Days: it’s a blog thing
Since August, 2001. Surely it can’t last…
Friday, October 25, 2002 ↓
WHO IS ME?
According to Googlism:
- keith bell is a licensed surveyor and chartered professional engineer
- keith bell is available as part of the cormier communicators team of senior communications counsellors
- keith bell is drafting a user policy and operating procedures
- keith bell is president of the company
- keith bell is our representative on the community centre’s management committee
- keith bell is internationally recognized today as the foremost expert on performance enhancement in swimming
- keith bell is our ‘mentor’ from the school
- keith bell is a principal consultant at ecsoft specialising in efulfilment solutions
- keith bell is looking for a tough contest
- keith bell is a team evangelist in the fazakerley team in liverpool diocese
- keith bell is our uk country manager
- keith bell is the top scorer with a 9
Yeah, I’m red hot on those efulfilment solutions. I score at least 9 on those.
As of this morning, a search for 'keith bell' on Google brings up december14.net in slot number three. I am beaten to first place by www.keith-bell.com (which says something about Google’s search algorithms), a site about a Yorkshire musician who must be at least as unknown as I am. Second place went to the world’s first swimming psychologist — perhaps the world’s only swimming psychologist. (Is that a psychologist who swims? Visits to his consulting rooms could be interesting…)
Tuesday, October 22, 2002 ↓
A NEW ZELDMAN
I see Zeldman is redesigning; I look forward to the results. Succint as ever, he says:
Goals of redesign: simplify. Increase focus, unity, and usability. Remove the extraneous. Be pretty.
Good goals for the design of any site.
MORE BLOGGER GOODNESS
Isn’t it funny how systems always seem to break down when you need them the most? Yesterday, in the final stages of moving all of the site files to a new server, Blogger would not publish my blog or archive files to the new destination. I spent hours checking, rechecking, and futzing around with my Blogger settings, while deep down I knew I had them right all along. But Blogger would not cooperate. I gave up because I just plain ran out of time.
So today, I’m reading Eric Janssen’s webraw, and I find that yesterday the default Blogger Pro server was knackered and wouldn’t publish anything for anyone. Wish I’d known about the Yahoo Blogger Pro groups yesterday, because status.blogger.com wasn’t reporting a problem then.
Moan, moan, moan…
On a lighter note: with so many sites switching to table-free, HTML/CSS compliant layouts, Eric is concerned that the single pixel transparent GIF is an endangered species, and should be saved:
This treasured resource of Web designers everywhere is in danger of vanishing. Action must be taken quickly if the spacer is to be saved from neglect. My proposal is not to abandon efforts to construct compliant sites but to incorporate a transparent one pixel spacer gif somewhere within the site. This is easy, painless and hey, nobody will notice. Best of all the spacer gif will have a home if not a use. Additionally, studies have shown that servers LOVE serving up spacer gifs. It gives them something "solid" to serve up instead of simply markup. Designers of the world unite.
That man Siegel has a lot to answer for. Or at least, he thinks he does.
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
Something bizarre is going on with my archives. After moving everything over to another server, and republishing the archives, there was no entry in the list for December 2001, and the November 2001 link actually pointed to the December archive. Nothing anywhere pointed to the November archive, though the file did exist.
To say I wasted a lot of time on this is to put it mildly. Initially I thought there may be something wrong with the script I had purloined from the most excellent Phil Ringnalda that writes out the dates longhand. But I had been using it for ages, and checking it through, there was clearly nothing wrong with it. Further tests showed it was Blogger itself that was causing the problem: it was feeding 11/01/01 - 11/30/01 as the <$BlogArchiveName$> but with 2001_12_01_index.html as the <$BlogArchiveLink$>. And no <$BlogArchiveName$> at all for December. Yikes!
After forcing republication of the archives by editing posts in November and December 2001, I managed to get Blogger to send <$BlogArchiveLink$> tags for both November and December — but it has given them both the same <$BlogArchiveName$>. So my archive lists two entries for November 2001, but one of them is actually December. If anyone has any brilliant ideas…
Monday, October 21, 2002 ↓
GETTING THERE
This old house has been moved to a new server. There may still be some screwiness with archives for a while. And I haven’t figured out why the December 2001 archive is labelled as November. Or where the link for the November archive has disappeared to. Hmmm. Must check that javascript.
Previous entries
Older material is stashed away under Replays.
