I’m pretty much over my flu (or whatever it was), other than the fact that I’m very wheezy, and moving around too much makes me cough for ages. The good news is that my cough seems to have left my chest, which means it’s not painful…just annoying.

The battle with WordPress continues. The problem is that I keep getting random 404s for pages in the admin panel, and there’s no consistency at all with where and when I’m getting them. It did get to the stage where I literally couldn’t access certain pages at all. And I’ve trawled the web for advice, and tried various different things. One of them has at least improved the situation, and the 404s are much less frequent (but still annoying). I was hoping a WP update would fix the problem, but the most recent one hasn’t. Sigh.

I know a lot of people are moving away from WP, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Nothing provides as much functionality, is as versatile, as well-supported or just plain good as WP. Way back when, I used Greymatter (another popular choice at the time), then Movable Type, but WordPress has been a massive jump forward. Even the haters have to admit it’s been useful for other developers to be inspired and, quite simply, the blog community just wouldn’t be the same without it. It’s not perfect. But I know I’m a million times more likely to figure out a solution to my problem than if I were using some obscure platform or struggling with my own code. Plus, with WP, I can make my site do exactly what I want it to do. I’ll be happy when I finally get this issue fixed

Anyway. My attempts to get the homepage of blossom going directly to the blog ended up being successful…but that meant my spam plugin stopped working. I found out a few hours later when I logged in to about 30 spam comments. So I installed something that’s working really well now, and the plus side is there’s no more maths question to answer when you try to post a comment Interestingly enough, my site stats are now also much more accurate. I feel considerably less depressed, because, as it turns out, I’m getting several hundred more unique visitors a day than were being counted previously. Plus, the search engines are ranking my site better and my SEO score is 99%. So at least something is going right!

I’m putting the finishing touches to the Adobe tutorials, and every time I edit a page to add something or change some code, I think of something else I need to do *sigh* My new plan is to spend an hour or so every day working on the site. So far it’s going pretty well; although I’d like to be spending more time on it, at least I feel I’m getting somewhere.

Work’s been busy for me as Apple have just launched new products and updates…meaning I’m spending all day writing all about them. I’ve been moved about all over the place recently because there have been a lot of people in and out, and they are still figuring out how to rearrange everyone. At the moment I’m sitting with a couple of my friends, and I’ve managed to grab some shiny new stuff for my desk/workspace (keyboard with lovely keys, nice widescreen display, great leather chair) so it’s all good. Still really enjoying my new job

This weekend is mine and Joe’s second anniversary together. I’m not mentioning what I’ve bought because I know he’ll be reading this! It’s his turn to plan what we do, and I’m looking forward to being surprised I just hope the weather’s nice and/or there’s a chance to take great photos. Sunday night is Dawn’s birthday thing, so we’re going to go to that, and Tabi will be here, yay! Then next weekend is halloween – I’m planning to take a half day off work on the Friday because Hannah’s coming to stay and we’re going to go costume shopping. I’ve seen some great killer heels I want, though I haven’t thought about my costume yet. Friday night is fondue night (and probably a film), then Saturday will be shopping/wii. Saturday evening my friends have rented a pub, and then I want to go on into town to the gothic bar, where it will be super halloween-y.

At the moment I’ve been quite into making milkshakes. I originally bought my blender for smoothies, but access to frozen fruit (much cheaper and easier to store) is limited at the moment, and it’s pretty cold out. Also, too much fruit was sore for my throat. So I’ve been making strawberry milkshakes which basically consist of fresh strawberries, semi-skimmed milk, a small scoop of light vanilla ice cream, and some Nesquik milkshake powder all blended together until frothy. Nice and soothing, and not too unhealthy.

Hmm…well that last blog entry I promised didn’t happen (in case you didn’t notice…)!! I’m mad at myself for carrying on promising that I’m going to do this, that and the other with the site – and even though I mean well, it just never seems to happen.

I kind of miss the old days where I’d come home from school and really work on stuff and be involved. Now there’s so much going on all the time, and the only proper free time I have is at weekends, which is often taken over by seeing friends, going out, shopping, going home, cleaning, doing laundry, doing various admin/paperwork tasks etc. Poor me and my grown-up life Heh. Anyway, I do generally like where I am in my life right now, I just need a way of stopping time.

Something I’ve been doing a lot recently is going to the cinema. I’ve seen District 9, Adventureland, Away We Go, Fame, The Final Destination, Sorority Row and Dorian Grey…and none of them really stood out as being brilliant. Adventureland was the biggest disappointment because the trailer looked good, but it was pretty mediocre. The Final Destination was boosted by the fact it was 3D. And the worst of the lot was probably Fame. Very vague, no real storyline, the one catchy song was left until the credits, and the singers had terrible High School Musical style editing on their voices. Dorian Grey was good – I’m not a Colin Firth fan at all, but he actually seemed like he was acting in it. Normally he just stands there looking fairly miserable and serious, no matter what character he’s playing. I think playing a bad guy was actually really good for him, because he delivered the witty lines well and his character seemed more three dimensional. He doesn’t annoy me normally in chick flicks and rom coms; he’s just there, like a lampshade or wallpaper.

I’m kind of tempted to see Triangle because the story looks fantastic, but it also looks completely terrifying so I might rent it when it’s out on DVD. I very rarely rent things, but I don’t tend to watch scary films more than once, and seeing it in the cinema might be too much for me Plus there are still so many other things I really want to see, like Zombieland.

Paid writing has also been taking up quite a lot of my time. Since getting my wii back, I’ve got pretty into it and all the games are half-price on Amazon compared to in the shops (even second hand games are more expensive on the high street). I want new boots and shoes, some Lush stuff, and some new clothes. Plus, it’s time to start saving up for Christmas and deciding what to buy.

It’s actually weird being so busy, because I’ve always been one of those people that seems to have more free time than anyone else. I’m lying in bed typing this, and I don’t mind writing blog entries or reviews lying down, but for proper coding, planning and designing, I like to be sitting at a desk with a mouse. I guess it just motivates me more…? But after spending seven or eight hours at work at a desk, it’s nice to just lie back and relax for a bit. I need a waterproof laptop I can take in the bath

So, I’m good, life is good, it’s Thursday tomorrow which is good. I’m going to go and sign up for the gym this weekend, and then I’m going to plan my weekday evenings carefully to try and balance everything so it’s not all crazy