James Brown

James Brown, originally uploaded by Mal Burns2007.

An early photo of the late James Brown.

You may have noticed things are going a bit odd in this blog - some posts arriving in the wrong order. Take my word for it - others haven't been getting here at all! Hopefully I'll have it all sorted as the new year starts for real. Because the new templates system here at Blogger is incompatible with most of my "fast-publishing" buttons, the holiday posts didn't happen as planned.

I'm now attempting to re-adjust those that will work. Obviously I can post when logging in direct, the system works fine again for video links via YouTube and this post is coming via Flickr. The main problem is that I no longer have a "Blog This" button that allows for publishing clickable links from a browser, so all that kind of thing has moved to Bloglines and Hotlinks (see links at left).

I forsee this blog becoming more of a central hub pointing to others for the time being. The template has allowed me some exiting new features however. Links in the sidebar now have active "pop-up" previews to help you save wasted clicks. My vod-pod module now has quick access to more clips and documentaries that would be practical on this page. Best of all, there are two new audio features.

Both here and in the annex you will find a nifty box that allows you to record messages and comments with your microphone. These are emailed to me immediately and, if worthy, will be published to my podcast.

The podcast blog itself can be linked to via the Annex link or at Bloglines. Each "cast" is a separate file and entries show up in standard RSS feeds. Talking of which, because Bloglines is based on an RSS system, I'm told the sidebar doesn't always display properly in some browsers. If this is the case, a non-RSS duplicate list is again in the Annex here.

If all this sounds confusing, it's just as bad for me. The idea in having so many facilities online is to give better theme-based functionality to each of them. It's happening - but slowly.

Meanwhilem a happy new cycle to all of you.

Later.