Saturday 23 January 2010

Computer chaos

There have been a few problems with various widgets on my sidebar this week. This is just a quick note saying what's going on. And also to allow some of my card photos to drop off the bottom of the blog, and hopefully provide one extra possible way of making the blog load quicker.

My Weather has disappeared again. It spent a week or two being unable to load its data half the time, then it stopped working entirely, and now it isn't even showing in the list of widgets. What is it about the weather in Singapore that scares the widgets off? That's the second one that has popped up then dribbled away in disgrace. Anyway, I've removed it, but that didn't help my blog to load quicker. I'll have to keep my eyes open for another one.

My Followers have also disappeared. This is a problem known to Blogger, and they're working on it in this problem report. No progress as yet, except they're suggesting Firefox users (like me) use Google Chrome instead, and I don't want to. I like Firefox. I don't want extra stuff to have to think about.

And finally I discovered that my Visitor Counter and my account to the service has also vanished into thin air. I e-mailed the supplier and they replied very promptly saying that they're having major problems with one of their servers. Let's hope that gets sorted soon, and I really hope I haven't lost all my data. If I have, I'll be using more than one replacement 'cos I LIKE seeing how many people can be bothered to read my crazy stuff.

DH and I have got a new computer. This is to replace the poor old Dell desktop which has been staggering along with its pants around its ankles for some years now. DH spends whole weekends getting it going again, then something else crashes and he's back to worse than when he started, bless him. He had just got it "stable" for a whole month, then my brother came to visit for Christmas, accepted some updates and downloaded something, and the computer went "ain't having that" and lay down with its little legs waving feebly in the air. After we'd come down off the ceiling, we decided that enough was enough and the old desktop was too much of a time and stress liability to keep going.

We bought a new one last weekend with Windows 7, and so far DH has been amazed and gratified by how easily and quickly it has been to get it going. He's used to having to fight for every small step forward. I'm hoping that will continue until all the data is copied over to the new drive, and we can let the Dell rest in peace forever. We will be creating a Guest account on it to prevent such hassles happening again.

DH has just come back in announcing that the computer is shut down and he can watch TV. He's smiling so I'm guessing things are still going well. I'm signing off now to watch some Most Haunted hehee!

ETA: I just removed the Visitors Counter widget completely (keeping the code elsewhere so I can add it back in when the problem is fixed) and ta-da - my blog now loads beeyooooootifly quickly. That was the problem. YAY.

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