dom.blog

Yes, it’s true, I have shamelessly stolen Alex Trafford’s design for a search box. But I’ve also played around with the comment form to give it a bit more sparkle, although IE users are left out here I’m afraid. It’s all part of my slow refresh of little bits of the site that need improving now that the newsness of the summer design has worn off. As ever – comments, questions, suggestions welcome!

OK – here’s the deal. School starts on Wednesday 7th September. That’s when I’ll stop having the time to work on this site so much and, yes, I will take it out of beta once the final pages are up. Time to go into the big wide world of personal websites.

But first – when I first launched the new design, someone had the audacity to complain that the Emoticons page no longer opened in a separate window. Well, I’ve taken it to heart and now you can insert emoticons from the comment form itself. Check it out…! (Safari users may not be included – I’m not sure.)

Huge credits to Battleangel for the javascript.

Oh, and the photo of Hiten, Tade, Paresh and I just after we got our GCSE results made its way into the Willesden & Brent Times today.

PS – Oh, and I changed my mind about Technorati tags. Too much hassle…

I’m experimenting with Technorati. Recently I’ve been using it quite a bit to search for breaking ‘news’ from the blogosphere and I thought “hey, why not give tags a go?” (I was also trying to avoid completing my online CV – but at least I’ve made a start now!)

Today I also:

• Paid in cheques. Always a fuzzy feeling.
• Applied for an Abbey e-savings account. Always a daunting feeling.
• Listened to Loney – Akon… in Dutch. Courtesy of Pingu. Much better than the English version, precisely because you can’t understand the stupid lyrics.
• Had one of those wonderful phone conversations with Holly Parkhouse where she manages to sound remarkably upbeat even with a swollen eye (ouch)
• Made Alex Trafford laugh with my suggestions to improve Aspire magazine – this rather dull thing that’s send to all the members of the ‘National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth’. He suggested I blog them, so here I am.

Things I’d like to be included in Aspire*:

• Geek page 3 girls
• Dilbert
• Geek TV Guide
• Advice columns done by geeks for stupid people written in a patronising and mocking tone
• Free gifts!

*(Not entirely serious – don’t write angry letters)

If this works, it has disturbing implictions for how quickly I could post exam results!

Which was a bit tricky as I had to keep the hacks intact for a separate Website \ E-mail field. If you do spot any problems, please let me know…