Brief Notes
Sorry for the lack of posts over the last few days (I really have failed that Blog365 challenge, haven’t I?) but I was working over the weekend and didn’t really spend too much time in front of the screen for most of the last five or six days. Also, I think I’m going through one of those periods where nothing is really flagging up as being worthy of spending the time to write about; I find that I’m not one of those bloggers who can just sit in front of the machine and write – I have to have something that I want to say, or a news story I want to comment on. So this is just going to be another in my series of Brief Notes posts.
1. Ozh has updated his updated Absolute Comments plug-in, which caused me some confusion for a while. In version 2.1, he’s created a separate my_options.php file for holding some of the user settings (they used to be in the main file). Initially, I thought he’d dropped support for threaded comments, but then after checking out his website I realised what he’d done. If you don’t use this plug in already, check it out – it makes replying to comments on your blog so much easier.
2. In related news, WordPress 2.5 continues to be rather underwhelming. It’s not causing any problems for The New Wolfs Howl, but I haven’t really come across any of the new features that were so trumpeted at the launch. But it seems to be stable, which is good.
3. We’re coming towards the end of the football season. Eastbourne Borough have two away games left to play, and it’s tight at the top of the table. Only one point behind leaders Lewes (but they’ve got two games in hand), it is mathematically possible for us to win the league. Of course, we need Lewes to do quite badly in their last four games and I’m not sure that’s going to happen. But if we don’t win, we’ll get a play off position so will still have a promotion chance.
4. I’ve been listening to a lot of internet radio recently – specifically, Virgin Radio Classic Rock. It’s old school rock (with some grunge thrown in every now and again – be warned) and has just played me Radar Love followed by Queen’s You’re My best Friend. If you ever listened to a radio show hosted by Tommy Vance, then you should really check it out.
Champions
I’ve mentioned Eastbourne Borough FC a few times before on The New Wolfs Howl (mainly because Health Plus – my employer – started sponsoring them this season), and hopefully at least some of you have been following their progress as they battle at the top of the table with arch rivals Lewes to see who will win promotion.
This week the Reserve team (that’s them in the picture) brought another trophy home to Priory Lane by beating Worthing FC in the final of the Reserve Section Challenge Cup. A 5-2 win, no less!
So, well done to the guys and let’s hope it inspires their first team colleagues to go into the last few games of the season all guns blazing and get that promotion.
Brief Notes
Its been a busy weekend, so I’ve not really been in front of the computer at all and haven’t had time to write any proper entries. There have been a couple of things I’ve wanted to comment on, though, so here’s another in my series of Brief Notes.
1. Sadly, Jeff Healey – guitar virtuoso – has died at the early age of just 41. If you’ve ever heard him play, you’ll know what a loss to the music world this is. If you haven’t ever heard him play, I suggest you start with See The Light, his 1988 Grammy-nominated album that really propelled him onto the world stage. (BBC)
2. A zero-emission sports car gets it launch at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show in a few days time. Developed by a consortium that includes Morgan, famed sports car manufacturers, this hydrogen fuel-cell powered car is showing the way that this type of car can really go. Who needs an ugly-looking hybrid car when you can have something beautiful like this? No word yet on whether it will actually make it into production (or how much it will cost if it does) but what’s exciting is that the development work on this type of vehicle is acutally moving forward. (BBC)
3. Unfortunately, Eastbourne Borough lost again on Saturday. We’re now four points behind league leaders Lewes, with the same number of games played. Hopefully, we can pull a couple of good results out of the bag over the last dozen or so matches of the season (and hopefully Lewes will have a corresponding downturn in form). Go Borough!
Brief notes
I know, I know: I haven’t been posting very regularly just lately. What can I say? I’m sorry. I don’t know if it’s the New Year or cosmic rays, or the value of the pound but nothing has really sparked me enough to make any comments (well, that’s not quite true, but I think everyone else has said everything I would say quite eloquently enough so I’ll stay away from the subject).
Which leaves us with the latest installment in the ever popular Brief Notes series; you know you love it!!
Politics
Everywhere I turn on the Net and TV these days, I can’t seem to get away from the US presidential candidate elections. So, you guys have an election to select a new leader for your party? That’s novel – you’d think Tony might have picked up on that one, being such a good friend of Dubya.
What I don’t get is all this caucus, primaries, Super Tuesday sort of stuff. It’s like you’re voting to be able to vote or something. But then the whole voting system in the US seems screwy to me; all that electoral college stuff – what’s that about? (Well, other than making sure that the man with the least number of votes get the job, of course).
Blogging 1
One of my pet subjects; there should be a further episode of my Going Self-hosted Guide in a few days but I just wanted to mention spam today. If you have a blog, you get spam; there’s no avoiding it. Wordpress.com blogs get Akismet (whether they want it or not) to filter theirs and it’s OK-ish (although just recently it seems to be somewhat over zealous and is creating a lot of false positives). On a .org blog you have a choice and thanks to a tip from Cornell Finch, I’d say drop Akismet and go for Defensio. I”ve only installed it today, but all the comments I’ve read about it rate it very highly and you do get more control than with Akismet.
Blogging 2
I read a lot of news feeds and since changing to the Mac, I’ve tried out lots of different feed readers. One of the ones that I tried and liked was NetNewsWire, but as it was something you had to pay for (albeit not very much) I ended up plumping for the free of charge Shrook instead.
Shrook is a very good piece of software for reading blogs and I’ve been using it for several months, but there was always something about the way it looked that niggled me. But today comes the announcement that NetNewsWire is now free, so I’ve switched. It just has a nicer feel to it than Shrook and I’d recommend checking it out.
Blogging 3
Over the last day or so, I’ve been having a discussion with another blogger about comments; he was complaining that his relatively new blog never got any comments. He seemed to be taking this as a personal affront, and even suggested that a third blogger only got comments because she sometimes wrote about sex and was “selling herself”.
As an aside to the issue, I started to wonder what other bloggers experiences were with comments. Did it take you a long time to get your first comment, or were you getting lots of comments from day one? Do you see more comments when you write about certain subjects, or on certain days, or is there no pattern at all?
Throughout the life of The Wolf’s Howl (first at Wordpress.com, then Blogspot and now self-hosted) I’ve seen comments go up and down like a yo-yo. I don’t get all that many, but then I don’t get a huge number of visitors.
And what’s your reaction when you do get comments? Has the newness worn off the experience and it’s just another comment, or is it still irregular enough that it’s like a little present, a reward for writing a post that someone else not only read but took the time to write about?
Football
Well, Eastbourne Borough finally got beaten in the League on New Years Day (shame!). But that’s the only loss so far – 22 games in – and they’re second in the table with two games in hand. Just need the team above to have a couple more losses and we’ll be in like Flynn!
You’re never too old
It all started with the WI in Rylstone in 1999 – getting your kit off on a calendar to raise money for charity. The Rylstone ladies have gone from strength to strength – raising over £1 million so far, having a hit Hollywood film made about their exploits, etc – and many groups have followed their example since.
The latest is Ancaster Athletic, a children’s football team in Lincolnshire. Not satisfied last year with getting the men in the village to pose for a calendar, the team has this year roped in the ladies of the village – including some of the mothers of the players and the wife of the coach – and scooped the big headline.
Nora Hardwick, who will be 102 next week, has posed behind the bar of the local to become Miss November. And let me tell you, she doesn’t look a day over 78!
Wolfs Helpers
