Personal Ramblings
Sun, 19 October, 2008 – 6:37 pm
Last weekend we had our long weekend away in Dublin. It was nice to get away and not worry about work for a few days, plus besides a bit of rain on the first day, the rest of the time we had semi sunshine. As we'd been to Dublin before we knew what to expect and planned things a little better. Friday was the day to take a wander around the shops as it would be quieter, Saturday we took the tour bus round as it's a good journey (despite doing it before!) and we could jump on and off to grab photos where we wanted, and then on Sunday it was a beautiful morning so we took a walk out to the river and walked down towards the ports instead, admiring the architecture, along with stumbling onto a mini Oktoberfest!
We stayed right by the bus station in Dublin which was so great for the airport bus! The only downside to the hotel was the room was overheated and on the Friday night there seemed to be a group of people, possibly from the bar next door, who decided to congregate right outside the window (we were on the first floor) until about 3.30am! However, other than that it was a nice place and just 5 minute walk from O'Connell street, one of the main streets through the centre.
However, from a combination of the heat in the room, spending a couple of hours on the top of the tour bus on Saturday and the air conditioning on the plan, I came down with a head cold and have spent the past week with my sinuses full up with cold 
It's pretty frustrating as I'd taken this past week off work too, to allow us to get some admin sorted out, work on some personal sites/projects and also go to the zoo, instead I've spent every day under the blanket on the couch watching boring daytime television and just faffing all day. A very unproductive week! So I'll have to grab some time next month if I can, as I've got a few projects going live this month.
Other news… I've started to write twice a week for Blogging Tips. On Sundays I continue my WordPress coding and design posts, and on Thursdays I'll be writing about basic (x)HTML and CSS. As always, all of my posts for Blogging Tips can be found on my Author Page.
Finally, this week I've done a little bit of work on this site. As you're probably already aware, I merged the two blogs on this domain into one, hopefully creating a less confusing and better resource of info for everyone 
I've added in a new fancy plugin called comment info tip which gives you a bit more info on each commentator on the site. If you go to one of my other posts with some comments on, and hover over the name of one of the commentators (besides mine) you'll see how many times that person has commented on the site, the last 3 posts they commented on and, if the plugin can find it, an excerpt of their last post from their site (if it's a blog and uses a standard feed address). I've also created my own logo which can be seen up top ^^. I'm not a designer, so it's nothing special, but I quite like it, and it adds a bit of colour to the header
Glad to hear you had a nice weekend away in Dublin
Boo for the head cold when you came back, however.
Your new logo looks great. A little bit of colour always brightens things up.
I noticed on some of your other posts recently that it shows your trackbacks in the comments. I remember we were talking a little while back about how, despite having trackbacks enabled in WordPress admin, they weren't showing. How did you get that working in the end? I've been searching for days on how to get trackbacks showing in my comments for days without any luck.
By Sam on Sun, 19 October, 2008
Cheers Sam. Yeah the cold has been a bit crap
In regards to the trackbacks, I actually didn't do anything! They just suddenly started working again for me.
Are you not getting trackbacks at all? You can obviously see these in your Manage -> Comments section in the admin. If yes then you just need to make them show in the comments file on your theme. However, if you're not getting trackbacks showing up in the admin then something's restricting them completely.
Hopefully it's just your theme not displaying them. Only other reason I can think of (in my limited knowledge of trackbacks) is that your host is not allowing the xmlrpc file to execute properly, which I think is what deals with the trackbacks (but I could be wrong!)
By Sarah on Sun, 19 October, 2008
Loads of people I know have had or are coming down with this rotten cold. I've got it now – just praying it doesn't develop into the full-blown kind with sinusitis, but I know it's just a matter of time before it does.
Thanks for the trackback info. I know of a few posts on friends blogs that link to some of my blog posts (see this from my stats package) but the trackbacks don't appear in my comments at all, even when looking through the Manage > Comments section. I have enabled everything I can think of enabling, but still no show. A shame really as I do like to see trackbacks in comments to see who's linking to my stories (without having to delve deep into stats packages!).
By Sam on Sun, 19 October, 2008
Sam – this is why you shouldn't leave the house. You catch everyone else's germs
However, I credit the heat in our hotel room to this cold. It was cold outside yet so warm in the room that we couldn't sleep under the blanket. Eventually we had to have a standing fan going all night to let us sleep comfortably, and I'm guessing all of that didn't help.
Sounds like your trackbacks are not as they should be. Couple of things to check in case they've accidently been switched off. Is your blog set up to allow trackbacks by default, and when you write a post, check if the checkbox is ticked to allow trackbacks for that particular post.
I'll have a look around to see how else they could get switched off or stop working. I think if the blog is set to allow them then it's down to a file not running or being blocked.
By Sarah on Mon, 20 October, 2008
Ugh, an overheated room would definitely mess with your body. That sounds very uncomfortable to sleep in. I think I'll wear a surgical mask next time I go out to avoid others germs
I've checked through my blog settings and when writing a post both 'Allow Comments' and 'Allow Pings' are ticked under the Comments and Pings section. In Discussion > Discussion Settings 'Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)' is ticked also, so I'm a bit baffled as to why they're not showing up. Could be something being blocked, as you say.
By Sam on Mon, 20 October, 2008
Yes, sounds like something is being blocked. I've had a quick look around but can't find a real technical answer on how trackbacks work, just the typical user answer. I'll let you know if I find anything
By Sarah on Wed, 22 October, 2008