blogging

I guess I'm not the Queen after all

This entry was posted in Barbecue blogging internet on by

I had been planning to have an “official” birthday barbecue this weekend, trying to make a tradition of something I started for my third of a century. However, with Daz and Emily away, Clare in revision mode and Damian and me needing to practice climbing hills in advance of an assault on Sca Fell Pike I guess I’ll put it on hold.

You might have noticed that Spinneyhead has been a bit subdued for the last week and a bit. Basically I came back from a lot of travelling over the Bank Holiday weekend to go onto a bullshit Gateway to Work course. I shouldn’t be there. It’s useless to at least three of us (out of ten) but it’s in the rules of New Deal so we have to go. I should have been on a course preparing me for going self employed (as a professional blogger[!!??] it’s one of those things that confuses people more the more I try to explain it) but the funds were cut. It seems that, now that Tony’s back in, the funds have mysteriously reappeared. Pisses me off lots.

The one good thing I’ve gained from this course is an understanding of why I’ll need to get away from the PC when I go back to doing this full time. Between the “how to do an interview” videos and awful time filling quizzes I have managed to write up a press release and business plan. If I were at home I’d be fulfilling my first duty as a problogger- delivering lots of timely information garnered from teh Internets but I’d be slacking on the sitting down and writing original stuff because it’s just too tempting to go and check the RSS feeds every hour or so.

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Feed Me!

This entry was posted in Adsense Blogger on by

I get most of my news from RSS (atom, XML, whatever) feeds, which is why it was so annoying when my computer crashed yesterday and wiped out details of my subscriptions. (Goes away and exports OPML file, just in case.)

And I know at least one person satisfies their Spinneyhead habit from the full text feed. So I’m pleased to see that I may soon be able to extend Adsense to my RSS feed. I promise not to over use it when it becomes available.

Another useful RSS trick I discovered yesterday-

Some blogs don’t publish a link to their feeds. However, it seems that Blogger creates one by default on new accounts, and puts the information you need into the templates available on its site. So now you can keep up with that blog you forget/ don’t want to visit every day. When viewing the page, go to View->Page Source and look for a line something like link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” href=”../spinneyhead_rss.xml”, which sould give you all the information you need to find and subscribe to the blog’s Atom feed.

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Monday is becoming minor disaster day

This entry was posted in blogging on by

Last week Casa Spinneyhead was disconnected from the Interweb for a day whilst the broadband threw a paddy, today I’ve been hit by two annoying setbacks to my blogging. One is short term, the other means a re-think of my plans for the next six months.

I left the computer on last night to run scheduled tests and because there were some sites left open I wanted to revisit. Some time during the night it crashed, corrupting the OPML file that detailed all the RSS feeds I check every morning. So now I have to track them down and rebuild it. You can bet I’m going to back it up this time.

More annoyingly, the training scheme I was booked on which was going to give me, amongst other things, six months support to become a pro blogger, is no longer open to me. Now I have to go and jump through other idiot hoops just to satisfy the JobCentre and get a job I’ll hate.

Grumble, grumble, complain.

At least it’s sunny out.
Update I think Monday heard me complaining and decided it hadn’t done enough, because the server crashed at about five and had to be manually restarted (by me). Not a major problem at all, but, in keeping with the rest of the day, mildly annoying.

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Spinneyhead Scale

This entry was posted in Blogger internet on by

The Spinneyhead family will be expanding in coming weeks. Spinneyworld’s still in development, so the first step on the road is the relaunch of Spinneyhead Scale as a blog. The world of models and modelling isn’t the fastest moving news wise, but teh Internets are a great place to find obscure reference material and out of the way garage kit manufacturers. I may also use the blog as a place to experiment with getting the most from Technorati tags, seeing as Blogger doesn’t allow me Movable Type style categories.

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Pet

This entry was posted in Blogger on by

BlogPet is a little creature for your Blogger homepage. When you install your pet it will read your blog when you update it, guess what kind of mood you’re in and tell visitors what it thinks. And sometimes the pets know a few jokes too!

It’s similar to a Tamigotchi, except it doesn’t need food or water. The only thing your BlogPet loves is the sound of your voice!

Strictly, it should be on the sidebar, but I’m going to see how it feels trapped after two posts about fractals (and I’ll try to put something dirty on top of it).

via visuallypleasing

Interface

This entry was posted in Blogger on by

Blogger doesn’t want me to use the Create Post window today and keeps timing
out trying to open it. So I’m going to see if the mail-to-post works.

I’ve found a few interesting things so far. Go sign the petition against ID
cards- http://www.no2id-petition.net/. I’ll put a proper link inthere when
I’m allowed to.

No Photo Friday or Deputised Experts until Blogger stops being pissy.
—
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.786 / Virus Database: 532 – Release Date: 29/10/2004

Look at me! Look at me!

This entry was posted in Blogger sex Sex Toy Tony Blair on by

via pinksocks, two articles about publicising your blog. I’d already read the Blogger one, and have setup the NavBar and made a few other changes based upon it, but the Scobleizer one is new to me.

They’re all common sense suggestions, but someone had to say them out loud I guess. If I IM’d, emailed or forum’d more I’d be well in. As it is I’m trying for a variation on suggestions 6/6b, call it 6c- Do something offline that gets attention. Spinneyhead still registers very high in Google searches for Perfect Sex Toy (and the Fleshbot post about the project comes out top if you stick the phrase in quotes). So I really should get one of my own Perfect Sex Toy long sleeves and wear it out so people’ll go search for it.

The other big offline project is the grafitti/ signage book, because I’m going to put it on CD and try to get it sold in Magma and Urbis and reviewed by City Life.

Failing that, I’m still trying to cause an outcry about that time I shot Tony Blair.

Testing

This entry was posted in Blogger on by

Hmmm. Blogger is a pain in the arse when it comes to pinging the trackback system. I had to read the Movable Type explanation of trackbacks to learn how it can be done, and there’s no explanation of how I ping manually.

This links to the trackback URL of my post from earlier about speed limits. I’m going to see what happens when I click on it. That didn’t work.

It looks like people with MT can leave trackback info for my Blogger submitted posts, but I can’t return the favour.

There has to be a way……

(Fairly) Early adopter

This entry was posted in Blogger on by

SPECIAL NOTICE

As an active Blogger user, we would like to invite you to be one of the first to try out Google’s new email service, Gmail.

Would you like to give it a whirl? YES / NO

Okay. I’m having a little trouble logging in at the moment, but when it’s all sorted spinneyhead[at]gmail[dot]com will be used for all blog related mail. I’ll even put an email link back at the top of the page.