This went out on a few high profile blogs, and spread from there. Eventually, after a few hours, the reason for the gag came out – I read about it first on Twitter. It was about a company that had dumped toxic waste off the Ivory Coast. Within hours, the name of the company and their solicitors (Trafigura and Carter-Ruck, respectively) were some of the most used words on Twitter. The culmination of all this attention was that Carter-Ruck withdrew their injunction, because of the huge publicity it was bringing to the story.

And that is the story of how Twitter broke a super-injunction. You can read a more full story here with a very nice visualisation of the story as it developed. Not bad considering most of the stuff on Twitter is about what some stranger’s cat’s had for dinner.

Until now, that is. A short quiet spell has enabled me to get back on it, and although there are still finishing touches to be done, screenshots to be taken, projects to be added, at last I can make this new site live and consign the old – and very out of date – one to the great recycling bin in the sky.

The main thing I’m looking forward to with this new site is having my blog back online, but for the purposes of attracting new business I’m also looking forward to having recent work up on here and keeping it up to date. I’ve created a projects section to hold all that, and I’m hoping that at last potential new clients will not be put off by the very few examples of work I had on here before. Though, of course, right now there are even fewer.

One problem I have had already was in importing my Blogger posts and comments to this site. Wordpress comes with an “import” function that supposedly imports from a lot of different blogging engines and CMSes, but I found that it didn’t work for me.

What I tried to do was import directly from my Blogger account, but Wordpress kept getting stuck showing one post and one comment imported, although those posts never actually made it to Wordpress. So, after reading a couple of posts on the Wordpress support forums, I signed up for a Wordpress.com account. Then, using the import tool on that account, I successfully imported everything from Blogger. With me so far?

Next, I used the “export” tool from that Wordpress account, exporting a Wordpress XML file with everything in it. It was this I tried to import to my this site. I say “tried”, because that didn’t work either. There was a problem with the permissions on my server forbidding Wordpress from creating the folder where the XML file would be stored.

A bit of Googling later, and I saw that this is a known WP bug. The temporary fix was to CHMOD the uploads folder to 777 – meaning that anyone has read, write and execute permissions in that folder. Right, so that done, at last I successfully imported all my posts and comments, not forgetting to reset the permissions on the upload folder.

And here we are.

I’ve had a bit of trouble with my son. He’s a baby, and has been a little ill with an ear infection. Although that hasn’t really been a burden time-wise, it’s certainly been a mental one. Thankfully now, though he’s much happier and getting better.

I launched a new version of my website last week. It’s an interim step, which is obvious if you look at it. Previously, all I had up there was a holding page with a contact form. Now it’s a bit better in that at least I have some blurb about what it is I offer, and some examples of work up there. It needs looking at graphically though; the logo is almost non-existent among many other problems. What will probably happen, though, is that I will get a load of project work in and leave it the way it is until next year when I’ll build a totally new one.

This has been very much a non-event of a post, hasn’t it? It’s what happens when I start writing a post with no clear idea of direction or structure.

Until next time, you stay classy.

It’s a problem I wasn’t going to bother solving; rather I would have just left that particular dog in its basket snoozing, carrying on being slightly put off by the whole blogging process. Thankfully, while looking out for a writers’ text editor for my wife to use, the answer came to me. From now on, I’ll use Q10 (a full-screen, absolutely minimal text editor) along with Markdown (a ‘humane’ text markup scheme.)

Let’s see how it goes…

The truth is, I’ve been absolutely chocca for a while, and the energy and inclination weren’t there. Now, though, it’s back.

What have I done since my last posting? Well, I haven’t mastered the new Virtual Earth API (version 3), that’s for sure. In the main, I’ve been splitting my time building websites for property companies and building a site dedicated to rallying. I’ll not post a link to either here: the former because as they complete I’ll post links from my website anyway; the latter because until I create a new template, it’s just not good enough to represent me in cyberland.

That’s your lot for the present time. I promise to make more of an effort from now on. But only because you, beloved readers, demand it.