You might be wondering what this has to do with anything.

Well I’ll tell you (in song! Just kidding)…

I did another “switcheroo” on my web sites, transferring the content from klkerr.com back to klkerr.com, as I did the reverse of a few months ago.

Google must love me.

Anyway, yes, all my posts and pages and other magic slivers of wonder can now be found here, and (hopefully) this will be the permanent home for my inane ramblings from now on.

That is all.

That’s right, new site design time, woo!

Do do do doo do do doooooooooo (<– That’s a fanfare noise, in case you were wondering.)

I’m proud of myself for managing to keep with the previous site design for an entire month; I usually work in hours, not weeks.

This design was picked up by my good friend Google, and while it’s a little less ‘jazzy’ than the previous design, I like it because it’s minimalistic without taking anything away from the content or sidebars.

As a little bonus, I’ve also updated the picture of myself under About Me to something slightly more interesting than the boring author portrait I took off the KLKerr.com web site.

I also noticed a pattern in these pictures when I put them together, and that is how much I seem to like putting things on my head. Whether that’s a self-depricating form of Paper Bag Syndrome (I can’t believe that’s actually real, admittedly only according to the Urban Dictionary, but…) or just the child-like wonder of playing with toys, I’ll leave that for the judges to decide.

Just as an FYI, the dragon head was part of Project: Algonquin, which never came into fruition but which I think we can all agree would have looked cool as fcuk if it had.

Finally, I’ve added a section for NaNoWriMo stats and the all-important word count into the widgets section.

As far as actual work for NaNo goes, I haven’t done a massive amount (shocker), but I have plotted out at least a skeletal outline, which I will be looking to flesh out over the next few days, so it’s all going off now.

Exciting!

After tinkering around for a while, I managed to get it working, and since the tutorial link provided isn’t available right now, it’s Super-Penrefe to the rescue!

I’ve no idea if I’ll do the original tutorial any justice, but if it gets it working, it’s godda be good enough, right?

(NOTE: This tutorial is designed for people using the hosted version of WordPress, and has been setup and tested working in WordPress 3.1)

Step 1: Installation

1. Download the Addon. You can do this from within the WP Admin in Plugins > Add New > Search ProgPress and Install, or you can download manually from here and upload to your plugins directory on your site’s WordPress installation.
2. Once it has been downloaded, activate it. If you’ve installed through the WP Admin, you will be prompted to activate it. If not, find the plugin within the list and click on Activate.

And we’re cooking on gas! But before the plugin will display in your posts or on a sidebar widget, you need to turn on some settings.

Step 2: Basic Setup

1. Go into WP Admin Panel > Settings > ProgPress.
2. If you want to be able to insert progress meters into your blog posts, tick the first box.
3. If you want to be able to insert progress meters into a widget sidebar, tick the second box.
4. To use the plugin’s in-built CSS style for the progress bar, tick the third box (It is generally a good idea to enable the Use Build-In Styles option in the first instance, for the simple fact that it allows you to see the CSS working in the bar [I'll get to this in Step 4]).

Now all you need to do is add the progress bar(s) to your blog!

Step 3: Adding the Code*

1. Go into WP Admin > Appearance > Widgets
2. Drag a Text widget into your sidebar(s), or footer(s), depending on where you want the progress bar(s) to appear.
3. In the content of the widget, enter the following code information:
   <!-- progpress|MeterTitle|MeterGoal|CurrentCount|PreviousCount|CountLabel -->
4. Populate this code with information relevant to your project and update the widget (In my case, it’s <!--progpress|Divided They Fall|100000|41000|20000|words--> – note also that if you want to show the thousand commas, you have to enter them manually)
5. Once saved, this code on the site looks something like this (will vary depending on your own sites’ inbuilt design, for example I use Century Gothic font in a mid grey colour, which has been picked up by the progress bar):

Ta da!

If you are happy with the result and do not want to further customise the look of your progress bar: Congraulations, you’re done! Otherwise, continue onto step 4:

* You can only add a progress bar in this way if you are using a theme that uses widgets.

Step 4: Customising with CSS

WARNING: This step involves editing your WordPress theme. Please backup your theme before making changes, as a wrong line of code can throw the entire system up the wall! Please do not conintue to carry out this step if you don’t have a backup or are confident with basic CSS/HTML code.

1. Go into WP Admin > Tools > ProgPress
2. Untick the Use Build-In Styles button. This tells the plugin to stop using its own CSS style to create the bar.
3. Click Save.
4. Go into Appearance > Editor. Down the right-hand side you should see a list of files, which are used to create your WordPress theme.
5. Click on the file called style.css (should be somewhere near the bottom of the list – it may open automatically but click on it if not).
6. Go to the bottom of this page, and paste the following code into a free space:

div.jcp_pp{margin:0 auto;padding:0;text-align:center;width:200px;}
div.jcp_pp_title{font-weight:bold;}
div.jcp_pp_meter{overflow:hidden;width:100%;height:20px;border:1px solid #000;padding:2px;}
div.jcp_pp_meter div{height:100%;float:left;background-color:#000;}
.widget_text div.jcp_pp{width:90%;}

This code is essentially telling the plugin how you want the progress bars to be designed. Any changes you make to this code will affect the design of the bars.

Examples!

Blue bar with a black background and a (rather hard to see) blue border:

div.jcp_pp{margin:0 auto;padding:0;text-align:center;width:200px;}
div.jcp_pp_title{font-weight:bold;}
div.jcp_pp_meter{overflow:hidden;width:100%;height:10px;border:1px dotted #0f73ac;;padding:2px; background-color:#000000;}
div.jcp_pp_meter div{height:100%;float:left;background-color:#0f73ac;}
.widget_text div.jcp_pp{width:90%;}

Green bar with a light grey dotted border:

div.jcp_pp{margin:0 auto;padding:0;text-align:center;width:200px;}
div.jcp_pp_title{font-weight:bold;}
div.jcp_pp_meter{overflow:hidden;width:100%;height:10px;border:1px dotted #999;;padding:2px;}
div.jcp_pp_meter div{height:100%;float:left;background-color:#090;}
.widget_text div.jcp_pp{width:90%;}

Red Title and Bar with Word Count Text “Hidden” (this isn’t really removing the text, it’s just making it the same colour as the background; if you highlight over it, the text will still be there, but still!):

div.jcp_pp{margin:0 auto;padding:0;text-align:center;width:200px;}
div.jcp_pp_title{font-weight:bold;font-size:8pt;color:#900;}
div.jcp_pp_meter{overflow:hidden;width:100%;height:10px;border:1px solid #000;;padding:2px;}
div.jcp_pp_meter div{height:100%;float:left;background-color:#900;}
.widget_text div.jcp_pp{width:90%;font-size:1pt; color:#FFF;}

Any questions, feel free to comment below, otherwise enjoy your new progress bar!

^_^

See, I’ve been pretty lax recently in getting any kind of writing practise in, and to be honest, I think it’s starting to show, but I’ll spare you the details of that for another time.

Before I could get into the swing of things, I wanted a cup of tea and to watch an episode of the Big Bang Theory. I resuscitated the MacBook long enough to pull the work I had off Scrivener to put into Word, while deciding I also had time to watch some episodes of Fringe, so I watched two of those, all the while adding nothing to the whole writing thing.

After that, I strode upstairs with sheer will and determination to get to work. I sat down at my computer, opened up my e-mails and downloaded the documents I sent to myself. Around that point, I remembered that I’d recently picked up a copy of the Inception score, so I put that on, and spent about half an hour just listening to that, really feeling the song and started thinking about NaNoWriMo, although I didn’t actually write anything down, so I can’t really count this as progress, either.

While the music continues, I decided that the blog’s design needed an overhauled, and therein spent four hours tweaking the HTML and CSS of a new blog style (well, technically re-using an old style, but…anyway, it’s the one you see here –>).

Now it’s quarter to one in the morning, and I’m writing a blog about writing exactly 0, that’s ZERO, words, doing not one jot of the organisation that I told myself I was going to do, while watching The Animaniacs.

Looks like I’ll get to work on my organisational overhaul tomorrow.

The only think I’m still toying with is the logo. It’s not quite “me”.

Anyway, that’s all. Go about your business. Nothing to see here.

EDIT: Yeah, so this was a huge lie. I’ve changed it about six times since then -_-

Oh well!

True story.

Because I’m overworked, unappreciated and underpaid at my current day job (as if I could write to pay the bills HA), I’m trying to dabble in online merchandising.

Everything I make will still be vampire-related, because–let’s face it–vampires are awesome.

So far I’ve only made two really half-decent things: the mug and some postcards.

I’m going to be stretching these feeble sacks of flab that I should be calling creative muscles in the coming days/weeks/months/whenever, so hopefully I should be creating something with more substance soon.

Watch this space!

It all started when I saw a Photoshop tutorial on adding grunge effects to images, and I went a little bit extreme with it. The outcome–in the likely event that I have changed the design again since then–is this.

Hope you like it, and if you don’t…screw you, it’s not your site =)

In other news, I’ve spotted another Headset of Doom in an episode of Friends (the one where Phoebe gets married; the headset Monica is wearing on the rehearsal night, NOT the one she gives to Phoebe).

I’ve also embraced my inner geek recently and purchased a Red XIII action figure. He’s so purdy, although a friend of mine rightfully pointed out he does look a bit “too badass”, since the character of Red XIII was pretty much the most docile of all the characters in Final Fantasy VII.

(Note: In case there are those of you out there who know about this action figure, you may be wondering where Cait Sith is. He’s on my car’s dashboard. Looking awesome. I bought Red with the intention of putting him there, but he’s just too big.)

I know this post has gone off at a complete tangent, but anyway, here are two related life stories about me and Red XIII and Final Fantasy VII:

1/ I know that ‘XIII’ means ’13′ in Roman numerals. Even in 1997, when I first got my chubby little hands (they probably weren’t chubby, even in 1997) on Final Fantasy VII, I would have known that XIII meant 13. However, for some totally unknown reason, when I first came across Red in the Shinra building, in my head, I called him Red X3. At least I got half of it right. Even now, 13 years later (13 years! 13! Spooky!) I still call him Red X3. I think it sounds better, anyway.

2/ I got the game shortly after its 1997 UK release. Final Fantasy VII was one of the reasons (if not the reason) I demanded a PlayStation for Christmas that year. I vaguely remember seeing the advert on TV (it showed the part where Cloud fell from the second reactor explosion, before he met Aeris), and being all “OMG I totally want that!” (Although I wouldn’t have said OMG, because this was 1997 and I we didn’t have Internet acronyms back then…except maybe LOL; that’s been around since Jesus times. Jesus LOL’d). Final Fantasy VII is still one of my top 5 favourite games of all time (in amongst World of Warcraft (of course!), Abe’s Oddysey and Tomb Raider II (didn’t like the original Tomb Raider – I think Lara’s odd-shaped boobies unnerved me). Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, so I played Final Fantasy VII like a trooper after I bought it. I still play this game, having previously played it via emulator and the old, scratched to buggery disks, and more recently re-purchasing it for the PSP. I must have completed it about five or six times, but on the second go, having learned that Red’s real name is Nanaki – and having the mental capacity of a six-year old at the time – I decided to have a bit of fun with the names (which, for those of you who don’t know, you can change for all the playable characters). For example, I called Cloud ‘Dick Head’, Tifa was ‘the Bitch’, and Aeris was ‘Big Bum’ (my personal favourite, since I never really liked Aeris, mostly because she was all up on Cloud, even though I made it abundantly clear during my multiple choice answers that Cloud carried wood for Tifa), which all led to side-splitting conversations in-game (well, OK, not anymore, but in 1997, when I was 13 (13 again! It’s a sign! The apocalypse is coming! The End is Nigh!), this was like comedy gold). Anyway, I called Red X3 ‘Nanaki’. Aside from the fact that you can imagine your own story to explain why Red says you (the player) can give him any name you like, yet if you call him his actual name, the universe doesn’t implode. So then why, in amongst these positively hilarious names, did I give Red X3 the only serious name? All of this effort amounted to one text box in the 120 hours or so of play that, when prompted during a scene in Rocket Town, Red says the line… ‘[My name is] Nanaki, also known as Nanaki.’ – as for the other names (Cid and Vincent in particular), by the time I’d gotten back into the game, I’d run out of clever ideas (and swear words…again, I was 13…I wouldn’t have dreamed of using words like f*ck, on the off-chance my mother might have read it on the TV screen), Dick Head and Big Bum was about as creative as it could get.

Finally, steering the train of thought (even though you can’t steer a train…) back to writing, I made a few minor startling discoveries relating to my own names, when I most recently picked up Final Fantasy VII on the PSP.

When Cloud fights against President Rufus Shinra before leaving Midgar, his guard dog is called Dark Nation. In the original sequel book (which might still be a sequel, just not in series one), Dark Nation was the name I gave to the demon that could bend history.

When the party moves through Nibelheim and travels through the mountains, they come across a monster called the Materia Keeper. If one (or more) of your party has the Enemy Skill materia equipped, he or she could learn the Trine spell. Hmm, Trine, now where have I heard that before? Oh, yes! Aisen’s lieutenants are the Trine! It would appear the most feared living vampires in my story’s history are named after a lightning spell. And not even a very good lightning spell. It’s fair to assume that this naming is merely coincidence, but the same can’t really be said for Dark Nation, since it’s such an unusual name.

So there you have it. Names I’ve shamelessly (although, until recently, subconsciously) stolen from a video game. Maybe I should just rename the Trine to Dick Head, Bitch and Big Bum…

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Not assuming here you don’t know what old Ed’s famous poem is, of course

My favourite is the Simpsons version, mainly because James Earl Jones is the narrator, and also just because it’s awesome.

What’s my point? Well I’ve decided to use one of the Somatic icons for the site. And can you see (next to the domain name in the address bar ;p )? That’s right; it’s a raven! You can find these Somatic icons and others like them over at the Icon Factory.

I don’t proclaim to be much of a techie, although it’s generally assumed that that’s what I am.  Family from the four corners tend to call on me when they need an e-mail setting up, when their internet is down, or they want to learn about “this ‘ere Facebook”.

I don’t know the first thing about the Internet, or much technology in general, other than “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”, and I don’t particularly want to.  But god damn if I don’t like to tinker.

No, scratch that, I love to tinker.  ‘Effing LOVE to tinker. Web sites, HTML and the other jazzy bits that go into web design (but not Flash, no, no, no, no, thank you), learning how the codes come together to create a ballsy site, I love it all.  That’s why my site’s never the same for longer than 5 minutes. I’m a mega nerd like that.

So yeah, back to tonight. I decided I wanted to be able to have image galleries for my blog.  That is, you click on a thumbnail picture or a text link and it gives a bigger picture. Sounds simple, right?

I started at 17:30. By 19:00, I’d cracked open the wine. It’s now 20:00 and I finally have it right. It’s still not right, but I’m not going to tell you exactly what’s wrong with it, because you’ll never guess unless you’re an absolute pedant, which I’m going to guess you’re not.

And to be mega nerdy, today I learned:

• There are different types of permalinks within a blog. The ones I am using now are commonly known as “Pretty” permalinks.
• A .htaccess file can be copied from a subdirectory to be used to make adjustments to permalinks within a blog when they’re misbehaving.
• Site cookies tend to reset and cause all kinds of hubbub if you reload pages too quickly while making adjustments.
• Smultron is actually a very powerful little HTML editor for the Mac, and is far superior to that NVU thing.
• The WordPress Lightbox plugin is ridiculously easy to setup for image galleries, unless the theme you’re using at the time happens to have a conflict within the Javascript.
• I never want to learn Javascript.

That just about covers it.  Think I’ll finish my wine and retreat back into the hole I crawled out of now.

Who’s That Girl sketch if you don’t know the reference.  Ah, Harry Enfield; that man painted my teen years with his antics.

So anyway, yeah, I’ve tweaked around with the site design YET AGAIN, and I have a lovely modified layout now.

As you can see, there’s a young lady crouching on the top of the page (unless of course I’ve changed the site since then, in which case here‘s what she looked like!), and also to the right.  That’s Catrina. Give her a wave.

Obviously, people will have different ideas of what Catrina looks like.  She looks different on the cover of The Genesis, for example.  That version up there is more what I personally see her to look like.  I made her using Second Life, one of my great procrastination stations. I (will) have an entire page chatting on about Second Life, which you can find here, to read in more detail about what exactly it is, and how I’ve been using it.

Hope you like her!