Adam Luke

Archive for the ‘Internet and Websites’ Category

"I Don't Eat My Necklace, I Just Suck on It": When Bloggers Meet

Today, I met two very cool girls. Their names were (and still are) Amanda and Nadine. I like to think that fun was had by all.

We met at noon, me with the advantage of actually knowing what the people I was meeting looked like (but a bit of texting so I could find them still didn’t go astray). We went for lunch (dumplings and noodles) in Chinatown, where blogging and life in general were discussed, and basic “getting to know you, getting to know all about you”-type questions were asked. It was recently discovered that Amanda and I attended the same high school, which was also discussed over lunch. In all likelihood, we walked past each other in corridors, but were in different year levels and thus paid no attention to each other.

Next stop was ACMI, where we looked at the Screen Worlds exhibit. Finally, we quickly dropped by Amanda’s office (there’s carpet in the elevator, which I feel is completely worthy of note), before catching trains home (Nadine and I caught the same train).

January 23rd, 2010 · Australia, Daily Life, Internet and Websites · 8 Comments »

On Anonymous Blogging

No-one I know in Real Life knows about this blog. I don’t want anyone to know about it, either. I suppose there are a select few, who I would be semi-OK with knowing, though.

I have a bunch of friends I met in Real Life from a VCE forum, and one who I met via LiveJournal. The people I met on a forum would be more likely to “understand” blogging, and many of them are the typical “Internet person”, who knows all the Internet memes and such. Some of these who I actually see quite often at uni, I’d be OK with.

Still, I don’t plan to tell anyone about this blog. I know I’d feel pretty self-conscious if I knew my friends were reading it, although when there’s “mutual blog-reading”, such as with the friend I met via LiveJournal, then that’s fine with me.

I am occasionally worried that someone I know offline will actually find this blog, but then I realise that’s a pretty ridiculous idea. The information on my “About” page is pretty much a dead giveaway to my real identity, but the chance of someone I know actually getting to that page is extremely slim. Other people in the blogosphere read my “About” page (I know because that page gets a hit when I get a referral from blogs I’ve posted a comment on, or forums where the majority of people have a blog). But people who come to the site via a search engine do not click the “About” link (presumably because my site is never what they’re actually looking for), so I figure people I know offline aren’t easily going to find out about this place. There was a time where I thought it would’ve been better if I was blogging under an alias, but I figure that won’t be necessary. Although it would still be cool.

That said, having a blog and not telling your partner (I don’t have one), seems a bit dishonest, so I’ll have to reconsider what I’ve said here, one day.

What I’m interested in knowing, is do you tell offline friends about your blog? If not, why not?

November 22nd, 2009 · Internet and Websites, Thoughts · 4 Comments »

WordPress and Captions II

A few months ago, I complained about the image caption system WordPress implemented in regards to making alt text the same as the caption for any image inserted. I am now back for round two of complaints!

Last night, I encountered a problem. Whenever I tried to insert a hyperlink into text contained in an image caption, it disappeared when I posted or edited the entry, or when I switched to HTML view. I had realised that WordPress does not allow you to insert hyperlinks into captions! Although this is bothersome, it is fairly easy to work around.

The following is an example of what you might see in the HTML view if you use WordPress’s “insert image” feature and add a caption (note that I had to replace square brackets with curly brackets):

{caption id="attachment_000" align="aligncenter" width="100" caption="This is the caption below the image"}<img title="Further information" src="http://domain.com/image.png" alt="A description of the image" width="100" height="100" />{/caption}

When WordPress formats like this, it is impossible to insert hyperlinks into captions. There is quite a simple fix, however, which involves looking at the actual outputted HTML in the posted/previewed page’s source and manually coding the image and its caption:

<div id="attachment_000" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 100px;"><img class="size-full aligncenter" title="Further information or description" src="http://domain.com/image.png" alt="A description of the image" width="100" height="100" />
<p class="wp-caption-text">This is the caption for the image. <a href="http://domain.com">Look, a hyperlink!</a>.</p></div>

Pretty simple, but I do wonder why WordPress doesn’t allow you to insert a simple hyperlink into a caption. I mean, really…

November 18th, 2009 · Internet and Websites, Thoughts · No Comments »

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