Ta da
This is the kind of entry which should be filed under the category, ‘Things only I care about’. Or maybe, ‘Geekery’. Or even, ‘The kinds of posts which will look silly a year later’. But here it is, regardless.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard version 5.0 of tu quoque, and version 1.0 of ben.atwood.com.au, the website which caters for all sorts of silly nonsense and frippery. Please note that the location of this weblog has changed to http://ben.atwood.com.au – the management respectfully requests that all bookmarks, hyperlinks, permalinks, trackbacks, and blogrolls be adjusted to reflect this new change. RSS eaters can find the link to my .xml feed at the bottom of the page.
There have been lots of changes, and because this is a soft launch (of sorts), some things may still be a bit broken and there’s still a lot of dummy content hanging around. Feel free to leave me some (constructive) criticism. Any dodginess you find is probably due to my inexperience with the new content management system, which has been helped along greatly by Dad and Simon, both of whom are much more into this hand-coding-your-own-website bizzo. Thanks, guys!
So, here’s a list of some of the new things for you to explore:
- tu quoque is now just one section of this website – now, you can go to my gallery, read some articles and essays that I will write in the future, browse my Bangla language notes, or flick through the archives (which are still a bit messy). You can also send me secret messages through the online contact form.
- Everything looks shinier and newer, thanks to a complete overhaul. I’m using someone else’s template (this one is called leaf) with extra bits. There are all sorts of nice things about this template, including little icons about the place and an awesome live search plugin.
- I’ve made the move from Movable Type to Textpattern, which seems to be en vogue with my fellow bloggers from church. Textpattern is heaps more flexible and powerful than Movable Type, in some ways, but has the tradeoff of being made by geeks. That means it is, at times, incomprehensible to this web neophyte. However, it does make lots of things easier – for example, I can use forms to simplify and replicate HTML where I need to, and Textpatterns proprietry tag system means I don’t have to handcode everything over and over again. Perhaps I am on my way to receiving my Bachelor of Geekdom (Textpattern).
- Comments are inline now. While I like popup comments, it wasn’t really practical with Textpattern, so after discovering them four versions ago, I’ve relinquished them again. I’m getting used to it. One day, there’s going to be Gravatar(Globally Recognised Avatar) support in there, so you can have your own pictures instead of the speech bubble. And, you can use Textile instead of HTML in your comments if you like. Please note that when you want to leave a comment, Textpattern forces you to preview it first – make sure you click ‘Submit’, or your comment won’t be recorded.
In other news, a lot has happened since we last spoke. As mentioned on the old weblog, I got into Morling College, so I will be a part-time bum for this year and next. College looks like it will be as hard or harder than uni in terms of content, but more relevant to future employment and more encouraging for me as a Christian. Not much on the employment front, for the moment, except some extremely frustrating antics with Middlenexus. I’ve seen Narnia again and loved it much more than when I saw it the first time. I’ve developed a taste for Sufjan Stevens. And I’ve learned how to name objects in Bangla.
Ben said,
Jan 14, 10:49 #
...and comments should be working…
NeilA said,
Jan 14, 11:58 #
They are!
Looks good Ben… And I’m sure we could get pop up comments going on TXP if you want…
Lucy said,
Jan 17, 05:26 #
hmm… “geekery” seems appropriate…
However, it is very pretty! (in a masculine sort of way) I want one!!
NeilA said,
Jan 17, 10:29 #
Pretty! In a masculine way! Hmmm.
However, we can supply one… for a small fee ;-)
Lucy said,
Jan 17, 13:27 #
Small fee?!? pfft
How about i have been notably absent from the “co-dependency” list for approximately 2 (TWO!!) years… i should think that sort of social exclusion payment enough! (Not blaming you Neil, but surely you can see where i am coming from glares and shakes head at Ben)
Also – why do i have to preview my comment before i can post it?!?
Ben said,
Jan 17, 13:55 #
Er, Lucy, meet Dad. Dad, meet Lucy.
You will now notice that you are in the links list, Lucy. Sorry to not have added you earlier. By ‘small fee’, though, surely my father jests! (well, if you did want something set up for you, it would probably cost you some.
You have to preview your comment before posting it because Textpattern is, erm, a bit like that. Also, you’ll notice that your use of asterisks has produced bold text – this is because of Textile.
NeilA said,
Jan 17, 14:54 #
Two years absence from Ben’s blogroll is a high price indeed!
I suspect Ben is increasingly uncomfortable about this collision of universes – the blogging universe and the ‘father’ universe.
Perhaps you need an age filter on this? ;-)
The ‘preview’ button is a first stage comment spam reduction tool…
Hezza said,
Jan 18, 16:37 #
Hi Ben,
Very cool looking site. You are clever. Just wanted to let you know that on the main page, until I click to leave a comment, all the lists on the right hand side are at the very bottom so you have to scroll down to get to them – the right hand side of the page is blank white when you first come to your site. Does that make any sense? Once you click on comments, it all appears at the top of the right hand side. (I am referring to “the author” “literature” “co-dependency” etc)
Dunno if it was meant to be like that though so if it was ignore my comment! Anyway I like the colour scheme and layout. It looks great.
NeilA said,
Jan 18, 17:33 #
Hexxa, Let me guess: you use IE as your browser, right? ;-)
It’s screwing something up – I’ll check it out soon…
Haoran said,
Jan 20, 08:38 #
New blog! w00t!
Inline Comments! w00t!
Web geekery! w00t!
Morling College! w00t!
Sufjan Stevens! w00t!
w00t all round :)
Haoran said,
Jan 20, 08:45 #
Hrm….you have some feed-back issues with this comments thing… it doesn’t tell you that you need to fill in various fields (or else it doesn’t submit).
Lucy said,
Jan 20, 09:28 #
Hi Ben’s dad/Neil!
I would love to have a pretty blog… how much does it cost? how much work is involved??
Ben said,
Jan 20, 09:38 #
Haoran: can you clarify what you mean? To submit a comment, you should have to fill out the name and e-mail fields, type a message, click ‘preview’, then click ‘submit’...
Haoran said,
Jan 20, 10:44 #
Ben,
What i mean is, when I first submitted my comment, I was lazy and didn’t add email/URL. However it didn’t tell me what i’d forgotten to add…it just refused to submit (but didn’t say it hadn’t submitted). So I was unable to tell if:
a) I had submitted multiple times and something was cached somewhere,
b) if the browser was broken in IE (hinted at by your dad), or
c)if it was because I hadn’t previewed my changes (i.e. the details of the comment can’t change between preview and submit).
I had to figure it out by a process if elimination.
Simon said,
Jan 20, 10:55 #
Ben, regarding the problem with the comment form. Make sure you have the < txp:comments_error / > tag in the form “comment_form”. It displays relevant errors.
Ben said,
Jan 20, 11:49 #
Simon saves the day!
NeilA said,
Jan 20, 12:10 #
Lucy, Contact me via my site to discuss…
/Karen/ said,
Feb 14, 17:24 #
Oh my! I am so behind the times. I only just worked out now that you’ve redesigned your site and changed your RSS feed. This is what happens when you live perpetually in RSS-land …