Gertsamtkunstwerk

Fixing the blog

• I need to check every entry to ensure that it is categorised correctly.

Starting at the beginning of time, I have reached October 2005. I have realised that some categories - eg Rock and Pop -  have been all but wiped away, and that somewhere in the transfer process I lost the 'multiple categories' that had been assigned to many entries.

• Change internal links, including photos, that still point to the old domain.

• Complete the Performance photo album and create a Stage Door and Signings photo album.

• Write my reviews of Die Tote Stadt and Der Fliegender Hollander

• Restart my Wild Women possts

Typepad Help!

According to the internet it is possible to:

• incorporate into a daily post all the posts that one makes to delicious during the previous 24 hours
• automagically post from YouTube using the 'Sharing Options'

I have tried both but to no avail (annoyingly, I did used to be able to post from delicious to Typepad).

According to the instructions, this is how I should do it:

• job_name: doesn't matter
• out_username is the login name you use for your blog - Typepad have confirmed that this is the email I use to log into Typepad
• out_password is the password you use for your blog - this isn't a technical challenge
• out_url is the full URL of the XML-RPC interface for your blog: Typepad's knowledge base says this is http://www.typepad.com/t/api
• out_blog_id is your blog ID number which I believe to be 6a00e551ef6300883400e551d96e0d8833 although previously it was a different, much shorter number
  
• out_cat_id is optional: the category ID number in your blog where you'd like to put these posts this doesn't work in Typepad
• out_hour is the hour (from 0-23 in UTC) to post your links at daily this can be anything

With YouTube, I followed the instructions to get YouTube to recognise my blog, which it does. When I go to a clip, I have in my share options (between the star rating and the comments) an option to post to this blog. but when I try, it doesn't work.

Does anyone else - using Typepad - have success with either of these options? If so, can you see where I'm going wrong?

Categorically speaking

I am in the process of revamping the 'Categories' in this blog. There is no easy way to do a rushed job, so it's going to be something that takes a long time, and will suffer from fits and starts, and, like all my computer-related projects, will probably go for long periods of hiatus, with a grey shadow lurking in the background of my mind.

But anyway, if you see a new category crop up in the cloud, don't be surprised if it's sparsely populated and seems to consist of early and recent posts with nothing from the middle years!

Blogrolling returns

On Monday, reportedly. Which is good news. They have announced that, unless I pay them some money, you will be faced with an advert every time you click on my blogroll, which seems fair enough. I expect I shall stump up.

I don't mind paying small fees for services, and I don't really see how, in a global economic downturn, advertising revenue will be sufficient to keep the internet going.

But I do feel a little uneasy about giving money to someone who explains the introduction of advertising with the phrase

This is the vision that you see instantiated in these screen shots.

I am currently writing a manual on how to write reports - which believe me is the most fun one can have whilst actually getting paid real cash money. I cannot begin to comprehend how anyone could possibly have come up with that phrase, let alone thought it would be a good idea to use it.

How about...You can see what I mean in these screenshots. That would work for me.

Photos of Dungeness

On the inner sidebar I have added an album of photos taken when we went to Dungeness four years ago. As I add albums, or add to them, they will be at the top of the sidebar. Additionally, from time to time I might bring one up from the bottom just to highlight it!

My delicious dump don't work

Not quite what it might seem, in fact it's a techy problem.

I want del.icio.us to make a daily blogpost, automajically. I have followed the instructions which require me to enter username and password; also the Typepad api:  http://www.typepad.com/t/api and my unique blog ID.

Am I missing something (I have checked and double-checked the user name, password and blog ID), and does anybody else has specific experience of del.icio.us dumps into Typepad?

In the meantime, I am going out, but there are several additions to my linkroll in the extreme right hand column, including news of Iphigenie en Tauride in Valencia in December and Cyrano de Bergerac in Paris in May (and one Siegmund in Valencia in June but as part of an entire Cycle)

I can already see from my referral stats that adding my del.icio.us tagcloud (that's the jumble of words that goes from 2012 to Warbling Barbie {oh god, I've just thought what the 2012 opening ceremony will include}) has proved to be a quick win.

Gertsamtkunstwerk is go go go

We have lift off.

I think it's pretty launchable. Still endless fiddling and trimming to do.

Most notably, I have to:

• finish off importing photos from Under Developed
• add a blogroll
• rejig categories
• update internal links on a post-by-post basis
• other things as recommended by readers

I will set up an auto-redirect from mmofm in due course.

Otherwise, things are much as they were.

I will from time-to-time, but sparingly, have the occasional password protected post, or, more likely photo album. Generally, these will be for eg family friends or workmates only, or, conversely, to bar family members or workmates. In such cases, a quick email applying for a password will suffice. I will judge each applicant on a case-by-case basis, but assuming you either fit the inclusion criteria or don't fit the exclusion criteria, and I have a vague sense of who you are (ie not some random fly-by-night googler) it shouldn't be a problem.

And in the next few days there is even a chance this site might become content rich!

In the meantime, update your feedreader - here's an atom link

Housekeeping

I am sick of the amount of spam emails this domain is attracting. And I'm kind of bored and want a Rebranding Product Relaunch

I had a radical idea the other day: purchase a whole new domain name and migrate this and my photoblog onto it. Rebuild the archives, radically overhaul. Maybe take up to a year to do it, possibly. (There'll be redirects and whatnots and blah blah: I shall apply the audit part of my brain to a systematic migrate).

But I can't come up with a domain name. So far I have thought of (A Ship Called) Serendipity and Something Inside So Strong.

Bright ideas welcome. Please. Also for design, colour, whatever...(yes, I know there are people out there who'll take my money to do it for me - I'm not averse to a reasonable sales pitch...)

Meta stuff

I discovered by accident yesterday that if you right click on a photo on this blog, and then 'View Image', the page that comes up has the actual photo as the page icon. Utterly pointless but a bit of fun.

Analysing my site stats I suspect that people are not fully taking advantage of the 'Linky Log' which shows outward links when I either don't have anything to say or else no time in which to say it. Many of them are to YouTube. Bit of a tip on You Tube searching - it's worth searching on names with and without accents eg Placido/Plácido, Villazon/Villazón, Alvarez/Álvarez. On my keyboard at any rate, a quick way to put in that accent is by pressing the Alt Gr key whilst pressing the a, o key. Thanks to Nephew #1 for that tip. YMMV.

Also analysing my site stats, via sitemeter, I find out little bits about people. The site stats tells me, in general, about a specific visitor - who their ISP is, what country they are in, possibly what town (although I know that my ISP, BT Internet randomly assigns me to servers anywhere in Britain). It also tells me the referring site, your entry page, your exit page, and an outclick. This is fascinating to me, although more so in the aggregate than the individual. And for example, it gives useful information as to whether people are actually finding the right pages to match their search terms; or the proportion of people who come to the front page vs those who hit a particular category archive.

As far as I am concerned this information is confidential and will never be discussed - except in the aggregate - on this blog. I will certainly never divulge where any individual, identifiable or not, works, except perhaps face-to-face: eg I said to one site visitor when I met them in person "You work for a such-and-such company" or once at work I said "Someone from this organisation did a google on my name at four o'clock yesterday" and my colleague (I knew it was almost certainly one of her and about three other people) went bright red and 'fessed up. If any colleagues were to notify me, either in real life or by email, that they are colleagues and bloggers, that remains between us.

I may occasionally comment that I have had loads of hits from large and/or well-known organisations, eg the BBC or the House of Commons, or that I seem particularly popular in Named Country, but I would never say that I have had multiple hits on a particular post from Grabbit and Run Ltd, for example.

If you analyse your site stats and see a referral from Bloglines3057397, that's me.

I have been unable to do weird search requests for a while because half my hits are people coming for pictures of Dvd Bckm or Crstno Rnldo - pictures that have been removed but are still live on Google Images. Many of the rest are eminently sensible, or at least, understandable (ie the words all appear but not necessarily in the same sentence) requests eg what is Crstno Rnldo p3n1s size? or Pixtures Pincress Daina itaian dyeing newspapers

State of Flux

Well, I've installed MT 3.2.

It doesn't seem to work with Mozilla so I've had to resort to horrible horrible Internet Explorer. And the typing bit is really really small.

sigh

I don't quite know what will happen to this ere blog when I rebuild - I suspect as a minimum I shall lose all my customisations.

Update: Woot, it seems to have kept all the templates intact. Yay!

Let's see if we can all comment now - let's have a free for all brainstorming session in the comments box. Say anything that comes into your head...

My Blog Log

I have been trialling MyBlogLog for a week now - thanks Daisy. I thought, it's a gimmick, I won't like it, and even if I do I'll just settle for the Free version.

I've just paid to go Pro. It's good - it tracks clicks off one's site. I was a pretty instant convert, actually. On Tuesday I saw in Sitemeter that someone had come to me wanting Casta Diva libretto English. Oh dear, I thought, they want the Aria Database, how can I tell them?

And MyBlogLog showed a click over to Casta Diva on the Aria Database.

I felt relieved, and vindicated.

It's only 25 USD for the year, which is about tenpence ha'penny at the moment

Adrian Sevitz Superstar

Update: And the lovely Shelagh, too, who has pointed out the same thing to me - Shelagh, I'm not including your link because I can't quite remember whether you are being elusive or fully public. But will, of course, if you wish!

What a truly wonderful person is mine and your favourite Saffir Mr Sleazy Sevitz who came through with a wonderful email

Haven’t upgraded yet, but doesn’t MT 3.12 use dynamic publishing? So it automatically generates archives? So it wont publish anything to a file.

So, I have an instant quick-fix - change my archives to be built statically, at least pro-tem, because there's a curry with my name on it.

Adrian, see you at the Green Man - name your poison!

And as I assume Shelagh won't be at the Green Man, maybe she would like to name a drink for Adrian to consume?

Sign of ageing?

It's two years ago today that the first version of madmusings graced the internet. We started it on a whim, having gone home early from work when running water ceased.

We didn't think it would still be going two years later.

We didn't know it would become the catalyst to exploring a whole new way of life.

We didn't think we would get so many visitors.

We never dreamed that we would regard other bloggers as friends.

And we never thought that we would start referral to ourself in the first person plural.

Thank you to everyone who keeps coming back and leaving me such wonderful comments. Every visit we get is valued. Every commenter is a real person; almost everyone on my blogroll is a real person.

Love ya!