Author Archives: Richard

Feed me

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Nobody reads blogs on a Sunday, so this is a good time to post something boring.

As I expected, I have been having some teething problems with this site.  Things rarely go smoothly, and frankly, I worry when they do.

Apparently, my RSS Feed Reader wasn’t working which didn’t really surprise me.

Why wasn’t I surprised?

The theme I am using doesn’t have a built in RSS button, which is a huge omission.  I had to install my own.  Then I had to set up my Feedburner account and that’s where the trouble really started. 

As far as I can make out, the Feedburner plugin has some problems with the latest WordPress.  Or maybe it doesn’t?  Either way, I had so many problems that I had to modify the plugin to get it to work.

In the course of this, I had to set up and delete my Feedburner account several times, and this is where the problem occurred.  My button, and my account got out of synchronisation.

It took a bit of twiddling, but I think I have it working now.

Try it out.

feed-icon-32x32

If it doesn’t work, just let me know……

Light at the end of the tunnel

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I sometimes wonder if I’m a reincarnated Druid.

While the world goes mad at this time of year in an orgy of consumerism and indulgence, I sit back and rejoice at the arrival of a different date.

I have my own little countdown which is slightly in advance of everyone else’s.  While people are shouting “only four days to go”, I quietly say to myself “only one day to go”.

My day is the 21st.

I hate the Winter.  Apart from the foul weather, I hate the darkness and the bare trees.  I resent getting up in the dark, and then the day ending when it is still mid afternoon.  I love the Spring especially, with the colouring in nature and the promises of warmer days ahead.  I love the lengthening days and the miracle of growth all around me.

There is always a little twinge of sadness on June the 21st.  It is the start of the long downhill slide to Winter.

But there is the corresponding delight at the arrival of the 21st of December.  The days may not get noticeably longer for quite a while but there is the great consolation that they aren’t getting any shorter.

Tomorrow, I will celebrate.

I won’t be throwing any parties or getting drunk.  I won’t be stuffing my face with food.

I will quietly greet the day, and my heart will be a little lighter.

And so will the days.

Early morning chaos

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

It has been a rough day today.

The Old Goat got up early this morning, and started messing with the servers.

By the time I got up, he had gone out, leaving the servers in a right state.

I haven’t a clue what he did, but I couldn’t get access to them at all.  Most of the sites were throwing error messages all over the screen, and the phone was hopping with irate clients.

I managed to get the sites back up and running again, though it was touch and go for a while.

Then of course, I had to change all the passwords to keep the bastard out.

One of these days, I’ll kill him.

Good buy

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

A parcel arrived yesterday.

It was my copy of Homepages.

homepages

I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but it’s much better than that.

It’s funny.  It’s thought provoking.  It’s a delight to read.

Grandad and I are honoured to be in it.

If you haven’t ordered a copy, you should.  Apart from the proceeds going to charity, it is a damn good buy.

My only problem with it is that there are no comment links at the bottom of the articles.

Reciprocity

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Grandad and I have decided to call a truce.

So far it’s rather one sided.  I have linked to his site, but he hasn’t bothered his backside linking to mine.

I have also included a thing on my sidebar that announces his latest garbage, but he hasn’t reciprocated.  I think he’s scared that my writing would show him up for the arrogant tosspot that he is.

He is in a good mood today anyway, and is wandering around listening to the radio on his mobile phone, which is rather unusual to say the least.  Maybe it’s something to do with that van load of people who arrived this morning?

Anyway, I have done one or two more tweaks to this site, but there are more to come.

I had forgotten just how much is involved in setting up these yokes.