Ok, so I’ve got this new blog set up and I’m pretty much happy with it for now. I’ve made a link to my old XBlog, which I shall probably tinker with tomorrow and make sure people can access the history on that too (never did get round to doing that before…), but I think I’m gonna scrap the Etomite blog altogether. Never really got on too well with the interface, bit too messy. Which leaves me with a bit of a problem – what happens to the blog entries that are left on there? Now, obviously they are old news, and not altogether ground-breaking, but they are history. And they do cover a fairly significant event (purchase of my Mini). So… I need a solution…

In essence, I’m going to try to sum up everything that was on that blog in one go, right here. Tall order? We shall see.

First off, I welcomed people to my new blog. Shame that didn’t last…

Secondly, I raved about the Mini I had just bought! And that’s a piece of news definitely worth salvaging. I had to go all the way to Kent to pick it up, which was quite a long way, but definitely worth it. I had a meeting in Chelmsford just after lunch, and then took the train from there to this little village called Higham. I’d had fun with money earlier in the day, what with almost losing my wallet in the bank (left it at the counter after I’d got the cash out for the car – muppet!), and then the bank making an error and not actually taking the money out of my account. My statement showed the money coming out, and then instantly being all put back again, which effectively meant that the bank had given me a wadge of cash for free! Sadly it wasn’t a permanent error, but for a few days it was as if the bank had paid for my new car! It was actually quite convenient, as it meant I wasn’t running perillously low on money for a few days before my savings account was emptied. God works in mysterious ways! Oh, and I had an interesting drive home too, as they had closed half of the Dartford Tunnel and also closed juntion 30…

Thirdly, I put a picture of the car in question up on the web. When I get round to it I’ll put it up here too so you can all continue to marvel at it.

Fourthly, I said “grrr” to the bonnet, which wouldn’t open, which meant that I had to take the grille off to get it open.

Fifthly, I managed to get the bonnet fixed by hitting it with a hammer. Then I checked the oil and found the engine to be completely empty. Not good. Seems I’d been driving around with a dry engine, causing untold damage and probably causing it to heat up excessively too. Again, “grrr”. So that was a trip down to Halfords in the Fiesta to buy some oil, of which 2.5 litres was duely poured into the thirsty Mini. Which, incidentally, has been called Neddy.

Sixthly, I told people how busy I had been, working on various things. Actually not all of it classifies as ‘work’ – I’m sure playing around with my blog technically counts as ‘play’! On the other hand, it is web design, which is my job after all… I was also playing around with some new DTP software I had just bought, Adobe CreativeSuite, a very professional and powerful set of tools if ever there were any. Which there have been. And then in the evening I went to Alex’s Commissioning Service at the Chaplaincy, at which I played keyboard, various people did readings, the Bishop of Colchester preached, Julian stood nearby looking short and feminine, and we all ate lots of cakes and things afterwards.

Seventhly (this is getting a little ridiculous now), I noted that someone came to look at my Fiesta. He seemed like he knew what he was doing, and seemed to like the car too. Said it was exactly what he was looking for. Sadly, though, he hasn’t phoned me back to make an offer, so he must have found a better car somewhere else. I also raved some more about Adobe CreativeSuite, and said that I was going to see Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride at the cinema in the evening, which was very odd. Very odd indeed.

And that’s about it, thank goodness. Apologies that this is such a long post, and doesn’t actually give you any new news, but for the sake of history I felt I ought to put it in. You never know, thing blog might actually be useful for something one day…

After a lot of hesitation and fumbling and reading through reference pages and stuff, I think I’ve finally decided that WordPress is worthy of my permanent attention. I’ve looked at loads of blog systems, and this one seems fairly good so far. I’ve downloaded a nice skin which will do for now, and it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to change it to look how I want. And the great thing about this is that skins are completely separate and modular, so I can design a new look for the site without having to rebuild any code or anything, and set it back if I don’t like it! So right now I’m about to design me a new minipix.co.uk interface, and try and link everything together so that people see this web site rather than the Etomite version, which I really don’t like now. So a big apology to all my faithful blog readers for all the changes that have been taking place recently, and I promise things will settle down eventually! I suppose that’s the problem with being a web designer, I’m always thinking up new designs….

EDIT: Ok, things are looking good so far, just got to figure out how to get my old posts imported in from previous blogs! Not sure how easy that’s going to be though, might have to talk to my good friend Phill and see if he has any clever ideas…