I have recently added the Quote function that you can see on the right handside. This displays a random quote each time the page is reloaded. I have put in a few quotes so far but I am looking for more. If anyone has any suggestions then please submit them by posting a comment to this entry.

There have been some complaints (especially from one person in particular) concerning the lack of recent posts on my blog. My argument of course is that this blogging lark is about quality not quantity!

I can however assure my readers that I am less interested in posting entries at the moment, and more interested in making things here look a bit more presentable. I have recently begun playing around with the plugins feature of WordPress (the software used to power my blog). I have successfully added two new fatures to the Comments section. First is the ability to add a ‘Gravatar‘ (a Globally Recognized Avatar) to comments. This means that if you add a comment any of my posts you can assign an image to appear alongside it. This is much like the picture feature in MSN messenger. Furthermore, you can also keep track of comments that follow yours by signing up to receive future notification of new comments in your email. Not actually sure if anyone is ever going to use this, but you never know….

I have also installed the Gallery Plugin for Flickr (click the Gallery link at the top of the page) which means that all my photos stored on Flickr are now visible here on my website. You can even launch a slideshow of photos directly from my pages. Pretty cool and seems to work reasonably well.

Over the next week or so I will be adding more cosmetic updates to try and lose the dreaded green look and make this think look slightly less amateurish. Unfortunately my knowledge of CSS and PHP is rudimentary to say the least so this could take a while. All a learning curve I suppose.

Olly. Out.

Well, after reaching a level of stagnancy that would convince anyone who knows me to have accepted that this was another passing fad, things are finally beginning to move forwards with my personal blog…

First up, I have purchased a very sexy new toy, namely the Canon 350D Digital SLR. This is a serious piece of techno-wizardy (check out the review at Digital Photography Review) and should hopefully encourage me to start updating this this thing a little more often with the day to day visuals of my life here in Beijing and beyond.

Also, I have decided to ditch the old gallery tool, and switch to the excellent Flickr service for hosting my photos. So far it looks like this service will do everything I want from it, and more. It will also allow me to store hi-res copies of all my photos for you lot to download and do with as ytou please. If you are interested in using it for yourselves, check out the website.

I am starting off by uploading all the pics from my Thailand trip back in Feb. Stay tuned for more updates.

Olly. Out.