Just a quick note that the server is going through some updates & upgrades for the next couple of hours, so service may be interrupted - although I don’t expect any black spots for more than 5 minutes or so during this period up to 8pm UK Time (12pm Pacific, 3pm Eastern). Thanks for baring with us!

Don’t worry, you haven’t been shipped off to a dodgy site instead of examining your regular tech menu. Instead of monkeys we’re all about snakes now. The site, in case you didn’t notice (I won’t blame you) now resolves to “techsnake.com.” The reasoning for the interested (or bored) is below:

Firstly no-one really understood skymonkey. It’s an interesting name but doesn’t mean anything. TechSnake is obviously about technology, and a new character, “Harvey”, will be making his appearance known soon!

Secondly it appears domain squatters have decided that rather than read about tech news, the readers of skymonkey would rather gamble, or click on Google ads to do with Sky television. Skymonkey.com & .co.uk were stolen away and are now in the hands of the other side. I know that nobody (especially readers) wants confusion and I certainly don’t want to be associated with that stuff. So rather than compete, I thought I would move the traffic away from the name, and towards a new image - that of the Tech Snake. Snakes because they’re slippery, cunning and always hunting out their prey - kind of what I do on a daily basis trying to get the best news and interviews for you, the readers of the site.

So there we are - news over. Enjoy the tech. Also worth noting is a great post by Dazza today, about the different gaming engines available in the market today and what we can expect for the future. Plus why not check out the archives on the left? Some of the news is topical but it’s normally always interesting too! Enjoy!

Paul Godden

Just a quick note to let everyone know, that due to some server work and hardware upgrades, the skymonkey.org website will be a little patchy from 9PM tonight until about 6AM tomorrow morning - that’s in British Summer Time (1PM-10PM PDT, 4PM-1AM EDT). Once done, everything should be good for a while! If you visit skymonkey.org during these times and you can’t get onto the website, please leave it for 10 minutes or so and give it another go. Thank you for your patience!

Don’t look now, but the site is going to change. Not a content change, just a boring “theme” change. I get bored easily, so I’ve just been working on the style of the website - since the latest “dark” theme.

I didn’t think the style fitted with what we’re all used to. I didn’t think it felt modern - it felt more like a forum (not to say forums are badly designed - just that there’s a place for them and us.) Because of this I’ve made some major design changes to skymonkey.org. When it happens (sometime this weekend) I think you’ll all like the change. Thanks for sticking with skymonkey.org

A quick post - while searching for a good “related posts” plugin for Wordpress, I stumbled upon this website that lists some very good and useful plugins resource for Wordpress users. And I found the plugin I was looking for too..[SHOW ME]

Just a short post to say that today I am moving. And although I don’t usually write personal posts, I thought I’d drop this one in as I’m probably not going to be blogging for a week or so with everything up in the air.

So please, don’t go away and hopefully I’ll be back sooner than I think!

Yeap, a quick post to let you know (if you care) that the ants are dead, therefore the antblog is dead. Oh well. It seems they only last a month or so before they “pop their clogs” to coin a phrase!

Oh well, on with the tech news then…

Well? I think it went pretty well. And yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, the website is ALL WORDPRESSED UP! Yeah! So the blog is now wordpress, and *hopefully* the XML feeds are working and everything is seamless! If you are having problems, comment or send me an email (about/contact section) so I can make changes, although the initial feeling is it >went well<

So, if you want to move your blog to a WordPress blog, take your time, do your research and send me an email if you need help. I've provided a few links below to hopefully help if you're having problems...

[Import Blogger to WP] - Move your posts to WP. Didn’t work for me, did it manually in the end!
[Moving WP] - How to move WP from one directory to another.
[Move the feed] - I think your host needs to be linux (apache) to do this, but works well. Just remember the .htaccess file they talk about goes in your blog directory! I’m pretty sure all is good…!

Well this isn’t really a post about something happening in the big wide world, but it does affect me and will affect you too if you’re reading this.

I’ve been toying with the idea of going over to a WordPress blog for a long time (in fact shortly after I started my blogger blog.) The idea of full customisation, the ability to categorise posts and lots of other cool features really appealled to me. The biggest hurdle though was creating a template that would fit seamlessly into my current website. And that was the scary part..

You may have noticed that my website has matured over the last 3 months or so, and that’s mainly due to me learning how to do things. It started out as an all table design, which was quick and easy to setup, but I quickly realised the constraints you have with tables. For instance, the way they appear differently depending what browser you happen to use. And also the way you can’t get things pixel perfect. So with that in mind I learnt a bit more css, specifially div tags, created a template and started playing about with it. Now for the next step, WordPress, the website has really got to be fully css. You also need to understand and implement php (a scripting language), and also use it for the building of your pages!! More learning damn it!

So next step, try some php. My current British hosting company didn’t provide php support, which basically stopped development for a couple of hours.. =) Within a short time I had signed up to Go Daddy and started to move my site across to the other side of the pond. Same price as my current host but so much more bang for your buck (as they say.) If you’re thinking about moving your site to an American host, do it, use Go Daddy and say I sent you =)

So I’m now at the stage where my website has no index.htm, it’s index.php and everything else is php. And I have the template ready (click the link below to see it’s current incarnation) and hopefully within the next couple of days all will move over to WordPress “seamlessly” (at least, that’s the plan!)

So was it easy? Not really, the learning curve has been steep but, I have to say, rewarding. But being a programmer previously, I think this helped me along a bit! The best benifit though is after making the mods I have a website that is pretty flexible now in design - so as I learn more and create some new graphics, the look can change quickly and painlessly.

SO roll on WordPress, and I think if you’re a regular you’ll quite like some of the cool features in the new blog.

As you may know if you are a regular reader of my ramblings, I am a bit of an avid podcast listener and really enjoy listening on the bus, at home and anywhere else. So when the release of a new social podcasting site for listeners was announced I thought I’d check it out - although I’ve left it a few weeks to settle down first.

The coolest thing I’ve found so far is the ability to search for your favourite podcasts, combine them into a channel and either play them at the site, which is streamed, or create an RSS file or playlist. I’ve taken my channel and dropped it straight into Juice.

I will continue to test over the next week and let you (and the owners) know of any problems I find or tips/tricks in getting the most out of it.

[link]