[I wrote this a while ago, but I have finally updated it with photos.]

I have collected a whole bunch of matchboxes from one of the cafes in the neighbourhood that was kind enough to leave them lying around. They are small (5.5 x 2.5 x 0.7 cms), but you could use bigger ones if you want. I like the fact that they are all the same size, but maybe that’s the anal in me.

I pick up every crumb, sliver and chunk of expensive (handpulled) glass that flies around my table and put it into a labelled matchbox. The ends of stringers also go in there. I store the matchboxes in a shallow plastic container from the local Japanese take-away.

Then whenever you want to pull a stringer of a handpulled glass, tip out the contents of its matchbox onto a graphite marver (eg). Heat up the tip of a rod of the same colour and then use the molten glass to pick up the bits and pieces. If you need to pick up a biggish chunk then push the molten glass as far around the chunk as possible; this seems to minimise the toxic shock. Melt it in, pick up more, melt it, etc. Be careful, avoid creating holes or gaps in the gather. When you have a big enough gather then pull your stringer.

Share on Facebook

So I was finally irritated enough to investigate the Case of the Missing Sidebar.

I think the google gods must have been looking out for me. Y’know? Sometimes you have to enter the perfect search terms to get the information you need. I have done a search before, of course, but my search terms were probably too vague. Anyway this time I googled “wordpress sidebar at bottom of page” which brought up two informative posts, this one and this one. Both of these suggest that the culprit is disagreeable HTML somewhere in one of the posts that displays on the front page of the blog.

Mmm, that’s quite a few posts. At first I tried scanning the post content, but this felt a bit hit and miss, and prone to human error. So what I did then was to “disable” each post one-by-one working backwards starting with the second most-recent post. It helps to open 3 separate windows:

1. one to display the front page;
2. one to display the list of posts;
3. and one to display the post itself.

Drag a post from window 2 to window 3. Change the publication status from “published” to “pending”. Don’t forget to “Update Post”. Refresh the front page in window 1. Has the sidebar reappeared? No, so go to window 2 and drag the next post to window 3. Rinse, and repeat.

I finally found the offending post. It was one in which I had used HTML comment characters to comment out a chunk of text at the end of the post. On the one hand this worked insofar as the text didn’t display (ie, the HTML comment worked) but it confused someone (safari? wordpress?). The sidebar displayed in the correct place once I removed the commented-out text.

Probably one of the morals of this story is to avoid using HTML comment characters in a wordpress blog. Possibly another one is that the old programmer’s trick of slowly excluding sections of code can be used to track down problems in a blog.

Share on Facebook

Recently I’ve been struggling with taking control of my life. Without wanting to bore you with the details I discovered that my time management skills are pretty well non-existent. The result is that I don’t seem to get anything done, I procrastinate about the things that I know I should be doing, and I’m making life pretty miserable for myself and those unfortunate enough to live too close to me.

The words “artistic struggle” spring to mind. But that isn’t really my problem at the moment (and I stress the at-the-momentness of this feeling). I am feeling fairly “creative”, but I am making a big mess of the rest of it: no sales outlets; a still-empty Etsy site; no blog entries; few photos; still haven’t discovered why my sidebar wants to hang out at the bottom of the page; blah etc, blah etc, blah etc.

A few days ago I came to the stark realisation that there were two alternatives: actually try and sell the stuff that I make or give up the idea of making a business of it and confess that it’s all just a hobby and stop harassing myself.

And whilst I’m very tempted by the latter option, I will stubbornly continue to insist that I can earn a living from this.

The solution?
About 12 months ago I became captivated by David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD). At the time I applied parts of the methodology to parts of my life and it helped immensely. For example, now I have a usable and useful filing system (one where I can file stuff, and find it back again); we don’t forget things like dental appointments or to return our library books any more; I have discovered the joy of having neatly labelled boxes containing an amorphous mass of slightly connected stuff; little things like that.

Unfortunately since then the rest of my life has been unravelling.

Okay, as of yesterday, I am taking Control!

I am now GTD-ing my working life too. I installed OmniFocus yesterday and spent last night figuring out how to use it. We’ll see how valuable it ends up being.

I’ve also been reading some articles at 43 Folders, a site devoted to “finding the time and attention to do your best creative work”. The article that has really helped is Procrastination hack: ‘(10+2)*5′. The idea in a nutshell is to spend 10 minutes on one action of a (difficult) project, take a 2 minute break, then spend another 10 minutes on one action of the next project, and to repeat this 5 times in total. (Although project and action are GTD-ish type of terms I hope you get the gist.)

I modified it to three projects (blogging, marketing, mailing list) and am now busy with the third iteration. I started off religiously doing the 10 minutes work, 2 minutes play. After about 40 minutes I had actually made a start on three projects that I’ve been avoiding for months.

The second iteration was easier. And I ended up spending more time on my appointed tasks.

I am now busy with the third iteration of my blogging task. I allowed myself 20 minutes and have just extended it twice.

Voila! a blog entry!

Share on Facebook