Blogging is not …
Blogging is not writing. It’s just graffiti with punctuation.
Dr. Ian Sussman: Contagion.
Went to see this last night – and the quote just cracked me up. So staying with the theme of self deprecating humour – there’s also this from the geniuses at Despair.com
With many, many thanks to those of you who continue to read my (properly puntuated?) graffiti.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
This is one of my favorite sayings. Along with “Never assume, the universe is full of dead people who lived by assumption”, “There can be only one” and “May the force be with you”.
SO why did I ignore it and “upgrade” the blog theme???
Ah, well, as it clearly didnt work very well – we have been told it was blocking access to at least 3 regular readers, and I noticed that visitor numbers dropped sharply (I choose to assume you didnt all get bored of me!) – we thre that one away and went back to what he had before.
So here ya go!
Good Old Avalon’s Guide back in blue and looking a lot nicer actually I think.
Thanks for sticking with it and many thanks to those who took the time to let me know they had problems. Hopefully this has fixed it.
Hxx
Website admin & links
Now that life has slowed down enough for us to organise a couple of holiday breaks, we’re also doing some website admin this week, which means that you might see a few changes.
We’re also going to fix up the broken links where we can. Not everyone keeps their pages static, so apologies if you read something that suggests there is a link and you can’t find one. Just drop us a line if you want to know where the link went and we’ll set the lolcatz searching again.
We’ve got a full website testing suite setup and running. i.e. I check stuff on Opera, Firefox, Chrome & IE8 plus Safari & Opera on my iPhone, to make sure it all looks proper. However, if we miss something and you find stuff just doesn’t show up as you expect, please let us know.
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Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide: How to Live the Dream Without Breaking The Piggy Bank.
Avalon’s Guide is on Sale :)
I am down to my last few copies of Avalon’s Guide, and at this stage am not planning to do another reprint due to the costs involved. So to clear the shelves of the last remaining books – I have decided to drop the price – which also helps with the crummy exchange rate.
So now instead of getting a copy posted to the UK for $46.00, it will cost just $31.00.
Once those have all gone, you will still be able to buy Avalon’s Guide, but only as an E-Book, which is also dropping to $12.00.
You are here too
Filed under: Blog and Forum Roundups, Hubby's Views, The Book and Website
Having written the You are here post, I was then doing some site admin. We use Visitor Maps to help us see where you’re all reading from. The latest version of the plugin gives some rather nifty graphics, such as this showing visitors in the past month;
Which is rather interesting to look at really.
So, you are all here, somewhere.
Sorry it is so quiet round here.
I just thought I had better pop on quickly while I have an internet connection up and apologise for the lack of posts. Basically our internet availablilty is going from bad to non-existant, and we are getting utterly useless responses from the “helpdesks” who swear that everything is hunkydory.
Please set assured it isnt that I have lost interest in blogging or troublemaking, boredom with the whole thing – or a lack of interesting things to tell you.
Ah the joys of city living!
Hopefully normal service will resume as soon as we find someone at an NZ ISP with a brain!
Share away.
We have just added some easier to use sharing options to the blog, so rather than having to a/ notice and b/ bother to use the Share This option, you can now just click on the nifty little buttons.
You can “like” on Facebook or share to Facebook or Twitter if anything I waffle on about grabs your attention.
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Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
2 years old today.
Yep – I have managed to blather on about all sorts for a whole 2 years now. You’d think I would actually run out of things to say. But no – I seem to keep going. And going.
According to wordpress there have been:
- 590 posts
- 1075 comments
- Last year I had 38,000 visits to the site, this year I have had 50,000 visits
- Racism in New Zealand is now the most viewed post I have written – second is the post on How to make clotted cream.
- My busiest mnth for writing was July 2009, where somehow I managed to write 46 posts. I had a quiet month in June and July this year, with only 13 and 14 posts each month.
- There have been a whopping 28,439 spam comments posted to the blog.
I think its time for a glass of bubbles.
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Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Upgrades to Avalon’s Blog done :)
Filed under: The Book and Website, The Family Sponsorship Saga
Hubby has reminded me just how much he loathes coding – and was only calmed down my copious amounts of Tea, Chocolate and Top Gear yesterday while he battled to do the things I wanted him to do to the blog.
Mostly it was a case of de-cluttering and tidying things up. It’s amazing how this thing has evolved, and as it does so, widgets get added, things move, I join more blog directories, and before you know it – theres no room for me to write anything anymore!
The main changes are:
- The Family Sponsorship Saga posts have all moved up to the top menu, so they aren’t taking up room on the side.
- I’ve created one picture of the Book with both Book and E-Book prices on to create more room and we have a smaller Buy Now button.
- Ive moved the Really Useful Immigration Links into the Links page, rather than having them sitting with the BlogRolls.
- Ive tidied up and shorted the list of Categories, to make it easier to find posts.
But the main alteration is that the Amazon Store is now up and running, and can be found on the top Menu. This is something I always wanted to do, because I spend so much of my own time devouring books, and this is a great way to have a list of all the books that helped me on my journey – both to emigrate and to become a budgeting freak. Ill be adding books from time to time, but theres a pretty good starting list there: both books about New Zealand and books about personal finance. And yes, I will get paid if you click through from the Amazon Store page and you buy anything during that session. It takes you through to Amazon, and you will be buying through Amazon, not through me.
I get about 5% on any purchases you make, so please feel free to make use of the store and help me cover the cost of running this website.
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Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Changes to AvalonsGuide on the way.
As its still absolutely chucking it down in Wellington, meaning we aren’t going for a nice long walk around the bay, or heading to one of the beaches for a nice coffee, we have decided to get our butts in gear and make some changes to the website.
Ive been trying to get this done for a while now, and even have a proper Amazon.co.uk aStore ready to go – but it does require the tech wizarding skills of Hubby to get a load of this done. Apparently the aStore requires changes to the CSS file – and I don’t even know what a CSS file is – let alone how to change it! Blogging is great as long as all you need to do is sput forth with your opinions – but as soon as you need to do something – Argghhh!
So anyway – feel free to comment and let me know if theres things that you particularly don’t like about any of the changes we make – cos I’m happy to bear them in mind as the website evolves.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Avalon’s Guide On Facebook
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