Upgrading This

I’ve just upgraded this blog to WordPress 2 and it seems that it’s fussier about some of the hacks I made to the theme. Categories aren’t working at the moment… probably some other things too. I’ll either fix later or switch to some fancy new theme. Update: Using Spotlight to search for code I realised that I’d actually documented my previous hacking. Amazing! Now if only I could remember that I’m sometimes quite sensible. The notes I’d made said, “I should write this as a plugin so that it doesn’t break with future WordPress upgrades”. Please let me know if you spot anything else broken.

Five Things

I suppose it was inevitable that the five things meme would get me at some point. Kevin Bjorke tagged me so, after some squirming about it, I have to tell the readers of this blog five things they don’t know about me.

1. The acronym, GASP, was first used for some software I wrote (so, Gary Alexander Software Productions). Unfortunately the computer was built from a kit and despite its exciting (for the time) graphics capabilities, almost nobody bought it. As you’ll see from the picture, the software was delivered on audio cassette. One program was a Pacman ripoff and the other a graphics program which was developed for designing the Pacman sprites. The gasp is supposed to be a little ironic and my favourite usage was when I was working in television and I borrowed the SP from BetaSP (tape) where it stood for Superior Performance. I always told people this with a serious face and nobody ever laughed. It didn’t even occur to me that it could stand for Street Photography until years after I started this web site.

2. I have this much vinyl. Converting it to digital is a chore which I’d recently cranked myself up for but after about five albums my record deck gave up so now I keep pondering one of those USB decks. The shelf is bending - my camera doesn’t barrel that much.

4. My Father was a Prison Warder.

3. I’ve been vegan since 1992. I realise that most people who know me, know I’m vegan but I can never remember the answer to the ‘how long’ question, so there it is.

5. I didn’t go to art school. Well, that’s pretty obvious if you read my bio page but I did teach myself to draw while I was studying to be a software engineer. It seems I formally study things that I realise later I don’t want to do and self-teach the things I do want to do.

I now have to tag five other people. Why is it that almost everybody I know doesn’t blog? Probably to avoid things like this. I tag: Julian, Eamon (who I’ve never even met), Sarah, Max and Nils. Apologies to all.