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.

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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