bookmark_borderSoundtracks

Prompted by the little fluffy kitten (as she is currently known), I’ve been pondering my musical habits of late and realised that, unlike the aforementioned little fluffy kitten, I currently lack a soundtrack for my life.

I bought a few albums over the past couple of weeks, some that I missed through 2008 (Kanye West, Q-Tip, Emiliana Torrini) but none have stuck yet. In fact I think there were only two albums that really ‘stuck’ last year. The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow, and Like Drawing Blood by Gotye.

That’s partly down to the fact that most of my listening time is at work, and I recently wiped out my iTunes library to start over, losing the date the tracks were added and, thus, the ability to wheedle out only the last X weeks of new stuff. This leaves newer albums lost in the mahoosive library of music that I have accumulated over the past ten years or so and, frankly, it’s something I need to tackle.

I have plenty of hard drive space so I think I’ll be ‘archiving’ some music to a separate folder, where it can sit until such times as I remember that it’s there and at that point it’ll be a decision on PLAY or DELETE.

Anyway, I have no soundtrack at the moment as I’ve been dipping into old favourites as it’s easier to remember those than recall the last 10 albums I bought.

According to Last.fm, the artists I listened to most in the past 3 months were:

  1. Aimee Mann
  2. Queen
  3. Pearl Jam
  4. Kings of Leon
  5. Sigur Rós
  6. Puddle of Mudd
  7. Radiohead
  8. AC/DC
  9. Elbow
  10. Foo Fighters

Which, given that only half of these artists released an album in 2008, and none of them are ‘new’ acts, might explain why I have no soundtrack other than the same half dozen songs that auto-repeat when I can’t think of any others.

Ohh well.

Just by Radiohead it is then…

bookmark_borderHome, home on the range..

“And coming home it feels like I, designed these buildings I walked by”

Having not been returned ‘home’ to Glasgow for a while I was quite surprised, as the train pulled into Glasgow Central this evening, to feel an overwhelming sense of comfortable familiarity.

It must be the same as all the Londoners gazing at that lovely new Olympic logo (which was recently sent to me with a subject line of “Lisa Simpson, giving head”)… ohh I’m only kidding. It could be worse, right? Hmmm maybe not.

Update: an animated version now exists. God bless the internets!

I only saw the full colour version today, and have to wonder if, somewhere out there a design team are still shaking their collective head (they only have one between them) and wondering what went wrong.

“But it was a mockup!!”

Either that or there is a design team shaking their collective wads of cash around in the air, wondering whether to pick the silver or white Mercedes.

Ach, what do I care? It’s not like the logo will make any difference, it’s not like the branding will have any impact on the way people thinking about the Olympics, right?

Sorry, I do hate to go on, and I’ve got so much else to do you know. I’m just about through all my emails, and I’ve almost finished that report from the conference, and… ohh you know how it is.

I’ll be round YOUR blogs over the coming days, I promise, and I’ll be revamping that list of links as well. Possibly even brutally. Those of you who have NOT left a comment yet… be afraid.

Or slightly worried.

OK OK, not even bothered at all as I’ll probably just add a few new links in, I wouldn’t really DELETE one, would I?

Would I?!!

(No, it’s no good, I’m just not scary…)

Right, Big Brother is just starting. I’m off.

What??

bookmark_borderUpgraded

What I did (for Lyle and anyone else).

Usual caveats apply, if you’ve done a lot of hacking then YOU need to know what YOU’VE changed. This is all taken from the WordPress Upgrade documentation. Worked for me.

The Preparation
1. Backup your database and the files on your site.
2. Download the WordPress ZIP file for 1.5.2.
3. De-activate all plugins on your site (will make your site look funny until the files are upgraded). I’d suggest taking a note of them as well, just in case you need to upgrade them too (I didn’t have to).

Note: It is NOT necessary to run install.php or upgrade.php as no changes are made to the database. As with all WordPress upgrades, the contents of your /wp-content/ folder should remain intact and unchanged.

The Upgrade
1. Delete /wp-admin/ folder.
2. Delete /wp-includes/ folder
3. Delete all the wordpress files in the root directory where the root index.php file is found. DO NOT DELETE wp-config.php. Note: My WordPress install is in a separate folder, I deleted all the files in my “WordPress” folder, leaving the remaining folders intact.
4. Download and extract the new version.
5. Upload the appropriate folders – /wp-admin/ and /wp-includes/ – and the files they contain.
6. Upload all the files in the WordPress root directory to your WordPress folder.
7. Re-activate your plugins.

Done. Hopefully. Was a breeze this time round, the docs could still do with a little “dis-ambiguating” and I guess it’s about time I used my membership of the doc team to good effect!