Ok, I’ll break my silence, if for nothing more than the fear that I may soon end on ECRs ‘Where are they now?’ list!
I’ve not ignored Thanet in any way, I take the Thanet Times back to Oxford with me (or get them brought to me!) when I can and keep up with blogging through the wonder of the internet. You know, I found I can be anywhere to read these blogs, not just in Thanet, amazing things these Internets.
I often find that when I see something interesting I think about how I would put it in a blog post, but it would seem I’m now into the habit of not posting. Lets take this example: The other day I was in Margate and was almost knocked over by Sandy Beach who was rounding a corner at high pace away from the town, only to find that when I got to Margate centre the whole town was without power… link perhaps?!
The topic of the moment though does seem to be TBLs birthday. I can hardly believe it to be a year already. That curious, spiraling turning of events that began with turmoil on the blogger circuit to the rise of the blog list. Though for my sins I may have started it, to my better judgment I handed it to Adem who has made it into a truly useful and enjoyable resource… though I must be honest, I cannot stand this Snap preview thing (cue tech tip). If you want to turn it off this is what you have to do: hover over a link to the snappy thing appears, got to options in that pop-up, check the boxes to disable, when it saves reload.
Ok, I’m here for the next month so I’ll probably post again, mainly because I see this as a Thanet blog. After that I’ll probably pull it into my new personal site that I’m planning (see if you can guess the web address 
).
For all you Thanet bloggers: Keep up the good work!
Made a nice change today, waking up in the morning. Went down for breakfast, life is that much easier when other people are cooking for you, it is also a good motivator to crawl out my pit in the morning. I thought it was important to make the effort and get up for food today seeing as I have rugby training at 2pm. We have our first match in four weeks and to be honest my laziness over Christmas has raised my own concerns over match fitness. What is the chances of a full time smoker and general layabout being able to run for 80mins. I can see me being sick on the touchline.
I’ve been playing with the new Bloglist and frankly I’m loving what he’s done with it. The Recent Feeds section is awesome and is a great to use in conjunction with netvibes. For example, though I have about 17 Thanet blog feeds on a netvibes page I would never have known that Old Ramsgate and Thanet Underground has been adding new material if it hadn’t been for the Bloglist. I’m not going to add every feed to my netvibes just in case, but the Bloglist does that for us.
In view of this I’ve decided to add the new button that is made available in the promote section. I’ll admit that I wasn’t altogether happy with the code, but frankly I always find something to moan about so I suggest you all use that mental filter now that I’m sure you all use on banner ads for the rest of the web… Actually, if you really don’t like banner ads there is a great Firefox extension that will clean the internet of them for you, its called AdBlock Plus
I’m now getting closer with my oonagi redesign with pretty much only one thing left to do on it, which alas due to my lack of php knowledge I have to place a request to ask someone else to fix for me. Shame really, maybe by the end of this year I’ll know what to do, though by the end of this year all the knowledge will probably be out of date anyway!
I’m back in Oxford now and to be honest I’m glad. It was nice to be in Thanet, see old friends, that sort of thing but I’m eager to get on with learning. I didn’t really do much more than drink and watch TV in Thanet, being home makes me instantly lazy. I had three boy projects that I wanted to do in my month off…
1. Re-build the Manston Garden Club website. I knocked a really shaky one together a year or so ago and I was never impressed in the slightest with it. I always thought it looked like one of those ‘welcome to my webpage’ sites (google it). This project I did based on wordpress and its kinda ok now. If you like you can see it at manstongardenclub.co.uk
2. Re-skin and re-organise oonagi. It looks awful at the moment; cluttered, not very user friendly and lots of pointless pages. I have now done most of the design on a test site but I’m still some way from sorting it enough to go live. It will still be based on the e107 system with changes being almost entirely cosmetic. This should give the least jolt to the users who have already been through many changes on the site over the past seven years.
3. Develop Thanet Blog List Build a geographically specific collectively edited news site. Basically a reddit/digg/newsvine for Thanet, as well as being portable to other areas. This will probably be based on a system like Pligg but unfortunately I can’t get it to work on my current webhost (they are a little backwards on the technology side) and am going to have to buy more webspace elsewhere. I don’t have enough money till February so you’ll have to wait I’m afraid. The idea came out of some brainstorming for the new Blog List build. As there were so many new blogs popping up I thought that the current approach, just posting them as blog entries, was restrictive. My ‘vision’ was that everyone adds new blogs and every gets to vote on whether its and good or not This should help filter out the one-post-wonders as well as letting the average reader quickly find the authoritative blogs. Even better, I wanted the user to have the possibility of having their own account where they can have feeds from their favourites, a little like netvibes, thus saving time from visiting all blogs as well as being able to see at a glance whether there are any new posts. Alas, I couldn’t really get it together and quite frankly its not my project any more anyway. I think its current new design is pretty cool and it wouldn’t be difficult to get a latest entry feed page on it with all the blogs listed.
So I managed about one and a half out of three projects. Thats not a very good ratio in my eyes. Lots of thoughts, lots of talk but not enough action. At least I’m more productive here in Oxford so hopefully we’ll see some more results shortly.
I no longer run Thanet Blog List. After my recent possible bias in the comments of this site I felt I needed to hand it over straight away. It has been given to another and I will not name them. They intend to develop the idea and I hope it becomes an even more useful resource.
This Saturday I will no longer be a Thanet blogger. I expect I will keep blogging for the same reasons I started in the first place. I will probably even change my subheading 
I also expect to continue reading others, you’ve been fun. Hope it doesn’t get too much more political (vote anyone but tory, hehe) and you all remember that life is supposed to be fun. Perhaps I’ll also point out for the sake of sillyness, has anyone else noticed that Ramsgate Tourettes and Eastcliff Richard have taken a break at the same time?
Thank you Thanet, its been emotional.
Seems I got somewhat busted in the BBC Kent article on bloggers as the man behind the Thanet Blog List. Many of the more savvy would have guessed anyway, but its really out now, so I guess its time to discuss it.
I started the list in reaction to Cliff Richard saying he was quiting the scene after a spat with the doctor. I was concerned that there wouldn’t be the central point for bloggers to rally around. I also had issues with the links being removed from peoples blogs due to personal issues. I felt the best way to resolve this was an independent list that would link anyone regardless, trusting the reader to decide what was hot and what was not.
Now we come to the problem. Not only is it not very independent now that its clear its me, but I am leaving Thanet and so feel I will have less time to hunt down local blogs.
We have a few possible solutions here:
a) Kevin continues as is and only adds blogs when he checks thanetbloglist@yahoo.co.uk once every few months.
b) Some other person contacts Kevin saying they will take good care of it and will remain impartial.
c) I tell you all the login and password for the blog and you can all add stuff when you find it. Kevin (or someone) hangs onto the email to reset any abuses with a password reset.
I personally like the third option as I’m a community thinking kinda guy, but I can see its problems.
This is up to you guys to call it as its really your list.
I’m upset. Someone smashed a cup on my car which caused a dent in the bonnet. Then I noticed that the most of the passenger side had been keyed. Why? I was parked sensibly outside the Regency in Ramsgate. I hadn’t done anything wrong. There was no need. 
Also noted today that Gannet College blog got mentioned in the Thanet Times. Though looking at the screen shot they had as a pic I noted there was some serious issues with the way their computers display web pages. None the less though, the local papers must be spending time on the thanetbloglist to find it, so carefull what you say people. You are being watched.
