Officially Transferred

Okay, well today I finally decided that I would infact use WordPress as my main blogging system as it is a lot more versatile, user friendly and has many new and improved features that Blogger just does not offer. There are still some things that I am currently doubting with this version of WordPress though, one being that the CSS editing is not free, which is a pain in the arse because that controls one of the main features of a blog - the layout. The other is the fact that any Javascript that is posted whether that is on a page, in a post or added to the sidebar is stripped from existence, which means that things such as Bloggrrr, Google Analytics and so on cannot be used, so I am currently thinking of buying hosting, a domain and an SQL database so that I can upload my blog to my own hosting and have an annoyance-free blog.

Currently I am looking at this hosting package which comes with free .co.uk, .org.uk or .me.uk domain name registration, unlimited bandwidth, no adverts or banners, 10 sub domains, 10 POP3 e-mail accounts and 2 free My SQL databases. I am currently considering this offer and I may buy it (or something else) within the next week, so watch this space.

Wikipedia Defamatory Remarks

Fuzzy Zoeller, a renowned golfer has filed a lawsuit to try and track down the author of a defamatory paragraph about him, posted on Wikipedia. Scott D Sheftall, Zoeller's Attorney, has filed the suit against a Miami-based education consulting firm, Josef Silny & Associates. He says he did so because the law would not allow him to sue Wikipedia and allegedly someone used a computer from Josef Silny & Associates to post the defamatory remarks.

Commenting on the lawsuit, Sheftall said the courts have made it clear for him to go after the source of the information, and that the Zoeller family wants to take a stand and put a stop to all this. Otherwise, Sheftall asserted, they would all end up as victims of these Internet vandals, who ought not to be able to act with such impunity.

Although the defamatory paragraph has now been removed from Wikipedia, it has been picked up by other Web sites. Josef Silny of Josef Silny & Associates expressed shock at the incident, and said he could not possibly imagine anybody doing such a thing. Silny has asked his computer consultant to look into the matter. Meanwhile, founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, maintained the online encyclopedia has not been contacted regarding the lawsuit, and that while they try to police the site pretty closely, people do tend to misbehave on the Internet.

As you can imagine, events like this happen quite often such as the Wikipedia Hindi page which had "the language of the pimps" added to it in two different places as well as the whole page being replaced with "hindi still sucks ballz" and "indi eats poo (not darren)". Many events such as these are under investigation and the culprits may be prosecuted.

Transferring to WordPress

I have been thinking for sometime whether I should swap to WordPress and blog on their from now on and have not yet come to a decision but I did manage to import all of my current blog posts and comments from Blogger over to my WordPress account, which is currently set to mirror my Blogger account. I am not sure which one I am going to use as my main blog, but for now I will stay on Blogger as I cannot edit the CSS/HTML of my WordPress blog unless I pay for it, so I cannot add a custom template like I have on Blogger. I will have to review both and see what one I think would be best for me.

Blogs and Feeds

It seems like only yesterday that weblogs and feeds were introduced (or, at least made popular) in the internet world and yet there is apparently a blog born every second and what do you get along with a blog? Feeds. They are everywhere now, I would say at least 75% of the websites I visit in a day have at least one feed. This blog has more than one feed and is also getting burnt through FeedBurner. Much of the time I don't really see the point in feeds so I haven't use them until now. I visit a few blogs regularly using the Flock tabs as an easy way to swap from one to the other and then I realised that if I had a feed reader I could view all these blogs in one place - so I suppose that is what feeds are used for.

If you search Google for feeds you will get nearly 20 million results! So how many total feeds and blogs are there currently? I would love to know the statistics for such a thing, but surely nearly everything you post has already been posted somewhere else on the web (excluding maybe the latest news from the last second) or maybe that is what blogs are for - to highlight the latest news that is interesting, big or rare, to rant or rave about something that you have seen someone else rant or rave about.

Long live blogging.

Gigantic Hole Appears in Guatemala

A giant sinkhole measuring 40 meters in diameter and 60 meters deep, swallowed 12 homes and killed 2 people including at least one truck early Friday in a Guatemala neighbourhood, likely due to a burst sewer pipe. The crater appeared in the capital's San Antonio neighbourhood on Thursday night. Authorities evacuated around a thousand people on Friday fearing more land could collapse into a fast-flowing river of sewage below. There were, at first 3 missing people who had lived in a house that was claimed by the hole almost as soon as it started to open. Two bodies showed up about a mile downstream. Neighbours said the ground had been shaking for weeks after a huge sewer pipe burst, making the ground underneath the houses unstable.

Unbelievable pictures of the gigantic hole are available from the 'read more' link below.

read more | digg story

Excuses to Stay Home from School

All of these are excuses that people have written to "excuse" their children from school. Some of them are pretty unbelievable but I don't think that they are all legitemate nevertheless it is still a good read.

read more | digg story

Blogger vs. Wordpress

When I created a blog for the very first time I went straight to Blogspot (now Blogger) with no hesitation but now that it is near enough a year since that time I am having second thoughts on the host I chose at the beginning. I was browsing through some of the Wordpress blogs and noticed that they seem to be more like small websites with a weblog as their homepage than one-paged weblogs, not including the archives and post pages. I actually liked the idea of adding your own pages to your blog so that you can add information to it that otherwise would be useless in a post because the post would get lost in the archives somewhere. Then again Wordpress does have it's negative points too such as not being able to edit the CSS of your blog without paying about £7.70. So why can't Blogger be more like Wordpress and Wordpress be more like Blogger?

There are some features that Wordpress has which I feel Blogger should have, for example one of the best features of Wordpress is the page creation where you can add information to other pages on your site rather than just sticking to one page, meaning that you are no longer restricted for space. That doesn't mean that Blogger should then start charging you to edit the CSS code of your own blog, which is what Wordpress have decided to do.

If I had the choice of moving all of my posts over to Wordpress I would most probably accept, but I would have to stick to the default templates and not be able to edit the CSS as I probably would not pay £7.70 to be able to do so. So I either stick with Blogger and not have more than one page or I create a blog with Wordpress and lose my custom template and designs. For some reason I just don't think I would want to do that, simply because it would mean that I would not have all of the posts that I have added so far - not sure why that feels like a stupid thing to do.

I suppose if I really wanted to add my own pages then I could always buy some hosting and upload a portfolio and blog together in one. For now I will stick with Blogger but I there is nothing stopping me from buying hosting, even if it isn't the best of choices.

Blog Template

It took me a hell of a long time to do, but I finally managed to create a Blogger template that works with the new Blogger. I would advise you to use a good browser to view the website though - such as Firefox or Flock - because Internet Explorer does not display items and widgets on this page correctly, the post footer will be all jumbled up and the sidebar may have some overlapping issues. A top-bar has been added along the header showing the time and date along with a graphical navigation from which you can access the blog's homepage, my Blogger profile, my deviantART portfolio and my World of Warcraft add-on, LevelRange.

If you find anything wrong with the website such as dead links or template issues and you are not using Internet Explorer (simply because there will be so many), please feel free to leave a comment or contact me.

I still don't have much time to post things, but I have also noticed that I don't seem to get many people visiting here anymore, so I don't think it would make a difference if I did post or not - I will just keep it alive for somewhere to post when I get bored or find something that I want to go back to later. A while back I posted a Neverwinter Nights 2 review, I may decided to post more soon too, so watch this space.