It's amazing what technology can do these days. From the farthest reaches of the earth, I can log into this website and update the content.
At least that was the idea.
I'm currently in southern Africa, and while I had done most of the research for the email prior to leaving, and all I had to do was put the content into the templates, do a little online research to flesh out the detail of the recommendations and post the whole lot online, this has turned out to be impossible for a number of reasons... In particular, the fact that the computer I am carrying around with me has decided to only work for 10 minutes at a time before spontaneously powering down (I bought it in France, I think it's joined a social movement). This is why I am typing this entry as fast as I can to get it uploaded to the website before the next digital hara-kiri moment.
I'm going to keep trying, but if no email comes out this week, you'll know why. |
 I do what I can to translate articles into French on this site. To be honest, I'm really rather fast at it, although it sometimes shows in the quality of the French prose. The problem is that no matter how fast I am, and no matter how good my good intentions, I simply cannot translate everything fast enough. In fact, time constraints are a major difficulty when getting a site like this updated on a weekly basis.
I'm looking into getting some hired help, but the flow of money in this little venture is - at present - entirely in the wrong direction, so it's an expensive exercise, and I may not follow through on it. Besides, I need help with content more than I need help with translation. Priorities, you see.
When the site has picked up speed, I will be more than happy to translate everything (or have everything translated), but in the meantime, this is simply not possible. The best way to help me get there sooner is to get more people using the site, so feel free to subscribe your friends to the newsletter and send links out to people when you spot something of interest here. In the meantime, your feedback is always welcome, and I apologise for the all-too-frequent "Il n'y a pas de traduction disponible pour cet article" comment you see at the top of the articles when you're browsing in French.
If you want to volunteer to translate a few articles from time to time, please get in touch :
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One of the most painful things about a site like this is trying to get it to look like the picture you have in your head. Since most of the software is written by third parties (Joomla) , I don't have complete control over what's getting put on the page, and sometimes it can be very difficult to bully the software into rendering the page the way you want it.
What's more, once you've got it perfect in Firefox, you find out that Internet Explorer crashes the second it tries to show the page. This was the problem I had with the pop-up registration box on the first page - it took me hours to get it working, had to rewrite a bit of the plugin, and then when I tested it on IE, the browser gave a fatal error and crashed. Fixed it, of course, but the point is, everything ends up taking 5 times the amount of time you expected it would.
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Sunday is Publication Day |
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 It's another Sunday evening and the long hard slog of preparing the email for distribution is once again over. In fact, today I seem to have finished it rather early, as it's not unheard of for me to go to bed at 3 or 4am after slogging at the format and recommendations for hours.
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