One of my 101 Things in 1001 Days tasks was to resurrect my old recipe blog. It began (and ended) in 2007, and it’s always bothered me that I abandoned it.

I should make one thing clear: I don’t have any aspirations of becoming a food blogger! I’m not that talented, nor do I have the required dedication. And besides, I prefer to eat when my food is hot rather than run to perfect lighting to compose a photo!

The idea behind my food blog is really simple – I just want to collect all of my favourite recipes in one place. Over time I hope to have a strong collection of food that I adore, and it’s an added bonus that I can share it with others at the same time. I have temporarily named it “cracked pepper” until I am blessed with an idea that’s more creative.

Updates will sometimes be infrequent, so throw it in your RSS reader and forget about it. Be assured that when I do blog over there it will be because it’s worth it!

I’m ticking three things off my 101 List this weekend – the clock is ticking!

ETA: Did anyone notice the part where I forgot to link to my awesome new recipe blog? Geez.

It’s that time of year again, where I attempt to entertain you every day for the month of November!

Here’s a little blurb about NaBloPoMo, from the FAQ:

The whole thing started off as a goof based on National Novel Writing Month, the challenge of which is to try to write an entire novel during the month November. Not everyone can commit to an endeavor of such magnitude, though, and so National Blog Posting Month was born. However, after doing a November NaBlo for a couple of years in a row it seemed that a lot of people had found their momentum and wanted to keep going into December and beyond. So now NaBloPoMo is something you can drop into any month of the year, though November is still the biggest month, and is the only month when members donate prizes that are then given out randomly to other members who posted every day in November.

I wasn’t sure if my heart was in NaBloPoMo this year, but I know I’ll be cranky if I have to watch everyone else doing it! The satisfaction of finishing those 30 days is too great to pass up, and besides – I always discover the most interesting blogs in November as I scour the web for inspiration.

And now that I’ve created an elaborate graphic to mark the occasion, I guess I’m locked in! Feel free to use the image above on your own blog if you’re participating this year, or throw this one in your sidebar:

(Please save the images to your own server.)

I’ve also decided to donate a couple of prizes to the prize pool. Pending Eden’s approval, I’ll be donating an Aussie-themed food/confectionary pack (to an overseas participant), and an 8×12″ print from my photography portfolio at Scarlet Arts.

So – who’s with me? I’d like to set up a folder in my RSS reader of other bloggers participating in the NaBloPoMo madness. Leave me a comment if you’ve signed up!

I’ve been reviewing my 101 Things in 1001 Days list today, and trying to figure out how I can speed things along a bit. I’m happy with my progress so far, but I am aware that there are some larger-scale challenges on that list that remain untackled. I really want to make a dent in it this month.

So I have identified some of the items that I can cross off entirely by the end of the month, with a little planning.

001 Weight loss goal #1 (50%)
The goal here is to lose 50% of the excess weight that I am carrying. I was doing really (really!) well at this in the first half of the year, and then Winter set in. Winter and Carbs. I’m pretty sure that I can finally knock this one over this month, but it’s going to take some really hard work. And if it turns out to be too ambitious, at least it will happen the month after.

022 List 101 things that make me happy
A list to refer to when I’m feeling blah. I’m a pretty happy person, so I’m not sure why it’s taking me so long to finish this off. I think it’s hard to list some of it without sounding dumb!

036 Visit 5 different Melbourne markets
I just need to find one more! Shouldn’t be hard in a city like this.

065 Improve my photography workflow
I have set up Lightroom to handle my photo library, and it is delicious. Now I just need to set up all my Photoshop shortcuts and actions, and I can consider this item complete.

082 Post a photo/day for one month
Already started! I’m really enjoying digging through my archives for old gems, so this task is an easy one.

The true strength of my list is the number of “work in progress” items that I have on the go. I need to remember to invest in the larger projects so that they are easier to tackle in the future, so here are some ideas for how I might do that this month.

005 Learn 15 new vegetarian recipes (2/15)
In truth, I’ve been cooking with less meat lately and have probably already covered this item. The true aim of this task was to set out to learn new recipes, so I’m not going to cheat!

008 Learn to cook a recipe from 30 different countries (0/30)
How can it be that I haven’t started a challenge this fun yet? I need to think ahead, and get more creative!

030 Learn to identify 5 new constellations (1/5)
Easy! I have Google and clear skies. Might tackle one tonight.

038 Visit 10 local art galleries (1/10)
It would not surprise me if there was one walking distance from where I work. I’m going to get proactive about finding out.

Visit 25 new restaurants (6/25)
I expect to tackle this one solidly when our family comes to stay at Christmas, but there’s no reason why I can’t start now. We eat out a few times a month, we just need to start venturing beyond our usual haunts.

060 Get rid of 101 material items (0/101)
I have an enormous eBay pile that is begging to be re-homed. It all needs to go before Christmas, so there’s no reason to put this off.

Obviously I won’t tackle every one of these tasks, but it’s helpful to see them all in one place and know that any of them are possible. I’m sure that blogging here every day will help me to refer back to this list and report on my progress, so it will be interesting to see where I stand at the end of the month!

Another goal: to write up the completed tasks that I haven’t yet blogged about! I got a little bit behind a couple of months ago, and I would like to start December on top of things. At least I have some backup ideas for when I don’t know what to blog about!

Here are a few other bloggers who are participating in NaBloPoMo. Go and show them your support!

Antithete
Bread and Cheese
Cherry Blossom Adventures
Holly

Thanks to the few people who sent me concerned emails today when they noticed my site was looking screwy. Something broke when I upgraded to WordPress 2.5, and it took about an hour to get everything running again. It’s funny how it only takes 10 mins to upgrade WordPress 4 out of 5 times, but the exception to the rule is always a massive shitfight.

Anyway, I’m so far quite impressed with the latest version, except for two things. The first (minor) annoyance is the ugly colour scheme, which will no doubt be tinkered with further down the line. The second issue is a bit more serious, and I imagine it has affected other bloggers out there even more than me.

The first sign that something was wrong was when my 101 Things in 1001 Days page led me to a 404. None of the other pages were broken, so I assumed that something was screwy in my database. Strangely, I could edit the page without any problems from the WordPress Dashboard, so I knew the page itself wasn’t damaged.

Further experimentation has led me to believe that this version of WordPress cannot handle numerical URLs properly. Here’s the URL of my 1001 Days page:

http://www.scarletwords.com/1001/

I experimented with a couple of other pages, changing their “page slug” to numerals. Here’s what happened:

http://www.scarletwords.com/elizabeth/harry/
This URL performs well.

http://www.scarletwords.com/elizabeth/123/
Changing the previous page slug from “harry” to “123″ confused it into displaying /elizabeth

As far as bugs go, it could be more serious. However, I’m in a situation where /1001 happens to be the most linked-to URL on my website, and changing it would be fairly damaging as far as traffic is concerned.

Workarounds include setting up redirects and updating all my internal links (which is a big job, as I link to it often in posts), but I imagine that this is beyond the scope of some of the more popular blogs. I’ve decided to live with the 404 error for the next day or so while I try to investigate a real solution.

It should be noted that URLs with number and letter combinations work fine, such as my 100facts page.

Has anyone else come across this bug? Heard of any solutions? I’ll update this post later with any information I find.

I know it’s been really quiet around here, but this week has been insane. I’ve started a new job, and am still adjusting to leaving the house each morning when it’s still dark. How I will cope in the dark and cold of Winter is beyond me.

I’ve made a decision to not write about work here, except in a very general way. There’s a good chance that some people at work will become friends over time, and so I don’t want to put myself in an awkward position by writing about anyone here. And besides, I really don’t want to be dooced, so I’ll play it safe for now.

I’m planning to set up “blog by email” today, so that I can write posts for my site during the quieter periods at work during the week. I’m not comfortable actually loading up my domain at work yet, but I don’t want another week to pass without any posts!

Don’t be alarmed if you see strange things around here while I’m testing it all out.

Meanwhile, it’s been nice to have a chunk of money show up in my bank account already! Yesterday I braved the 40C heat and bought some new plants, and then spent the afternoon repotting them. It was so much fun getting my hands dirty that I then weeded the garden and pulled out a vine that periodically tries to strangle one of our trees.

By the time I had made dinner and cleaned up I was completely braindead and fell into bed. Today I slept in until the grand hour of 8am! Working Monday to Friday has turned me into such a pussy.

Anyway.

I’ve been having fun thinking about all the stuff I’m going to buy over the next few months, now that I have a regular income. It feels like I’ve been living on next-to-nothing for so long, that even mundane stuff will be exciting to buy! Items on my wishlist include:

- A big, brightly-coloured watering can
- Cushions for the couches
- A spice rack
- A double stacker saucepan/steamer
- Oversized noodle bowls (for big salads and pasta)
- Blender
- Alarm clock (with an ipod dock?)
- New M.A.C. makeup
- Some cute, pointy-toed shoes with a low heel
- New jeans (!)

And the bigger stuff:

- A bed for the spare room
- A coffee table, so that I can put the blanket box in the bedroom again
- A replacement lens for the one I broke

The first step is getting out of bed again early in the morning, so that they continue to pay me. Guess I’d better get some sleep.

I am pulling my hair out trying to find a plugin that will let me have threaded comments here. Some of them appear to do half the job, but I’m yet to find the solution to my problem.

So far I’ve tried Brian’s Threaded Comments and AJAXed WordPress. I had some success with the latter, but it stripped away all my styling and I had more trouble modifying the template than I usually do.

(Besides, both of these plugins actually do nested comments rather than threaded… although I’d settle for either right now.)

I am beyond frustrated at this point. Are you using something simple and brilliant at your blog? Tell me how!

Please excuse the chaos while I tinker with some new plugins for this site. Things will look a bit wonky today while I test-drive some new features, but should be back to normal tomorrow.

While you’re waiting, leave me a comment and tell me something I don’t know!

In this age of RSS, my blog reading is handled almost exclusively by Google Reader. It has become part of my morning routine to read the posts in my “daily reads” group, just as regularly as I check my email. The rest of my subscriptions are categorized by subject, and when time allows I catch up on everything else.

As a result, my feed reader has almost completely replaced my bookmark list. If I come across a blog I really like, I subscribe to the feed so that I never miss an update. If a blog seems interesting, but I’m low on time, I’ll subscribe to the feed and learn about them over time. It’s a great way to figure out which blogs are holding my interest, and which ones have failed to “grab” me over a period of a few weeks.

I imagine that most bloggers would prefer their readers to assess their blogs over time this way, rather than making an 8-second judgment call, or forgetting to go back. That’s why I’m always surprised when I come across a blogger who only provides an excerpt of their posts in an RSS feed.

The truth is, I’ll unsubscribe from blogs who only make excerpts available. My RSS reader gives me the luxury of just moving on to somebody else’s feed, and with so many other blogs to choose from it’s not likely that I’m going to make an exception for yours. It’s not that your blog isn’t worth reading, it’s just a symptom of being oversaturated with blogs that are just as good as yours.

There are only so many hours in the day, and more blogs being written than I can ever hope to read. Unless you’re writing about something spectacular and truly original, I’m probably not going to make an exception for you.

And that means we both miss out.

It’s worth pointing out that I am often clicking through to peoples’ actual sites to read comments, leave comments, or to remind myself of an older post. I’ve heard the argument that RSS readers can slow traffic to your site, but in my experience it works the other way. Forcing people to work harder to read your site won’t attract viewers – especially if they’re not even hooked yet.

I just wanted to provide a description of one person’s RSS reader habits, in the hope that other bloggers will see the merit in making their full posts accessible to subscribers. It is really frustrating to add a potentially great blog to my reader, only to find that I’m restricted to viewing the first 50 words.

I mean, look at my first 50 words. Would they have inspired you to click on a link to “read more” and wait for a new site to load? I wrote it, and I know I wouldn’t have kept reading unless it was already in front of me!

I’d love to hear how other people are using their feed readers, and whether there are some good reasons for RSS excerpts that I may have missed. I’m no expert, so tell me what I’m missing!

Want to see what’s stashed in my desk drawers, or what jewellery I wear every day? For the next couple of days I’ll accept any (reasonable) photo suggestions, and will post the results on this blog.

Request as many photos as you like, from big-picture stuff (like a photo of a room) to the mundane (like the current state of my nailpolish). I’ll find a way to honour every request, even if I have to find a creative way to do it!

So what would you like to see? This is your chance to learn something about me that wouldn’t normally find its way to my blog.

This one proves the point that not every lolcat is improved by bad spelling.

So, NaBloPoMo is finally over. I must say, this year it really seemed to drag. I guess this time last year I had more interesting stuff to write about, and finding something to say wasn’t a problem. This year there’s been too much other stuff that needed doing, and blogging was way down the list. I still enjoyed making it part of my daily routine though, and I’m sure I’ll do it again next year.

I didn’t use the Randomizer as much as I did last year, nor did I seem to get much traffic from it after the first few days of the month. I’m sure I’ll keep using it over the next month or two to find new blogs, since it’s such a great resource. I hope next year it regains a little of the community spirit that it had last year, maybe this time it was just too big a monster.

Anyway, I intend to keep blogging very regularly to keep up the good habit although it may not be every single day from now on. Might try that ‘quality over quantity’ thing that I keep hearing about!