Phew... Done At Last

Tagging every post I've written in the past 6 years or thereabouts that I've been writing this blog on and off took a lot longer than I thought it would. Still, all done now, so you can now look through the blog archive much easier than before. Bedtime for me now as I have work in about 6 hours time.

A Whole New Look

So I thought that since I was gonna have a go at this blogging lark again, it was about time I gave this place a bit of a spruce up, as after 6 years it was looking kinda dated. So I picked out this rather nifty looking template from the selection that blogger offer, customised it a bit by adding in my links, and moving things about and this is what I've ended up with thus far.

I'll likely tweak it a bit more until I'm happy with it. I'd like to put the nice header pic I had on the old blog on this one, might get it tarted up a bit first though, maybe add a decorative edge to it or something. I am pleased to be able to have the section of Tags though, which will make navigating around this blogs archive a lot easier... or at least it will once I've finished tagging all the posts in the archive anyway!

Tweaking

As a start I've updated the list of links on the sidebar, many of which were horribly out of date. They should all work now and are once again relevant to my current interests.

Hmmm...

Been a while since I posted anything on here and for the life of me I can't think why I lost interest in this site. Not sure what I'll post here but I'd rather not leave this field fallow any longer.

Upgraded

About an hour ago I finally got around to upgrading this blog to the new version of the Blogger software. For the most part this change is behind the scenes as it were, in that the blog itself looks pretty much the same as it did before. What has changed though is at the bottom of many of the posts you will now find a Labels link. I have spent the past hour going through the list of my posts and flagging them with various tags to group them. Thus all the Song Lyric posts have the lyrics tag, all the Quotes From Three Movies posts have the movie quotes tag, all the Book Reviews... well you get the idea I'm sure.

This makes it easier for me to organise the site and keep track of what movies, books etc I've covered already, and it makes it possible for those who want to do so, to view all the posts of a similar topic by clicking the link. The list of labels as of now is:

• Book Reviews
• Gor
• Lyrics
• Movie Quotes
• Movie Reviews
• Poetry
• Rogues Gallery
• Taunton Tour
• Website

I'll likely add more as I think of them, but those should serve to make the site a bit easier to get around for now. If you find a post that should have a particular tag and doesn't do let me know. I'm sure I've gotten them all, but I'm only human afterall.

Looking Nice Again

So up until this evening if you went back through my blog it started looking a bit messy. Pictures missing (including the header picture), links not working or missing and generally the site looked untidy and half finished. Not so anymore, as I discovered Blogspot's neat "Republish Entire Blog" button. This has set every page in the blog now to the most recent standard, so the entire site looks as good as the front page. Now if only I could fix all the typo's that easily...

Some New Links

I've added a bunch of new links to the sidebar today, as I like to have that section of the site representing the sites I most often visit on the internet.

Candlekeep is the best resource on the net for information regarding the Forgotten Realms D&D world of which I am so fond.

Amazon UK is my favourite place to shop for books and DVD's.

The Sweat Shop is a new store that sells individual D&D Miniature figures. I've recently foudn that these figures add a lot to the experience of running my Friday night games, so it is handy to have a store that sells them at a good price and gets them in the mail quickly. Plus it's a big help being able to buy specific figures rather than having to hope the figure I want is in a specific booster pack.

The Internet Movie Database is a huge resource of information of all kinds about just about any movie (and TV shows too for that matter) I can think of. This is where I get the quotes for the series of "Quotes From Three Movies" posts that I do.

Wizards of the Coast is the company that produces the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game (amongst many other things). When it comes to roleplaying books, I rarely buy products from anyone else.

Also I've changed the link to Celluloid Heroes as the writer of that blog moved to a new server. That's all for now, update complete. If you've not visited any of those sites before, I suggest giving them a try.

Photobucket

If you're viewing this page at around about the same time I'm writing this post, then you'll have noticed that the wonderful picture that this site is named for (as well as my photo) are missing. Fear not, I'm not getting rid of them or anything like that. It is simply that they are not housed on blogspot's servers, but rather at a free image hosting service called www.photobucket.com.

And it would seem that photobucket are having a few problems right now, as those images can't be accessed and neither can the picture I use in the chatrooms I roleplay in (which is how I discovered that photobucket wasn't working right, when that picture wouldn't load up in the room). Hopefully everything will be back to normal in a few hours and this site will again be looking as I like it too.

Ohh and for the record, this is the 300th post since I started this blog!

A Little Knight

I've made a small change to this site today, in that I have changed the look of the webcounter. It was created as a dragon breathing fire because I wanted a dragon on the page. Unfortunately, as time went by (and the number of page hits rose), the stream of fire got longer and longer and started to intrude on the text in the main column. Which looked really bad in my opinion, so I've changed it.

The new counter has a little knight in armour defending it, and the actual numbers are a bit bigger and clearer too. All in all I think it looks better than the old counter did, especially as it fits into the side column properly.

Spring Cleaning

No not the house, though some parts of it could use a tidy up. Instead I've made a few alterations to this site. Nothing really major, just some tweaks to the html to tidy it up a bit and make the place look better (even though it looks exactly the same). I have also edited the list of links.

The Movie Review Diary has changed its name to Celluloid Heroes for no reason that I can think of, guess its author got bored of the old name. Anyway, that link has been renamed accordingly. After the writer completely messing up the multi-part storyline that had been running in Pet Professional in favour of returning to repetitive one shots I've removed the link to that comic in disgust.

I have however replaced one webcomic with two others. Please welcome (and hopefully read & enjoy) the webcomics Penny and Aggie as well as Brat-halla.

Penny and Aggie is about two American girls in high school. Penny LeVac is the atypical rich bitch overacheiver (think Cordelia from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you're on the right track). Her nemesis is Aggie D'Amour a girl more concerned with saving the world than living her own life. Penny and Aggie is updated every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Brat-halla is a fun comic which answers the question: "What were the Norse Gods like when they were kids?". Meet Odin and his wife Frigg and their unruly brood of child deities: Thor, Heimdall, Hod, Baldur, Hermod... ohh and Loki! Complicating matters are the evil Odineye and his minions, plus hormones, underdressed Valkyries, monsters, school and having Hel as a babysitter! Brat-halla is updated on Tuesdays.

Lookeee... New Links!

I've added a couple new links to the sidebar this evening, both of which I've been meaning to add for a while now. The links are as follows:

Abby's Agency: A webcomic detailing the job of a girl called Abby Normal. Unfortunately her job is anything but normal, as she works as the receptionist for the headquarters of Worldstar Conglomerate, which is a cover company for an international counter-espionage ring (much like Universal Exports is the cover for who James Bond works for). What's worse is that it is a very badly run organisation (they have a former arch villain running their canteen!), and the operatives at Station J (in Jamaica) are permanently stoned! It is a very funny webcomic, updated on most Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Striptease: This is a brilliant webcomic whose main character is Max. Max draws a comic book called Neato-People, works for his best friend Emily, and is in love with fellow artist Alli, as well as being a huge fan of Joss Whedon's tv shows. There is a great cast of other characters, many of whom are more interesting (to me anyway) than Max himself, such as Alli's evil twin Naomi, Kim the vampish asian lawyer, and the misadventures of the band Bohica Mouse. The comic is updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

As with any webcomic I heartily reccomend starting to read it from the very beginning, especially Striptease which has long continuity heavy storylines. Hope you check them out and enjoy reading them if you do.

Look... New Links!

I've added a couple more links to the sidebar and thought I'd point them out. The first is a webcomic called Pet Professional, which updates every Wednesday (but so far not today it seems). The comic is about a contract killer with a twist. He only takes out contracts on animals! Despite sounding really grim, it is really funny. The comics have a loose overall story arc running through them, though most of the strips can be enjoyed as stand-alones. Still, I recommend going into the archive and reading from the beginning (which won't take you that long, it is a fairly new comic) to fully appreciate it.

The second new link is to another blog, named The Movie Review Diary. The guy who writes this got the idea to simply watch DVD's and review them. And he is really good at it. His writing is solid, his opinions well thought out, and I find myself agreeing with most of what he has to say, about the films he reviews. And there are a lot of reviews to read, if you are so inclined as to read through his archives.

Retro-Publishing

One of the great advantages that the internet has over print as a forum for expression, is the ability to go back and edit your work, without having to issue an entire new copy of it. I am forever sifting through my back posts and editing them, clearing up typos and bad grammar, substituting words that on retrospect weren't quite what I wanted to say, for those that get my message across better. It is said that hindsight is 20/20, well the internet (and more specifically this blog), allows me to make use of that.

I also add to past posts, such as today adding an extra paragraph into the Rogues Gallery for Derek Adams, as well as removing a comment I made in jest about Jon Wright in his Rogues Gallery entry, which he seems to have taken offense too. Do I think that this is re-writing the past? Yes. Do I think that this is wrong in any way? No.

Anonymous Posts

I have reluctantly had to change the settings of this blog to exclude anonymous comments, after a whole string of frankly very juvenile insults that were added to some of my older posts. All of them have been removed now. So, unless you have a blogspot account (you don't have to start a blog to have one), you can no longer post comments on this site. I had wanted to let anyone post, but I guess some people just can't resist being idiots. Sad state of affairs really.

Starting The Clock

So I got curious. I mean for all I know I could be writing away and no-one could be reading any of it. Now while I like to write simply for the sake of it, I can also be a bit vain at times, and so I've added a webcounter to the sidebar under the links so I keep track of who visits (if indeed anyone does). Also what with me being a fantasy geek, it feels right to have a dragon on the site, even if it is just the head of one.

Fine Tuning

I did a little bit of tweaking to the image at the top of the page to make it fit better. I think I have the site pretty much how I want it now, though I will likely add more links to it from time to time.

Lock Down

Got my first comment... it was spam of course. As a result I've changed the site settings (really shoulda done that to begin with, but better late than never), to add in word verification on all comments.

On the plus side, I've opened comments up so anyone can post, not just other bloggers.

Looking Good

Got the header picture to work, so at least the place looks like home now.

EDIT: Also added the Links section to the sidebar today as this format "Scribe" doesn't come with that for some reason. Still the gif existed in the directory with the Recent Posts and Archives gifs, so dug that out, and used it to keep the place looking nice.

Testing 1 2 3...

nothing much to write now, just getting this thing kick started.