2 Days to Go

Hey Guys,

Well here's my first post...

In case you hadn't already guessed from the title and the date, I haven't actually left for anywhere yet. It's Wednesday today, although only by about 45 minutes, and I don't leave till Friday.
Mainly I'm just putting this post in as a test to see if this blog thing is working properly, I suppose it's also partly to do with the fact that I'm bored but can't be bothered to do anything that's actually constructive. Most of you will know what I'm like, meaning it will all get done on Thursday.

I suppose I'll use this first post to do a bit of housekeeping so to start off. For the less computer literate of you (I'm looking at you Mother, Grandad, Uncle Mick etc.) I will now explain a few of the feature that I have put on the blog, although it will probably be pointless as I know full well it doesn't matter how well I explain it, Mum will either not use them or she'll call Dad and get him to do it for her. Uncle Mick will most likely try but somehow manage to end up on a pornographic site, but then instead of coming back here to try again, he'll stick with the porn (only because of how well photographed it is of course) probably then getting caught by Zoe who will patiently take him back to this site and "slowly" explain to him how to use the blog properly (don't worry when you still can't get it after Zoe's shown you though Uncle Mick, that's why I put the "slowly" in quotation marks.

Anyway I suppose I should get round to telling you what features I have added to the site. After setting up this blog and scrolling through the lists of useless crap you can put down the sides of these blogs, I briefly contemplated such useful additions as the Bombay Stock Exchange Index or the Barack Obama Quote of the day (not that I don't like him, it's just that there are only so many quotes you can have when the only words are "hope" and "change", aside from the relevance issue of course)
Anyway I eventually decided on a few things to add, among these were: satellite photos of where I would be staying, a live weather report of wherever I would be, an indicator which would tell you whether I was online with my Skype phone or not etc. Unfortunately I have only discovered now, whilst writing this post, that the majority of the features which I added to the blog actually don't work. And the one's that do aren't particularly exciting. If you look to the right you will see:

1. A slideshow of pictures of Livingston, as you should have worked out by now, I am in fact not there at the time of writing this and, believe it or not, I did not take those pictures. I will replace the slideshow with my own photos as time goes on. If you are reading this and it's mid-December or something, I'm sure you can work out for yourself that this post may no longer apply. (You'll notice that I told you anyway just in case)

2. Below that there is a blog archive, you can use this to see posts which you have missed in the past. However obviously none of you will need to use that feature unless it's purely to go back and read one of my posts again so that you can rejoice in artful wordsmithery that is my writing. We all know that this reading blog is going to be the highlight of the week for most of you, if your lucky enough to get a post that often. Don't let the length of this post fool you into thinking that I'm going to be sending you all an essay weekly. I'm sure the novelty will wear off very soon and you'll be lucky to receive a photo with a paragraph once a month when Liz pesters me to do it because Mum's been texting her to ask if she's heard from me.


3. There is a clock below that showing the time in both California and Guatemala, I have added the UK time also for those of you who have yet to master looking at the bottom right corner of the screen to read the time.

4. After that there is some tabs which can be used to create something called a "live bookmark". What a live bookmark does is basically tells you whenever there is a new post on the blog. Most of you wont need to use that however as I'm guessing the majority of you don't use a bookmarking service like "Google Bookmarks" or "netVibes" etc. So for you all you need to do is go to this link:

http://richsyearout.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

And press "Subscribe now" you then just press "ok" or whatever when a window pops up.

This will put a live bookmark in your bookmarks/favorites menu in your browser. When you run your mouse over the bookmark in the menu it will show you all the titles of the posts on my blog. If there is a new one, then you know I have added something new to the site.

On the other hand you could do what Mum will almost certainly be doing and check the site every 10 minutes, or even better set it as your homepage.

Anyway, that's it for the features, nothing too complicated, I'll probably add more as I go along, that is if I can find any useful ones that work. Unless of course anyone would like me to add a copy of the periodic table or some fairy art of the day (no Simon, not that kind of fairy).

Ok now before I go I will just clarify one thing. I don't care about the spelling, grammar, vocabulary of my writing or if indeed any of it makes sense. So you needn't bother commenting saying stuff like "Hmmm, well I think you should get a spellcheck feature on there" or anything like that.

Right, that's it for the first post, Ive wasted a good 45 minutes on this now so I think it's served it's purpose. I'll start posting properly when I've been i California for a bit.

Later