Alas! English weather isn’t as pants as we all thought! *cough* OK, it isn’t as bad as I thought. *cough* OK, OK, it’s bad, but there are the odd exceptions. Today, and the previous two days being such exceptions. Why?

We’ve had sunshine! SUN! Suitably warm/mildly hot temperatures! Why… I’m almost tempted to think summer has arrived late! Well, it hasn’t because now it’s all going back to the best of British tomorrow. (Ie, pants.) I say summer has come late because well, last year we all got flooded and this year although the rain fall was much less, the hours of sunshine didn’t improve.

Two years without a real summer! It’s driving this girl crazy…

Any who, enough complaining you English arse. Yes, so woot sun for the weekend. Of course, I only managed to enjoy it (for part of) today, due to the annoyance that is work. Never mind.

So whilst I was working home from work today (keeping in mind today was my day off) a sudden flash of thunder and lightning struck! Oh, wait… no, that was just my brain cranking round some old childhood memories…

You see, whilst it was very sunny and the sky was pure blue (with no clouds in sight) there was a slight chilliness to the temperature. I haven’t experienced those three variables together like that since I was a wee lad. *cough* I mean wee lass…

Many many moons ago yours truly lived in a predominantly Christian village. I know how it sounds, but it’s what I know as my childhood - seems perfectly normal! Any who, due to this religious factor most, if not all residents of this wee little village attended the service on Sundays, every week, without fail.

Yes. That includes me - until my parents started drifting apart from each other.

Now it’s all very queer because quite literally every Sunday morning was the same. Sunny, slightly chilly, but oh so relaxing! I don’t actually remember it ever raining on a Sunday back then. (Peculiar much?).

So this morning, it felt literally the same (oh, and there were Church bells a-ring-a-ding-dinging. Real bells, not the weirdness America has) as back then. So much so that I suddenly felt like I was seven years old and walking to Church with my parents and sister. Then I realised that wasn’t the case and stopped kicking the conkers on the floor, to the relief of the elderly Church-goers walking past me.

Wow. What an exciting post. Crikey, what’s going on?!

I’m tellin’ ya, sunshine does weird things to those English folk. The British aren’t coming, they’re going insane!

(You love us really).

Of all the things to blog about, I choose bloody Firefox 3. If you wonder why that’s a bad thing, well, if you thought everything that happened during the Hibernation was bad, what’s happened since that blog post has been worse. Much worse. Gah, I really guess no one did say life would be easy.

Any how, I don’t want to get into it now, there’s time yet for all that malarky to erupt.

So yes. Today is the day all fluffy-tailed, pointy-eared, black-pawed critters have been waiting for. The official non-beta public release of Firefox 3! Now where’s those rats I just caught for my celebratory dinner…

Oh! I’m sorry! You’re not a fox! You’re not even remotely fiery! D’oh! Neither am I, but don’t tell my mother…

Actually, technically maybe I am. Only in the sense that I’ve been using Firefox as my primary web browser since mid-2003. Not because I smell like wet dog. And rabbits.

So any who, getting to a somewhat relevant point (or not). The young buds at Mozilla decided that the release of Firefox could also be a record attempt at the number of downloads erm, downloaded in 24 hours. Sound kinky or what? Nah, I didn’t think so either. I did get a bit excited though, to the point a little bit of wee came out…

That day is today and YOU have less than 24 hours (probably less than 20 by the time I get this thing bloody finished) to take part in the record attempt! So go download it, or not if you’re not a firefox like moi.

Ah-hem. Well, good luck! Hmm, that’s not so fair, you do have a somewhat high chance (I think) of actually downloading it… just don’t put any money on it. Hell, I’m writing this post using it! But it took about an hour to actually get it on my machine!

Why? Well, everything at the Firefox 3/Mozilla HQ went kapoof shortly after the 24 hour period
‘started’. Oh you know, it’s that typical thing of every bloody person being ruddy impatient and running to the download page to get their hands on the dirty-pawed product. So what happened? The servers said no. Literally. Spreadthefox.com, getthefox.com and the main Firefox page at mozilla.com went loopy. Well, they just didn’t load actually.
Which was no fun! Anyway, after some weird goings-on, some chillin’ tunes from Stereophonics and some farting, things finally worked for me. So yeah, I have it. It’s kinda kooky if you ask me! The main reason I got it seems to be holding up - it does seem faster.

Now don’t go bloody shouting at me because I said that. ‘Course it’s bloody faster you nimwit! Well I don’t care what you think. I needed it to be faster because Firefox 2 went loco on this machine, and thankfully it is. That’s all I wanted. I don’t care about plastic, silver-shiny, new-car-smell features that might also be inherent. I’ll find those later.

So if you are also a Firefox user, or just want to fill up your family’s computer with random downloads then, with a bit of patience, you should go download it baby! It’s no Speed Racer, but it’s certainly speedier than FF 2.

Some screen captures of the fun you might have instore if you do decide to download. Spot the difference between the first and second capture and you win a ‘keen eye’ award*.

* The keen eye award does not actually exist. Well, it does because what I’ll say to you, if you do spot the correct difference, is ‘keen eye’. That’s it. Awwshum, non?

Oh, psst… you can also make yourself a certificate to say you downloaded it! Sweet! Here’s my certificate (PDF).

Have you ever wondered how a website owner could slip into hibernation, without a word and seemingly disappear from the world of all things online and meaningful? Well, let me list some possibilities that may have occurred for such hibernation to occur.

1. You can start, by failing to think of something for your series entitled Wednesday Weevils, and post some half-nonsense poop about FooFoo’s. Although you did wonder if anyone knew about any cool photos sites besides Flickr, it really wasn’t a real Wednesday Weevil. In the end, you managed to upgrade your Flickr account so the 200 photos maximum has vamooshed.
2. You can then follow up that post, with a completely pointless and stupid entry written in a pirate accent, that simply celebrates the smiley on the Internet.
3. A few posts fall in, apologizing for lack of time. Even some fiction-sounding material works it’s way in.
4. Then you jet off to the grand US of A.
5. Whilst you manage two twitter updates (1, 2) during this trip, they mark the true beginning of the full-on Hibernation Period.

What happened, you ask, during this Hibernation? The gathering of acorns? The deep-sleep slowly fueled by thick layers of insulating fat? Well… here’s what might have taken place, immediately after the return to gloomy England.

1. You’ve had such a brilliant time abroad, your last night was filled with tears. You yearn to stay and live there, once again. Your life in England cannot compete with the hope the two week vacation put unknowingly in your heart. You, along with your sister and father all get drunk on delicious wine, wiping away the tears, but fail to ease the constriction of your chest muscles.
2. Upon returning to your home country, and the building you call ‘home’ you feel empty. You want to be back with your father, and the little lion dude. At least you have the pumpkin princess to snuggle with.

3. In the next month, you wake up to reality, and realise things aren’t that bad. Yes, you want to live there, but actually, your home country is better to study in for your chosen degree. One day you will live there again, just not as soon as your heart wishes for it to be so.
4. You apply for university, to start in autumn 2008. Your at-the-time first choice offers you a place three days before Christmas. It is your first offer out of four to come. You smile, laugh, and jump around the house like you’ve never done so before in your life.
5. Christmas 2007 is spent is your own company, and that of the snuggly one. Your one present is that of your university offer, but nothing else could have been sweeter to receive.
6. Back at college in January, your closest friend, who happens to be male and three years older, turns into your own private stalker.
7. January also takes you to see one of your favourite bands you’ve loved for the longest of times.
8. For the next couple of months he is chasing you to the train station, getting on your train home, and demanding your attention and time in a completely obsessive and entirely non-friendly way.
9. When your father comes to visit from the USA to take you to a visit day at your first-offered university, you are glad for the break away from the stalker. You hope the distance and time apart will soothe difficulties.
10. Things get worse. Your stalker ‘attempts’ to commit suicide three times at your town’s train station. He never jumps. He just sits there until the police are called out to pull him off the bridge and arrest him.
11. You have been followed and chased down that many times, you no longer feel safe in your home town, or the city of your college to walk alone. Although you do it anyway, constant looking over your shoulder, and panic attacks start setting in.
12. Finding comfort in a female friend, one year older than yourself, and your course tutor at college, things improve as the stalker has to leave you alone, else feel the wrath of those silently supporting you.
13. During this time you have received all four university offers. You visited one uni and hated it. You visited another and decided this one would be your first choice, over your previously preferred university. The long term benefits of this one outweigh the short term desires of the previous one.
14. You turn nineteen.
15. A couple of weeks into April, you manage to resolve things with your stalker, but you lay down ground rules for the newly-forged friendship.

So there’s the basics of it. The possibilities that may have occurred to render a website owner in a hibernative state. Of course there’s no reason to think they did happen, they just might have…

OK guys and gals, here’s the point of this post. I was pretty much in hibernation from the internet for a good number of months. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and I would bet that it isn’t going to be the last.

Everything listed above did happen to me, amongst other non-interesting things. Whilst some of it may sound… undesirable, it inadvertently strengthened other parts of my life. Some of the things that happened during the stalkerish stage were enjoyable in the sense that I had huge adrenaline rushes and for once in my life I could be loud and shout and swear at someone at the top of my lungs. It was great! I’m normally rather calm, quiet and content and so this experience let me break out of that mold a little bit!

I plan on writing about particular things listed above in their own sanctity of individual posts in the coming weeks. I thought it may be an idea to sketch out a basic ‘outline’ of what life has been like for me since November ‘07.

Rather interesting, eh? Actually, not really. I’m sure there are more interesting things six months could have been filled with! But it has been one hell of a ride, for me, that’s for sure!

I’m slowly crawling back into the world of online things.

Some things that have changed regarding online things:

• My oceanus-anima.com email addresses have been spammed to death. I no longer use them, and now enjoy the comforts of Gmail. (englishocean at gmail.com is my email address).
• I am using someone else’s theme for oceanus-anima.com. This is a first ever in my history of website owning since 2003.
• My iBook broke. Then my computer broke. Then my website broke. My iBook is forever broken. My computer just about usable. My website back up and waiting for me to use it again.

If there is not one thing you can possibly comment upon, and/or relate to then… well… that really can’t be the case, surely? If so, can you explain? At least welcome me back into the online world.

Now, some of you may have been ‘in the know’ during April Fools Day, and already discovered/encountered this BBC video, but nevertheless, it’s still worth a watch!

To those that aren’t in the know, this is just a short clip of a fake documentary regarding flying penguins! Honestly, if you have 1 minute and 31 seconds to spare you really should give it a go.

I realise April Fools Day was a long time ago now… but still. Just watch it already!

I had a very long, rambling post for this. Actually, I still have it, I just unpublished it. Why? I very much doubt that you are that interested in what went wrong.

The basics? As short as possible…

This site is hosted via DreamHost, which offers one-click installs of WordPress. I have always used this method for installing WordPress on this domain. By doing this, I can also have the DreamHost bot do upgrades via another one-click process.

When WordPress 2.5 came out, I was eager to sink my teeth into it, and so did the usual upgrade via DreamHost.

What resulted was my site, neither the front or back end of WordPress, showing up or working. Something went astray somehow.

I ended up doing about six million installs of WordPress on another domain, a sub domain here, and locally on my computer (via one-click and manual installs).

However nothing got WordPress working fully functional as it should have been on this domain.

Then it came to me. When I’d installed WP on a sub domain, I’d actually created that sub domain specifically for such reason, rather than plonk it on some random pre-existing sub domain. I remembered skimming past on the page that the sub domain was PHP 5.2.(x). Hmm weird, I thought.

Considering my domain is coming up to two years, I felt sure it wasn’t that version of PHP. And it wasn’t. It was 4.4.(x). Ah. I said to myself. Is this the answer?

So I quickly updated this domain to 5.2, reinstalled WP 2.5 (first manually) and thankfully things worked perfectly! I decided I still trusted DreamHost’s bot, so reinstalled it via the one-click.

To this day I don’t understand what happened. WordPress doesn’t require this higher PHP version, so what did cause the stinky poops I don’t know.

The one unfortunate thing of upgrading via an ‘external program’ is that you can quite possibly be arrogant enough to not read the upgrade instructions or guidance notes. I certainly never did. I just went ahead and clicked ‘Upgrade’.

But from this experience, I’ve learned how important it is to backup your WordPress database before upgrading. To not do this, is pure ignorance, and sets you up for complete disaster that no one can pity you for, or help with.

Thankfully, I had backed up my database randomly the last time I did anything on this blog. DreamHost automatically backs up your files before upgrading, but I don’t believe it does anything with the database.

I realise this post is extremely non-descriptive in what exactly happened, but, hey, let’s just move on, and take joy in the fact everything is now working!

Thankfully, I am very happy with WordPress 2.5. Whilst I am aware some bloggers have issues with things, I have yet to find something that I dislike, or am not fond of. Perhaps all this hassle has left my judgement of WP 2.5 locked in a jar? Hmm. No bother!