You can’t fail to have noticed that I have a new header to my site. This came about after I was thanked for my help on the Xilo forum that I moderate on and someone suggested there be a logo/header competition for my site to allow people to chip in thanks in the form of designs. The winner or should I say the only entry came from Gary, but its very good in my humble opinion and so after a week or so of the competition running with no further entries it now has pride of place on my site. Comments are most welcome and big thanks to Gary for this lick of paint!

A while ago I added and duely blogged about a blog reactions addition to my site. While this was a nice feature it wasn’t well used and seemingly was causing some quite severe slowdowns on the server - on occasion knocking this and other sites clean offline. This feature has now been removed from the site so hopefully the server slowdowns should stop and a faster service should resume for this site too. I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to other users and sites on the server for any slowdowns or outages and for not spotting and rectifying this sooner.

It was with great sadness today that I read the uptime project is to close. This was a service that allowed PC and server operators to track their uptime, compare their uptime against other users and also broadcast the information to their sites and in forum signatures by way of a dynamic .png image. Money and time have been sited as the two main reasons for the closure which is sadly the way so many good and innovative websites go these days. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the uptime project team for their hard work and their innovative idea and wish them all the best for the future.

As for this site you will have noticed that Lara’s uptime is no longer displayed in the sidebar. I am currently working on a hand-rolled solution to displaying my uptime and the overall averages so hopefully you should be able to track my personal server’s uptime the way you’ve always been able to. I may even provide an RSS feed or similar for it this time around

I realised today that my phone number on the contact me page of this site had been dead for a week or so. This has now been rectified and was due to confusion over the billing period on the part of the phone company. I ask you, is anything easy and trouble free these days? Anyhow apologies to those who were getting the disconnected tone and needed to get in touch. I trust you found other ways of speaking to me.

Some of my friends and family will no doubt have noticed a message in their e-mail with a link in it allowing them to click and make amendments to their contact details. This is a part of a large contact details database (see the faq) that I have added to my site which will allow me to look up individuals details and stay in touch with them.

If you’ve already got your e-mail or get one in the next few days or so, congratulations - you’re a part of a select group of my friends I’ve chosen to help test the system and make sure its good to hold and manage every single one of my contacts details. You don’t have to do anything special to test it out, just read the FAQ and click your link to make sure I have your details correct and that any omissions are completed. Every update gets back to me so I’ll be able to see if things are working as they should.

If you’ve not got an e-mail, don’t fret, within the next two weeks I will have all of my contacts in the database and you will be able to amend your details every time they change using your e-mail link. If you still don’t have your link after that feel free to contact me and if I know you I’ll add you. Be rest assured that providing your details this way is as secure as handing me a piece of paper or sending me an e-mail with them on and you will not be spammed as a result of being in my database. In case you didn’t already know, I absolutely hate spam and those that send it.

As part of my zero tolerance on spam I’ve now started to publish a running total of the number of spam blog comments I’ve deleted, or canned as I like to call it, in the sidebar of my site. Considering this anti-spam system has only been in operation for a little over two weeks from the date of this posting its quite shocking to note that over 800 spam comments have already been caught by it. Just goes to show how much of a war spam really is and its one we need to win. Anyone who wants the code to add to their WordPress blog to publish how much spam they have canned then contact me.

Keen eyes will have noticed the recent appearence on this site of little blog reaction links with the technorati logo on them appearing below all my blog postings. Thes provide an indicator of how many blogs have linked to each blog posting I have written. This might be useful to you if you want to read what others have written on the same subject as I have. Simply click the link and you will be taken to technorati where you can see a list of what sites have linked to my posting and peruse them at your leisure.

As a quick guide if the link is grey there are no links from other blogs to that posting. If its green then others have written about my post and you will see a listing when you click it. Enjoy!

In line with the latest WordPress release the core code running this website has been upgraded to the latest version. This update closes some known security loopholes as well as providing a few tweaks to the admin side of things which should make brining content to you even less hassle free.

I encourage all users of WordPress to upgrade to the latest version to avoid potential security issues. You can get the latest release on the WordPress site

Keen eyes will have noticed a new link in the sidebar called calendar. As the one line intro states its a page that lets you know what I’m up to and when I’m free. I have introduced this so that everyone who knows me can find out in advance when I might be passing in their direction so meeting up is easier and also so that people who want jobs doing and such know when I am not away somewhere so they can ask me.

All comments on the new calendar are most welcome and suggestions for additions or improvements will be considered. I’m still finalising the interface through which events are added in the admin panel, but when that is finished I will be releasing the code for the calendar as a WordPress plugin for all those who have seen my calendar page and are screaming “I want one of those!”. You can start using my calendar page to find out when I’m free right away though. Enjoy!

Direct link here

Its been a long time coming but my new photo gallery is here with a great look, a nice set of functions, an easy system of updates and album additions and pretty links to make it easier to share the locations of albums and individual pictures over messenger or e-mail with friends and family.

The system is powered by gallery and the development team are credited in my sites’ footer. It marks the end of the old basic gallery system with no cache that took a while to generate thumbnails on the fly for large albums and used up a lot of server resources doing so. You can also see a random photo picked out from the whole photo collection that may (or may not) entice you to view a wide selection of albums in more detail.

I’m currently in the process of pulling together over 5 years of photos to place in the new gallery (after calls that my temporary system was too small and the one prior not updated enough) so it should soon be rich pickings for friends and family with an interest in days gone by and those looking for the latest shots I have taken. Have fun!