The New Is There Food - Categories

What started as a redesign of the site - another theme change - has resulted in something a little more extensive: a full on restructuring.

The categories have changed again. They didn’t really fit with the things I want to do with the site so they’ve been jiggled around. Before, I had:

Reviews - too broad. TV, film, music, games; it all ends up in here.

Site Specific - Not used all that often, and sometimes ended up being tech posts about new Wordpress updates.

Distractions - hasn’t been used for ages.

Thoughts - I was finding that everything really ended up in here. After all, what’s a blog’s content made up of if it’s not thoughts?

So, after some careful thought, and a look at my archives, we now have:

Personal - I intend to write some more personal things for the site. These wouldn’t have fit in any of the other categories.

Health - My gym updates (which I’ll admit have slowed a little, of late) will go in here. Light-hearted posts about my current state of well-being will probably also go here.

Tech - I tried to start a second tech blog, but that failed miserably. It makes no sense to try to write two blogs when I’m neglecting my “primary” blog. So tech will stay on Is There Food, and I’ll try to keep up to date with all the Apple stuff I used to post about.

Entertainment - And this is where everything else lives. Films, TV, games, music: it’s all going to sit inside the entertainment category.

Beyond that, I’m going to make better use of tags. If I write a review of a game, I’ll try to make sure it’s got the right tags on (”review” and “game”).

Using this approach, the site should make a bit more sense, and I can compartmentalise my posts better.

The New Is There Food - Theme

Is There Food is now powered by a customised version of Arun Kale’s great The Morning After theme.

I’ve chopped and changed things a bit, and implemented a number of tweaks, but without Arun’s great initial work I don’t think I’d have been anywhere near as pleased with the end result as I am.

New features include:

No more “blog” view - categories are now very much segmented on the front page. This makes sense to me: why include a post about my gym progress with a review of a horror film.

Better use of tags/categories - the front page includes links to the four key categories on the site, as well as quick links to the most commonly used tags.

Viewing Log page - The magnificent WP Movie Ratings plugin is being used to its fullest and is powering my Viewing Log page.

Two column post view - it’s now easier to read posts, and there’s less wasted space.

Amazon recommendations - I’ll try to keep this up to date. Buy stuff from this list is you like the site and it’ll contribute to its upkeep.

Category specific banners - Each section of the site is undifferentiated from the others by the use of a different banner image. The classic Is There Food banner is used in the Personal section. (coming soon)

There’s probably more, but I’ve spent so long tweaking and adjusting that I can’t remember.

I hope you like the new look, and I look forward to making the most of it in the future, and increasing the amount of content that appears on the site.

I’m still tweaking bits and pieces, but wanted to get the site launched otherwise I’d never do it!

A Belated New Year

Happy new year to you, dear reader. For it seems there are a few of you left, despite the fact that I’ve neglected this place for the last few months.

A recent check of my stats shows I’m still getting traffic, and I still have quite a few people reading my RSS Feed. So thank you for sticking with me; I’ll have some more content for you directly.

The new year will hopefully see increased activity at ITF towers. A new design is currently being feverishly worked on, which should launch soon. I say "feverishly" but I actually mean "during what little time I have to actually devote to such endeavours". And I say "soon" but I actually mean "when it’s done".

I owe you some reviews - most significantly Diary of the Dead. It’s coming. Having recently finished reading the excellent Book of the Dead, it’s given me a bit of a taste for writing up my reviews again. It also seems to have turned me back on to reading, so I’ve picked up a few Cormac McCarthy novels (The Road, No Country for Old Men, and Blood Meridian, just so you know) and will be posting my thoughts on those.

More soon people. Honest.

Save The Bears…?

I had this email from the lovely Hannah at Proporta the other day:

At Proporta we’re all up for a bit of giving and receiving, but when our local stationary company decided to send us two teddy bears, they were met with a raised eyebrow from the child-less among us and have been dodging the shredder ever since.

If you think a bear is for life and not just for Christmas send an email to savethebears telling us why we shouldn’t wipe the fluffy smiles off their faces and we’ll publish the best one. The winner will also need to be able to house George and Bert (twin bears should never be separated) so a large back garden, preferably with enough room to house a picnic, is essential.

I suspect there are a few of you out there who would enjoy focusing your creative energies on sending some highly amusing  mail in their direction…

I’m Still Here!

Just a quick update for anyone who thinks I might have dropped off the face of the planet: I haven’t.

I’m still here, although “here” isn’t where “here” used to be. I have a new job, and I’ve had to wave goodbye to a number of people who I’m proud to be able to call my friends.

As a result, I’m going to try to post more here so people can keep in touch, and keep up to date with what I’m doing. And thinking.

Feel free to slag me off in the comments, I’ll just interpret it as praise and it might encourage me to post more often

You Never Get Something For Nothing

Right, the next time someone emails you about some wonderful free offer just bloody ignore it.

My wife forwarded me an email (sad that this is how we communicate now) entitled “Free M & S Vouchers!!!”. It’s clearly an attempt to spam the Andy Curran at Persimmonhomes.com email address. Apparently, there’s this special collaboration between Marks and Spencers and Persimmon Homes; the instructions carefully state that all you need to do is cc him in on the email to ten of your mates, and your vouchers will magically appear in the next few days. Ohmygodohmygod: spam everyone.

So stop. Cleverly, a few people have already blogged about this. Perhaps not so cleverly, they’ve printed Andy Curran’s address in full, so now numerous Internet bots will be furiously spamming the account, along with a large network of gullible Internet users (and, yes, I’d have to include my wife in this group) who want their free vouchers.

I suspect Andy Curran has long since had to change his email address (it sounds like this particular scam has been around for a while), or else Persimmon Homes have invested in some decent spam filtering. In fact, I suspect the “this is a scam” email she got from Message Labs originated from the Persimmon email address; it certainly wouldn’t have come from the assorted gmail, hotmail, and yahoo addresses she forwarded the mail on to.

So today’s lessons:

1) if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

2) if you’re asked to spam lots of people with an email, please don’t; I get enough spam as it is.

3) if you can’t be trusted to use email in a tolerable manner please fill your bath with water, drop any Internet connected computer you may own into previously mentioned bath, and leave for approximately the rest of your life. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to retrieve the computer from the bath.