Izdihar - Magic Kingdom Escapology

Link: http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=17415

I think that slowly but surely, the blog is now coming together. Still a couple of small niggly things to suss out, like the fact that it won't let me create new categories from within the b2evo back office yet, but every indication says that this is a MySQL issue rather than the blog software itself. I hoping that the post at b2evo on the link [above/below: delete as applicable] will get me a usable answer on this one.

If you've been following any of this, you may notice that I've been messing with the r/h column stuff - it should look a little cleaner now. I've dropped a couple of things out of there and re-ordered stuff a bit. The search box still looks a bit clunky and out of keeping, but I may have to learn to live with that. I've done the same over in the T189 blog and also with the Linkblog, which generally you should never see, to keep a common 'look and feel' to it all.

At some point, I'd like to expand the width of the body of the blog out to at least 1,000 px to let it breathe a little more. A slightly larger font is also a possibility, as is a fluid layout to make it a little more flexible. The other thing that needs sorting is the CSS behaviour of this skin in Firefox3, my browser of choice. I've seen something on it across at b2evo and it doesn't look beyond the wit of man to sort out. But not tonight, time to hit the hay I think, they're all back in work tomorrow!

For anyone hitting this site for the first time, they are probably wondering why a European expat would end up with a domain name of izdihar.com. I've had the domain for quite some time now, probably since around 2000/01. The reason I got it was because I was living on a compound of the same name in Riyadh at the time and one day did a casual search for the name and was amazed to find it still available. Without much ado, I registered it, only to find that within a matter of weeks, I had a Canadian claiming that Izdihar was "his wife's rare Iraqi name". Despite a few nervous moments, when it came to actually paying the ICANN domain name resolution people the necessary to 'investigate' his claim, it all went very quiet and has been ever since. I now reckon I'm good for this name for as long as I can remember to keep up the payments myself. The compound itself is being transformed into a Holiday Inn and it's been some considerable time since I lived there.

As to what Izdihar actually means, it is a feminine name of Arabic origin and can be translated as "blossoming", "flourishing" or "blooming". It is generally taken to engender a sense of progress or moving forward. Quite a nice idea for an internet site and who knows, maybe one day a valuable domain name in its own right. Maybe I'll work out what that is, or maybe I won't. Until then, here I am in whatever form I choose to present myself. Welcome.

One final note for now, the image in the next post is now my most commented image at flickr - it was worth the trip out to the desert after all then.

Edit: Updated to reflect Ahmed's comment below.

OK, got that done. The image was taken from this one I took this afternoon

Works out rather well I think.

That was a rather long evening of trying to get everything to behave itself in that skin. All the images now fit the width of 'leftside', which turns out to be 575px and I've also corrected an error in the way each individual post is set out - they are now full one after another. There has to be a better way than using a never ending series of [br /] tags.

Must be time for bed

Well I can honestly say that worked considerably better than I could realistically have hoped for. The blog s/w has now been updated. It doesn't necessarily have my skin of choice, and some stuff needs resizing to get it to display images at a size I feel comfortable with but it's not looking too bad. More later

Just realised how old this version of the b2evolution application I'm running [1.10.2]. Given that they are now up to 2.4.5, maybe it's time I did something with it - ho hum, time for some skin action...