Flickr integration, thanks to the lovely Flickr Photo Album Plugin

Thought I’d update you on some new features here and there on the blog, nothing worth talking about but you know, if I keep talking about gigs you’d think I’m not actually a geek! There’s still lots of backend stuff that I occasionally do out of curiosity and for coding pleasures (mmm code). Today I’ve been doing a bit of plugin shopping and downloaded/installed two useful plugins, a flickr photo album plugin and a google site map plugin. The latter is mainly used for informing google and other search engines of newly updated posts and whatnot, I’m not really seeing any immediate benefit from it but I hear it’s useful *shrugs*, I kinda got bored reading it’s use on wikipedia (and I find it weird how my readers are actually reading this for me if they dare click on the wikipedia article).

The former (I always love saying “latter“, but never really keen on using the word “former“, it’s just weird) is a pretty useful tool in shoving photos into my blog. Typically I use flock to drag my flickr photos onto my blog but lately I’ve found it a bit tiddly to use. It’s still pretty slick but when I’m on computers that don’t have flock it’s a pain in the rectal region. I thought having all this built in would benefit so much more, so I opted to install this friendly and pretty awesome plugin. The plugin allows me to insert photos from my flickr photostream, all nicely linked up and ready to go. Not only that, it has more flexibility in terms of what size you want to insert it, the alignment of it and even captions. There’s loads more features but I won’t get into detail.

So what does all this mean to you? Absolutely nothing, well, not nothing. That is a lie I do apologise, whilst I’m still mastering it the thing you’ll notice most is the use of small thumbnails for photos. I really like using them now to really bung a lot of photos in a post with minimal effort (back then I had to copy the image location, paste that, and then put the link over it). I’m still in experimental phase so don’t expect that much difference, just be happy about the fancy search bar!. My next plan is probably to work on multiple stylesheets and having a different site design for the “photography” and “muse” sections. I was thinking of a nice black site for the photography one but we’ll see. It’s an idea for now but it might come true if I find the time and patience.

Oh and here’s an example of those thumbnail thingys I’m talking about. Using my pinching album as an example.

Of course this would have to be fully separated between factual and thoughts / perspectives. This is where perhaps a forum could be implemented, to really speak out to people and get some intellectual posts going on. I don’t think both the official board and other sites have too many good posts without being polluted with n00bish posts. So yeah, this is the idea, I’ll get some feedback from you guys and from there we’ll work out the feasibility of it all, if the plans go ahead I will get a donation thing going to actually purchase the board. I am not fond of the free boards out there (phpbb comes to mind) since they require constant care and are open to attacks so a full license to vBulletin will be needed which comes at a hefty £90 for the license. So yeah, quite a lot of things to consider. I don’t think there’s enough of a demand for a message board but who know’s best see what you guys think and we can work from there.

If you have any thoughts on a musewiki forum, feel free to comment here.

I am also happy that our news is now published through my blog crazybobbles.org. It means I don’t need to deal with finding an easy way of clearing the current place up. Not only will there be updates on the site but also articles about the band or the muse commnuity, I think there needs to be more blogs and articles related to Muse that offer a more opinionated point of view, no other fansites seem to be allowing users to submit their own non-news articles, it’s all facts and news. So yeah, I’m pushing on getting some people to start publishing articles on the site and use the momentum of crazybobbles.org to allow users to read it. I think it will definitely work since quite a lot of success was made on crazybobbles.org from articles such as 4th album theory by Max and the legend that is the Matt sex face. So yeah, if you feel like publishing articles similar to 4th album theory or my recent articles about Royal Albert Hall, then start sending me stuff to publish, you’ll get full credit and editorial rights to the blog if you have more articles that are interesting to read.

So what stuff can we see this year? Well what do you want folks? Feel free to post comments on future changes to the wiki and hopefully I can roll out stuff that’s feasible. I’m hoping to overhaul certain places to ensure everything is easier to read. I might get that damn logo sorted once and for all and I might look into getting a forum setup, granted the idea of a forum might end up in an epic fail since the official board is the best forum out there still, but yeah, just an idea. You’re more than welcome to suggest some

So yeah, thank you once again for making Musewiki the most awesome site there is for Muse and we’ll hope you’ll enjoy you stay, it’s good to have you with us, even if it’s just for the day (oh yes I went there)

On another note, I’ve also upgraded the wiki to the latest version, no significant changes I’m afraid just some bug fixes and whatnot.

The selling point (or niche) is you’ll be getting a informal array of posts about Muse from an old time Muse fan who’ve seen them far too many times. More insights and discussion fuelled posts which you won’t get on other sites. I want to keep my vibe from the old site of having a site about musers, and not Muse. I will also integrate my musewiki updates on here which will in turn feed into the wiki to keep those who like to wiki informed of new developments, got to love integration eh?

Not only will I be updating about Muse here, I will start redoing my covers here and give them some life. That was the original purpose of my site so it’s only fair to start doing them again. I’m looking at using various sites such as youtube and myspace to host and spread my covers too so hopefully it will be awesome. Some songs were simply too cringeworthy so hopefully you’ll see a new refresh of covers that I’m happy about :).

Think that’s about it, enjoy the new site, more changes of the blog can be found on my previous posts. Read my old personal posts too if you want get to know more about me and my horrid past haha. Will be looking forward to giving you more unadulterated blog action. Hope you enjoy my new theme, take care and hope to see you soon (yes my blog is a living entity capable of “seeing you”).

I’ve pretty much backed up crazybobbles.org so what’s left now is to finish the blog theme and start migrating. Quite excited since I feel like I’m not really making the most out of crazybobbles.org so migrating stuff from my blog seems like a cool idea. I just need a lovely place to dunk my covers and I can generate some flash player to play them (loads of people are using my songs for their sites and all :(). Another thing I’m worried about is the amount of spam and crap that’s been generated via crazybobbles.org, boy that was a legacy. Luckily wordpress is a beauty at managing spam. So yeah content you’ll be expecting on my blog:

• Muse related information, I’ll only post stuff that are super interesting, I prefer using musewiki.org to sort out the news since it rocks (hehe got to love self promotion).
• Musewiki news, I have a news section on the wiki but it would definitely benefit if it was stored in some more blog like than wiki
• Feeds seems to be the key for getting these things right, I’ll be generating individual category feeds so people can subscribe to the correct ones, so if you’re only interested in my banter (fat chance) than you’ll subscribe to banter, if you’re interested in musewiki updated than you subscribe to that, of course there would still be a one feed that will rule them all.
• The obvious addition will be covers, having the blog migrated to crazybobbles.org means I’ll need to start recording more music, I’m quite tempted to just making youtube videos of them all so it can all be hosted externally, we’ll see.
• A new email address! The old crazybobbles was spammed silly haha.
• I might start a music myspace account. Reason is that it’s by far the most productive way of storing latest covers as well as distributing them, and lets face it, I never use myspace correctly, won’t do facebook though, wouldnt work too well.
• Some focus on photography as well, I will try and include more flickr photos on the blog (got to love the blog feature) will focus on band photography but to be honest I’ll try everything that’s interesting.

That’s all for now, I’m just writing out ideas so yeah. Will hopefully incorperate everything mentioned since it’s all doable. Blogging will definitely easier since I’m really enjoying blogging on the tube, nice hour spot to get something done and all.

I would recommend people to get Google Reader going. I would recommend a software based RSS reader like RSSOwl or even Outlook but it’s just a lot nicer and easier to manage when you do it all online (seems like the way forward these days, what with web office etc). So yeah! Get yourself a gmail account if you haven’t already and go nuts on Google Reader

The bit you need to abuse the most is definitely the mobile part of it, for UK folks you can get text notifications of other people’s status’ which means you can stay disturbingly updated with people and all. Not only that, it’s also a gateway for free texting if you’re online since you can send direct messages to people they would receive it via their mobile. So yeah, my profile is http://twitter.com/crazybobbles if you want to follow what’s going on and all. Oh yeah

Hopefully I should have time to start coding my own blog theme so that everything is tweaked to my standards, will do a lot of planning and all to, need to make sure I know what’s going on before making any silly moves hehe.

• New image borders and hovers
• Random images for To do list and about me section
• Slightly cooler looking comment box
• Removed Links from the blog
• Added a flickr badge at the bottom
• Changes the calender date thingy to a nicer looking green and white thingy
• Meddled with the header thingy a bit
• Added loads more subtitles

That’s about it really. Going to see Jason and Rachel today for some wii action