Archive for September, 2008

Blogging: Why Bother??

When I was writing the blurb for my “About” section, it made me wonder why people blog. A quick google showed that I’m not the only one wondering. Most of the stuff that popped up was about how the blog was the equivalent of the modern day diary. Some people blog in order to impart their “knowledge” (and I use that term loosely) about various things to the world while for others its a place to vent.

Past blogs of mine tended to be about what I thought were interesting things I got up to on a daily basis, it was a bit like a public email which my chums could jump onto and see what I was up to. My last blog was a photoblog because I became too lazy to write and thought how apt it’d be for me, as a photographer, to let the photos to do the talking. I remember that the accompanying text that went with my first few photos were rather long and a friend pointed out in one of the comments how I seemed to be writing more even though the point of it was for to economise on words. Subsequent posts however were usually a few lines or even a few words. I think there was an entry where I just wrote “?” or perhaps it was “??”.

So let me ask those of you who blog – why do you do it??

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30

09 2008

There’s a bug in your ear

These must be the coolest looking earphones ever!! Click here!

I quite like the pigs, but for people to really appreciate them, they’ll have you look at you head-on. The ducks are quite sweet too.

28

09 2008

Bon Anniversaire

Having just renewed my domain, I’ve come to realise that this website is 3 years old today.

Over the years its undergone many guises from some sort of online photoalbum, site about stuff, blog, photoblog and now a blog-based website which kinda includes all of the above. The photoblog is still about and viewable if you click on As I Xi It (2007-2008) in the links section.

Happy birthday xiyuonline.com.

26

09 2008

Domain Renewal

I was fiddling around with my site while I was at work and all was fine with xiyuonline.com, when I got home in the evening, my site had disappeared! Turned out that I forgot to renew my domain. Anyway, since my domain was only expired for a few hours, I dropped a message to those people at Big Wet Fish, paid my subscrption and all is well again. They replied to my message really quickly, as in within 30 minutes at 10-something pm at night!! Kudos to them, there’s no substitute for quality customer service. In the first year that I had my account with them, they sent me a Christmas card, but they haven’t done so since. It’s just as well, I don’t see the point of Christmas cards, a waste of resources. Think of the trees!!

It would’ve been a real pisser if all the data had been deleted and I had to upload and set everything up all over again. All that fiddling and tweaking the past few days would’ve been lost in some big webbie hole somewhere.

26

09 2008

Lowepro Primus AW Camera Backpack Review

This afternoon my Lowepro Primus arrived. I decided I that I needed a new camera bag (yet another one) after my last photographic excersion. My North Face Big Shot although very well made and practical gets rather uncomfortable after walking long distances when its got a heavy load. The waist belt’s a bit flimsy and left me with bruised hips and aching shoulders. So I went in search of a dedicated camera backpack and came up with the Lowepro Primus AW. It normally retails for around £115 – 138.00 but I found it for £57.97 on Amazon.co.uk so I thought why not?

The shoulder straps and waist belt have plenty of adjustable bits and are nicely padded. From my initial test wear, it’s quite comfortable, sits well on my hips. It’s all pretty well made even if it is from recycled used plastic bottles. For those who know me, I guess it’s pretty appropriate that I’ll be using an ecofriendly camera backpack. It seems to tick all the right boxes from the outset but the real test will come later when I take it out in the field to see how it fares in its element.

25

09 2008

Site Mods

I’ve added a “Portfolio” page where you can see a selection of my favourite pics, it was made using the NextGEN Gallery plug-in for WordPress. It’s simple but neat.

I’ve got no major plans for this blog, I suppose this time round it’ll be a bit of a mixed bag.

Nothing much interesting to report here.

Zzzz….

23

09 2008

Hello World Indeed

Well, I upgraded WordPress and my chosen photoblog plug-in (YAPB) decided that it didn’t want to work anymore. So I upgraded to the latest version of the plug-in and it gave me a fatal error. I couldn’t be bothered to faff about figuring what was wrong so I thought I’d just start afresh.

Watch this space for further developments.

09

09 2008