So here’s me. On iPhone app WordPress 2.0 with fingers crossed (again) that when I open a browser and go to my blog, I will see this little post.

Oh PLEASE work!!

Edit #1: Test one was a failure. The I set it to publish, and it shows status as Published. Visibility as Public. Shows the date and time of publishing, but when you visit my blog there is nothing. This edit is being done on a desktop.

Edit #2: And after adding the first edit, and updating the post, it shows up on on the site. *ponders* I don’t know if that’s quite as functional as I had hoped. Better, but still a pain. Not sure what’s going on.

The “other” flickr manager thing required me to do all of this high tech mySQL database conversion stuff. It was kind of terrifying. Mostly because it’s been years since I’ve done that kind of stuff, and I don’t know all the in’s and out’s of how WordPress does it’s thing. Dreamhost ends up doing all of the updates for me automatically anyway, so it’s not really me that looks all high tech and fancy. It’s them. No joke. Not me. So I ended up getting the databases all converted from latin1 to UTF-8. Sounds exciting, but now my little Flickr widget is broken. *sigh* Ah well.

So of course, I’ve been doing all of this and getting no where. Getting frustrated was inevitable, but really? I can’t just put A photo in my blog? Just one? I don’t want to have to upload the same damn photo eleventy-billion times in fourteen different places. I use Flickr almost exclusively for my photos. It’s because I can email them from my iPhone and share. It’s just easier that way. So why all this running around (on the internet) and backwards nonsense to share A single photo?

Oh well. It seems there was some kind of weird change when WordPress updated to 2.8. The author submitted  a fix for the lovely Flickr Manager plugin I already had installed, but it hadn’t been approved yet and you could download it directly. So I did. I could have saved myself a ton of headache and confusion and database backup-ing and terrified I’m going to break something to beyond fixing. Y’know how it goes.

And so here I go with the photo sharing. Because after all this nonsense I better start sharing some damn photos, right??

Here is the first attempt at Sweater Hoodie thing. It’s technically called theApres Surf Hoodie, but I like my name better. It’s easier for me to say outloud when I talk to myself while knitting/blogging. The pattern calls for you to make two halves, the back and the front, and piece them together. I started the back (which is what you see pictured here) when I found some blog posts somewhere on the internet regarding doing it in the round (I cannot for my life find the link where the girl mentioned how she did this, but if I ever do, I’ll link it!). So I frogged (took the whole thing apart, for you non-knitting/crocheting folks) and started again. And started again. And again. And again. And again. No really. I started it over 5 different times before I finally decided on starting it on DPNs (double pointed needles; usually used for making socks and other items in the round) and after a few rows transferred it to the circular. The “invisible” start cause some issues with starting ON the circular needle (aka frustration!). I’m about 2 rows away from starting the lace part (the body), which took me DAYS to do.

Side note: Because I can now work this all in Stockinette Stitch, I can continental stitch all of it, meaning that I knit 4 times faster. Having to “throw over” all of the purl rows (when going back and forth) meant I got the first 26 rows (of both the front AND back) done in less than a day and a half (of knitting in between Wintergrasps (WoW speak ftw!) this weekend). This should technically take me a whole helluva lot less time to finish. Yay!

Also to share, because I’m in a slightly obsessed phase, is some yarn I dyed. Because, like I said, I’m slightly obsessed. This one is called Tribal. It’s Brown, Teal and Orange. I used Kool-Aid and Wilton’s Cake dye. This one makes me happy and I love it.

I call this one Odyssey. No reason for the name, but it’s Kool-Aid and Wilton’s Cake dye as well. I love the colors on this one.

And thus concludes my photo sharing entry of the day.

But I’m thinking I might play around with creating some myself. There are some decent ones there, but a lot of ones that I would never even consider using for any application… ever. Maybe some versatility will help. We’ll see how motivated I am at doing this.

Edit: Except for the fact that it didn’t actually publish it to the main page, even when it said it was published. I wonder what the deal is with that?? Am I going to have to republish them from the web admin page to get them to show up?? *sigh* Kind of frustrating.

I’ve gotten back in touch with a handful of those people I used to read regularly and interact with regularly and I feel, internet-content. In a way I haven’t felt in a very long time. I don’t get the same joy that I used to when I spent hours and days designing a new layout for my website. I remember first blogging, and the thrill of a CMS, and holy crap, they added the WYSIWYG! There were all of these aspects of designing and blogging that I used to adore.

And then I grew up. And then I got jaded. And then there just seemed to be a thousand other things that were more worthy of my time and energies. And then the spam revolution hit and that was it. I was done. I threw in the towel, because my site had been listed (and still is in some cases) as a porn site, because of all the spam that sat there, plainly visible, for all the search engines to find. It was a lose/lose battle. I couldn’t win, no matter how hard I tried.

As with most things in my life, the phase passed, and then came back. I’ve missed the far away friendships I so easily made then, but feel so awkward about now. I miss the plethora of knowledge I once had about the internet and coding and creating web pages. So here I sit, in noobdom, all over again. And I’m okay with that.