lukehodg.es

Midnight blogging has never been my forte but its late and I’ve got some spare time so here we go, can always fix the grammar tomorrow :P.

So it’s been several months since I departed Whistler (oh how I miss it so much) and made way to London. I’ve settled in here now in western London (why can I never escape living in the west?), living dangerously close to the best walkabout in London.

I’ve seen all the sights except buckingham palace so far, I keep meaning to make a trip out there with the trusty old kangaroo suit for some good photos but never seem to make it, but in the mean time I’ve decided that I’m getting back into the social networking scene.

After a few lazy days on the couch with my trusty little laptop I have noticed that social networking hasn’t been adopted as much as back in Australia. Businesses, educators, and charities seem to lack meaningful online presence, there are no effective blogging networks to bring them all together and the blogs that do exist don’t seem understand the ways in which wordpress can be manipulated. Myspace may be the only exception where social networking may have been adopted more than back at home and this due to the music scene over here, music being the only real use for myspace at this point in time.

So in light of this there’s a lot of work to be done over here, time for me to polish the keyboard and get cracking back into my career over here, pretty soon it will be goodbye call centre job and hello again to my writing and customising blogs.

So I’ve been a bit lazy on the blogging front, I’ve just had bigger priorities in between the skiing and partying.

Webb and I live together in the staff dorms here, Icemantle house (the biggest party house there is of course). The place is a constant party, if you’re bored… grab yourself a drink, walk out in the halls, find an open door and make a new friend!

Whistler village itself is absolutely massive! I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but taking 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other for a snow town was far from it. The village is beautiful, I know I’ve been slack for photos, but I promise I will get some up as soon as I can find a connection that can sustain the 4Gb of photos I’ve backlogged.

Things are pretty crazy here, so far I’ve seen the following:

- Garry chase a bear yelling “run free bear, run free” (lucky it didnt tear him apart)
- A bus doing doughnuts in front of the bus stop for fun
- A taxi driver stuff a few people in the boot to get us up the hill
- Some weirdo steal a guys stock out of his hands and leg it off
- About a billion other weird things that don’t come to mind right now and awesome mountain landscape all around.

I am starting work at the Glacier Creek Bistro this Thurs. To get to work I need to take 2 chairlifts and ski for about 5 minutes… (it’s a hard life). Turns out I’m not just a busser, but an all rounder… seems I might have to learn the Canadian currency after all.

Bought some sweet new ski gear and been on the mountain a few times but a slow start to the season has led me to being quite picky about the days I go out. Hopefully it picks up soon (I’ll be on the snow every day after this thurs anyway).

Went to Walmart yesterday, almost stranded in Squamish in minus whatever the fuck temperatures (cold enough to freeze overnight I’m betting). So worth it though… Got some sweet BB guns.

Anyways, having a blast here in Whistler, be assured I will be blogging more regularly now, Base wireless seems to be a little more responsive after some complaints… until next time!

Cheers

Keeping it short and sweet whilst in hawaii, the only internet access I can afford are my $5 starbucks day passes. Having a great time in hawaii, absolutely exhausted at the moment from touring all day (uploading photos now).

Hawaii is awesome, so much to do that you really have to cull off the activities you want to do. We are going parasailing and scuba diving tommorow, to a luau wed, jet boat thurs, and sunset cruise fri.. very full schedule but loving every minute of it.

some quick things about hawaii:

- The water and beaches are brilliant, the water temperature is awesome and the surf is just right
- ABC stores are crazy.. $13 for jim beam that’s bigger and stronger than ours… these stores are everywhere, from any ABC i reckon you can see the next one you’re gonna reach.
- Tipping is a pain in the ass… i dont know how to do it and it always seems to end the wrong way
- Aloha will substitute for just about any word
- Never order large, american portions are ridiculous, drinks the size of your head are the standard and the fries seem bottomless… i can see how americans get so fat.

anyways like i said, short n sweet… might report back before i leave for vancouver, in the mean time … Aloha!

… seems as though my brain cells had not regenerated over the weekend as I just deleted my wordpress theme that I had not made a back up of, so until further notice… here is my new theme (yay).

Forget the LHC destroying the world, the most important day of the year will have finally arrived this Friday… no it’s not Christmas, or Australia day … it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

This is the one day of the year when it’s completely acceptable to talk like a pirate the whole day through, so why not take advantage of it? You would be forgiven if you are a little nervous about embracing your inner pirate persona, after all it is a work day. But if we can raise awareness of this glorious day, soon enough it’s those who do not talk like a pirate that will be considered the outcasts.

In order to promote the good will of this occasion, here is my guide to workplace survival on International Talk Like a Pirate Day:

1. Awareness is the key to a successful ITLAPD. Take time to send a memo around the office at least the day before to explain why you are talking like a pirate, and why everyone else should consider doing the same.
2. Be sure to practice your pirate impersonation in the week leading up to ITLAPD, for you to truely be doing the day justice, people must know that you are trying to talk like a pirate and not be confused by your accent.
3. “Dharrr” is an appropriate way to start any sentence, and “my” has now become “mi”… for example “Dharrr, I’ll be in a meeting, hold mi calls”. Also be aware that “Ahoy!” is a great way to greet somebody on this day.
4. While talking ‘like’ a pirate may sway you towards talking about certain topics, you should be aware that innapropriate topics such as the rape and pillaging of small communities will still get you into trouble and should be avoided if possible
5. If you feel the need to start gathering items around the workplace as part of your buried treasure, please remember that when the day ends, so does the pirate fun and these items must be returned. Leaving a treasure map for people to find their belongings on Monday is generally considered bad ettiqute as ITLAPD has ended by this time.
6. If you are overly committed to your character on the day and decide to bring a parrot to your workplace then you should appropriate measures to control your bird. A cage to contain the bird when it is not sitting on your shoulder should be brought with you.
   It is also suggested that you consult a pet owner’s guide on clipping parrot’s wings, this will ensure that your bird does not cause havoc around the office.
7. Phone calls have always been the tricky part when trying to celebrate ITLAPD without it having a negative effect on your job, however this is where we get to spin a negative into a positive.
   Every office will have at least one non-participant. Whether is be because their ancestors were slayed by pirates or maybe their pirate impersonation is absolutely terrible and just doesn’t do the celebration justice… it doesn’t matter. All you need to do is divert all your incoming phone calls to this person’s phone and have them screen your calls. If they think the person calling will be accepting of your new found dialect then have them transfer you the call… if the CEO of your company decides to call, you’re unavailable at the moment. Now your phone calls are all safe… and the non-participant is ‘taking one for the team’.

So there you have it, a small guide on how to celebrate your International Talk Like a Pirate Day in the workplace safely, and responsibly. Please enjoy the day responsibly or before you know it, you might find yourself walking the plank into the sea of unemployment

The new year has always been a popular time for new beginnings. The majority of people will be starting to mellow after the clock hits midnight, they sit down under the influence of a beer, or two (or twelve) and before you know it the cliche verbal diarrhea begins… “I’m going to quit drinking”  … “I’m going to quit smoking” … “I’m going to travel more” … “I’m gonna be a better person” … “wah wah wah, whinge whinge whinge”.

So what happens if you don’t make your resolution at this point? What happens if you make it at 10:00am, floating around in the pool, with a beer in your hand? It’s amazing how little remorse you feel in this scenario and without that key ingredient, there is no incessant whinging to influence your new year’s resolution.

Having found myself in that very situation on January 1st 2008, it’s no wonder my mates and I had very unconventional resolutions.

Craig - will not use a bottle opener for the whole year
Justin - will not take his necklace off for the whole year
Garry - will not buy anything using coins for the whole year
Myself - will not use scissors for the whole year

Just a little bit of fun that lasts the whole year. Just the same as their conventional counterparts, there was the suspicion that the resolutions would be broken, so to enforce this we decided there should be a penalty… 5 punches where it’s going to hurt the most (yes, that is exactly where you think it is).

So we’re into August now, how have these resolutions held up so far?

Well, Garry hasn’t been punched as many times as he should have, while he did track well for the first couple of months I think it simply got too hard for him, he has broken his resolution that many times that we don’t even bother enforcing the punishment any more in the interest of Garry reproducing one day (on second thoughts, maybe we should keep punching).

Justin hit a loop hole with his resolution. We discussed that the resolutions could not affect our jobs in any way and was asked to remove it once on the job. Other than this moment, the necklace has stayed on firmly around his neck, testament to this… the once white shell necklace is now a disgusting shade of brown.

Craig has tracked well with his, some early traps were set up to try and get him to use a bottle opener, however, no such luck. The guy drinks twist-tops anyway, actually… do any beers even come with the old lids any more?

And me, well I am proud to say that almost 7 ^1/2 months on, and I have not used a pair of scissors, alarm bells go off in my head whenever I see the things. It is amazing how a knife can suffice for a pair of scissors in every possible way, people just tend to look at you weirdly when you’re cutting the outline of an object with a knife… it adds a certain element of ‘psycho’ to the activity.

Yeah, so they are weird resolutions, but at least when you’re finished reading this blog and you go out and have your cigarette and a beer, I’ll still be on track keeping MY new years resolution

So I’m relatively new to blogging itself but am certainly no stranger to WordPress blog themes, over the past couple of years I’ve seen some great templates and some absolute shockers.

Every time I enter my blog, I see my plain old boring banner and think to myself ‘that has got to go’ (on that note, my blog’s appearance will probably change again soon), and as I begin scouring the internet for inspiration I come across so many brilliant themes, that lack functionality.

Sure these themes look great, have creative designs, and make a blog look great… and that’s why they are so widely tolerated, downloaded, and used. So you’ve installed and customised your cool new theme and now it’s time to active your plugins and get your widgets going down the side bar… this is usually where you first notice you’ve downloaded a dud theme, because now everything’s all over the place, or worst still you get a lovely PHP error.

I suppose I have a bit of an advantage when ’shopping around’ for a new WordPress theme. I’ve heard the words ‘Luke, I’ve broken my blog, Help!’ and had to solve the problem enough times to know what to be weary of in themes, and knowing my way around php has definately had it’s advantages.

So for the rest of us, I thought I would put together a few notes on selecting a new WordPress theme.

Think about the layout and how much room you need
Possibly the biggest thing you need to think about when selecting your theme is how many columns you want. If you’re blog is going to be something simple and you’re just going to list your posts, categories and not much else then there is probably a simple one or two layer theme for you.
if you plan on getting a bit widget-happy and want every cool trick under the sun on your site, then you’re probably looking for a three or maybe four column layout.

How much are you going to need to manipulate the theme?
How much tweaking to the theme are you going to need to do in order to personalise it enough? If you’re looking at a theme and thinking about relocating the menu items, pushing the header to the side and lifting up your left-hand navigation then hmmmmm, unless you’re a good coder or want to pay for one, you might want to look at a different theme.

Does the theme validate?
If the theme validates, then it’s probably in good shape. To test this, use the W3C Markup Validation Service and copy the web address of a blog that uses that theme into the address field on the validator, hit check and see how many errors it can find.
Errors can affect a number of aspects of your blog, from display consistency between browsers, to accessibility issues or even how easy it will be to customise the blog. Once you have found an error free theme however, it is important to remember that plugins and widgets ad code to your theme and may trigger errors, so check your blog’s validation from time to time.

This is certainly not to say that my blog theme is the best choice in the world, last time I checked I think I had about 43 HTML errors? But I’m sure I can fix them by turning off a couple of those unnecessary widgets and a little bit of coding.

Are other people having problems with the theme?
You’re reading a blog right now so it’s probably no surprise to you that there’s a lot of chatter on the internet. Type your theme name into google, check out a few other blogs that are using it, trying adding ‘bug’ or ‘problems’ at the end of your blog name and find what issues there are and if there are fixes available.

Having said all this, no WordPress theme is perfect but I guess the point I am trying to convey is know what you’re getting yourself into before investing valuable time into something you may just have to change. And on that note… I think I might get to work on fixing some of my own theme problems :D.

So a number of months ago now, I told a lie. It’s not something I normally do, but I did it. I wrote a ‘Coming Soon’ post and far from ‘Soon’ here is my first blog post, it’s funny how easy it is to get distracted and lose sight of where you were headed.

However, I’ve recently started reading a lot of blogs again and been doing a fair bit of work fixing blogs so I thought I should get my act together and start blogging myself.

I’m really not certain of what I’m going to post here in the next 3 ^1/2 months, will more than likely be a mix of rants, web 2.0, and random interests. So unsure am I about what this blog will be about, I have set the subtitle of the page to pull directly from my facebook status (which I change a little more frequently than one person probably should). In addition I have my twitter bar up the top, and surely enough will get around to adding my other social networking spaces.

Other than rants and things of that nature, the greater vision for this blog is to act as my travel blog. Come November 15, I pretty much flush whatever of my life doesn’t fit into my backpack down the proverbial toilet and set off  on my open ended round-the-world trip (will have to write a post some time soon outlining my trip in more detail). It is both an exciting and scary thought leaving so much behind so in an attempt to keep record of my experiences, keep my friends in the loop and most importantly keep my mum off my back, I will be posting to here from the road so people can keep track of me.

So anyways I will cut the virtual ribbon with a knife, not scissors (there’s another story to blog about), and declare my blog open!. Feel free to leave a comment no matter how short n sweet so I know who’s stopping by.