1001.....

....cleans a big, big carpet, for less than half a crown......whoops, sorry, nostalgia for the joys of early UK TV advertising and substantially lower prices got the better of me there! Just to report that we've got 1001 posts under our belts and are still staggering along.

But should you feel the urge for celebrating the occasion with a substantial (it runs to 16 volumes, so definitely not for the faint-hearted, or prudish for that matter!) dose of culture, can I suggest "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night" at archive.org ....plain vanilla text available for download. Wikipedia article with lots of links here

wor::site is 2 today, but......

Test file from box.net

Trying out another way of posting a file to the blog....bear with me!!

Middle Eastern Cookery.pdf

LATER....Well that seems to work nicely, it'll do for now anyway!

Blog Admin

Various bits and pieces down the right hand side have stopped working over the last couple of days, Blogger has been rolling out some changes that may, or may not, have had something to do with it. In the meantime I've taken the easy option and removed them. Will try to reinstall the Box Files at least, suitably weeded, sometime over the weekend.

Haven't got time to read that now.....

....but monkiri could be the answer. Someone asked me where I got ideas for posts a while back, and until early this week it involved keeping an open email to me-at-home while I was at work, then copying and pasting possible links to content until hometime as and when I came across them. monkiri allows you (after registering and downloading a 'button' for your Internet Explorer or Firefox toolbar) to 'snap' an area of the screen and quickly add a title that automatically posts to your monkiri blog along with the address of the source page and any text you feel inclined to include....you can have as many as you like, so great for research purposes. It doesn't seem to have a huge take-up so far (as of today I was top of the list of posters with 30!) Check out the story so far here (I'm treating it as a sort of visual sieve for content....and it's a lot better than a load of individual daily emails cluttering my inbox!) I've used a rather retro, minimalistic template that sits comfortably with my geeky work persona.....there's other, more visually attractive templates available!

A bit of judicial weeding

I'm planning on removing some detritus from the 'far right'....and maybe adding some new ephemeral stuff. Anyone who wants me to leave (or re-instate) anything in particular give me a bell.

Another couple of additions to the blog

You may notice a little envelope added to the end of each post.....it's a handy way of sending an email link to the post to your friends (or enemies!) should you feel the urge
I've also added an interactive sudoku puzzle on the right hand side below the BoxFiles for fellow addicts.....enjoy!

Link to NH Wines added

I've added a link to Nicks new venture into the "Drink" section of the Links at the right hand side of the blog. Not a lot of content as yet but that'll no doubt be remedied soon?

From a technical (web design) point of view I hope they're not paying too much.....but then I'm hypercritical! If I put my money where my mouth was I'd do a complete redesign, wouldn't I? But one issue with the website cries out to be mentioned....accessibility, as in allowing for red/green colour blindness. I did an online simulation of the banner image at VisCheck and this is what it would probably look like to wor John.....
....hmmmm, not exactly readable is it? If it wasn't for that slight white drop shadow round the lettering it would just be a muddy mess and definitely not the sort of corporate image I'd want at the top of MY website. By the way, 1 in 10 men suffer from partial to complete colour blindness.....that's a sizeable proportion of the wine buying public!

OK, "Holier than thou" lecture over!

......er, can someone help me down off this high horse.......please?

The 100th post....

Who would have thought it.....we've managed 100 posts!

How to post a video on the blog

Bex has asked how she can post a video on the blog (apparently there's lots of swear words.....I'm looking forward to it!) I've done a help sheet and put it in the Box Files, just click on it to download, it should open in acrobat reader

Problems with posting and commenting

Confession.....I updated the blog template and I think I may have locked you all out (except John)...see Chris' comment in the chat box The new template needs a gmail identifier to log in properly. It's easy to do, just go to the sign-up page and invent an address, use that to log into blogger (left hand box at the blogger sign-in page) and that SHOULD work!