I'm a fairly tolerant person, but the site is driving me nuts tonight. I have been adding a section to my profile with old blog posts in, so that they have visibility.

It took me about 10 minutes to get all the code ready and about 30 minutes to get the template to save. Several times the page crashed loosing my changes (I'd saved my theme to a notepad file - so nothing lost) and the number of times I read 'Waiting for www.cre8buzz.com...' is beyond belief.

I finally got the theme up and then about 10 minutes later, when I refreshed the page my changes had gone. When I checked my theme the changes that I had made were gone, as if my theme had been rolled back to an earlier version. I've corrected it again and it's working for now.

I don't know what the problem is, but this slow down is happening several times a day and it needs fixing urgently.

I know there is never a good time to get a puncture, but while in the supermarket is pretty bad timing. I noticed the rear left tyre was low as we got back to the car to load the shopping in, but I figured that I'd put some air in at the petrol station next to the supermarket, enough to get me home and then change the tyre for the spare.

So we loaded the shopping in and drove about 100 yards to the airline and waited for the car using it to finish. When I looked at the tyre it was totally flat...that's not a good sign. Being an optimist, I put the airline on it anyway, but the sound of air hissing out and the fact it wouldn't hold any pressure let me know it was in vain.

We parked back in the car park and unloaded the shopping back into a trolley so that I could get the jack and spare wheel out of the car. Luckily, the weather was dry, the bolts came out easily and the wheel wasn't stuck to the hub. The kids got to see first hand how to change a wheel, I'm so glad it went well and I didn't get stressed. So in about 10 minutes, the wheel was changed, the shopping packed back in and we were on our way home. You never want a puncture, but if you have to have one then a straightforward on is the type to have.

Since getting my digital camera at the end of last year, I have really got back into photography. A few weeks ago I created a photoblog on one of my domains and will try to add fairly regular images. Those of you who follow my blog will know that good intentions aside, this may not be as regular after a time, but I will try.
I have called my photoblog Collection of Light and it is located at http://www.ianhedges.com

I was invited by Jo-N at Shower Your Children with Love - The Right Way to participate in the Big Bang - World Record. This is a list started at MondayMorningPower attempting to get to at least 1000 links.

I have blogged on my site about it http://blog.ijhedges.com/2008/02/02/big-bang-world-record/

Feel free to pop over and join in.
Its up to 372 links at the moment

Ian

Over the past week I've been doing what I enjoy doing; identifying (or inventing) a problem and then finding a solution.

The chat applet that is donated for our use by Velveteen Mind is great for being available on multiple profiles, but for me, it was too small. This was the 'problem' I set out to solve.

After investigating a few software packages, I came across gtchat, which seemed to offer the majority of normal chat room functions in a small package. Unlike a lot of the free chat rooms, this was a package that had to be hosted, but had the advantage of no adverts.

After I got it up and running on my test site, Jackal, Nen and Ender helped me with some of the early testing where we discovered some of it's features and fixed a couple of quirks.
Thank you to all who helped test this out.

The site is here http://chat.ijhedges.com/cre8buzz/chat.pl

The site can have multiple rooms with the idea that communities can have their own room where they can chat about their subject.

There is a Photography room that we set up in testing http://chat.ijhedges.com/cre8buzz/chat.pl?id=&language=&css=&proxy=1&template=chat&room=photography
It is possible to post a picture and then discuss it.

There are shortcomings of this room compared to the chat applet, there isn't visibility of what's going on without logging in. I hope that this can supplement the applet.