Facebook has also added status update which gives 160 character field to write a small little place to wite a personal update. This status is shown in the News feed and can also be outputted as an RSS feed. As I spend lots of time updated this, so I thought I would add to this site. The new feature which I am currently testing at the moment appears on the right hand sidebar, under the heading, My status. It adds a personal touch to the site and adds a new element to page.

I would like to know what you think of it, so please comment.

I have been known to do a bit of rereporting but I don’t think that is the real focus of this site. The point of this site is that is doesn’t really have a point. I can write what I feel interests me and share that with the rest of the world. But reading this blog you get a chance to look in my head and see the kinds of things that interest me. It makes this blog very personal to and you get insight into my mindset by reading it. Having said that it is very personal, I don’t really write about my life. There are lots about blogs out there about people’s lives, their girlfriends and parents that are getting on people nurves. For the most part, all of these are rubbish and are completely boring to read. I find it hard to believe that anyone but the people who these blogs are write about would find Joe Blogs and his cats at all interesting. I try and write about accessable topics that interest the world at large. What the problem lots of us weblogger have is, how do you keep the quality level to a high standard. The question you have to got ask yourself before sitting down in front of your computer is this, “Why I am blogging this?”. If it is for a good reason, to write something of use, that would help the world, like a blog about you dealing with a problem, then fine. But if I have to read another blog post about the Iphone, I think I am going to go mad.

When I write, I only try and write things that I know and that interest me. I don’t go off on rants (tell a lie, I do) or try bring people to the way I think about stuff. I just try and write what I think and let you guys judge. This means that I don’t always get the traffic I should. If I talked about recent events or news stories, I would get more people coming in from search engines suchs as google. Personally, I don’t think writting blogs should be about how many people see the site. That really is not important to me, I write because I enjoy getting my thoughts down and not because I want lots of hits. I don’t have adverts on this site so I really am not making any money out of this. I like the idea of someone just finding my site by mistake and taking a look. It doesn’t matter as long as someone might find it useful.

It will be interesting to look back on this site in 10 years. Lots of stuff in my life and I will be able to look back on it as a kind of time Time capsule.

It is a feature that has been in the pipelines for a long time and until laterly I haven’t managed to get working. All the images in the photo gallery are hosted on my Flickr account which I have been updating weekly for nearly a year. It means that you can browser the many images without worrying about bandwidth limits. This is all made possible by a lovely plugin called
Flickr Photo Album for WordPress. It is simply amazing, as it works so well with Flickr. It even has many of the features of Flickr, like search, feeds and tags.

Adding the photos section shows the move away from what this blog used to be. I have no plans to turn this book into a personal dairy, but it is nice to share my things of interest with the world at large. So enjoy my pictures and watch this space.

Other sites that are doing this

• Wackomenace
• blogherald
• dustindiaz

For more information, go to the officle site.

More improvements include

1. Sexy new look
2. New section, titled works, with little writtings and other things I have done.
3. A dynamic archive page, list of all the posts and static pages
4. Improved load time
5. New tagging system that allows posts to be sorted by taggs
6. Easier to find hyperlinks within text
7. Rewritten About page, with lots more information
8. New Questions and Answers page, with lots of explanations of some of the Technical features of the site
9. More information about the site is included at the footer of each page
10. Improved submission to del.icio.us and Digg
11. Improved spam filtering on comments
12. The site now uses WordPress 2.1
13. New background images from the header, including a really cool lego design
14. Refinements to the rss feed and search plug-in
15. New contact form, which a input box for the subject of your form.

And much more. I hope that people like the changes and expect some really cool posts coming up. If you have any ideas for the site, improvements or you are having a problem, please use the go the contact page.

*A note to the Spammers*

A new and very good spam filter has been added to this site. If you try to spam this site, the filter deletes 99% of all spam. The rest, I will get. So I thank you all, for wasting my time and bandwidth, but no longer.

Just thought I would just tell people what is going on and ask people to tell me about problems you have with the site.

Thanks
Spacedmonkey admin

Jonathan Harris

On a side note, I am getting really really sick of spam at the moment. When I logged on today, there were 26 spam comments from four different sources. It is really gets on your nerves. I need to implement some kind of validation for my comments, but I can’t be bothered to write any code for myself. What would be the point, the spammers always find work arounds. If I had my way, I would get a team of hackers together and take those spammers down forever. I will work something out, but it people like spammers that make the internet not cool.

There will be lots of new stuff on the site, trust me, I just need sometime to write and upload it. I have been saying that for ages but it will happen. If you have ideas for the site, you would like to write the site or have any other thought, please use the contact form.

This is a Christmas message to the world at large. It is nice, when reaching the end of a long year, to reflect on things. It has been a very long and eventful year for me. It has been a year full of lots of ups and downs. A year spent in doing lots of hard work so that I could pass my A-levels to get into university. I am glad that I put some much time and effort in, going to university has been one of the best things that ever happened to me. This year has been full of problems with my father becoming extremely ill. Thank god, he isnow fine and I greetfull everyday for that.

With all that I have been through in the last year, I know that I wouldn’t have got through it without the support of loyal group of friends and family around me. I would like to thank them for everything and for putting up with me when I was being a bit of jerk sometimes. I remember the saying from the amazing christmas film it’s a wonderful life;

Remember, no man is a failure who has friends

It is important to me that in these changing times, to take sometime to look back and remember what is important. To keep the holiday of Christmas special. Even if you don’t believe in Jesus or god, the holiday of christmas can be kept in your heart. What on earth is wrong with a holiday where friends and family get together and enjoy each other? Nothing that I can see. For one day, we show our loved ones how we feelr and we are all a little nicer for a while. It reminds me of a quote from another christmas film, scrooged;

It’s-it’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we-we-we smile a little easier, we-w-w-we-we-we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year we are the people that we always hoped we would be.

I have also really enjoying creating and mantaining this site. It has even me a chance to express my creative side and really kept my mind of my troubles. The site has only been running since March 2006, but has changed so much and has gone through three versions. I like to thank all my long term readers. There will be lots more from this site in the next year. Also look out for spacedmonkey’s new sister site, Computing Corner in 2007.

I have been gifted with a great life and the chance to forfill my dreams of going onto studying at univerisity.

I wish everyone reading this a very Merry Christmas and Happy new year!!

Spacedmonkey admin
Jon Harris