Successful bloggers, and indeed writers in most fields, will tell you that the key to success is to pick your target market and stick to it.  No surprise, then, that the most read blogs are ones where their authors talk religiously about their chosen topic, whether that be a blog about programming methods or a blog about one man’s journey to become a vintage bus driver.

In spite of this well-acknowledged fact, you’ll notice that my blog is still littered with a whole plethora of categories, covering all sorts of topics and areas of life.  I have chosen not to focus on one target audience, but to write infrequently about everything instead.

Now, finally, I’ve got round to introducing a way for you, the reader, to take control of my blog and only show the articles you’re actually interested in.

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In all honesty I fell in love with Macs back before they were popular, back in the days of System 7.  My Dad used Macs every day, when he worked as a graphic designer for a local newspaper, and even then I could tell that the user interface was just so much ‘better’ than Microsoft’s offering, which back then was Windows 3.1.

Times have changed since then, of course.  Now I’m running Mac OS X Leopard on a dual-processor G5 tower.  Not new by any means, but it still beats the pants off Vista on my laptop.  Of course, Google has had its part to play in driving things forward, revolutionising web searches and pretty much anything we do online.  They’ve even brought out their own web browser, but sadly they didn’t think it worth while to port a PPC version of it, so I can’t use that.

However, I can trick out my Firefox to do some of the same things that make Chrome such a fantastic browser.

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A while back my blog decided, in its infinite wisdom, that allowing access to the control panel was in fact not what I wanted to do, despite my many attempts to do so.  I would go to the login page, enter my details, hit the ‘go’ button, and be instantly redirected back to the login screen.  Helpful.  I did some digging around, and it appeared that as far as WordPress was concerned I was actually logged in, it just wouldn’t show me the control panel itself.  That meant I couldn’t approve or reject comments, I couldn’t add new posts, I couldn’t update the templates, I couldn’t add or remove any plugins, and I couldn’t spend time tinkering with my blog.  Maybe it thought it was doing me a favour.

In any case, it’s taken me until last night to resolve the matter.  I had previously tried copying new files across to upgrade to the latest version, but that didn’t work.  So last night I took a full backup of everything, deleted all the core files from the server, and uploaded a fresh load of files.  And as if by some deep and powerful magic, my command over my online presence was finally restored.  With that liberation still fresh, I jumped on the opportunity to make a few changes.

The most obvious change you’ll see is that I’m now importing my Twitter feed.  When I post a new tweet, it’ll get displayed here on my blog too, appearing like a little speech bubble.  This is actually a category in WordPress too, so I can non-Twitter mini-posts too.  Like for those times when I really feel the need to say something to the world, but Twitter doesn’t give me enough characters, and a full-on multi-paragraph post isn’t necessary.  Of course, I understand that you may not want my Twittering to come up in your RSS reader, so if you want to continue reading my blog by RSS but excluding these micro-posts you can now use this new RSS feed URL: www.minipix.co.uk/?feed=rss2&cat=-342.

Other changes I’m bringing in include a mobile-enabled view of my blog, so that you can read my posts from your phone.  I’ll hopefully also figure out a way of updating my blog from my mobile too, so that I can blog on the move.

I shall also be adding a new ‘Family’ category, as I seem to be writing an increasing amount about our son Samuel, and it feels appropriate to recognise his significance with his own category.

EDIT: If you’re seeing the Twitter micro-posts but they’re unformatted (i.e. not in funky speech bubbles) you probably need to refresh your browser to reload the stylesheet.  To refresh your browser, click the refresh button in the toolbar.  Or press F5.  Or press CTRL-R.  Or CMD-R if you’re on a Mac.  Or ALT-CTRL-SHIFT-TAB-R-X-N-SPACE if you happen to have that set up as a custom keyboard shortcut.

I remember when I first started blogging.  My friend Phill was responsible for starting me off, back when we were at uni together.  He had a blog, and said that I should have one too.  So I registered a free domain name – www.minipix.cjb.net – and pointed that at some free webspace that came with my Dad’s dial-up internet connection (with permission… I think), and wrote my first blog.  If memory serves, it said something along the lines of ‘hey, I’ve got a blog, not sure what to write here, but we’ll see how it goes’.  Once the bug had bitten, there was no stopping me.

That first blog was a straight HTML page.  I edited the HTML, probably in Notepad, put the latest post at the top of the page, and re-uploaded the file.  Simple but effective.  But over time it became a little unwieldy.  So Phill got me to beta-test his PHP-MySQL blogging system that he’d been tinkering with, and that opened up a lot more options.  Before long though I felt it necessary to migrate to something more substantial, made the move to WordPress (importing my old blog posts), and have been a blogging sensation ever since.  Well, maybe not the sensation bit.

But now, an ominous cloud hangs on the horizon.  A tiny ripple out at sea that has the potential to grow into a tidal wave that will rip through all that once was safe and secure.  My wife has a blog.

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Just a quick message here to say that my blog isn’t letting me in.  WordPress has failed me.  I can’t log in to add new posts, because when I enter my login details it just redirects me back to the login page rather than taking me to the admin panel.  And yes, I have tried disabling all my plugins.  And yes, I have tried upgrading to the latest version of WordPress.  And yes, it is amazing how I can still post to my blog if I can’t access it (I’m using Flock instead, hopefully this will work in the meantime).

So apologies for the lack of content here lately, when I get it all back up and running again I hope things will return to normal, with posts planned about how I get Samuel to sleep, video editing, rants about Google Buzz, revelations about split infinitives, and so on and so forth.

(Below is a solution for getting iSync to sync iCal’s “delegate” calendars from Google Calendar onto a mobile phone.  Feel free to skip all the blurby bit at the top if you’re not interested in my life story.)

My job means sitting in front of a computer all day, playing with the internet.  There are of course times when I leave my desk, or need to use a different computer, and then it’s nice to still have the same tools to hand.  So I’ve put my diary onto Google Calendar, so that it’s available wherever I am.  Nice.

Oh no, wait a minute.  I also need that same calendar on my mobile phone.  So far there is no bridge directly between Google Calendar and my Motorola L6, unless I load up Google Calendar on my phone’s browser – but that costs me money because I’m on a PAYG tariff and I don’t get any free data, so that’s out of the question (not least because it’s far from instant, even using the incredible Opera Mini browser and its clever servers).  So, that means having the calendars on iCal as well, so that I can use iSync to copy everything across.  And here’s where it all gets rather complicated.

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This is a useful Twitter widget - repeats everything everyone else has said.

I’ve never been one for associating with the ‘in crowd’.  I’ve never been particularly interested in trends, fashions, fads or crazes.  Well, I say never… I do remember a time when I was at primary school when Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle action figures were the big thing, and I saw everyone else playing with them, and I pestered my Mum to buy me one, and she did, and the day I brought mine into school was the day they went out of fashion.  It’s scarred me for life.  Not that I’m bitter.

Fast forward a decade or so and I’m still in a similar mindset, though it has evolved slightly.  My approach now is to observe the trend from a distance, and then when it’s established itself and the hype has died down, then I jump on the bandwagon, and hope to goodness that I haven’t left it too late.  As a result, I have never bought a brand new Mac, I still haven’t got an iPhone, I joined Facebook to find most of my friends already there, and I gave SecondLife a spin a year or so too late.  And now it’s happened again.  I’m on Twitter.

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Actually, that’s a little harsh, it wasn’t quite that bad.  And second time around was much less stressful.  Not to mention gentler on the upholstery.

Oh, sorry, you’ll be wanting some context.  Ahem.  Allow me to back up and start again.

I now have a second person on my insurance policy, and much to my wife’s disappointment it’s not her.  My friend Sarah has another driving test coming up next week and wanted to get as much practice as possible before zero-hour, so I put her on my insurance for a week as an additional named driver.  Of course, that’s meant that I’ve had to actually take her out in the car, which was pretty scary, for both of us.

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I’m not usually one for following popular trends (I think I was emotionally scarred by the day Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles went out of fashion on the very day I proudly brought my action figure into school).  Facebook has been one of the exceptions, in that not only did I sign up fairly soon after it became big enough to catch my eye but I’m actually still a regular user of their services.  I have photos uploaded there, I use it to keep track of my friends, and I have no reason to stop any time soon.

I did however succumb to a Facebook-related trend that is probably beginning to grow old now – I uploaded a profile photo of me as a baby.  Well, about three years old anyway.  I even got a comment left by a friend of mine saying how cute I was.  And it got me thinking – who actually remembers me from when I was that age?  No one I’m in contact with now, apart from family of course.  The only people who would remember me from then would be my old friends from my first primary school, but I’ve not been in touch with any of them since… well, since I left in Year 3.

And this is where Facebook really comes into its own – a quick search brought up an unexpected surprise, finding someone who is potentially the first friend I ever made.

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I don’t usually do this, but this post is primarily concerned with linking to cool stuff I’ve found elsewhere on the web.  Not very original on my behalf, so be thankful that this doesn’t happen often.  However, they are things I thought it would be fun to share, simply because I enjoyed them.  All of them are videos on YouTube, and both were ‘featured’ items today, which is how I stumbled across them – testament that featuring items does actually work sometimes.

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A while back I discovered the delights of free VOIP calls and instant messaging courtesy of the revolutionary Skype.  I bought me a nice Skype phone for my Mac, installed the Skype program, and purchased some credit so I could call landline numbers from my computer.  It was fantastic.  Until I got frustrated at the poor quality I was getting when connecting to conventional telephone numbers.  I would call clients on business and the call would fall apart and I would have to call them back on my mobile and apologise profusely for the dodgy phone connection.  Not very professional.  And as such I stopped using Skype altogether and let my credit expire.

So why am I now considering it again?  Is it just the Christmas merriment making me more receptive to trying something in the hope it’ll be better this time round?  Or have I left things long enough to allow for technology to catch up, enabling me to take full advantage of the services on offer to transform the way I do business?

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Just a quick note to say that my new blog design is finally live and kicking, with just a few technical bugs to sort out, most notably that comments aren’t working at the moment.  I’m trying to find a solution to that one, and then everything should be fine.  I also realise that the three latest comments have also been lost; I am aware of that, it’s because I’ve moved this site to a new server.  Hopefully I’ll figure out a way to reinstate those comments too.  So, sorry for the inconvenience of not being able to litter my blog with your own thoughts, but I’m working to resolve that!

In the meantime, please do enjoy the new look for the blog, in particular the header image which changes depending on the time of day, and time of year, so check back at different times during the day to see different images.  I’m also quite pleased with the comments post-it notes too, which work quite well.  The only caveat with that is that I have had to put a cap on the length of comments, otherwise it all started to look silly.

Once comments are up and running again, please feel free to let me know what you think.  In the meantime, twiddle your fingers, or if you really do want to tell me something send me a postcard, or a homing pigeon, or smoke signals, or something.

As many of you will know, I maintain and develop the Diocese of Chelmsford web site, which is a big (800+ pages) site with lots of content and serves a lot of people.  One of our monthly printed publications, The Month, is also published online for people to download as a PDF.  I have to be honest, although I upload the file every month I don’t actually read it!  However, it occurred to me that a publication like this would be an ideal place to advertise.

After a few e-mails and phone calls to the publishers, Cornerstone Vision, I ended up sending them a small advert, and I’m pleased to report that it’s in this month’s Month!  The newspaper will be delivered to churches in Essex and East London soon, so you’ll be able to pick up a copy free from any Anglican church in the area, or of course you can download it to view on your computer.  And my advert appears on page 3!  How cool is that?!  I’ve got another two ads lined up for further issues too, so hopefully I’ll see some return on that.

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Funny isn’t it, how a good idea can so quickly turn into a nightmare?  Right now I’m a situation where I have two reseller accounts with different companies and no clear way of transferring web sites from one to the other.  The old server is running Virtualmin, and the new server is running cPanel, and apparently the two don’t get along.  I can transfer the files and database, but getting the mail accounts across is proving to be a pain and a half.  I’ve spent almost all day searching the net for information, and there just doesn’t seem to be anything on migrating from Virtualmin to cPanel.

To add to my frustration, my business e-mails aren’t working at the moment.  I’ve sent a query to the company running the server, so hopefully they’re looking into it, but it’s quite crippling because I rely on my e-mails on a daily basis.  Personal e-mails are unaffected, but anything to do with the business is eerily quiet.  And I have no idea if the e-mails are ever going to reappear – they’re not bouncing back, but neither are they appearing in my inbox, they’re just floating off into another dimension or something.

Nothing else to report really, just expressing my frustration at things not working perfectly.  Technology may have come on a long way in the last 50 years, but it’s still got a long way to go before it’s all completely user-friendly.

I suppose it’s a natural progression for all web designers to feel the need to be offering hosting solutions alongside their web sites.  It makes sense from a practical point of view, and of course it’s an extra source of income.  I’ve actually been offering hosting for my clients for a while now, through a friend of mine who has a hosting business, but I’m reaching the point where I need more.  So far I’ve only really been able to offer my hosting packages to people I make web sites for, rather than to anyone else, which is potentially limiting.

So I’ve been spending a lot of time recently investigating all the hosting options available to me.  And there are lots.  Buying individual hosting packages from companies isn’t really an option, as there is so little markup that it’s just not worth considering.  A reseller package is far more suitable, allowing me to set up hosting packages for people without having to worry about the server itself, which is completely managed by the hosting company.  A step up from that and you’ve got Virtual Private Servers (VPS), which gives you a lot more control and room for expansion.  Above that is a Dedicated Server, which is a VPS without the Virtual bit.  I’ll go into more detail on that in a bit.

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Despite having been in the web design industry for several years, it’s taken until this week to get myself into a community of like-minded people in that respect.  I’m surprised at myself that it’s taken me this long.  Still, better late than never.

It all stemmed from a problem I was having, and searching the net hadn’t provided an answer, so I felt asking some actual people might prove more effective.  And so I found myself wandering around the Web Designer Forum, a UK-based community (well, the web site is based in the UK, the members could be from anywhere I suppose) specifically for web designers like me.  I was able to introduce myself, ask my first question, get some responses, and answer some questions other people had, all within a couple of days of discovering the site.  They seem like a genuinely nice bunch of people, so I’m expecting to hang around this site for some time!

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Yesterday morning when I turned my PC on it refused to let me into Windows.  It got as far as the logon screen and then rebooted itself.  It took until this morning to figure out what the problem was – the USB wireless dongle had come loose and the dodgy hardware connection was causing Windows to panic.  Aww… poor Windows… can’t cope with stuff…

Anyway, a byproduct of that temporary glitch was that I started looking into getting Linux working again.  I say again, it wasn’t actually broken before.  I had installed Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy on the PC over a year ago and never really used it because I couldn’t get it to recognise the wireless dongle I had.  However, having got Windows back online with a CAT5 cable I decided to see if I could persuade Ubuntu to go online too.  And that’s proved to be a mammoth operation, and I’ve got little work done today so far.

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Some background

Some years ago I found myself taking on a large web project, managing a web site with several hundred pages, edited by several people with little (if any) knowledge of HTML, and which needed a serious overhaul.  Initially I tried streamlining the process of dealing with all those static HTML files by creating a simple PHP framework to insert a common header and footer to each page, which significantly simplified the whole process of editing content.  However, it wasn’t long before I realised that a proper Content Management System was what the doctor ordered, and preferably one that was free.

So it was, then, that I started a little research into what CMSs were available, and tried out a few of the demo installations on www.opensourcecms.com.  There were a few that I had heard of, even back then, and which promised fantastic performance, easy-to-use interface, complete cusomisation, and more bells and whistles than you could shake a keyboard at.  Among those I tried were Joomla, Mambo, e107, EZ Publish and a few others.  Most turned out to be quite complex, and while they offered plenty of options for technical people I found them to be a little less friendly for people less web-savvy than I.  I eventually settled with Etomite, which didn’t offer quite so much in terms of bells and whistles, but which enabled rapid development through its simple templating system, and had such a simple back-end interface that I could satisfactorily introduce my client to it.

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Running your own business means a lot of extra effort, relative to a ‘normal’ job.  True, there are the benefits of being your own boss, working the hours that suit you, taking holidays when you fancy, setting the prices you like.  But in addition to being a Web Designer I also have to handle the accounts, pay the tax man, and do all the boring day-to-day stuff that proper businesses would palm onto someone else.  Thankfully, because my business is relatively small and simple, this doesn’t take too much effort.  Mr Tax Man doesn’t bother me unduly, and the general running of the business tends to just happen.

Of course, there are ways of making life easier for myself on the business side of things.  For instance, keeping track of the business’s money is something I’m keen to do, since numbers are not my strong point, so having a system in place that makes it all blindingly obvious is a must.  So far I’ve been relying on spreadsheets to log the work I do, with a different spreadsheet for each client.  It works, but it’s not particularly efficient.  I’ve looked around on the ‘net, and not found anything that fits my requirements exactly, so I decided I’d make my own.  Nothing like reinventing the wheel every now and then, just for kicks.

And so mWork was born.

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The geniuses (or should that be genii??) behind the Firefox project have come up with a nifty bit of marketing to get everyone to download the latest release of their web browser.  Instead of just releasing it, they’re hyping it up and going for a world record to see how many downloads they can accumulate in the space of 24 hours.  Firefox 3, available for PC, Mac, and all those ‘other’ operating systems, should be a massive step forward compared to Firefox 2, and challenges most other browsers too.  It claims to be faster than Safari on the Mac, and faster than IE7 on the PC, and with the enormous community base and a massive library of add-ons available, Firefox’s finger in the pie is surely set to grow.

However, there has been significant confusion in the world-wide-web community, because it’s still not available.  We were told that Firefox 3 would be available on 17th June.  It’s been 17th June all day, and here in the UK we’re running out of day in which to download the darn thing.  And yet there is no sign of it on the Firefox web site.  There are some clever people who have managed to locate the actual download separate from the web site, but that’s cheating somewhat, and I wonder whether those results will count in the world record stats.  Take a look at the comments on this news item and you’ll see people from around the world thoroughly confused at the lack of the promised download, wondering how, why and who screwed it all up.

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