Just to let people know that I have hopefully implemented a few of these ideas to stop some of the referrer spam I am getting, hopefully now we have stopped that and any comment spam, its a real shame when it comes down to this, but I won’t let them win damnit! So if you are legit and are seeing some errors or have problems getting to the site, then let me know.

Just spent a couple of hours being driven loopy trying to get my feeds to work… past the old 0.91 RSS Feed its never worked, now after digging around on the nucleus forum for ages, I find out its the fault of the plugin I use to GZip the page output! Installed the latest version of the plugin, bingo all my feeds start working! Which means you now have the choice of a 0.91 or 2.00 RSS feed or an Atom feed, check the links down on the left. Also spent a few hours today finally doing a long over-due update to the HMC page, new header courtesy of our graphic designer, and lots of new content to reflect the first two issues of a new volume of Oracle.

Apart from that I have some new posts in draft mode at the moment so expect some proper content now I have most of the backstage stuff sorted!

So we are back, after a slight hiatus… if anyone is still reading and cares! We have a new look, an updated version of nucleus and still some work to do to finish things off. If anyone noticed we suffered a slight hack, so for now the various external scripts (media, guestbook etc) are gone probably won’t return. Also we have comment control installed as I suffered a few thousand comment spams, and they are still coming in now, but get blacklisted automatically I hope! You are still free to post comments, but anything on posts over 30 days old has to be moderated by me. As stated still a bit of work to do, things to add, change and update, but this will be the new look. Also planning to do more writing rather than just post links like in the past… inspired by the really cool magic blogs that are now appearing…

In case anyone was wondering the last year has been weird, got made redundant, got a new job and spent the last six months working really hard, and still am! Only down side to the job is I have to take my holidays in school holiday time, which messes up going to magic conventions Also studying really hard for some industry recognised web qualifications for the longer term plan. So not much time for magic, or the blog, which explains the lack of posting, hope I’m forgiven, and hope to rectify that in some small way.

Let me know what you think to the new look, and if anything is broken/needs changing, bear with me over the next few weeks as I tweak it and add new things, and watch out for some new posts.

Well we passed the 3 year anniversary of the blog, and to mark the occasion I managed to get my FISM report plus photos pulled together… don’t want to say too much except I plan to keep posting as regularly as possible, thanks to all my readers, regular or those that come in via search engines.

I finally managed to finish off all the little bits of the site design, although I do have a few new ideas up my sleeve, so keep watching.

The Magic Cafe Forums – http://www.magician.org.uk/: looks like I’ve been magiccafe’d (the equivalent to ./’d I guess!) thanks for the link Joe

Apologies for the lack of posts but its been a bit hectic around here lately, just getting ready to go to FISM 2003 which is going to be unbelievable, I have added a media section to this site, the first thing to go in it will be photos from FISM… the plan if it comes off will be for me to write-up the highlights of each day, if I can find an Internet point I will post from FISM if not it will be when I get back.

Also this week I have my Sister’s graduation, doesn’t seem five minutes since she went. Congrats Jo!

Will try and post a bit more before I go, I plan to actually finish the new design by adding an about page which is the only thing missing, and a proper contact form.

Wow… it has come around again, today the blog is 2 years old, and I am cough..25..cough..

As you can see the blog has a new template which I have been testing for the past couple of days, and it now runs on the Nucleus Content Management System.

Please let me know if you have any problems with the template or the new system.

I’ve been very happy with Blogger, but I just felt that having a PHP host and not running my own CMS was a bit of a waste, and it also gives me better control, and more flexibilty, and in a months time Nucleus will also run the HMC site.

I can’t honestly believe that this blog has lasted two years, sometimes posting has been sparse (although I don’t think a week has lapsed that I haven’t posted something!?) and as I keep saying I don’t really do this for anyone but myself, to keep track of Magic links, although if anyone else happens to look in you are More than welcome. I don’t think I really want too much attention or publicity for the site, if people happen to stumble across it thats great, and thats how it should be I think with a blog of this nature.

So here is to another year running on this new system, and new look, next is to get the HMC site up and running. Please take your time to look back over the two years of archives, and I will try and blog as much as I can today between the beer and partying!