmarks before you forget!

You may recall just under two months ago, I set a goal of getting into the Technorati top 100,000 blogs list. I thought it would be interesting to see how I’m progressing and I’m pleased (and somewhat shocked) to report that I’m currently ranked 307,091. I think that’s quite a mean feat and it’s put me well on the way to the top! People have pointed out that it’s somewhat pointless and I agree… as I said when I started, I don’t know why I’m bothering. But I guess I’ve started now, so I have to finish - or at least try!

Obviously you have to keep in mind that the higher you go, the longer it takes to progress up each stage, but it just goes to show what a little teamwork can do. So keep linking to my site, and we’ll see just how far I can go!