What makes you happy ?

I like it. Doesn’t catch the sun as I wanted. Lots more frost, then ice, snow, mist and continual sub-zero temperatures and I’ll be happy. I live in the wrong country…

I liked the idea of gravatars when they came out - mine was until recently an image of my right hand with the implant - but then for some reason it sort of dropped off the planet for me. No idea why. But now they are back (not that they left) and back in a better way. Like favicons though I like gravatars.

Unlike the amazingly boring and uninspirational M (I will change it later) that adorns the address bar here some favicons are little works of art. Completely constrained yet people can create wonderful images which can convey so much. Like gravatars. It surprises me at wordpress.com just how many people have their faces on their avatar there (but then it surprises me just how many people look at their stats too) but also the diversity. There’s a sticky thread just for testing avatars and while many are images taken from the web, images that are part of images taken from the web (looking at them now faces seem to figure higher than I thought. Maybe it’s a “I am a person not just a blog” thing going on) but there are some which look deliberately created. Created because nothing else fits, nothing else conveys the meaning they want to get across. And that’s really cool - especially to a person like me who has all the talent of a brick when it comes to art.

I tried to bring them into my comments at some point in the past but gave up with the styling for some reason or other. But I can and I probably will. There’s a support angle here though. There is a plugin at the gravatar site. and although it mentions WordPress 1.2 (I loved that version!) it probably still works. No doubt an uptodate version will appear. Anyway, there are many themes out there that have no gravatar code in their comments.php file and that means there are some issues ahead.
The gravatar help mentions the ‘Comments Loop’. The word ‘Loop’ used to throw people at the wordpress.org forums and although comment loops are probably fairly uniform it’s still a code insert. While there may be some hooks in the default themes - because hooks are good according to those that code - that will not do anything for existing users. So people will be going to forums saying ‘Loop?’ Soon after they will return saying things like “They overlap” “It broke the layout” “But I want them on the right/left/top/bottom?” “Instead of the author name” “drop shadow” and others too. The gravatar code does not specify anything in the way of placement, and neither should it. But people want their placement. And that’s where the fun starts. It’s adding a significant chunk of something that needs it’s own div, margins and all that other styling stuff. Forums will get busy and probably unavoidably so.
It’s not just a WordPress thing. It’s all the platforms - unless code is there waiting then code needs inserting and CSS writing. As gravatars become more popular then more people will ask “How?” and when someone asks, someone needs to answer (I know all about that bit). Maybe theme authors will produce something, not that they have to, but I can imagine they will be asked. The forums might keep known solutions. Again it’s not just the wordpress.org forums but others too. Possibly theme authors start to code this in by default and have the choices in the CSS - who knows.
None of this is bad, it’s just the effect that happens when something new comes along that lots of people want. And regardless of who actually bought it all the above would still apply.

And there are still some really good little pictures.

18 Oct edit:
Favicon now the same as my gravatar which is the same as my wordpress.com avatar.
Gravatars added. The gravatar is in a class which floats left and has a right margin of 10px.
The time/date is followed by br clear=”all”
The Author name is followed a br because I couldn’t be bothered to try any other way.

(copied from the BBC.)

You’ll have to forgive the blurriness - it wasn’t posed :)
(He was running toward me……)

I’m standing in the chemist waiting and I glance to my side. I see the above. I see the tagline. And it was all I could do to not laugh.

I bit the bullet and installed Gallery again, imported all the images from Zenphoto(s) and nuked all other photo dirs. I really like Zenphoto because it’s light and there is nothing there I’m not using. But having just one cache directory for all the albums wasn’t working - I had a problem with something a while ago and going into that directory caused problems due to the number of files. Less files and more zp installs? Possibly…. but Gallery is now where all my online photos. The hiding of albums seems useful and I’ve yet to get link in there that leads out of there - later maybe.

And ages ago I pondered how to organise my images. I just bought ACDSee 9 after checking out trial code. And now I being careful in trying to create as many if not all of the categories I’ll need to classify the images I know I have. It’s pointless charging through adding willy-nilly because it’ll be just as much a mess as it is now, if not worse. So that’s not the quickest of tasks - especially as I’m looking through pictures while pondering and they take me off on other tangents too.

Good things are pictures.

I don’t like busy desktops, so this is just fine.

The original in blue by Bryan Veloso will surface soon no doubt but I quite like my deviation too.

Went for a slow long plod with Winston this morning. Don’t they say something along the lines of “There are hundreds of spiders per sq foot”? Well on a misty morning walking next to the fields it’s amazing just how many webs I must otherwise miss in good weather. Nature’s chandeliers they are. Best part about a sunday morning walk though is that Winston gets off the lead much sooner - even if he does go hide from me.

And getting back I find that I’ve got around 1500 images online now with several more to add. Zenphoto - which I really like - seems to put all the album cache files into one directory and when that gets big …. I wanted to change some files this morning but with over 2000 cached files I had to erase a few to find what I wanted so I could delete it to get a new thumb. So waiting in the wings - again - is Gallery. It’s just so damn ugleeee. All the bells and whistles I can ignore but ugleee….. shame zenphoto won’t cache per album. Does gallery? No idea. I suppose I should look….. job for the week then.. move it all into Gallery.

Gym was great today - 4 others there. I could do what I wanted without waiting. And I am starting to really like the cross-trainer again. The other day was 20 minutes Hill Plus level 15 and today it was Cascade same time/level. One day I’ll try Kilimanjaro.

I forgot to mention: Great photo As seen on Chartreuse Check around there for more …. pictures ;)