Since the re-design of Nicole’s blog, Tales from Den Haag Side  we have been using a plugin to display avatars of people contributing to the comment section.  A few people have been asking Nicole how to get their picture into the comments section of the blog and she has asked me to write a post explaining the process. 

In computing terms avatars are representations of you.  They started mainly in discussion forums back in the days of green screens, Amstrad computers and Sinclair C5’s.  The kind people over at Gravatar have designed a process whereby you can upload your photo to one site and it will be recognised by all blogs and websites using the Gravatar plugin.  Gravatar stands for Globally recognized avatar.  Signing up is free, and Nicole likes to remind me that free things are good!

If you are a regular contributor to the comment section of Nicole’s blog you will know that it asks for an email address.  This serves two purposes:

1. To try to stop spam getting posted in the comments.

2. It is checked against Gravatar’s database to see if it has an associated picture with that email address.

If Gravatar cannot make a match to the email, it then displays a default picture.  In the case of denhaagside, it is a little daisy.  If you would like your image to appear next to your comments in Nicole’s – or any- blog (and you know you do, especially you, Summer!), then go to Gravatar and sign up.  All they need is your email address and a photo to upload to the Gravatar site.  Once you have given Gravatar your email address they will send you an email to confirm that it is really yours.  You will then be able to upload your picture.  Gravatar allows you to crop the image once you upload it (perfect for editing out that ‘ex’ in the photo that you look great in!

Once you have your avatar associated with Gravatar open up Tales from Den Haag Side and look through any of the comments you have made.  Or make a new comment! You will see your picture beside your comment!

On holiday during August a friend told me that talking about something makes it more real.  I was talking to him about running the trans-alpine run, next September.  It is a 300km race across the European Alps that takes place over eight days.  Basically it is about a marathon a day at altitude.  I realised that what he was saying was true, talking about things did make them more real.  Having never run a marathon before I started to plan out my training regime.

So, in the vein of making things more real, I am now going to talk about re-doing the design of this blog.  I want to re-design it into three columns: thinking; reading; and hearing & seeing.  Although I go through waves of why I want to keep a blog it seems that I never focus on one particular area or topic.  This means that I either have a.d.d. or I just haven’t focused on what I want the blog to achieve.  It would appear that it has taken a year to get to this point, and I am OK with that

So, right now I hope to re-design the blog over the next few weeks while keeping up with other projects.  Especially after seeing this particularly inspirational video today.  Try to stay with it, I know he seems arrogant and annoying but it is worth watching.

iMac, originally uploaded by Will Adam.

Apologies for the blurry photo, I couldn’t keep my hands steady, mainly due to the caffeine overdose mixed with rabid excitement of getting the mac…

oh man… it is taking all my will power not to throw the PC I am writing this post on out and to set up the iMac. However, I know that I would go down with something like mac flu tomorrow and wouldn’t make it to work… Am already thinking about talking a holiday on Monday…

It’s here, and Project AJD takes another step forward… just waiting on the English version of CS4 now…

Described by Steve Jobs as “a tour de force of engineering” the Apple notebook event has brought us several new notebooks and an LCD cinema display.  An updated MacBook Air, an aluminium bodied MacBook and a new MacBook Pro as well.  You can read about these in more detail from several blogs here, here, here and of course from Apple itself.

My interest, for this post anyway, was drawn to the environmental aspect that Apple was keen to push forward.  They have been criticised in the past for being one of the least environmentally conscious companies, and this seems to have rattled their cage somewhat.

Their new notebooks have all been awarded the Environmental Protection Agency Gold rating and Apple was keen to push the fact that none of their new Notebooks contain toxic chemicals and that their new MacBook Pro features:

• Arsenic free glass
• BFR free
• Mercury free
• PVC free
• Highly recyclable
• 37% smaller packaging

It was also pointed out that due to the amount of less packaging they are actively reducing their carbon footprint (less packaging leads to more that can be transported in a single shipment).  Apple mentioned the environmental aspect no less than 3 times during the hour long event.  Greenpeace has been quick to slam Apple in the past as one of the most environmentally damaging companies, see here and here.  It will be interesting to see if the change in Apple’s attitude to environmental issues changes their ranking with Greenpeace.

In any cae, you can now feel better about buying a new notebook from Apple…

As an avid fan of Grey’s Anatomy (bite me, I like it, as well as House and Smallville), I was really pissed off when Amazon sent me Grey’s Anatomy Series three with Discs 1&2, twice.  The first eight episodes, twice.  Seven discs in total and someone in packing screwed it up.  Just to be clear, I do not blame amazon for this at all.

I blame some idiot who works for Buena Vista for it.  I mean come on, it is not the hardest job in the world, pack four different boxes into one bigger box.

Anyway, I’ll get over it.  What I did want to say here though, was how thoroughly impressed I am at how amazon have dealt with the problem.  I noticed the duplication on Monday night and by Tuesday afternoon they had sent out another copy to me, with a promise of refunding my costs of posting the error package back from the Netherlands.

I have to say I was dreading a long drawn out email saga with amazon, but was amazed at how professional they are.  I am a happy customer, although if the next set of discs that comes through has the same problem I will be a tad pissed about it…

No doubt you will hear about it…