I have recently converted my blog to using wordpress rather than fanupdate. This means that I am no longer updating with fanupdate and I have a new RSS feed. It *should* be http://calmbanana.co.uk/feed/ though I'm not entirely sure because I don't know anything about RSS.

Thank you for being so loyal. ^_^

I'm working a lot on the "behind the scenes" part of Calm Banana, and I'm seriously considering switching to a CMS like wordpress. I've used wordpress before but I switched back to doing all my pages by hand because wordpress was a bit bloated for me and had features I didn't need.

But now... I'm writing more articles, and I'm seriously thinking that wordpress would be better for me.

The other alternative is to write my own CMS, but my php skills aren't that good yet and if I tried to write my own CMS today, it'd probably result in the apocalypse. Hands up who wants an apocalypse? Yeah, me neither.

I really do think that wordpress is what I'm after... But, part of me still thinks it's wussying out. I can code pages by hand, and without sounding too big-headed, I'm pretty good at it. Part of me feels that if I go for CMS, I'll be abandoning all that for markup I wouldn't be satisfied. Sure, wordpress would make everything much more organised and it'd be easy to restructure my site and everything, but... I kinda like doing stuff myself.

Wordpress has plugins that would allow me to add features to my site I can't at the moment. As I want to make more of my articles / tutorials, wordpress would enable you guys (my lovely visitors) to be able to search my whole site for what you're looking for, instead of having to sift through what will hopefully one day be a long list of article titles.

If I do switch, I'd lose all my current blog entries... But maybe I could keep those separate and put them up in a 'museum' style page or something... Who knows?

What do you think to using wordpress as a CMS? Does it give you enough freedom to do what you want to do without having to faff around with XHTML / CSS the whole time? Or do you find that it limits your 'bragging rights' as someone who writes all their XHTML from scratch? Does anyone even do that anymore, or is everyone using some form of CMS?

I would like to thank you very much (very very much) for your letter today. Words cannot express how shocked (and pleased) I was to hear from you.

I can't believe that ticketmaster sent my MCR ticket to the wrong address. I think that's very unprofessional of them and I shall be writing to them tomorrow to complain. Had you not been as nice as you are, my ticket would have never turned up, thus resulting in me panicking greatly (never a good thing).

Thank you very much for forwarding my MCR ticket to me.

Expect a reply letter with some goodies in the post very soon.

Yours sincerely,

Rachael Furn.

P.S. Who knows, we may even be sitting next to each other in November.

I want one. I really really want one.

I have one on order.

I currently have an old school iPod mini. It's silver and it's very sexy. However, lately the battery has been on the blink and it's been lying to me. I do not like it when my technology lies to me.

P.S. - did I mention that if I buy the (RED) iPod nano, a portion of my cash will be used to help fight AIDS / HIV in Africa?

More articles? More tutorials? Some freeware layouts? More blank button templates?

Suggestions!

Comment anonymously if you wish.

Wrong! It was delivered some time this morning by parceline, who decided to leave it right outside my house. The box was in a very poor condition. They didn't put a card through the door, they didn't leave it with a neighbour, they didn't even knock on the door (we have super-sensitive hearing in our house). I assume they rang our doorbell, but that doesn't work. We've just left it up to trick people.

I only spotted it after I went out to my car and came back (I forgot the CD I wanted for my car). There I spotted it, this medium-sized box sitting on the path outside my house for anyone to steal. I would have been none the wiser.

Grr...

See all those pretty little 16x16 pictures? They're called favicons. Lots of sites have them, and lots of sites don't. They're not essential to have, but they do help your visitors by providing them a way to instantly recognise your site.

The above picture is a screencap of my "bookmarks toolbar" in Firefox. I instantly know which picture to click to go to my favourite site.

Left to right we've got Mozilla, headlines, my yahoo mail, snark forums, meebo, something, site5 forums, something else, smashing magazine, jemjabella, the q*bee, not-noticeably.net, un-ordinary.net, superficial.nu, hotscripts, maxpower, and my cpanel.

The two blank ones are sites that don't have favicons.

So, people, get yourself a favicon and use it!

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2007
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2007 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

Here are my five blogs I recommend.

Catherine of disdainful-soul.net

Catherine is "A twenty year old geek girl from New Zealand, studying computer science and with a love of all things ancient." I found her blog after she showed up in my referrers, and for a while I kept calling her Melissa by accident. She blogs about everything from learning PHP, to Harry Potter, to being unable to find cheap DVD's.

Lene of silencios.org

Lene is "an atheist" and wants "to take over the world". She likes etymology, art, and writing. I found Lene's site after seeing her around Snark. She blogs about her daily off and often slips into "rant mode" which is why I like her so much.

Ashley of rainbow-stuff.com

Ashley is "a 24 yr. old elementary school computer lab teacher who loves strawberry smoothies, her one-eyed cat Pouncy, shopping, and the internet." I found her site after she welcome me to the q*bee back in February of this year. She too blogs about her daily life, but she never ceases to make me giggle.

Sarah of risque.stopcrashgo.com

Sarah is much too bitter for a fourteen year old. However, she presents herself in a very mature way and always justifies her rants without needing to resort to the childish behaviour of so many young teen bloggers these days. I look forward to seeing her grow both as a person and as a blogger.

Sean of Seanus♥

Sean is a 15-year-old Canadian teen, and his name's pronounced "shawn" not "seen". He's one of the few 'male' bloggers out there that I regularly read. He writes interesting articles about all sorts of things, and is currently "not caring less about going back to school".

There we go! That's my list of five.

[12:03] calmbanana: apparently if 10,000 people put something on the census it becomes fact.
[12:03] calmbanana: 'jedi' is now a religion here.
[12:04] Lil: i know, how awesome
[12:04] calmbanana: ^_^
[12:04] Lil: i think we should put down w3c as a religion
[12:04] calmbanana: YES!
[12:04] calmbanana: for sexuality, I'm gonna put 'relative font sizes'
[12:04] calmbanana: height:
[12:04] calmbanana: 500em.
[12:05] Lil: lmao
[12:05] calmbanana: weight:bold.
[12:05] Lil: that means you can be resized
[12:05] calmbanana: LMAO!
[12:05] Lil: as it happens i do resize. it's a seasonal thing XD
[12:05] calmbanana: That's going in my blog.
[12:05] Lil: lmao

This is my dog. Clever-looking, isn't she?

I started queuing for the HGB show at half past ten in the morning. I was third in the queue...

Third! I joined the queue after two very lovely girls called Vicky and Lottie, and made myself at home (as much as one can on a tarmac pavement). Unfortunately, Tuesday was the day they decided to dig up the road next to the Astoria. Nice. If there's one thing I like more than a numb-bum and damp clothes, it's roadworks.

The doors opened at six, so next time I go to a gig where I plan on queuing more than six hours, I'm taking a cushion with me, or maybe a whole chair. That sounds like a plan. Buy a cheap armchair and just take it in the queue with me, so I can leave it there when I go in.

The Astoria (or 'historia' as one girl thought) is right in the centre of London, so that means that a McDonald's is never more than 30 feet away. This resulted in several "McSh*ts" throughout the day. McDonald's have the most confusing taps I've ever seen. They're a sensor on the wall, and I'd just like to say, these sensors aren't very good at 'sensing' things.

To help pass the time, I took a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with me, figuring I may as well try and get through some more chapters because at the rate I'm going, the film will be released before I get to the end of the book.

Just as I was reading the part where Harry and Draco kissed (or was that just in my mind?), this guy came up to me and asked me who I was queuing to see. "Hellogoodbye," I replied, knowing that he, like the fifteen other people who'd asked me the same question, would have no idea who I was talking about.

He then proceeded to reply that I was an 'emo slag' and I was 'sad' for reading Harry Potter.

Wow. Where the hell did that come from? I'd just like to clear a few things up.

1. I am not a slag. I do not 'sleep around'. In fact, I've never even slept with anyone. I haven't actually even had my first kiss, so I'm about as far from a slag as you can get.

2. I am not emo. I don't have black hair; I don't self-harm; and I don't sit on my window sill and cry. However, if I were to do these things, you can be sure I'd listen to HGB, because everyone knows that lyrics such as "Present for a presentation, presented presently. There's no "I" in "team", no "me" in "us", no "you" in "we". " are what make people want to kill themselves.

3. Whether I am 'sad' or not for reading Harry Potter is debatable. If I'm sad, that makes millions of people around the world sad. Us Harry Potter fans can take anyone in a fight. Bring it.

We finally got inside (after being frisked) at six o'clock and the first opening act came on at half past. Lights and Sounds. Totally awesome. And cute as hell!

The second act were a bit up themselves, and after that I started to overheat. I kindly asked the lovely security staff (Shawsec are a good crew) to lift me to safety, but because there was only one guy to do it, it was a little tricky. Luckily for me, the crowd around me helped lift me out. No, wait, that was just in my head. There was a point where I was just hovering about eight inches off the ground - I wasn't sure whether I was coming out or going back in.

I did eventually get lifted out, at which point I went on a picture spree and got some lovely pictures, which I'll put up at some point with all my other gig pictures.

HGB were so much fun on the stage! They had glowsticks clipped to everything they could, and the floor of the stage was covered in balloons. I've never seen such fun! (I also never knew balloons were 'emo'). Forrest (the lead singer) is so tall (and he reminds me of SpongeBob) and he has this beautiful awkwardness on stage. He looks completely at home there, bouncing around and playing the guitar, yet he also looks strangely awkward as if he doesn't know how to use his full height (he should get some tips off Justin Timberlake).

***

Queuing for the Decaydance fest was not the marathon it needed to be. We had set seats so there was no reason to queue from six o'clock in the morning. The doors opened at half past five, so we got there at quarter-past five and shimmied into the queue half way back (my friends wouldn't let me go any closer to the front). We finally got inside at quarter past six, which meant we missed half of the first band - Cobra Starship.

I'm going to skim over the rest of the night because there's not much more interesting to say other than "it was awesome."

Gym Class Heroes (GCH) did their famous cover of "Cupid's Chokehold" and got Patrick out on stage to sing with them (cue loud screams). Cobra Starship had Travis from GCH and William from The Academy Is... (TAI) out on stage with them to sing Bring it! (Snakes on a Plane). All the bands had several 'member-swapping' songs, and Fall Out Boy (FOB) did an outstanding rendition of Michael Jackson's Beat It.

In usual FOB style, the crowd went completely insane when they performed This ain't a scene. I've never seen such insane moshing, jumping, and general being a lunatic behaviour.

The treat of the night (as if seeing five awesome bands wasn't enough) was when the lead singer from a band called The Plain White T's came onstage and performed their new song - Hey there, Delilah. That song is so big right now - it's plastered over every single chart list I've seen in the past few weeks.

I have a confession - I almost fell asleep during Panic! At The Disco's (P!ATD) set. It's not that they were boring, it's that I was tired and they weren't helping to keep me awake. So I guess in that sense they were kinda boring. Either that, or it had something to do with the fact that they've played their songs to death. Luckily though, they played two new songs, and from what I heard (in between naps) they were fun.

I think that FOB are the smallest band in the world. Not in terms of popularity, but in terms of height. They are all midgets. With guitars. But... they're damn good looking midgets. Absolutely. And they make good music and have insane amounts of energy.

And now, I am finally back at home. My new laptop has arrived (alienware ftw!) and I'm currently trying to get used to a wide screen and Vista. It's going... okay. I've downloaded a piano for my sidebar widgetlist thing, so now I can play the piano on my laptop!

Let's clear a couple of things up here. I use the word 'wrote' in the loosest sense of the term. There was typing involved, yes, but did I write it from scratch? No.

I followed some very useful tutorials from tutorialtastic and had to get just a little bit (well, it was more than a little bit, but it wasn't a lot) of help from Jem and Vera.

In the end though, it works! I have an admin panel and everything! You have no idea how proud I am about it...

Now I just need to figure out how to update and delete the links in the database...

What makes me love it even more is that fact that I didn't make it!

This layout was made by the more than lovely Ramsha. She offered to make one for my birthday, and she proved to be a woman of her word.

Everyone bow to Ramsha's wonderfulness.

But recently, the whole world has seemed kinda annoyed with me... My conversations recently have consisted of me saying something which comes across as unintended sarcasm which leads to an argument...

So maybe it's not a problem with the whole world, like I tell people, maybe it's a problem with *me*...

This awesome little picture over on the right was made by the lovely Arien, and is one of the several presents I received from online friends. From my family I got a couple of books, some money, an MCR poster, and my parents are treating me to a new laptop because my current one has recently passed away.

I made a complete mess of washing my car tonight. I got more water on me than I did on the car, and I missed a couple (well, lots) of bits which Mum had to come and fix. Deary me... What am I like?

Moving onto other matters, I'd like to say thank you to all the new people who've been commenting recently, as well as those who have emailed me requesting layouts. I shall start work as soon as I get my new laptop, and all should hopefully be done by the end of the month.

Moving on, I'm starting a little experiment. I've just received my Truculent Review (cheers, Vera darling) and it brought to light that my layout might be a bit... bare. Trust me though, it's not as bare as the first draft...

Anyways, I'm now going to work on making a new layout. But, and here's where the experiment starts, I don't have access to any graphics programs at all. I only have access to notepad.

This means any graphics I use in my layout will have to come from internet-generated sources. I'm after some recommendations. I'm aware of stripegenerator.com (after all, I'm it's number 1 striper!) and tartanmaker, but what others are there? Suggestions are appreciated.

Wish me luck... And expect a new layout soon.

Alternatively, it's my birthday on Wednesday so if anyone wants to make me a layout as a present... feel free.

As I was driving to work, I saw a car whose numberplate ended in "png".

I think the internet is stalking me... Anyone else had freaky coincidences?

Let's start with some basics, and clear some things up. Any spelling 'mistakes' in this article are because I'm stupid, made a typo, or used the British spelling. Apologies if I sound patronising, but these are all things you really should know.

Types of words

Verb - This is a 'doing' word. It's what you use when you're 'doing' something. Running, jumping, hopping, kicking the cr*p out of - these are all verbs.

Noun - This is an 'object'. Cup, House, Gimptard, Internet - these are all nouns.

Adjective - These describe nouns. Hot, cold, funny, stupid, gay - these are all adjectives.

Adverbs - These describe verbs. Quickly, shamefully, merrily, randomly - these are all adverbs.

Often confused words

A lot of words sound the same when you say them, but when they're written down they are spelt differently. I think this is where most people go wrong. Personally I learn best by example, so let's have some of those.

know / no

"I know someone called Billybob."
"There are no chocolate raisins left."

they're / their / there

"They're really smelly." (they're = they are)
"They don't know it yet, but I stole their sheep." (their = belonging to them)
"Where are their sheep? Ah, they're just over there." (there = a place)

you're / your

"Your grammar sucks." (your = belonging to you)
"You're terrible at grammar." (you're = you are)

our / are

"Our sheep have been stolen." (our = belonging to us)
"Are you free for a drink later?" (are = present particible of the verb 'to be')

Bad grammar will lead to people not taking you as seriously. Bad grammar is one of the many signifiers of someone with lower intelligence than the rest of us. Most of the time on the Internet, though, people aren't stupid. They're just lazy. That's even worse.

How can you expect someone to take you seriously if you can't even be bothered to type in correct English? You'll confuse lots of people who don't have English as their first language, and you'll confuse a hell of a lot of people who do have English as their first language!

Thus concludes this explanation. Unless, of course, anyone has any other common mistakes they'd like me to explain / clear up.

You don't have to use the layout. In fact, you can do whatever you like with. I'd love you forever if you did, but of course you don't have to. You just need to ask for one, and allow me to use it in my portfolio.

Any takes? Any at all? *looks around*

You'd be able to use variables inside your stylesheet. Define "$colour" at the top and just whack it in where you need it in your stylesheet, thus saving lots of time when you decide to change the colour.

You'd be able to use statements inside your stylesheet. You'd be able to specify widths as "100% - 200px". I know you can do that these days by adding a 200px margin, but sometimes margins have obscure results.

All websites would be forced to use a "<nosplash>" tag, thus being able to get rid of the pointless splash pages for people who have splash pages disabled in their Firefox webdev toolbar.

When using the <code> tag to display markup on your site, you wouldn't need to convert the content wrapped in the tag to >, thus saving time and confusion when things don't display properly.

There'd be a "<glomp the webmaster over the head>" tag that you could insert into webpages at your will, thus allowing you to glomp the webmaster over the head for being an idiot.

The 'box model' would work whichever way the designer wanted it to work.

And there would be peace. Lots of peace.

What would the world be like if you ruled the w3c?