Blogger beta

You may have noticed (if you're a regular reader) that the blog's had a major re-design. And that my spelling's getting a lot better. Two innovations I'm quite pleased with are responsible for these things:

Blogger Beta is the new version of the Blogger software - and it's really quite good. It's almost as flexible as WordPress (which I use for Cambridge.IsHome, about which more later). The template I'm now using is almost completely as-is from Blogger, and it fits my branding almost perfectly, which is why I've kept it. The new templates available are really very good, and I am pleased with the way this new one looks.

It's also going to allow me to do more clever things with my feeds and the way I parse them on my sites. I can tag posts on here with a particular keyword (much like WordPress allows) and then - when I eventually found out how - I have a feed for each keyword. That means the Maltpress.co.uk site and the JuicyFly site can have different feeds on them and I can choose which site my blog posts go to.

FireFox 2.0 is responsible for the better spelling you can now see, thanks to a lovely inline dictionary function for web forms. You simply download the dictionary you want to use - UK English or US English (or any number of others) and all your sperling misteaks are suddenly underlined in red for you. Lovely.

Joel left a comment below saying some nice things and asking about Cambridge.IsHome. Well, as he guessed, I've been somewhat busy lately. Things are about to change though - I'm about to re-start it, and that begins with a bit of re-design work. I've never yet managed to get a design I've been happy with, so I'm going to spend some time tonight on the mac with the Gimp (and perhaps with some felt-tips first) to get it looking nicer. Then I have some articles planned which I'm actually going to go out and research (well, do) and write.

I would have reviewed The Bluetones at the Junction the other night had I not been late leaving a business event, meaning I only got to see three songs.