While I have predominantly spent it sitting, today has been quite a busy day. I have made a fair few changes to the blog here which I shall now highlight for you.
For a start, I have filled out an ‘about this blog’ / info page, entitled What On Earth is This? You’ll find it constantly available at the top of the blog just under the header image, but for your convenience click the link in this paragraph.
I have also added a Quotations page, which contains some inspirational or otherwise thought-provoking quotes. If some of them seem a touch cliché or trite, well, screw you. Write your own damn blog. You will find this page sat all cozy next to the above mentioned What On Earth is This at the top of the blog.
Depending on how you view the site, you may notice some changes and additions to the information on the right hand side of the posts. If you receive updates via email or RSS, I’m not sure if you can see this information or not, so bookmark and visit the actual site from time to time. I have changed the ‘links’ section to have descriptions to the sites they link to, I’ve updated my reading list, and I’ve added a category list as well as a tag cloud (more on that momentarily).
While I’m talking about the links, I have edited and updated all three of the maps that’re listed on the Maps page. I discovered something pretty nifty with that today – if you load up any of the maps, say the Total Trip one, and then click the play button, it’ll take you on a nice animated tour of the whole journey, complete with accompanying (and fitting) music. Try it for all three. It’s fun.
So back to categories and tags. I spent a large portion of the afternoon going through and adding categories and tags to most every post I’ve made. One by one. The categories are somewhat larger over-arching subjects that a post may be about, a theme it’ll fall into, shall we say. The tags are smaller or more specific subjects that may be contained within. On the right hand side of the main blog page you’ll see a category list and a count of how many posts fall into each category (which so far are Travel, Introspection, Miscellany and Photography), and a tag cloud below that (which represents how often each tag appears by the size of the word). You can click on any of the categories or tags to filter and show only posts pertaining to that particular subject. Oh, TIL stands for Things I’ve Learned, by the way. Each individual post will detail which categories and tags are attached to it at the bottom of the post.
I don’t imagine any of this will make any difference to anyone going forward – it was mostly for the sake of proper organisation. That said, it will allow newer readers to easily go back and read posts on certain subjects or places easily without having to scan through every post. For instance, if you want to read all the Things I Have Learned, just click the TIL tag, or all the posts about or relating to Italy (warning, bad language…) then click the Italy tag.
Also updated is the About page over at Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere, though that’s really a minor addition.
You will find, should you view each post’s page individually (such as via email or RSS feeds), buttons at the bottom of a post allowing you to share said post via Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, WordPress, Google+, reddit, and indeed email itself, should you feel the post entertaining or enlightening enough.
I think those are all the changes I’ve made to the blog so far, though I have a couple of other things in mind as well. Feel free to leave feedback on any of the above should you care enough.
Long Road to Nowhere 