Much as I enjoyed the visit, though, something I noticed really puzzled me.

Aldeburgh is a seaside town with—unsurprisingly for a seaside town—a beach. And yet, on the high street—just a minute’s walk from the promenade—were lots of cars containing people, who sat in their stationary, parked vehicles eating chips.

Had they got out of their cars and walked a handful of paces, they could have sat on the beach watching the sea and stuff, whilst eating their chips. If you’re going to sit in your car looking at the high street—a pretty crazy thing to do—why go to the seaside?

If you are one of these generally-ancient folks who partakes this most idiotic of activities, why the hell do you do this?

The triumph

First and foremost, I was dizzy with joy to read that my article on sandwich fillings had won a small pseudo-competition on Upstart Blogger. Terrific. I’ve got a little link on Upstart Blogger, and the statistics tracker tells me that the mention on such a blog as UB has brought traffic through the roof. (Well, assuming it’s a low roof that is, but one cannot complain.)

The titivation

Also, I’ve been tweaking the blog design. Chief among the changes made in yesterdays burst of productivity has been the fact that I’ve started to use sIFR. No, that’s not some kind of medical disorder thingy—read this, from the website of Mike Davidson, one of sIFR’s parents:

sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash.

At the mo, everything looks a little bit poo. I’m new to sIFR. But the fact is, I managed to get everything working. The documentiation—riddled with big, scary words and equally monstrous acronyms—looks daunting, but in reality it’s easier than falling off a log. I’ll write something about it all later. My first priority is perfecting this design.

The font I’m using with sIFR (and in my snazzy new favicon) is Soopafresh, a legendary sort of wonky Helvetica Heavy. Because I don’t own an expensive copy of Adobe Flash—and although they have Flash at school (taxpayers’ money well spent), I’m on holiday—I obtained a sIFR-ready copy from Stefan Isiarie’s wicked library.

Another jaunt

Tomorrow morning, I’m heading to London for a couple of nights. I’m coming and going like a yo-yo, it seems. Well it is the Summer holidays after all.

I’ll return on Thursday evening, when normal service will be resumed. I may well have some photographs for your delectation, perhaps one of those photo-essays a bit like what Anand Sharma does.

Until then, pip-pip!

Since each pair of socks is different—and all my new socks are completely unlike any other socks—it means that I no longer need faff about for hours trying to pair up similar-looking socks. However, it left the question of what to do with the original, all-black socks. After all, some of them are okay, and there are children in Africa with bare feet—why waste socks?

Being the genius that I am, I concocted a clever solution. I decided to introduce a “sock quarantine” to my wardrobe (or, as I said when I was knee-high to a perambulator, my “wardrove”). I started placing the black socks into that section as they came out of the wash, and now I have a section of my wardrobe full of the jumbled-up old socks.

The next step is to examine the contents of the sock quarantine…

Stop! I need not go on! It is clear that I need to get a life. Organising socks? Pah! Whatever next? Clearly, I need help.

Help me, people, help me, please! I’ll be watching Bargain Hunt next!

I’m not going to tell you all the gory details. This is because the trip was about as gory as a teddy-bears’ tea party. (That is, it wasn’t very gory. If you assume teddy-bears’ tea parties to be particularly gory, you’ve clearly been to some unusual teddy-bears’ tea parties.) In fact, I’m not going to bore you with any details whatsoever—not even those with the lowest goriness ratings.

If you were ready to read a tense, nerve-racking account of what happened throughout my five days of absence, forget it. You can forget it if you were looking forward to my recipe for banana milkshake, too. I haven’t got either niceties ready for your delectation. Although, if you must read about someone going on holiday, read this big post by Derek Punsalan.

I haven’t read that post by Punsalan. It’s a massive post. And well, my Google Reader had a biblical 133 new items for me to read. That’s what four full days of absence can do. Cripes.

Anyhow, farewell for now. Some exciting articles are going to be heading in your direction in the coming days, I should imagine.

Don’t get your knickers in a twist, though—it’s not my ghost writing this, or something equally mind-numbingly crazy. This post is brought to you by the future posts feature of WordPress. I’m writing this yesterday, if that makes any sense—it probably doesn’t.

I’ll be back soon—on Friday at the latest, Wednesday at the earliest. You won’t be deprived of your regular source of bad writing for too long.

Don’t expect me to have more posts like this one, queued up, ready to go live using the aforementioned WordPress feature—I haven’t bothered to write any. But on returning to Norfolk, you can expect me to have with me some juicy new content, written on good old-fashioned paper. Photographs of the fine city, too, which was founded in 1207 according to the mine of knowledge that is Wikipedia. And maybe some more illustrations. (Don’t worry—cross your fingers and I just might have everything eaten by a big hairy monster, sparing your eyes the torture.)

Farewell for now, then, reader. You are spared from my ghastly writings for a few days whilst I am in the 2008 European Capital of Culture. Spend the glorious me-free time wisely, for soon I will be back!

But all good things come to an end. And so do some mediocre things—the competition is now over.

So, now there’s one question that you are undoubtedly eager to know the answer to. It’s on the lips of the planet. It is, “who has won the competition?”

The answer? I’m delighted to announce that the name I’ve just pulled out of my woolly hat is that of RedBox, to whom I have sent an electronic mail.

So, there you have it. The competition is over, well done RedBox. Sorry if you’re one of the two entrants who didn’t win—that is, Matt and PsychoticApe. Better luck next time. It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts.

I don’t think I’m brain-damaged in any way. However, the shock seems to have somehow made me eager to crack on and sex up this website’s design a bit more—a wire in my brain must have been moved. Those familiar with this blog will notice a few tweaks, although I’ve still got stacks more up my sleeves. For instance, I’m thinking of using a bit of sIFR.

I mentioned the thorough redesign in a previous post. That has not started yet—and probably won’t for a week or so. This is sort of more related to my plans to release the current design as a public WordPress theme, for all citizens’ delectation and use. Let me know your thoughts—I’d be thrilled to hear them.

In other news, be sure to entertain the notion of entering my “win a domain name” competition if you haven’t done so already, since it closes on Sunday now. Please, please, Digg the article too. Even if the idea of winning the domain name cofreehost.com fills you with horror, speading the word could bring it to the attention of someone who would like to enter.

Another thing: please ask me a question using the newish “ask the author” page. Ask me whatever you want, and I will do my best to reply. Only one question has been asked so far, which is dismally pathetic.

That’s all I have for you today, reader. I feel nice and empty, like I’ve just been to the bog and moved my bowels. Toodle-pip!

Okay, it wasn’t too bad. But, in my opinion, it could have been a whole lot better. There are heaps of things I forgot to mention, but didn’t bother to. This is because—for no reason at all, really—I was in a rush to click the “publish” button.

I’ve now decided that I should take time to write blog posts. There’s no reason for me to rush. It’s not like there’s a bomb under my chair, about to detonate—well, if there was, I would have things on my mind other than clicking “publish”.

I’ll probably be writing a follow-up to the mediocre Browsershots article, in which I add the other things I have to say on the subject. For now, I’d like to talk about how taking time to write—doing the exact opposite of what I did on Sunday—can make what you write a whole lot better. This is true with all aspects of life, in fact.

Show gobbledygooch the red card

Yesterday, I was working on The Daily Car—a new little project of mine. I wrote something about a new vehicle coming onto the market, and if I had rushed that article it would have been a load of bollocks.

Fortunately, before clicking “publish”, I went back and read over the article. I managed to stop the article from being about a car with two engines.

Sometimes, nonsense can be good. For instance, if you’re Count Arthur Strong, it’s essential. But in most situations, it’s a good idea to weed out any mistakes, or you’ll look like a block-headed idiot.

Discover drafting

There’s a saying that goes: “a watched pot never boils.” It has absolutely nothing to do with my next point.

If you write a blog post in one go, you’ll likely forget to mention stuff. If you just think, “sod it”, and hit the “publish” button straight away, it’s likely you’ll remember the point you wanted to make a bit later, when it’s too late. If you hit the “save” button, you’ll still remember—but you’ll be able to add the extra metaphorical cherries to the equally-metaphorical smoothie before the article goes live. That analogy is remarkably diabolical, but hopefully you understand my point.

It’s a good idea to have several blog posts saved as drafts—irons in the fire, or “ironing boards in the fireplace” as Count Arthur Strong calls ’em—ready to be published when you’re good and ready. Don’t just write a whole post every day, in one stretch. Blogging should be like a buffet… well, a little bit like that.

So, there’s some advice. I am going to start following it, and hopefully blogging better. And now that I’ve pushed this into the open, I’m going to have to stick to it.

I like simple, minimalist designs. However, I fancy having a go at knocking together something a bit more interesting. People have grumbled about the hardcore simplicity of this site. Simple is good, but you can have too much of a good thing. This design looks a little too much like a Word document for my liking.

So, I am going to start, slowly but surely, making a start on a design for Joshua Goodwin’s blog that is a little more substantial. Just thought you’d like to know.

Fans of this minimalist style, though—don’t worry. I’m also planning to release this design as a public WordPress theme, probably once the redesign is alive and kicking. I will make plenty of alterations to the theme as it is in its current state, though, of course; I’m planning on adding such rare luxuries as an options page and a choice of colour schemes.

So, that’s some of what the future holds. Don’t hold your breath, though, as I’m not planning on this arriving for a while. Taking time to do stuff makes that stuff come out a whole lot better. By writing about my plans now, I’m more likely to actually bother to fulfil them since I’ll otherwise live in fear of angry mobs of readers demanding the theme and redesign they’ve been promised.

Now, I’m handing the reigns over to you, dear reader. I want to know what you think. I want to know what you’d like to see in a WordPress theme, and things that you think could sex up this blog’s design. Please, please, speak your mind. I’d love to hear your views.

But what is Browsershots? Well, that’s a good question, best answered by this from the Browsershots home page:

Browsershots makes screenshots of your Web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your Web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your Web site in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

This seems cool. I’m testing my site right now, and it’s working a treat. It is admittedly a bit slow—I’ve been waiting 21 minutes and so far, 26 of the 45 screenshots have been uploaded. But many of those screenshots show this site rendered completely fine, in browsers with such acceptable web standards adherence that I won’t be ticking their boxes in future. Also, there are many browsers that I already have access to—I was completely block-headed in getting a test in Safari 3.1.2 for Windows XP for instance, since I have that installed.

And, the really impatient can pay to get quicker processing.

Next time I use Browsershots, I’m going to use it just to check this website in Internet Explorer 6. That is a browser that—sadly—is widely used and renders websites idiotically. Some are giving up on supporting version six of the diabolical Microsoft application, and I respect their decision, but I feel like having a go at slight “cross-browser compatibility”, as the jargon-lovers call it.

I’m certainly not going to be twisting my knickers when it comes to how this blog looks in Dillo, some obscure, prehistoric browser with a name which I at first misread.

Overall, then, I think Browsershots looks to be an insanely useful tool. I’m glad I found it via StumbleUpon. You may like it too, so check it out.