Looks like Google are running the Change Bat over blogger …
There’s a couple of positive changes but a few where the instigator needs shooting …
Positive – favicons. I change my normal avatar often and without warning 🙂 Check out the latest (more below). He’s a Pocket Dwagon called System Cwash, which I chose in honour of how well our work IT performed yesterday. That bad. However, the favicon will always be the “Another Monday” ZombieDwagon :
(I may tidy it up a bit more though as favicons are tiny)
That fella will always be my favourite Pocket Dwagon. It’s a shame the Pocket Dwagon hatchery shut down in 2006 but here’s a link to more about them. Sadly, Evil Ex won custody of most of our Pocket Dwagon collection when she left, so I only have a few to choose from for avatars.
Where was I …
Oh. Blog template update : This is going to generate a fair bit of hate as control of the comments template has been taken away from us. To be honest, the new one looks a) horrible and b) isn’t compatible with the IE6 we’re forced to use at work. So when it comes to checking that a new comment isn’t spam, I have to use my mobile.
That’s another change that got my goat – when I got my Android phone, it forced me to change the Google sign in to a Gmail account. That’s not so bad but it’s irritating to have some comments go to Gmail and other comments go to the email address in my profile. (I’d repeat it but that’s how you spawn junkmail).
Happily, a while ago Google enabled cutdown templates for browsing blogs via Mobiles which works pretty well. So I can still check comments (for spam) at work despite the efforts of Google to break stuff. Actually, not so sure why I check for spam as I can’t do anything about it anyway until I get home ! (There’s no way I’m exposing any home passwords to the potential at work for keyloggers, insecure access or data monitoring)
So – I’m not impressed by what Google have been up to, it breaks the first rule of enforcing a change on people : Always ensure your change is complete and correct before unleashing it.
Last change for now : System Crash. Here’s the original :
The prep work for that involved :
Placing System Crash on top of my subwoofer (after dusting it)
Using the plastic base for my last PC as a flat black backing (think greenscreen technique).
Hoping I could remove the t-shirt on the radiator behind.
Standing the little fella on top of a couple of pennies to get the right angle.
And standing my camera on the subwoofer so it would be stable enough for a no flash, long exposure shot. (Next time I’ll use a non-reflective backing)
By the power of Photoshop (Elements), that becomes :
The black backing can be quickly removed by the power of the Magic selector thingy tool. It’s very handy for selecting around the edges of what you want to keep, so you can delete what you want gone. The trick is to get good contrast between image and background, black works well for Pocket Dwagons. I could have tidied up those lines a little more but I was happy enough after 20 minutes fiddling with Photoshop.
But I think I still need a new camera as the other 6 pictures I took were garbage : washed out by flash or blurry due to long exposure.