Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Alan in Belfast: a few adjustments

Number 1

Bye bye Frappr. Hello BlogMap.

Static copy of BlogMap

Since Frappr was so hard-to-use and hence underused, I’ve removed it off the sidebar, and replaced it with the BlogMap. By adding a couple of tags (ICBM or geo.position) containing your latitude and longitude to the section of your blog template, it can pick up where you are on the globe, and show any nearby bloggers. (Word of warning, BlogMap is definitely beta software – your mileage may vary.)

Talking of dumping … A couple of bad experiences, and Wayne Ordinary American packed his Blogger bags and headed over to the admirable Wordpress. And I can understand why. Blogger’s image loading is very unreliable at the moment and getting on my goat too. Together with the lack of tags, I do often regret opting for Blogger back in March.

How fickle (and unfaithful) we all are in the online world!

Number 2

I’m toying with going three column … it’s the trendy thing to do after all. Might put the third column on the far right (rather than the de jour left hand side).

I frequently read blogs on the move using a PDA whose display size doesn’t support multiple columns. As a result the columns are displayed in order, putting a lot of little used garbage in the way of the main up-to-date postings I’m trying to read.

But it’s a lot of effort to tweak the Rounders template that I picked up from Blogger. Would need a boring flight though to get it all sorted.

Number 3

No more mention of Downpatrick for a while.

Like me, you’ll be delighted to know that my period Jury Service finally ended yesterday morning. I wasn’t selected for this week’s case – though a friend was sworn onto his fourth(?) jury! If you missed the trying experience, you can catch up in the four previous riveting instalments:

Just now to send off the expenses claim and it’ll all be sorted. (Compared to my employer, the Courts Service's mileage rate seems rather generous at 27.3p/mile?)

So no more pictures of Downpatrick Cathedral, or whinging about the lack of parking etc.

Ok, one last whinge. It’s nearly impossible to buy a cup of takeaway tea in Downpatrick at 10am in the morning. Court with breakfast wouldn’t have been good.

4 comments:

Alan in Belfast (Alan Meban) said...

Not so fast ... I'm a bit like GPS, and inject a little bit of error into my position on Frappr maps etc!

Definitely, BT4. Close enough to walk to the Orient, or Arnolds for a takeaway.

Alan in Belfast (Alan Meban) said...

And the owner of the KFC up the road was in the news last year for yet another food-hygene problem.

The Point's not bad for lunch. Feel free to submit a guest review of local establishments to alaninbelfast at gmail dot com!

Alan in Belfast (Alan Meban) said...

Howard, I did a View Source on your blog's home page.

* You've the ICBM tags in twice. Once before the end of the HEAD section, and once between HEAD and BODY (which should really be empty).

* Strangely, there's no opening HEAD tag (or TITLE tags) on your page ... which would explain why there's only the URL in my IE window displaying your blog.

* You might need to tidy up the start of your Blogger template to get it working.

* Og, and FeedMap seems to complain whenever you try to update your location. Lots of people have commented about this problem on their forum, but no one has responded to explain if it'll be fixed. Definitely Beta.

Alan in Belfast (Alan Meban) said...

^Og^Oh