Tag: Heraclitean Fire

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Me

Oh crap.

I just got around to testing the new design on Internet Explorer via browsershots, and what do you know, it’s completely fucked up. And for most versions of IE I got an error message; I don’t know what that’s about.

It’s so bloody irritating; why can’t all the various browsers agree on how to render simple CSS? And of course it’s not very convenient for me to try and fix the problem without access to a Windows machine.

Anyway, if you’re looking at the site on Internet Explorer and it looks kind of broken: sorry. I’ll try and fix it.

grumble grumble.

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Me

Under construction

I’m in the process of changing stuff around on the site: you may encounter occasional weirdness.

EDIT: OK, the tweaking process is still going to be ongoing for a little longer and some things aren’t finished, but the new design is now basically live. This is more or less how I want it to look.

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Culture Me

Site Redesign

I’m itching to do yet another site redesign—I have a pretty good idea of what I want and a working test version of it, allowing for a bit of tweaking—but I think it makes sense to wait until the release of WordPress 2.3 so I don’t have to worry about any compatibility issues. I’m considering losing the theme switcher, as well; since I make no effort to make changes to the site backwards-compatible, it’s probably better that way. And it’ll make it easier to rework things for my ultra-minimalist new look.

Of course the whole thing is increasingly irrelevant, since a growing proportion of my (diminishing number of) readers are now accessing HF through feed readers and may never see the design at all. But I enjoy the process.

I’m also intending to start a photoblog. I’ve always liked the idea of photography but found the results slightly disappointing. As a birder I know well the importance of good optical equipment; the difference between a cheap pair of binoculars and an expensive pair can be profound. I never bought a film SLR camera because I didn’t think I would get the use out of it to justify it; now with digital, knowing I can go out and shoot 50 or 60 and discard them all, it seems like a good moment to make a serious attempt to take some good photographs. So the photoblog will be part of that attempt; recording my learning process. But I can’t decide on a name for it. I could keep up the G.M. Hopkins theme and go for something like ‘Plough Down Sillion’ or ‘Shook Foil’ or ‘Finches’ Wings’, but I think I fancy a change. Hmmm. We’ll see.

WordPress 2.2 upgrade hitches

Apologies for the slight messiness: I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.2—don’t know why, really, it’s not like there are any compelling new features—and at least one of my normal plugins is broken. I should have a work-around up soon.

EDIT: OK, I think everything’s just about working now. If anything seems broken, give me a shout.

Further comment: One of the claims for WP2.2 is that “We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.” Who knows, perhaps this is brilliant, sometimes. But it didn’t work for me today.

And another comment: One of the changes is that instead of having a built-in preview in the posting window that has to be reloaded every time you save a change, it pops up a preview in a new window when you ask it to. Which is probably a good decision, since it should make writing faster, but it’s a pity it makes a new window each time instead of reloading the previous preview window with the new version. if I don’t carefully close each popped-up preview after looking at it, I end up with a whole row of tabs, each a preview of the post.

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Culture Me

Books books books

I’ve posted a few thoughts on the books I read in Crete (a couple of novels by Kazantzakis, some Marquez, Seferis, books on the Battle of Crete and resistance, Aristophanes), which can be found via my ‘What I’ve been reading’ page.

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Culture Me

New section: Music & Books

If you’re very observant, you may noticed a new link in the sidebar: Music and Books. I’ve been gradually tweaking it to my satisfaction, and you can now not only see a list of the ten most recent songs I’ve listened to and the ten most recent books I’ve read, but click through to see my profile on last.fm, reviews of the books, and a sort of bookshelf of all the books I’ve read since installing it. Since I’ve only read four books so far, the ‘bookshelf’ hasn’t really come into its own yet.

I have to admit that if I was criticising this particular design work done by someone else, I’d suggest that the navigation possibilities were a bit opaque, but it’s my party and I’ll make the links difficult to find if I want to.

None of this is currently working unless you’re using the Scallop theme. I’ll probably edit the other themes accordingly in due course. Or just turn the theme switcher off, to save myself these kind of compatibility headaches.