Retract that kudos to Blogger from a few days ago. The old archived posts are broken again; the same posts as before they fixed it for me. Including the posts I fixed myself.

So I am out of here. You'll find Néaablog at neablog.wordpress.com at least for a while.

Labels: blog meta

 
Kudos to the Google/Blogger people. A few hours ago I reported a problem with the archiving of Néablog, and now I suddenly notice that they've fixed it. I have been whinging about Blogger's various misbehaviours so much, I thought I'd mention some positive stuff as well :-)

Labels: blog meta

 
I have grumbled about Blogger, repeatedly, in the five years and a bit that Néablog has (intermittently) existed, but I believe I am approaching the point where I'll do something about moving to another platform. I'm tired of having all non-English characters in my older postings mangled, I'm tired of the archiving system only sort of working, and above all I'm tired of the time it takes to do the simplest update. One of the defining characteristics of a weblog is that it's a rapid medium; slower than chat but much faster than offline writing. And ever since Google bought Blogger, posting to the blog, updating the template, adding tags to postings and everything else that involves writing to the blog takes at least several minutes every time. One of my recent posts took over a quarter of an hour to publish. In the olden days before Google, it was possible to publish just the index page of the blog; now, however, the entire blog is re-published, all 630-something posts each time I do an update, however small. Which means, of course, that the non-English chars in my older posts stay mangled, for I don't have the hours it would take to update the posts (and in any case there is no guarantee they won't be mangled again, even though I use ASCII codes these days.) Of course one is not supposed to publish to another domain than blogspot, and we who do so are punished for it. It just isn't funny any longer.

Besides, I am tired of the washed-out look of this thing, but there is no way I'd start playing around with templates given how long an update takes.

So. Wordpress, I think. It is possible to install it on the server - I'd have to check with Walter if it's possible - or I could just import this whole blog to wordpress.com. I have already registered an account there.

Labels: blog meta

 
I'm thinking of moving this here blog to wordpress.com. Is that a good or a bad idea? Am not too bothered about changing the URL (and obviously there will be links and redirects and things), but is Wordpress as good as it looks? Comments welcome.

Labels: blog meta

 
OK, one more thing before I sign off for tonight. New Blogger gives posts a time stamp when you start typing them in, not when you actually post them. I started writing that Bill & Bull post before watching the first episode of Lewis and posted it more than two hours later.

This is just something I've noticed, you understand - it's not really a criticism.

Labels: blog meta

 
Woo, posting now works with Firefox again! I am pleased.

I have posted links to the GROW! games before; two new games have appeared there since last time I checked. These are less complicated than the ones on the site earlier -- in fact they are called GROW! 1 and 2, respectively, whereas the previous one was GROW! 3 -- but quite enjoyable all the same. Here is GROW! 2 and GROW! 1. The latter is extra fun because once you have found the correct sequence you can go back and see what happens if you make other choices, which is often quite fun and very different. I like that kind of light-hearted creativity, very much.

Labels: blog meta, fun, games, links

 
I have changed to the "new" Blogger, and am very suspicious. Let's see if it is possible to post at all. Then I'll see what I can do about the comment function.

Editing the post: all right, that worked. And word verification appears to have disappeared in the comments. Since I know that some actual people were prevented from posting comments, that's as well I guess. I'll do the comment moderation thing instead: this means that your comments won't be visible until I've approved them.

Labels: blog meta

 
By the way, I activated word verification in the comments -- you'll have to look at a picture and type the characters you see, to be able to post. There was quite a bit of comment spam here and it takes a long time to remove it manually, so I guess word verification could be the lesser evil; if anybody has a problem using it let me know, though.

Labels: blog meta

 
So, Blogger still doesn't work in Firefox. (I can't log in to my account, it tells me I have disabled cookies which is patently not true). I am so tired of working things being "fixed" so they no longer work.

Anyway. It's not as if Blogger is the only site that doesn't work completely in Firefox; I have resigned to use Safari for Kingdom of Loathing and some other sites. And it's not the end of the world anyway.

Labels: blog meta

 
Am not dead, and nor is the blog. However, since Google acquired Blogger, it's become almost impossible to use Blogger. I find that having to struggle for 15 minutes to log in kills my interest in actually writing anything.

But I will write again, at some point.

Labels: blog meta

 
Today I've learnt about the attribute "a:hover". It works the same as "alink", that is, it changes the way a link looks when you move your mouse over it. a:hover is a CSS feature while alink is a html tag, and I'm not sure why whoever created this template thought it necessary to include both. But since I don't know CSS, I guess there might be very good reasons to do so.

In any case, links should no longer go invisible when you point at them.

Labels: blog meta

 
Content is about 100% more important than form, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm a bit excited about the new look. Which might not be final -- I have a couple of ideas which I may or may not implement later. And of course it will be a little while before I'm sure I'm happy with the look.

Labels: blog meta

 
Notice anything different???

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Another week, and I still haven't fixed the colours. Sigh. Also, I need to learn to tell the difference between the save as draft and publish buttons; otherwise what I do write won't be published!

Ah well. I would like to make it known that I honestly could not possibly care less about the ice hockey results in the Olympics. I know Sweden won, and that doesn't bother me, but nor do I feel happy about it; in fact, it doesn't change anything at all in my life in any way, positively or negatively. In a month or three I will have forgotten it to the point where I won't be able to answer the question "who won?" -- I always do that. And I hope the agitated muffin eaters will still be my friends...

Labels: blog meta, personal

 
My efforts to make the blog's links more visible haven't been a success. That is, the links are definitely easier to notice now, but I don't like the way it looks now. So instead of experimenting further, I haven't written for a while. Is logical, no?

But I do have to tell you all to draw a pig, since that is all the rage now in the Morniverse (it was Lib who started it).

Labels: blog meta, links

 
QUESTION: Is it very difficult to see links in my blog posts? I think so, myself, but colours and resolutions are so different - and of course when I look at my blogs all the links are already followed so I don't see the original colour.

Labels: blog meta

 
Help! I've been listed on the stock exchange! I'd seen references to the Blogger Shares game but not looked at it — so why am I suddenly worth $2172.16 and what do the symbols and statistics mean? Do I even want to know?

Labels: blog meta, links

 
Yesterday I succumbed. For years I haven't had a To Read shelf; I've walked around the library searching among all our books when wanting something new to read, but now I've decided to try the other model, to have a particular shelf where I put those books I plan to read next. Perhaps I'll decide I don't like it, we'll see. There is a new list over there on the left, though.

Labels: blog meta

 
This isn't a blog, really; I knew that from the outset. A blog, in the sense of web log, is not the same as a web journal -- or at least the concepts were different ones originally. A web log is actually a chronicle of where the author has been on the web, having something of the same purpose as a ship's log in detailing interesting or pertinent features of the person's travels. But that's not what this is about at all; I do insert the occasional link, but that is not the reason why I want to keep this journal, just a result of me being Library Babe and doing that sort of thing compulsively.

As for other meanings of the word blog; the first one I encountered the word it was as a fannish term for "beer" in Swedish sf fandom. In British (and American, possibly) fandom it apparently means "weird alcoholic drink", but it is very much a sf-fannish word in any case. Oddly enough I didn't really make the connection when I started writing this, and that's probably a good thing; I might have been tempted to make fannish in-jokes in designing the place, or something.

Perhaps I should write more about beer, though. But I'm not changing the name; "blog" is used universally for "web diary" these days after all, and I have stated that I intend this to be a diary/journal rather than a log book of web trawls.

Labels: blog meta

 
I predict that today will contain several short postings, for I have much to post about. Apologies for being rather silent recently; it's been a season of many holidays, so I've not been at the computer as much as I usually am. And I won't be very verbose for a while I'm afraid, as I have an intensive working period on the VIE ahead...

5 working days this week -- how will I stand it? :-) On the other hand, though, I will be at the veterinary library on Wed and Thu, which will be a fun change.

Labels: blog meta

 
Seems the guest book has become an extension of Dan's chat room :-)

Labels: blog meta

 
Blogger problems again -- I don't want to criticise the system that enables me to do this, but it really annoys me when I spend too long writing entries at too late in the evenings and then they disappear when I click on 'Post & Publish'. . . .

Last night I wrote all about how I killed Dr Lucky twice; once with a Loud Noise in the Carriage House (where it was thrice as deadly as anywhere else, yay!) , and once with a Tight Hat in the Piazza, and how Stina then finished him off a third time, poking him in the eye in the Greenhouse. Thoroughly enjoyable game, very easy to learn and with lots of built-in hilarity. After which the three of us (Johan, Stina and myself) proceeded to play Deadwood which at first seemed too complicated to be really fun in the same spontaneous way, but once you got into it (took us about 10 minutes) it was even better. It's a better game, I think, and very, very fun to play.

So yesterday was a good day, in spite of the sadness I feel at the death of the old indoor market in town, which burnt down yesterday -- 300 years almost to the day after the big fire that destroyed much of Uppsala.

Labels: blog meta

 
Oh joy. What fun it isn't when you write a long posting about the concert yesterday and Blogger eats it... I'm not going to try to re-write it right now though; I'm off to the strawberry patch to weed it before the sun disappears again.

Labels: blog meta

 
And now a guest book! Am I going all trendy? I'll try to make it look better, though.

Labels: blog meta

 
A new beginning, as my first blogging attempt was unsuccessful. Enough said.

Labels: blog meta