Bits and Bobs

Hi everybody.  I don’t often make off-topic posts but I been wanting to say hi for a little while now and to share a couple of things.  Don’t worry – I’ll be back soon with a post on one of my most memorable and exciting experiences in New York!

Christmas Plans

I've just booked our Christmas stay at the Hawkwell House Hotel in Oxford.  That is the wonderful cosy hotel we stayed in last year while we were on our Road Trip around England. As you can see from the image below, I didn’t get a chance to take my own photo of the hotel and that is just not good enough for a budding photographer such as myself!

 
Picture courtesy of HawkwellHouse.co.uk

So, the plan is to spend Christmas there and take the time to sit by that gorgeous fire and sip some hot chocolate and generally have a cosy, happy Christmas.  And to take some of my own photos of course.  We usually spend Christmas in Liverpool with my Dad but unfortunately have to stay near London this year as Stephen is on call.

Blogging friends

This blog has grown so much in such a short time.  When Emm in London was featured as a Blog of Note, my subscribers increased from 80 to over 750 in one week.  It has been crazy trying to keep up with that!  As you may have noticed, I respond to each and every comment on my blog (eventually) and I always visit commenter’s blogs to learn more about them.  But Google Friend Connect isn’t really user friendly and I’m struggling to wade through this buggy application to find the blogs of everyone now following me.

Let me just say that I appreciate everyone who reads, follows, subscribes and comments on this blog.  Thank you – you absolutely make it a pleasure to blog; I don’t take it for granted and I am humbled that people would take the time.  If you are following and have wondered why I haven’t visited your blog or noticed you then I do apologise.  If you do take the time to comment and introduce yourself then it will make it so much easier for me!  So don’t be shy!

Spam

Having said that, like most bloggers out there today, I do delete spam comments on my blog.  If you are unsure what spam is, then you can visit this excellent post.  Don’t let the article scare you away from commenting though; basically, spam is when you comment on someone’s blog and don’t really read what they say at all but leave a link in the body saying “visit my blog!” or “read my blog post!”.  It’s not really a nice thing to do and it’s a little rude.  I’m more likely to give people the benefit of the doubt but often have to delete spam comments from obvious spammers. 

Comment Form

There are pros and cons to using the comment form that I use.  The pro is that if you log in with your name and URL (blog address) you’ll get a link straight to your blog.  The con is that it is also buggy and it often gives you a nasty error message.  If you get that error message, just try press “post comment” again and it should eventually work.  Like I said, it’s just buggy.

Links

In the past, I’ve always had my links open in a new window but recently I have been told that this is a bad practice and that the links get caught in people’s pop up blockers.  I use a tabbed browser and open all my links in another tab and carry on reading the original page, so I thought other people would do that too.  What do you think?  Do you prefer links to open in a new window / tab or do you prefer to click on a link and immediately go to that page?  I’ve turned it off for this post now but await your feedback!

Moving House (again)

I only moved to the UK in July 2007 and moved into our first rental in September 2007.  After a year, the owner decided to sell and we had to move.  This year again the exact same thing has happened and we have to move again!  It is crazy and I wish we had a little stability.  The good news is that we hope to be able to get on to the property market in a year, the bad news is I have to do my least favourite thing on earth – move. 

So, this is happening next week.  My posts might be a little patchy as I unfortunately don’t have a library of ready-made and scheduled posts waiting for me!!  Bad blogger!  Please bear with me over the next couple of weeks and I’ll be back with regular posts after that. 

The very good news is that I am moving to Dartford which is a lovely old town on the very outskirts of London.  Actually, I think it is officially outside of London.  Hopefully, I’ll get to do more adventuring and touring around Dartford than I managed to do around Sidcup.

That’s all I have to say today.  Like I said, I don’t often make posts like this but I did just wanted to touch base with people and say hi and thank you and don’t be shy but try not to spam.