Wow it’s October already, how crazy is that?

So I can’t really vouche for my absence from my blog but just to let you know I am here and good things are to come.

So I’ve realised in terms of dedication, blogging isn’t my thing, I like to write but often I lose interest in things very easilly. However one thing I always update is Twitter. Increasingly we are seeing blogs dying and Twitter taking over due to it’s ease of use and simplicity.

So no, my blog is not going to shut down or move. However I have decided that more ‘me’  blog posts will come on my tumblelog while tech posts will stay here. So you will be seeing quite a few more posts on ant.geek.nz and a few less here. I’ll aim to keep this blog updated with an informative post fortnightly or monthly, depending on how I go!

Make sure to subscribe to my tumblelog, you can do that here.

This time period is all about awesomeness. Coming up in June, this blog will be one year old! I’ve used over three blogging platforms in this time and have always without fail come back to Wordpress. You know why? Cause it’s awesome!

This is why I think Wordpress is the best blogging platform:

It’s Free!

This is the best thing! People love free stuff and so do I! Other platforms such as Movable Type Pro cost quite a bit of money and people don’t generally want to invest in a blog without any traffic and are unsure if it will succeed or not. Wordpress is built by the community and for the community. With plugins and themes anyone can to their liking. Which brings me to my next point…

Plugins

Wordpress plugins are awesome and incredibly easy to use with Wordpress 2.7. They allow you to add great features to your blog or website with little fuss and ease of use. They provide great functionality and are free! My favourite plugins are  Twitterpress by Peppery, Optimal Title by Aaron Schaefer, FireStats by Omry Yadan and flickrRSS by Dave Kellam. What are yours?

Ease of Use

I use Dreamhost as my web host. As with other web hosts they provide awesome one click installs of some popular software. This makes it incredibly easy for someone to install Wordpress. The navigation and admin panel in Wordpress looks and acts amazing. It’s very easy to get around. They key elements are easily positioned. Wordpress gives you the ability to operate a website without any programming knowledge. If installing Wordpress on your blog is too hard for you, you can always try wordpress.com!

It Just Works!

It’s Apple’s favourite line but it’s very much applicable to Wordpress. Since Wordpress is so easy to use and there is such a large community behind it, it is always in its best form. Only occasionally do you get any error messages, if you do it’s normally on your end not Wordpress’s. If you do come across an error with Wordpress there is a huge community to help. Or feel free to Google it!

Themes!

With one click of a button you can easily change the look and feel of your blog! There are thousands and thousands of themes out there to easilly change your blog. A simple visit to the Wordpress Themes Repository or a simple Google search will get you away with finding awesome Wordpress themes!

Using WordPress makes you smarter.

Yes, it’s true, you’ll gain IQ points when you blog with WordPress because you do need to learn to take full advantage of it’s power. Wordpress may be intimidating at first but after a walk-through of the system and a few tips, you begin to add plugins, try out different features, and generally start exploring all that WordPress has to offer.

Download Wordpress today!

- – -

I have just touched on what Wordpress has to offer. There are so many other features out there! What I love about Wordpress is the versatility. Feel free to point out any other awesome uses or features of Wordpress.

Enjoyed reading this post? If you want more you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe by email. Or if you want to know what I’m doing you can follow me on Twitter.

Today is my one year anniversary of tweeting! My first tweet was posted on 29th May 2008 at 7:27:24 pm. Yep, and this blog post was published exactly to the minute I posted my first tweet! Over the past year I have tweeted nearly 4000 times and have ove 300 followers. The stats are not so important to me though, the connections and awesomeness I have discovered is priceless!

So as you know I love list posts! Here I will describe the best parts and uses of Twitter I have discovered over this year.

Real Time Search and Results

Twitter Search has been named as a Google killer. What do you think? The keyword here is real time. With Twitter Search you can instantly know what is going on in an event straight after or during it. For example the Mumbai attacks were tweeted by thousands of people in real time. Events first were heard about through Twitter rather than any other classic news source. The news about the Hudson Plane Crash was first heard on Twitter by Janis Krums who posted a picture.  Another example was the President Obama inauguration. The list of events tweeted real time are endless.

Immediate Answers

Another awesome feature of Twitter is almost immediate answers to a question or anything else. For example if I were to ask “Why do some folders in Windows have blue text?” I would get the answer that the “folder is compressed” instantaneously. How cool is that?

If you are working on a project or trying to brainstorm ideas Twitter is even better! Just post a tweet and get loads of responses (depending on how many followers you have). The possibilities are endless!

Interact with your Favourite Companies

The companies on Twitter I love to interact with are Orcon and Vodafone. Not only can I know what is currently happening on the network and know about new features but I can easily message them for support. If I’m having a problem with any one of my accounts I can just send a message to one of the awesome guys there and they can
easily help me out! I’m not saying this is the right channel to go for support but it is one awesome way to get it quickly!

Building Awesome Relationships

This point is short! Over the past year I have made awesome online friends, you know who you are. With these people I haven’t tried to befriend them to get information or help, just want to hang!

Just Interacting with Your Friends

Well, isn’t that the point of Twitter? You’re right! Just finding out what your friends are doing is the best feature for me. Long are the days when you would have to wait to call your friends them to find out what’s new in their world. Twitter is here and it’s set to stay!

- – -

Here I have just surfaced the uses of Twitter. Have anymore? Discuss! Can’t wait for my next year of tweeting!

Enjoyed reading this post? If you want more you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe by email. Or if you want to know what I’m doing you can follow me on Twitter.

Over the past month I have started getting much more involved in the micro-blogging site Tumblr. When you sign up for Tumblr, you create a tumblelog, A tumblelog is a variation of a blog that favours short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts associated with blogging. Most peoples tumblelogs associate with the pictures, videos, links and quotes they discover while surfing the web. However tumblelogs have other creative uses such as Trailwaker, a tumblelog set up to broadcast Team Stiles participation in the Oxfam Trailwalker New Zealand Challenge. Or another creative tumblelog is Lunch Bag Art, a dad who creates unique and impressive lunch bag for his kids.

This is why I love Tumblr:

Easy As

It’s literally not much more than a click of a button (ok, maybe two or three clicks) to update your tumblelog. This feature of ease of use attracts many people to Tumblr as most people don’t have the patience to maintain a blog and write lengthy posts. My favourite ‘Goodie’ in updating my tumblelog is their bookmarklet. if I come across a nifty photo, video, link, quote or piece of text I want to share with my readers and friends all I have to do is click the Share on Tumblr bookmarklet in my bookmarks toolbar in Firefox and it automatically reads my mind in what I want to post. All I have to do after that is click Create and it posts the content to my Tumblr. Easy huh? Other nifty goodies for updating your tumblelog is an iPhone App, Mac OS X dashboard widget, call in audio, email posting and a variety of other awesome third party apps.

Customisable

With very little design or tech know-how you can easily create a beautiful tumblelog. One can choose a theme from Tumblr’s extraordinary Themes Garden or easily create one themselves. (It’s not that hard!)

Another cool feature is that you can register your own domain and link it with your tumblelog. This is a nifty idea for a lot of people as they can have their easy, great looking space on the web with their own domain name. This also provides uniqueness so that you are not just a subdomain of Tumblr.

Great Content

One can follow different tumblelogs and they can appear in their dashboard. As I look through my dashboard I see awesome  types of content. The content is almost always aesthetically pleasing and great looking. It’s great to know that people are putting out this awesome content not just to profit off ads but to add benefit to the Tumblr community.

It’s Cool

Tumbling is cool. It’s easy, takes little effort and a lot of fun. I can often sit and spend the whole day looking throughout different tumblelogs. Tumblr helps to promote your creativity and uniqueness.

If your not on Tumblr you should definitely sign up. It’s the place to be. While your exploring why don’t you check out my tumblelog?  Have any other reasons why you love Tumblr? Comment!

Enjoyed reading this post? If you want more you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe by email. Or if you want to know what I’m doing you can follow me on Twitter.

Last night, I got a Twitter update from Wordpress, saying that the first beta release of version 2.7 was out. This version promised a huge GUI upgrade and many other cool features.

So with the help of a fantastic plugin called InstantUpgrade (which is now obsolete due to to Wordpress having this inbuilt feature) I quickly updated my blog. The obvious huge change was the visual design. All the actions are now on the left sidebar with drop down menus making it easier to find what you want when you want. The overall feel of the admin panel is much nicer due to the matching soft colour tones.

Another cool feature I have found is Quickpress, this lets you write a blog post right in your dashboard

and quickly and easily update your blog without any complicated hassle. Wordpress has also added a feature called Turbo which allows for use with Gears. This will let you store most of WordPress’ images, scripts, and CSS files locally on your computer. This speeds up page load time. Another productivity tool that comes with Wordpress, is the ease of uploading plugins. You can either search for plugins from the Wordpress website or upload them, this is straight from your admin panel. So if you are at a computer without an FTP program you can still easily add plugins to your blog.

However with a beta release there are still going to be features that have not been included with this release. This beta release is for users to try out and find bugs etc. Already I have changed some CSS of my theme and now I cannot access the editor. I’m sure this will be fixed in the final release, due November 10.

So what is your favorite feature in the Wordpress 2.7 beta 1 release?

Since so much effort is put into writing and managing your blog, losing it can be even worse than loosing your whole hard drive.

So basically the other day, my blog died. I spent an hour trying to restore it but my Wordpress database was corrupted and I hadn’t backed it up since two months ago. So from then till now I have been trying to desperately repair my database and thanks to a few free tools and people I have succeeded.

However this has been a huge pain and wasted a lot of my time which could be spent doing many other things I have to do, so this is basically what I learnt from my blog FAIL.

1. Backup your database every night

Your database is the brain of your Wordpress blog, it contains all the posts, comments, tags, categories, modifications, settings etc. Without this you would have no blog so this is a must do. I use a plugin called WP-DB Backup, which emails me a copy of my database every night. So if a problem ever happens It won’t be to much of a problem to restore it.

2. Have the latest version of Wordpress running

This post mainly applies to Wordpress blogs, but can be used universally. Newer versions of Wordpress constantly fix up security holes and bugs in your blogging platform. Having the most up to date version of your blogging platform running means that you will have the best protection offered at that moment. Instead of struggling to upload the newest version each time it comes out there is a plugin called Instant Upgrade for Wordpress which will easily take the files from Wordpress and upload them to your blog with very little work done by you.

3. It’s not really the end of the world

It may feel like it but its not. All it is just a pain. If this happens to you and you havent followed steps listed above then take a deep breath and get to work. If you have a RSS feeds then your actual posts arent really lost as all the content is still in your feed.

So save your time and energy, a few moments spent now will save you a lot of time in the future.

So you have created an awesome website that you want to get up and on the internet? How? Firstly this is not a post on how to create a website. I am not going to go to in depth about this, if you need any help don’t hesitate to contact me.

Buy a Domain Name

A domain name is basically your home/address on the internet. This is the key to looking professional to have a domain such as yourname.com, instead of yourname.someone.com as this can easily link to someone else’s site, which will detract traffic from your site and help either your competitors or domain name provider. I am not going to go into detail about choosing a good domain (that will be covered in another blog post). A good domain provider will be reasonable (no more than $15 USD a year) and provide a great service. I use Dreamhost which is a great site for all my needs, they provide Domain name forwarding (forward your website to another), URL Masking (make your visitors think they are still on your original site) and of course Domain name servers (the link with your domain and hosting.) If you buy your domain and hosting from the same company you shouldn’t have to worry about this. There are also other popular Domain registrars/hosting sites such as GoDaddy, BlueHost and Homestead.

Buy Website Hosting

Website hosting is the place on the internet where your website is stored for everyone else to view it. Here are 5 important points to choosing a great webhost.

1. Don’t be cheap – This never works. Before I found Dreamhost I had been through around seven different webhosts that seemed great but had false promises and never suited my needs. Such as too little space, wrong programming languages, banned file types etc. This brings me into my next point.

2. Assess your needs first – Think of what you will need for your website and go with that. If you need any special programming languages such as java or Perl make sure your webhost offers it. If you think that you need 150mb of space, go with 250mb as your website can rapidly grow and you don’t want to be left with no more space. As mentioned earlier be sure that your website doesn’t ban selected file types such as .zip, .doc, .pdf or .exe. As you may need those file types and will have to resort to hosting them on an external website.

3. Don’t pick a site that sounds too good to be true – Because it probably is. Website hosting sites that offer unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth often are dodgy. They are either are too expensive, can steal your credit card details or have another catch. Stick with what you need not what you want.

4. Thoroughly read through the Terms of Conditions/Service – This is where most Web hosts sites catch you out. You are probably paying for something you don’t want. Such as if you wanted to create a proxy server or a secret forum, web hosts often don’t allow that and will cut your website with no refund. Stay safe and read through the Terms of Conditions to know exactly what you are signing up for.

5. Read many reviews on your potential web hosting sites – This will help you greatly as most users have experienced the advantages/disadvantages that you will experience. It is also great for others opinions on what you are going to put your hard earned money into.

Again I use SmokyHosts for my web hosting as well. The other sites mentioned above also provide great website hosting services.

Download an FTP Client and Upload Your Website

To transfer your website to your webhost you must use a FTP client, (FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol) this is your door towards uploading and updating your website. There are many great FTP clients out there, (they should all be free) my favourites are FileZilla (made by the people who make the popular browser Mozilla Firefox) and SmartFTP. These are both free and very easy to use.

Once you have downloaded just enter your FTP details that you should have received in an email when you signed up for a webhost, enter those into your FTP client and add your sites files to the relevant directory. For updating your website you can change/add/replace different web files and reload them.

You’re Done!

It may take 24-78 hours for your website to become live (depending on your hosting company and ISP) then your website should show up at your chosen domain name. Just sit back and watch traffic increase. You may also want to add your website to Google.

Enjoyed reading this post? If you want more you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe by email. Or if you want to know what I’m doing you can follow me on Twitter.

If your viewing this post in an RSS reader please come check out ant.geek.nz for my new design.

It’s been a long couple of months but I think I have now found my footing. Let me give you a very short background story on this blog.

Wordpress: June/July 2008- I started off with this blog but didn’t ever get any traffic or anyone really reading it so I tried and I gave up.

Tumblr: August 2008- I gave Tumblr a try as I had paid hard earned money for this domain and I didn’t really want it to go to waste. What I liked about Tumblr was the ability to not have to create long posts, as I could simply post a picture or a video. However I really missed a self hosted blog platform as there were little customization options for Tumblr.

Wordpress: September 2008- I missed Wordpress. I missed the huge customization options, the themes, the plugins, the self hostedness.

So i’m back, and really am better than ever! The initial problems I had with Wordpress are now gone, I now have reliable webhosting thanks to Arkhalon and to match I have a great new theme and now a huge drive for writing which I am sure won’t be going any where anytime soon.

So let me fill you in on the changes you will be seeing on my blog:

• Header: Now I have a much more appealing header that clearly tells you what this blog is about: “Ant”, short for Anthony, the creator of this blog. I now have a Social Media tab and a contact tab. We can now connect in more ways than before and if you want to contact me I now have a neat little PHP contact form.

• Sidebar: Pretty much the same as before but firstly much more simple and stylish. Also for my Twitter sidebar widget I now have a small Twitter web 2.0 icon.

• Body: This is the part of my blog thats ultimate focus is content. The font changes and colours are now much nicer so while your reading great content you can look at a great design.

• Footer: I’m a strong believer in an informational footer. There are three elements in my footer. The About Me page is for the reader to get to know the writer, which is me, it’s just a short snippet and there is always more information on my About page. Second is my Recent Posts section where you can find great content written by me and third is my Flickr feed, I love photography so hopefully this will integrate a link between my Flickr page and blog.

There we go! I’m really happy with my new updated blog and am looking forward to updating it with awesome content often! What I really want from you guys is feedback. I want to know EVERYTHING, what you think of my posts, the redesign etc. So please comment, discuss and enjoy!

Enjoyed reading this post? If you want more you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe by email. Or if you want to know what I’m doing you can follow me on Twitter.

Submerged scene

The secret to success when using a remote camera is to do plenty of research and know what you want to capture, explains photographer Adam Pretty.

“I set up the camera in the water using scuba diving gear so that I could really take my time and ensure that I would be able to frame the image, making sure it looked perfect through the lens.

“During one of the finals of the swimming I captured the reflection of the competitors and some of the amazing architecture of the venue, known as the ice cube. I just fired the remote when the swimmers hit my mark.”

Photo by Adam Pretty / Getty Images / 12 August 2008

Olympic FAIL: Blue Screen of Death Strikes Birds Nest during the Opening Ceremony Torch Lighting – wondered what the technician thought when he looked up?