Gary Andrews

Want to know the meaning of sheer blog terror? The knowledge that clicking just one button could make a huge difference to your blog. Or it could destroy it. You wouldn’t know until you clicked that button.

It was this form of terror I experienced at approximately 8.34pm this evening, while attempting to set up a domain redirect from my old wordpress blog to this place. I’d followed the instructions, but still wasn’t entirely sure I’d done everything correctly.

My blog was going to be, essentially, a version of Schrodinger’s cat.

*click*

The tension was too much. I sent a couple of emails instead. Then I looked back.

It worked. Thank whichever deity you pray to for that.

So, now I can get back on track. The redirect, to me, was always the most important thing of moving to my new domain. Otherwise, I had two blogs floating on the net, with the old one getting all the links and the traffic.

Now that’s done, I can worry about the design (ha! As if I’m going to get that right without breaking something).

Meanwhile, apologies again for waffling on about the maintenance of this place. It’s sort of fascinating to me, as, for all the time I’ve spent on the internet, I’ve never bothered to learn the technical stuff. Now, I’m realising that I really should have done while I had the opportunity.

Ah well. More terror up ahead.

[Incidentally, for anybody who's looking to redirect their old wordpress.com blog to a new domain built on wordpress.org, this PDF is a Godsend. It's writing for people hosting on GoDaddy, but I use Bluehosts and the method's pretty similar and easy to work out]

written by Gary \\ tags: building a blog, domain redirection, wordpress.com, wordpress.org

Congratulations if you found this place. It’s kind of a bit new, but in need of some DIY.

Yes, after years of blogging on wherever, I finally caved in and got my own domain name. And, er, this is it. It looks exactly like the last one doesn’t it.

Essentially, the plan is for this all to change. I’ve got plans to redesign the theme and split my feeds into at least two different topics, namely football and other stuff. And to make it look pretty.

The downside to this is I’ve never attempted to design a blog before.

“Get outta town,” I hear you say. “You’re all over teh internetz like a bad rash. How can YOU not know how to design a website?”

Um, well, I don’t. And I can’t. Seriously, I’ve no idea what I’m doing here. Blog designing lessons? CSS editing? Sorry miss, I must have been behind the bike sheds. Or doodling. Yes miss, sorry miss, won’t happen again.

But, like any good man with a wanton disregard for instructions I’m going to attempt to do much of the redesign myself. So if you see funny things go on over here you’ll know why. And I’ll be blogging here from now on. So update your RSS feeds and your bookmarks.

No doubt this will all end in tears and I’ll get somebody to do this professionally, but I at least feel I should have a go.

Like I say, tears before bedtime. Have you seen my attempts to put up shelves?

written by Gary

At Soccerlens: Should we regionalise lower-league football?

The short answer is no, not yet. But the long answer is also worth reading.

I’m in deepest, darkest Devon this week with limited net connectivity, so there may be no posts. Alternatively I may pass the time with long pieces on the future of media. It’s the uncertainly that keeps this place so exciting.

So, if it’s quiet on here until beyond Thursday, then Happy Christmas/Winterval/other to one and all.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Christmas, regionalisation, Soccerlens, Woking

I’m not obsessed with appearance. If I was, I probably wouldn’t have been mistaken for a student while walking into work a couple of weeks ago. But nonetheless, I feel this place could do with a bit of sprucing up.

That said, I’ve no idea exactly what I want to do – whether I should move this onto WordPress.org, or if I can perform a few bits of cosmetic surgery without having to do anything major. I’m open to tips and suggestions if anybody has a blindingly brilliant idea they’d like to see on here. Or just an averagely brilliant will do.

Also if suddenly things look a bit strange, I’ve done something I shouldn’t have and manage to royally bork things up.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: blog redesign

I’d really welcome a wet weekend soon. Partly because I don’t handle the heat well and am on the verge of melting on a daily basis. But also because I’ve got a ton of stuff I’d like to get done, largely online (that includes properly exploring Seesmic, trying to get my Phreadz postings to work along with a whole host of other stuff. I’d like to give this blog a bit of a make-over as well.

Then I look out of the window and it’s sunny and I feel guilty for even considering turning the computer on. and then I go outside and melt again. I swear one of my ancestors must have copulated with an ice-cream at some point to make me so heat intolerant.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Phreadz, rain, Seesmic, time-wasting

Blogging has been and will continue to be necessarily light over the next few days for three reasons:

1. Local council elections. I’m covering 3 areas tomorrow and have plotted my route for the day according to location of coffee shops and toilets. Interested as I am in politics, I can’t bloody wait for these things to be over, so I don’t have to interview every person standing for election about the rabid badger problem in their ward.

This inevitably results in one suggesting a full cull, one suggesting we try and solve the cause of why the badgers became rabid in the first place, one will say it’s all Europe’s fault and the sitting councillor will deny there’s any badgers in the ward in the first place. Probably.

That said, the letters pages of the local papers are always amusing at this time of year as absolutely everybody will have an opinion on how often the council should recycle the decomposing badgers. It’s just surely a matter of time before politicians are elected in a knockout tournament, not dissimilar to Brockian Ultra Cricket, where the only available weapon is a flying pan made out of stuffed dead badgers.

2. Football. With the Exeter City v Oxford United play-offs looming this bank holiday, in between badgering people about elections, I’ve been churning out large amounts of stories and interviews about the Grecians, all under the pretence of ‘work’. Actually, it’s turning into quite a big deal in the City as there’s a real possibility we could do it.

I’m going to remain optimistically cautious but not overly so as I’m sure the minute I start hyping up our chances an unexploded bomb will be found under St. James’ Park and Oxford will be given a bye to the final due to some obscure by-law dating from from 1947.

Come Tuesday evening, for the return leg at the Kassam, I’m going to be a gibbering wreck, of that I’m sure. I’ll probably also have to do post-match interviews, so let’s hope the bauys will understand that ‘Hgnfhngahnannnaaaaaaahhh’ roughly translates into, “So, what did you make of the offside decision at the end of the first half?”

3. Facebook. I signed up for it on Monday, have already spent more time than’s good for me on there ‘poking’ friends and lying to people I’ve not seen for several years that I’ve made a fortune from launching an online Teach Yourself Estonian guide, and am now busy buying up and demolishing a good deal of Milton Keynes with the proceeds, so I can redesign the town in the shape of a snail. This will only be visible to space tourists and will form a large part of my next business venture.

That said the bastarding network site locked me out this morning and my password isn’t working any more. I think that’s their subtle way of telling me I need to both get a life and get back to work. There’s no rest for the wicked.

++++

As a random aside, I discovered today one of my colleagues actually had to eat a roadkill badger during a university journalism assignment. Frankly, I’d have quit the profession there and then, as there’s just no way you could ever top that.

written by Gary Andrews

… that others who know a bit more than me may be able to answer.

In the last few days my computer’s developed a propensity for switching itself off at random. No warning, no nothing, just off. I’ve checked the connections, they seem fine and it gives no warning it’s about to go – the machine doesn’t seem like its overheating and nothing starts slowing down.

Although the machine itself is getting close to 3 years, and was quite advanced when built by a friend (who, sadly, I’ve lost contact with) it had a complete makeover last summer, Windows was reinstalled and the latest gizmos downloaded. It had a spring clean a couple of months ago, and I’m due to give it another in a bit. But I’m not entirely sure that’ll work.

Any suggestions. I’m a bit baffled by this one.

written by Gary Andrews