binaryslate

Thought it was about time for a spot of updating. A quick reboot of the blog, new style based on a nice theme called Brajeshwar v7 and an update of Wordpress to the latest version (v2.0.5).

As per usual under these circumstances, it’s highly likely that I’ve forgotten to patch something, missed a plugin or generally cocked up the css, so do throw a comment or suggestion if you spot anything.

Hope everyone likes it

I started using del.icio.us a few weeks ago to record all those pointless sites you happen upon. This action made my asides column redundant so i’ve removed that from the sidebar and replaced it with my del.icio.us linkroll.

I was intending to use a plugin to get the list but del.icio.us provide a script. You can get the info for your own blog from del.icio.us/help/linkrolls.

I’ve thrown up a tag cloud over on the right hand side of the site.

Since I stopped using wordpress categories to organise my posts there hasn’t been a way to find posts by a particular topic. Using the tags kinda provides the same feature but also allows me to pop up on technorati too.

And also I couldn’t be bothered to manage the categories

The tag cloud is an interesting concept in how it shows your more popular topics in a ease to grasp manner. The brain just seems to accept graphical stuff so much easier.

My biggest daily chore with the blog has unfortunately been moderating comments as spam due to Akismet not spotting them correctly and sticking them in the ‘Akismet Spam’ list. I’ve now had to install some comment form checking like in the old days of v1, for the small extra effort required by comment posters it should be a load off my shoulders.

Akismet worked great at first but a lot of spam seems to get through now. I had assumed that if I marked those that slipped through as spam and passed them over to Akismet it would learn and catch further similar spams, but it’s not worked out this way.

I’ve installed the Did You Pass Math? plugin. How does it work you ask…

Asks the person making the comment to answer a simple math question. This is intended to prove they are a human being and not some kind of robot.

e.g. What is the sum of 2 and 9?

Hopefully you’ll all not mind the extra seconds to post a comment, I actually think it only asks if you’re not logged in so regularly posters shouldn’t be affected.

I’m trying out a new look, still a work in progress (when is it not!) I wanted to aim for a clean look but I’m really struggling with fonts, always have, I look at my fave sites and see what they use but whenever I try them out it never looks the same Whats the secret ?

I’m also not overally sure on my header pic/logo combo as it looks very naff. But then I never was very artistic.

Throw some comments my way if anyone has any suggestions or improvements I could make.

An open request to someone on the wordpress team…

Please fix the regex that replaces text smilies for the graphical versions, please make it match from the start of line as well when preceded by white space. It’s a nightmare having to always go back into a post to stick a space in front of a smiley…