Back For A While

Over a year ago I wrote what I thought was to be the last post of the jonjo.se blog. My interest in keeping an online diary had waned and I did not feel as if I could write what I truly wanted to. Simply put, I felt censured by the eternity of posting something on the internet. I also felt as if time was against me, and putting effort into this site was stealing time away from my free time: family, writing school books, playing games, watching films and TV series. The list of alternatives to blogging goes on, but collectively these activities are called life.

We recently received an email from Jack, whose company hosts this blog, asking us what we wanted to do with it. I had originally considered saving a pdf of the posts I’d written, then closing down the site. I am now reconsidering this option. Jo wishes I would continue to write, and Freya has just recently expressed an interest in having a blog to noted down her adventures in Star Stable, an online game she has been playing for over six months now. While I am unsure she knows what she wants the purpose of the blog is to be, it may be wise to develop her interest in technology and writing. So the blog remains.

The question is, though, what I shall do with my decision to keep this site alive. When I take a cursory look at the last year without blogging, I realise there is a lot (and I mean a lot) that has occured, much of which is worth digitalising for the future. It would be a fantastic memory for the family to revive my scribblings. We shall see what becomes of jonjo.se.

For the moment, anyway, I am back.

HTML Code: Lists

I don’t know why I’ve never bothered to find out before, especially because it is something I have had need of on numerous occasions, but I’ve finally found out how to mark off a list using HTML. Now I can do this:

  • the beginning of a list
  • the middle
  • the end

    The dots look ugly, but they serve a purpose, and will suffice until some other method comes along to replace it.

  • A Common Language

    The last few evenings have been spent changing the random blog description. I’d previously had a number of famous quotes that would randomly appear every time the front page was accessed, but couldn’t find enough of them. There is, however, an endless stream of difficult, strange and obscure words from the English language, and the hope is I shall learn a few of them this way.

    As I looked for said words, I came across a couple that were similar in pronunciation and meaning in Swedish, which reminded me of others I have learnt through my etymological meanderings. For my own interest, these are:

    yenta: someone, normally a woman, who spreads rumours – jänta: (girl)
    gravid: carrying developing young or eggs – gravid: pregnant
    avgas: aviation gasoline – avgas: exhaust fumes
    screeve: write – skriv: write
    claque: a group of persons hired to applaud at a performance – klack: in football etc supporters

    All of thes above words are more commonly heard in the Swedish language than English, and most come from other languages themselves, so It’s perhaps not so surprising that they exist. But still, eh?

    Minor Facelift

    I’ve been spending (far too much) time today searching for different icons for the nine categories we currently have. Some of them are more obvious than others, but the explanations are as follows:

    Family: Mario and Luigi are brothers, of course.

    Freya: Aril, sister to Link, and a young girl, like Freya.

    Friends: Nintendogs And Friends is the official title to this DS game.

    Game Animal: Donkey Kong is an animal, and he appears in a game or two.

    Jo: Peach is a princess, too.

    Jon: Which other character could I possibly take.

    Links: Hehe, my favourite. It’s Link, from the Zelda series.

    Site: From Pikmin, and only here because the former site icon was a beacon, and looks similar.

    The Word: Goombella, from Paper Mario, is always ready with information.

    New Version Of Serendipity

    The blog software that is powering this blog, Serendipity, has just released a new version, being v1.0. Our friend, Jack, who is kindly hosting jonjo.se, upgraded yesterday, and just looking at some of the new additions to the software makes me mightily impressed.

    There won’t be too many changes to the front end, but I’ll be playing around a bit with various plugins over the next few months, to see if there’s anything I can use to my advantage.