Of course, dear reader, you noticed right away. Yes, we’ve got a new look.

It was felt here at The Eye, that perhaps it was getting a little too crowded, that there was perhaps a little too much information on the page.

Did you really need to know what the time was here? If you know where I’m situated, and you’re in the same time zone you know what time it is. If you’re in a different time zone, you probably don’t care.

Of course, we have keep some advertisements which we hope you don’t find overbearing, and indeed hopefully useful on occasions, and we do need to keep the lights on here too, and this blogging lark does cost time and money, even though we enjoy it and it’s fun.

To get to this new look, we spend some of that precious time (it’s like gold around here), looking at various new ideas and themes.

Some looked very nice, and classy, and we actually did do some code rewriting on a couple of them to customize them to what we wanted – and then changed our minds.

There was one them that was really cool, but it wouldn’t allow me to use my flickr images in the way that the designer had got the whole thing set up, and I didn’t want to go re-loading them all again onto my own server. It’s not that I’ve not got the space; it’s that The Eye has been around a few years, and I haven’t got the time to make a few thousand previous postings look pretty.

One day, when I start a whole new blog though, I’ll take a look at some of these more unusual designs again.

Anyway, we hope you like the new look!

Please do comment or drop us an email and tell us your thoughts, good or bad. We’d love to hear from you.

Changes At The Eye is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

So, after the trials and tribulations of trying, and failing, to install Wordpress 2.5 last weekend, here we are!

The Eye, now running Wordpress 2.5.

The main problem I had issues with was the media plug-in that I use. This meant that none of the video clips I had added were displaying.

Any of my own video clips that I add, I first convert to flash movies, to ensure maximum compatibility across platforms.  I know that .avi files will work on most Operating Systems, but I avoid platform- dependent formats such as .wmv. In fact, once they’re recoded to .flv they’re usually smaller anyway.

Why don’t I just upload them to YouTube, I hear you ask?

No real reason really, except that mostly I don’t want to, and have plenty of server space, and bandwidth of my own. OK, so if I were to put one of my own creations up, and everyone found my starring role in it, so

irresistable that I had a million viewers a day, then I’d have to have a re-think. It’s not happened yet though.

Anyway, as I’ve said somewhere else before, it’s not fame I want. It’s the fortune!

Getting back to the subject, you probably won’t see any earth-shattering changes with this behind-the-scenes upgrade, but if you do see anything broken that I’ve missed, I’d be glad for you to write

me.

Ok, I’ll fess up, I’ll be glad for anyone to write me. The bloggers life is a lonely one sometimes.  The self-piteous approach not working either?  Thought not. Anyway,  I do hope you enjoy reading my rants, rambles, and well ok… utter drivel.

Wordpress 2.5 is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

[flv]http://kjdevserver.com/repository/video/snapshots.flv[/flv]

Snap Shots is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

This really does help. I installed caching after getting a smack for server overload, and it’s not happened since, so it keeps everyone happy. After all, it’s not much point having a popular blog, or popular articles within it, if your hosting provider suspends your account!

read more | digg story

Beef Your Blog With Super Cache Plugin is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Upgraded the blog to Wordpress 2.3

It’s way too late to be up, so I’m off to bed now. A lengthier report later.

Upgrade! is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

I thought I’d try out the the WP 2.3 beta today. NOT a good idea right now. Database errors up the Ying Yang! Still it is a beta.

Solution: restore 2.2 to the server. I’ve really got too much to do right now, to debug yet another SQL database.

Oops! is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

We finally made it to Brunch at Madra Rua, the Irish Pub On Montague Avenue, in North Charleston.

I had a Ham & Cheese Omlette with home fries and toast, washed down with a pint of Guinness. Kathy had a steak with fried egg, and home fries, and blueberry scone, accompanied by a Mimosa (champagne and orange juice). It came to around $33 plus tip.

Brunch at Madra Rua is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Just in case you’re not aware, or you missed it on your dashboard, if you’re running a self-hosted WordPpress blog, there’s a nice new shiny update out right now, just for you. You can download it right here

It’s got the usual bug fixes and security stuff, and you can read all about it at the WordPress site.

WordPress Update is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

I use Bloglines to read a number of RSS feeds I find interesting. You might find some of these interesting too. I cut and paste links from the feed entries that capture my interest, and post them into Eyeballs, my Bloglines blog.

It’s a quick and easy way to grab snippets of news and information and make them readily available for reading in the future. I also take an RSS feed from Eyeballs, and you can find it on this page in the side bar to the right.

Eyeballs is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Working through some of the blogs I administer, and adding to Feedburner. This enables any of you good folks out there to subscribe to my feed via Feedburner and using your favorite RSS newsreader.

Optimization is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog