I am way more excited about this than I ought to be. Avatars are back on this blog! Check any post where comments have been posted to see what they look like.

I can’t really remember why I originally removed them. Probably because the Gravatar servers were too slow / permanently down. Since Automattic acquired Gravatar though, there is a renewed confidence in the system that lets you use the same avatar across multiple websites. So I am giving it a bash again.

If you haven’t got a Gravatar? You automatically have an identicon! This is a lovely randomly-generated geometric pattern that is unique to your email address. Cool or what?! I’ve been meaning to implement this on my blog for so long — since February in fact — but I didn’t have the time before. I decided to stay up a late this evening to work on the blog a bit, and this is the result.

If you don’t like your identicon, I guess you could always sign up to Gravatar.

Sorry if you’ve been trying to visit this blog over the past couple of days only to find that everything had appeared to have gone tits up.

I had decided a while ago that I was going to change my host and domain registrar. Unfortunately — typical me — I decided to leave everything until the last minute. The last minute just happened to be in the middle of my exams! You know, those exams I’ve been cacking myself about. Dohh! That made the whole thing much more difficult than it needed to be which is why this blog has been in testcard mode for a couple of days.

You’ll be delighted to know that the whole business isn’t even finished yet, but keep your fingers crossed for me, eh? I’ve also had to tinker with the theme a bit. I’ve taken a lot of stuff away from the sidebar, but it was pretty out of date anyway. I’ll be totally redesigning this blog in a week or so anyway, so it’s no great loss. I’ve also taken Gravatars out because they never seem to work any more.

So what news have I had since I last posted? My first exam wasn’t quite as bad as I had feared. My second exam was every bit as bad as I had feared. And my essay mark — yes, that one I messed up the word count on — was way higher than I expected. So a mixed bag all-in-all. I’ve only got one exam left. Thankfully, I will actually have some time to prepare for it! Hopefully this means that I’ll be able to post. Woo hoo!

Psst. Check this out: duncanstephen.co.uk. Don’t worry. I’ll make it non out of date aswell.

Update: On the subject of Gravatars, I’ve just read about Pavatars. It’s a similar idea, but this time instead of being stored centrally like Gravatars, Pavatars are stored on your own webspace. Nice idea. I’ve already got my own one. I wonder if it will catch on like Gravatars did, because it sounds to me like Gravatars are dead. Via Weblog Tools Collection.

Wow, I remember these StorTroopers. Boing Boing says that they’re from “half a decade ago.” Thinking about it, that’s just about right. Sheesh, that makes me feel old.