Category: The Site

Exactly as the post title says – don’t shoot me. I had felt the previous three column approach had grown a little cluttered and regular visitor to the blog (not including RSS subscribers) may have noticed the same. Given that Sunday (today) is an absolute miserable day, I put on the design cap and made a few changes.

The grazr stays but has been made wider, while the font size jumps up a peg. Now included in the sidebar is a small profile and photo of myself which had been available in version 6 of the theme (this being version 8 – yes, I know, a lot since October 2005 but four of them don’t really count).

The search has been moved right to the top (in the header) and the advertising restricted to a single 160*600 block which you will only find by looking for or reading down through the blogroll. The sidebar also adopts the approach used on Mobileblogr (using a combination of single column and split two column) and while the Mobileblogr feed exists within the grazr I have also brought it’s five most recent posts to the kenmc.com homepage in an attempt to draw attention to the blog as it begins to develop.

Nice to get the decorating done before Christmas….

I’m not married or marking any kind of personal anniversary… this one is the blogging kind as (according to my post archives) kenmc.com marks one year as a blog and I, in turn, mark one year as a blogger.

There’s a little lie behind that I guess as I ran a blog of sorts in college, also hosted on this domain using Serendipity at the time before I discovered WordPress. I think, however, there’s a slight difference between “running a blog” and “blogging”, where the college one served as means to an end, following a particular college subject and project notes and this one was pushed to the public domain.

I’ve had a few rants, there’s been some interesting discussions and over the past year I’ve managed to launch several blogs.

At present, the main count would be…

• Creative Imagination
• Liverpool Access
• KilkennyMusic.com (must be registered to read the blog element of the site)
• NFLView.com / The Football Times
• World Cup Access (best short term blog, ran it for two months and closed it down. Bless FIFA for threatening to rip me a new one over including the World Cup logo in the site)
• The Happy Medium
• Ken McGuire Photography
• my.KENMC (now obsolete)
• 2006 Battle Of The Bands

To top it off, at the weekend I launched Mobileblogr, with a view to keeping up to date on mobile developments (something which interests me directly). Comments and feedback on the theme and layout would be greatly appreciated. All of the above are hosted on versions of WordPress between 2.01 and 2.04.

In that time as well I’ve been able to work with people, friends, bands and family in setting up blogs and have been able to develop my own style of writing (certainly more clearer to myself once World Cup Access launched, which in turn inspired Liverpool Access). I

I’ve also made contact with some excellent bloggers in the country and read up on many of them on a daily basis (see the blogroll on the right-hand-side for some quality Irish blogger links), discovered a wealth of information and been introduced to new sites, products, different ways of thinking, all through blogs.

The ways of the web, including my own usage of the web for day-to-day activities has changed a lot too since coming out of college in May 2005 (my own background there being a BScH in IT with a preceding BSc in Multimedia Applications Development) and I guess Google’s purchase of Youtube in the last week or so is certainly proof of point that the ways of the web are about to get a lot different over the coming years.

Thanks to everyone (now 80 or so daily reading the blog via FeedBurner outside of search engine links or regular browsers) who continues to read the blog, or any of my other blogs for that matter and thanks to people for all of the above.

Since we started the business last July I’ve managed to take a week off work (barring a ten day break at Christmas), and during that week I was involved in producing (and acting in) a show for a new theatre company a small group of us established back in May. That said, I’ve got a few spare days this year to take so I’m booked for a week in Toronto flying out the morning of Friday November 24th and arriving back the morning of Friday December 2nd.

After spending a good week researching flights, making phone calls, waiting on phone calls I discovered that the only decent way to get to Canada – directly, and quickly – is to go out from Belfast. So the night (23rd) before the flight I’ll drive avec mon pére (more his trip away with me tagging along for the break and change of scenery) to Belfast or as close to as is permissable to catch the morning flight out. In the end we opted for Zoom Air who run direct flights to both Toronto and Vancouver, running at around €450 inclusive of flights, taxes, insurance etc. for the return trip each. Not bad considering that it was costing at least €100 more to fly out of Dublin or Cork, both offering flights with lengthy stopovers in any of London, Paris, Amsterdam or Atlanta, extending the trip anywhere up to an extra 6 hours.

The flight comes at a good time as well blogging wise. Between the few blogs in the last month (thanks in part to a 250 quid text link on The Football Times) or so I find myself less than a hundred quid off the final cost of the flights… If anyone asks I’ll just say I blogged my way to Canada (or at least part of the way there)….

All the same, can’t wait to get away and get over there. Last time I was stateside was a good ten years ago, spent a few weeks in MA between Boston/Springfield/Northampton/Florence…. gorgeous neck of the woods (Northampton/Florence).

But of course – Toronto is in Canada! Anyone ever been or can suggest anything to go check out while I’m there?

So, I finally gave in. She comes dressed in black, silky smooth to the touch, bright and colourful character and as a great memory.

I also treated myself to a 60gb video iPod, in black.

Decided to pack in my Creative Zen Jukebox and move over to the dark side. Next stop is that Macbook Pro I’ve got my eye on. 🙂

Figured I’d throw this out there if anyone is interested. I’ve ended up with spare tickets for Tool and I’m selling two of them (face value plus the booking fee). If anyone is interested I’ve listed them on ebay and you can view the listing right here.

The tickets are two standing tickets (not yet sold out) for Tool in The Point Theatre, Dublin on Wednesday November 22nd. Tickets were €52.50 (+€5.95 per ticket, thank you Ticketmonster) so I’ve listed the two tickets at €115 to start the bidding or €120 buy it now (I ain’t no tout!).

If you happen to overhear anyone in conversation looking for standing tickets just send them my way!

Update: Had been told the standing tickets were sold out but turns out their not (cheers Adam). Notice that the gig isn’t actually sold out either, but I’m selling the tickets all the same…

So some people are for it, some people are against it, I’ve come to quite like it to be fair. Think it was June Bank Holiday Weekend that I applied the previous theme, having wanted to go on and use a 3 column theme for kenmc.com at that stage. And now, I have.

I’ve been using a three column layout at LiverpoolAccess.com since the blog launched not much over two weeks ago and have become quite accustomed to it. The expansion of the design, CSS layout all provide that extra bit of breathing room.

I’ve also decided to revisit the delivery of content on the blog. World Cup Access (presently dormant) and Liverpool Access have helped me develop my writing style over the past two months, something I feel should be brought out here, without restricting myself to looking at the facts of various technical matters.

Not to say that the blog is going to go mental or anything, just a little more freedom of speech and thoughts around various issues relating to posts made on the blog. I mean, thats what blogging is about right? Freedom of speech, freedom of your own control?

At present, Feedburner is telling me I’ve got 13 feeds burned. Thats from 13 different blogs too I might add as the little blogging empire builds up. But this is, and will remain my primary blog and should get the attention I feel it should get.

Just a little rant for myself while I work out the kinks on the lunch break over the new theme. Now, where the hell is my double espresso!

So my World Cup blog, World Cup Access has finally gotten some extra attention. Just when I notice a quiet spell in the stats due to lack of my activity over the past two days and the quiet spell between the semi finals and the final…

Dear Sirs

I am writing on behalf of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) with respect to the 2006 FIFA World Cup(tm). FIFA owns the exclusive rights around the world in a number of trade marks and copyright works created for the tournament, including but not limited to the Official Emblem, Mascots, FIFA World Cup Trophy and numerous word marks such as FIFA WORLD CUP (the “FIFA Marks”). FIFA has various exclusive contractual arrangements in place with sponsors and licensees around the world relating to the exploitation of such rights in accordance with strict terms.

We have discovered that FIFA’s Marks are being misused in the following way on the website under your control and/or legal ownership at: http://www.worldcupaccess.com/

Unauthorised use of FIFA’s copyright and trade mark protected Official Emblem.
FIFA has not consented to this activity and consequently, this is a clear infringement of FIFA’s rights and/or a misuse of FIFA’s marks. Such activity is likely to cause material damage and harm to FIFA and its sponsors or licensees.

FIFA requires that you immediately remove the offending material and/or cease the offending activity within the next 24 hours. Please note that further monitoring will take place to ensure that this request is fulfilled and the infringement is not repeated, and that FIFA’s rights and those of its sponsors and licensees are protected.

Not only that, but they were kind enough to email me a screenshot highlighting in a lovely red colour where I broke the rules… (the use of the World Cup logo on the top left of the page). So 24 hours to come up with a new logo… for the love of God, the World Cup is nearly over!!!

Now in fairness, FIFA ran wild on Spreadshirt and anybody selling tshirts or unofficial merchandise with mention of the World Cup but does a lowly blogger who has a passion for football look like I’m about corrupt FIFA? For the love of God, I’ve got stuff to do today apart from changing the entire header graphic of the site. They were kind enough to email me in German, Spanish and Chinese as well.

They could have at least been nice about it and told me how they found the website. Through Google? Referred by a friend? Or is someone in the FIFA marketing department subscribed to the RSS feed? If so, are you happy with the full posts or would you rather snappy summaries? Did you like my blogging efforts? The screenshot’s primary post was after the Germany vs Italy game on the 4th so I’ll have to see what I can find from the stats….

Guess I got busted for causing material damage and harm to FIFA for promoting the World Cup 😉

Bwaaagh! I’m finishing this cup of tea first…

After the arrival of a few extra bit today I’ve had a few people ask about my home setup… so here you go, in photographic detail. Apologies for cutting off the top of the photo…

1. My PC. This one was custom made by myself back in Fenruary of this year. Holds two 200GB Maxtor hard drives and dual boots Windows XP Pro (SP2) and Windows Vista Beta 2. P4 3.0Ghz chip, 2mb cache, 1GB of ram at present backing it. Front bays currently holding a 52x CDRW drive and a 16x dual-layer dvd-rw drive, along with a media card reader bay with additional USB / Firewire / Audio ports. Graphics driven by a GeForce 6500 @ 256mb, shifted up to 512mb in the OS.
2. Monitos. Dual 19″ LG Flatron L1917S setup, delivered a fortnight ago from Komplett.
3. Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard, Comfort 4000 model in black, along with Comfort 3000 optical mouse, both of which were picked up off eBay in the US for under 60 bucks including the shipping. Trés comfortable.
4. Creative Audigy 2ZS Platinum Pro, front box seated under the monitors, firewire in, optical in/out, 3 line connections, phono / midi and more… tasty
5. The trusty bottle of Stella, nice sipping during an evening’s recording…
6. The new desk… Allen & Heath PA28 shipped just today from Thomann Musikhaus in Germany. A pleasure to work with so far…
7. Takamine EN-10. Sounds like heaven when its played, and its been played now for well over a decade. Favourite of my acoustic collection and my choice guitar for live performances…
8. Leather chair for under €35 from Viking Direct. God bless those special offers. Leans all the way back too!
9. 200GB Maxtor external harddrive, USB2 for when you need the extra hard drive muscle (when 400GB isn’t enough), though mainly used for backups and portability. Should really bring it back to the office…
10. Shure SM58. Fantastic vocal mic that is pretty much the defacto when it comes to vocal performance on stage. Never leave home without one.

And thats about it. Looks a lot smaller in the photo than it is up front!

Update – 00:33 4/6, Blogroll population is kicking in. I’ve added direct links to people’s RSS feeds from their blog. If you’re on the blog roll and want to use a different link for your feed, be sure and let me know.

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Summer is in and I just splashed out on a lovely set of 2 LG Flatron L1917S 19″ Flatpanel monitors, nothing like it to get the design juices going. So much screen space I tell ya. With that in mind, I’ve been working on a mild facelift to the blog, tidy up certain elements and structure things a little neater.

My main idea was to remove the clutter from the sidebar (posts, comments, ever-extending blogroll, numerous links) and improve the navigation (new nav bar on the top) and search (now located bang in the header itself), so, I introduce KENMC6 Beta for WordPress 2.x.
Of course, if you’ve got any feedback, or notice any little kinks that might need ironing out then just shout. Network / Resources / Blogroll should be active by this evening at some stage.

I read Michele’s post over the weekend on adjusting his WordPress theme to the MW1 theme (Monetize The Web) which is based around simple support for AdSense.

Seems to work well – paste in your own AdSense code into the building blocks (pages used as includes in the templates), and presto, you’ve got neat inline contextual ads – one after your first post, one after your second, and one after your last.

K2 (which is what I’ve based the CI3.5 theme on) works a little different in that it uses a seperate loop file to control the displays of posts, asides, comments etc. However, a little bit of tweaking and I’ve ripped out the AdSense support, gravatar support, and recent articles links and ported them to K2, dropping them in at the right spots along the loop. At least now you’ll get a little more effective ad placement with K2 running….

Enough is enough.

I feel the captcha is coming back in unless theres someone out there with a name and address for me so I can track down whoever it is has been bombarding the blog this morning with spam comments. Think I’ve broken a hundred at this stage since being offered Viagra with my breakfast, auto loans with my lunch, and God only knows what else in between.

Can we jail spammers? Or make them use dialup? Can we?

So I made the upgrade from WP1.5 to WP2.02 this morning, which means I’ve also upgraded the theme ever so slightly. A few tweaks to be made this morning but its making it easier for me to manage the blog. I’ve also added a new contact page for those who have been asking how to get in touch with me.

I didn’t go into any real extensive testing for my old theme on the latest version of WP but if it turns out to be working fine I might well release it to the general public for download as I’ve found myself slipping into the K2 vibe recently. There’ll be some updates during the day or later on this evening.

Questions and comments always appreciated…

Some people might like the fact that the captcha is gone, hmmmm 😉

Got a little time out this evening to make some additions to kenmc.com, whether you’ll notice them or not! I’ve added a nice Social Bookmarking plugin which covers the likes of Del.icio.us, Digg, Yahoo and a few other spots which comes courtesy of Max Power based of Paul Stamatiou’s work who handcoded the original version. Should help out with keeping track of posts, and it adds a nice splash of colour to the blog 🙂

I’ve also shifted around the comments to integrate the comment count into the post title (you’ll see the current comment count for each article in brackets) which takes away the link of italic text beneath each post that I never really liked. Nothing like a bit of cleaning on a rainy night….

Ok colour-loving and hating people… lets have your feed on this one! Spent an hour or two throwing this theme together, finding colours that work and match, something simple and bright that removes the oppression derived during the week.

Oppression! 😉

Anyway, food for thought is this theme. The header background is based on the ‘A New Spring’ theme, which is used over at Your Daily Feed this is my completely wild derivation of it, which I’m quite proud of actually. Maybe a little bit of work to do on the sidebar, but the Stylesheet is pretty much sewn up.

Try find half life now why don’t ya! With a little bit of A/B testing in mind, your comments and crits are sincerely appreciated!

I’m looking for colour opinions here. Also… according to my feedburner chicklet down the right of the page (which I’ve just added), I’ve got 14 people keeping tabs on my blog. Thanks for tuning in over the past while, and lets hope the blogging continues right through 2006.

Any of you 14 people fancy a suggestion or comment at the new colour scheme? Anyone remember the old one?