Richy's Random Ramblings

A little nonsense entry here as fellow ODP editor ciaran texted/SMSed me to ask me to test the new TrackBack facility on his journal. So, I’ve added the appropriate URL in my “URLs to Ping” and now I’ve just got to publish this entry and see if it “takes”.

A funny thing’s been happening though, ZoneAlarm Pro (which I run as a secondary firewall/ad-blocker) seems to have decided that some of the images in my blog are, in fact, adverts – and therefore it’s been suppressing them. It played with my mind for a while as I tried to figure out “Well, the image code’s in the blog entry – so why isn’t it showing up when the page is generated”. I may have to look into why ZoneAlarm has suddenly decided to treat the images as ads… Odd…

Some of you may have noticed slight changes to my blog. Basically, I’ve added a web cam view. The camera is pointing outside my window towards the street and it does quite good images at night. Ok, the view isn’t exactly, erm, interesting – but it adds a little something else. I have got an additional camera which I’m thinking about placing inside the house (ideally pointing towards my computer), but the number of times I’m at my computer “au natural” puts me off the idea. Oh – and the camera should update every 2 minutes. It won’t, however, update if I’ve had to “cut” my internet connection for any reason (basically the computer acts as a router to the internet for the camera – hence if the computer is offline, the camera is). Since I’ve got ADSL broadband and my computer tends to be on 24/7- you should get frequent updates of the exciting view: or, at least, an idea of the weather 🙂

Why 2 minute updates? Well, I could make it upload the image more often, but I felt that it’ll just be consuming too much bandwidth (on my connection and on the server that hosts my blog) for something that isn’t important. I could also have set it up so you could practically view “live images” via my PC, but whilst I did apply the necessary firewalls and configuration changes to do so, I have blocked them for taking affect. Call me paranoid if you want…

Other Leicester web cams that may interest you are the one on Epic House (home of BBC Radio Leicester) in the City Centre, a traffic cam view of the nearest roundabout/flyover to me at Red Hill Way (more “jamcams” are available via the BBC), one in Lutterworth, and several from De Montfort University (Queens building, James Went building). Hmm, I may have to consider making an appropriate category at ODP if I find any more…

And the other changes? I’ve decided to stop the Monthly blog updates – basically because November’s monthly log was getting ridiculous already (I seem to blog quite a bit 🙂 ): the archives are now weekly. Oh, and due to Wobble and Bob and a forthcoming Harry Potter review (it is coming soon – I promise), I’ve created a TV and Movies category.

I am planning on actually designing my blog correctly as some point (a the moment it justs uses a slightly tweaked version of the Movable Type style Georgia Blue.