Tag Archives: Blogging

A bit less of a Mess

Aside

Slight progression. Post formats work (as an aside, I am an aside). Different footers for single post pages. Discovering the horrible tension between ‘child theme’ and writing ugly hacks to cripple the parent.

Shall go and do proper work now.

A bit of a Mess, (continued)

Aside

… supernaut has been one-columnised. Most of the index page is done. Older stuff is broken (Oh! Images, why do you hate me?). Things have been lost/misplaced/sorted into piles for later use or discarding. Looking forward to hand-grepping the database.

(This is trying to be an aside but breaks things … Trying to use supernaut differently.)

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A bit of a Mess, Really …

I was planning on slowly flopping supernaut over to a newer look … well, mostly the same old look but wrapped around WordPress’ default theme, so I could a) take advantage of all the fun new things like post formats, b) deal with some irritations of having slung supernaut through two or three platforms (WordPress, MovableType, and I think something else), and the general cruft of 8 years blogging and z) just because …

Slowly became quick because supernaut got hacked again. Not looking at you, DreamHost, too hard, but it’s getting kind of irritating lately. It’s probably not the very old theme supernaut is running on which is responsible for this, but having looked through the logs, gah! Keine ahnung!

So I swapped over to the new theme early. Severely unfinished. Much mess everywhere. Embarrassment? Yes! It’s going to take a long time before it looks all proper, like.

And this post was written using the Aside new post format. More of a Status really.

Fuck it, I’ve got six opened bottles of wine by me feet and a … what am I doing sitting all alone in the darkness in Alte Kantine Wedding?

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Was it something I said? (or, supernaut blocked in China)

I noticed a few weeks ago that traffic from China was low — single digits low instead of being in the top three countries for visitors. Even then I was fairly certain the cause. Today I was again reminded of this anomaly, so sent a message to a 广州人 who replied almost immediately, “yes, blocked on my end”.

A pity, really. I liked that supernaut was read in China, that all my writings on living there, on culture, politics, artists, dancers, places had some small (tiny) return.

Anyway, here’s a picture of a grass mud horse.

草泥马 cao ni ma 草泥马 cao ni ma
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Places

Because I seem to spend so much time in Brussels, and also have lived in several cities which until now have only been tags …

Berlin, Brussels, Zürich, Vienna, Guangzhou, Taipei, Adelaide, Melbourne. Countries also. How does living in Switzerland or Germany differ from the city within which I reside? Or rather, how does it differ here, where I write?

Because there’s no way to make things neat, to allocate everything according to its place; categories, tags, uses, definitions change over time and even from post to post, I decided to stick with the cities I lived in as sub-categories for the Places category. Countries, other cities I have spent time in or have a connection to have remained free-floating.

Another way to regard the issue: these cities should have been categories all along, and by making them so now, I’m merely anticipating the addition of new cities (or places) in which I shall reside.

Anyway, more importantly, it makes it easy to see where I (will) (might) (have) be(en). There, in the sidebar.

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supernaut updates supernaut

Last night I noticed the dilapidated state of my sidebar links. “Who uses them anyway?”, I thought, before answering myself with, “Me!”

In order of finding new blogs, the first and most common is from someone I already read who mentions another writer who may take my attention long enough to click through to their site. Getting from there to the ‘New Additions” folder in my RSS Reader (now using the quite beautiful yet assuredly beta Reeder), is a rarity, and from there to my sidebar is … well there’s scant connection really, it’s a rare thing when I go through all the links and add/subtract, and even then, with 300 or so in my news feed, my sidebar is only a few I like a lot.

So I added and subtracted. As usual, some blogs I loved very much have withered and passed the deadline of no longer updated (around 3 months before promotion to my ‘Dinasaurs’ folder), others have moved. Many new ones have arrived.

Excitement! I’ll not list all the new ones here, but there are a few, notably in ‘Art and Theatre Blogs’, as well as in ‘Asia and Central Asia Blogs’ and in the sciences categories. As for the ones that vanished …

I removed two sections. One for design as this stuff has moved mostly to my other blog (thingswithbits.info) and I don’t really get so enthusiastic about design as I do about, say, Central Asia or Kepler objects. The other to go, which is little more difficult to explain is the category for Trans* Queer Feminism stuff.

Without going into too much detail, there are still blogs I read in this field, but I find what turns up on these blogs is either irrelevant to me (e.g. cat blogging), the quality of writing does not have a level of rigorousness I find in other blogs I admire, or too often they are simply too American-centric. I’m also not so interested in spending a day in the echo-chamber finding the rare blog I would read.

So, for those who suffer distress when I blog infrequently, the sidebar should now assist you in feeling as I do most mornings: inspired by brilliant and passionate writers.

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Flowplayer Playlists and WPAlchemy Meta Boxes

Last night I spent a bit of time working on francesdath.info, which I’ve been shifting into WordPress recently. I wanted to recreate the video playlist I had, but using some kind of dynamic method via the WordPress editing page. Flowplayer, WPAlchemy, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, Anonymous Pro … somehow it wasn’t so difficult. If you like coding stuff, you can read it here: Flowplayer Playlists and WPAlchemy Meta Boxes.