Still tweaking the site.

I changed the settings on WP Greet Box. If you find them annoying let me know.

I’ve been watching the RSS subscriptions jump up and down. *scratches head* I decided to add the ability to subscribe to receive updates via email. This apparently overrides FireFox’s default setting to make the feed a live bookmark, so if you want to do that, just click the feed icon in the URL box. I’m not too concerned about it, as I know I’m more likely to catch feed updates via Thunderbird’s reader than my live bookmarks. 😛

I’ve “claimed” my blog via Technorati. What with spam blogs becoming all the rage, and my finding much of my content ending up on these blogs, I figured I’d at least make some effort to let folks know that mine is a legitimate blog. I also installed a plugin so that if these blogs continue to auto-post my shit, at least my URL will be provided so readers will know it was harvested.

I will still  continue to crosspost the links to updates until the end of the month to give everyone time to switch over.

Technorati Profile

In an effort to streamline my life and (hopefully) make this site a little more constructive, I’ve been making some changes around here.

The first would most likely be the theme. I’ve had a few friends mention that some of the pages backgrounds are headache producing so I switched to one that is more subdued. This one will most likely be temporary, however. While, as a writer, I am a big fan of fluid width themes, the author of this one (Arclite) is in the middle of creating another (fixed width) theme that I found to be absolutely hilarious. He said it was close to being done, so maybe within the next few days…

The other big thing that you may have noticed is the “WP Greetbox” which sometimes pops up at the top of the first page/post you visit, dpending on how you came to the site. It’ll ask you to consider subscribing to the RSS feed and may also suggest you make use of the “Share This” link at the bottom of each post. The former is part of the streamlining I’m doing. As much as I want to I can’t keep up with every web community that I belong to. No, this does not mean I will be leaving speed_fic but you guys have to promise to write more Racercest. I’m going through major withdrawal, here. 🙂

It does mean that I will be cutting back on where I’ll be posting links to my posts. So, yeah. Subscribing to the feed is good. The default for FF users is to bookmark the feed, but if you have the CoLT add-on you should be able to snag it by right clicking the link  and pop it into another client (I’ve been using Thunderbird’s reader). Otherwise you’ll have to go through the bookmark’s properties. IE users (boo! hiss!) will have to deal with Feedburner. I have no idea about Opera, Safari and Google Chrome users.

I’ve also added a popular posts section, as well as a widget that offers suggestions for further reads. And for the LJ fanatics, I’ve added the ability to subscribe to each  post’s’ comments. Like LiveJournal you’ll be able to read (via email) all new comments to a post. Unlike LJ it’s optional and you can change the settings at a later time.  Those, along with “Share This,” should help draw in more visitors and strike up some conversation.

Until I see the final version of the other theme I’m interested in I’m not going to mess with the fonts. If you are having trouble reading (and it’s likely as I am), you can enlarge the text via your browser and resize your browser window so the lines are a readable length for you. This is why I love fluid width themes: they can be tweaked by the end user for their own optimal use.

So. If anyone is having any issues with the changes I’ve made, please let me know. That way I can fix them ASAP.

I’ve come to the conclusion that ADD and old age do not mix. It’s bad enough being a scatterbrain but the addition of senior moments results in very little getting accomplished — or, at the very least, the wrong things getting accomplished. 😛

For example: I was supposed to get the color scheme to the Lavender Room laid out as well as install, activate, and configure a bunch of widgets/plugins before uploading some actual content. Instead I spent the day playing around Max’s site, after learning that an older theme I used here had been updated. I did get the scheme work done, but that’s about all. I was also supposed to exercise. Somehow I got distracted by a shiny heart rate meter I saw online.

The State portion of our tax refund arrived today. So after dragging the preteen to his doctor’s appointment, I went to Target and picked up a new phone. Living with one phone (even a cordless one) is a pain in the ass. Unfortunately they didn’t have the cheaper model recommended by Consumer Reports but $40 isn’t too bad. Once the Federal shows up we’ll get the struts replaced on the Taurus and, if there’s enough left over, get the transmission worked on. I’ve also been promised a new light for my aquarium, so that I may finally grow some decent plants to provide oxygen for the fish. 260 watts is a whole lot brighter than 48. If I time the lighting correctly we’ll have a fairly well lit livingroom at night, too boot.

Been browsing through Minuteman’s online course listing. They’ve finally got some courses on PHP and MySQL. They deal with the web site design end of things and while I love working on web sites, there’s not that much money in designing them these days. It should get my feet wet as far as the code goes, though. The course on starting an online crafting business looks interesting, too. *laughs* It’s a shame I can’t seem to make any real money doing the stuff I love.

One more thing. I was cleaning out some of my old computer files and found this:

That should embarass the hell out of a couple of people on my f-list. Bwahahahaha!

I had planned on getting at least one new fic uploaded to the Pinkish Pages today. Then I discovered the site was broken. At some point, between the last addition and now, a Starscape theme upgrade made several of my widgets produce errors. I’m sure the theme’s designer will say that the problem is with the widgets because his code is flawless (he boasts this in his read me.txt files), but after testing the widgets out with a new theme, at the still under heavy construction Lavender Room, everything worked fine. He is also responsible for the original rating system I was using on the site. One which I had to tweak, one way or another, each time he updated it. Needless to say both have been replaced. The new theme is a flexible/variable width one, so I don’t have to really worry about line length. Visitors can just reduce the size of the window (and zoom in, if necessary) for optimum ease in reading. It was also created by someone who knows just about as much about style sheets as I do (which is just enough to get by), so it was fairly easy to change the color scheme. My only concern is those who still surf using the dreaded IE. You get a runtime error on every page if you view it in that browser. Luckily, most of my friends have the smarts to be using something else. Right?

Glenn is sitting on his ass, watching the Super Bowl. I had planned on recording it — if only to watch the commercials — but then remembered what happened I when I did this last year. For three months Glenn watched the stupid thing every night. He’d probably still be watching it if it hadn’t accidentally been deleted. Anyways, I figure they always have them available for viewing online and I’m sure someone on my f-list will be nice enough to share the link to the site, if I don’t find it first. I made chili for the event. It wasn’t the traditional vegetarian crock pot recipe that I always forget to write down. Everyone and their mother seems to have wanted the book it comes from as all five library copies were on hold. I managed to find a veggie-ful recipe in another crock pot book. It contains meat, including bacon, and takes forever to cook, but it came out yummy! I’ll see if I can get it uploaded to my cook book this week.

I’m now off to confiscate the bottle of vodka Glenn thinks he is hiding from me. I just need some Diet Dew.