Monthly Archives: February 2005

For those of you who are regular stalkers visitors you’d have noticed that the Linkies section is no more. It just wasn’t working out between me and Linkies, so I told her that we had to have a talk and I told it to her straight, “It’s not you, it’s me”. She started to cry and begged for me to take her back, but we both knew it was time to move on. She hung around for a bit after ‘the talk’, said she wanted to be friends and then I finally had enough, I dumped her database and told her that she had to move on. It’s just not healthy.

I didn’t stay without a web application for long. A few months ago I started seeing Del.icio.us, it started out with a few innocent clicks, I noticed that she was quite popular on other blogs and I liked her style. Sexy and simple, an application next door. So I asked her…

“Would you be my preferred link blog application?”

She said yes of course. I gave her the nickname ‘Liciouslinks’, she moved into my sidebar, and we’ve been going steady ever since.

Although I must confess to you that I have been cheating on Miss Del.icio.us with another application. Flickr. She is my mistress and has been for some time. She caught my attention a late last year, she was casually showing off some photos on another blog, and since then we’ve been making sweet photo uploads together. She’s so classy, yet so powerful.

I hope Miss Del.icio.us doesn’t mind, I’m sure she won’t, she’s cool like that. Not like that bitch Linkies.

Voting via postal vote due to illness. I voted ‘YES’ and ‘YES’. I should make an aussie version of the ‘I think I voted’ sticker for all the postals.

A glass vase full of beautiful flowers arrived today from my friend Ella, with a ‘get well soon’ card attached. 😀

My brother picked up his books for Uni this week, and I was flicking through one of the HTML ones when I saw this…

Oh it’s totally ‘e’, for sure.

I had to refrain from burning one of the many HTML books he had to purchase this week, it has only 5 pages dedicated to CSS and a whopping 25 pages to tables. It irritates me that he has to pay $200 for a bunch of outdated and poorly written books, when he could learn everything he needs to know about HTML online.

Will they ever start teaching web standards?

I’ve been nominated for quite a few Cammies (2005 webcam awards). I’m sure the standard procedure is to announce such an event by writing an entry containing ‘lyke’, ‘kewl’, ‘omg’, ‘lol’ and various uses of exclamation point molestation ‘!!!!!!!’, but I will try to restrain myself.

The categories I’ve been nominated in are…

• Lifetime Achievement
• Camgirl of the Year
• Best Slogan of a Camsite
• Best Australian Camsite

If you have a moment, please vote for me. Kewlies!!!!! (Sorry, I couldn’t restrain myself any longer.)

An article was published in The Age yesterday about The Bloggies, it was mainly about the best Australian/NZ finalists and had some talk of commercial blogging thrown in there. ‘Blogs break out and hit the big time’ was the title.

I was emailed by the writer last week, but because I was in hospital I couldn’t reply until Sunday, which of course was too late. I am officially the mystery fifth blogger who wasn’t mentioned in it. The lovely Karen Cheng and creative Claire Robertson also didn’t get a mention, even though they are finalists (in a different category) from Australia.

Here are a few of the questions I was asked…

What does the nomination mean to you?
It makes me proud. It’s wonderful to have your hard work and dedication to your blog appreciated. Sometimes I look at my stats and think of my visitors as just numbers, because most don’t leave comments, and then I get nominated for a bloggie and I know they are really there.

When/why did you start blogging?
I started blogging in July 2002. I knew a few people that had their own blog and it seemed like an interesting hobby. I also wanted a testing ground to exercise my web design skills. A blog is a perfect place for someone interested in growing stronger in web design.

What feedback do you get from readers?
I receive emails from readers expressing how much they enjoy reading my blog and how it brightened their day. People say blogging is a selfish pass time, but the emails I receive beg to differ. Readers can and do get something out of reading blogs.

Is the blog form becoming commercialised?
Yes, anything popular always ends up becoming commercialised and blogs are becoming increasingly popular. Businesses and anyone interested in making a profit are starting to take note of just how powerful blogging and ‘word of blog’ (blogs linking to and recommending websites and products) is. That’s not a bad thing. So long as the person blogging is honest and truthful, which is at the core of blogging, there’s nothing wrong with commercial or business blogging. Readers can always smell bullshit on a blog.

I’m still writing up the great hospital entry, it’s quite long, and nap breaks keep interrupting the process, but I will have it done soon.

I have been in hospital for the last six days. I will blog about it once my brain has done a defrag of all the information and I’m feeling up to writing about it. Until then, here are some of the things I’ve missed this week…

• I seem to have been finally hit with trackback spam. Oh goodie.
• A ton of email – 1019 in total, including 438 spam messages.
• A young boy has been ripping of my design. He stole my CSS file, uploaded it to a free hosting account and then used what he wanted from it, including my background image. Normally I’d email him and ask him if he knows what copyright means, but after the week I’ve had I couldn’t give a flying fuck. So I changed the files around and I think his layout looks so much better now that credit has been given. See for yourself in the before and after images. 🙂
• Desperate housewives, ER, my restaurant rules, lost and all the other TV shows that started up this week down under.
• Food.
• Water.
• Sleep.

Update #1…

The boy who is stole my CSS and linked to my background image is still using the ‘devoid of talent’ background image and someone is posing as me on his tagboard. Hilarity ensues.

Update #2…

He has now password protected his blog and changed the site information on the CSS file to read ‘CSS for ecuadorz.blogspot.com’, changing anything else in the file (like the ‘devoid of talent’ background image) seems to be far beyond his knowledge base.

Update #3…

He has taken down his blog and the stolen CSS file. Viva la monkey!