A quick note to you all that Paulo’s blog, The Bonsai Experiment, has had a change of address as he changed his ISP and server access. His new wonderful URL is http://bonsaiexperiment.net - Update your bookmarks accordingly! (And if you haven’t been there yet, he talks of bonsai growing as a metaphor for life, and as such, has all sorts of interesting and amusing ideas and photos there).

I thought it about time to come up with a better system of categorizing the posts here at abarefootman.co.uk. Given the amount of posts there are, and looking at the categories, I decided I could do better. So, watch this space as the categories change and posts get filed away into appropriate sections. Change is good, development is good.

Today I was in a charity shop, an impulse decision on the way home from the library, and I saw a Garfield book there for a mere 80p! Now, I know I can be a little too serious at times, a little too learning-orientated (at the cost of fun and play), but Garfield is just hilarious, and I love him so. Perhaps in his own unapologetic way, he teaches non-judgement of self, and as it turns out reading Garfield is learning after all, but it’s fun learning, and that makes all the difference. Work can be play, of course. Define them right, and work is play, as Paulo likes to say.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything smaller than a 10 pound note, and they had no change for me. Expressing my disappointment, I left it and began walking out, when a woman asked how much it was, and told me that she would buy it for me! I was overjoyed, and deeply grateful. I walked out feeling great about the world, hopeful about humanity, and that compassion and kindness do indeed exist.

One kind act tends to promote others, and by the end of my walk I’d picked up a fair bit of litter, doing a good turn as well. Not out of any sense of trying to even things up, but just a natural happening. I saw the litter and it seemed like the thing to do.

So, thank you kind stranger, and may the kindness multiply!

I thought it might be good if people could get a quick overview of what I’ve said over the years on this site. Obviously, the site has changed over time, as have my beliefs and opinions, but who knows what nuggets are hidden in the past waiting to be found again? If you’re new to the site and haven’t been following it from the beginning, then even better, it’ll all be new to you.

To that end, I’ve set up a nice Archive section, so that you can see the list of all of the posts/artcles I’ve written here, sorted by month and year. You can find it in the quicknav bar at the top-right of the screen, or click the word Archives on the list at the side. A thank you to Justin Blanton’s Smart Archives plug-in for doing all the hard work for me.

“We don’t always need new lessons, sometimes we just need to understand the old ones.”

Paulo has shown real skill and employed a great sense of simplicity by writing his own blogging software to run his website. What better thing than to have an engine that you understand and does what you want it to do because you made it yourself? He’ll be releasing it as open source (that means it’s free to look at the programming code that makes it, and tinker with and edit it as you choose, for those not in the know). When it’s ready I’ll give you the heads-up. And who knows, abarefootman.co.uk could someday be running PBS: Paulo’s Blogging System! Now there’s something to think about.

I thought it about time I brought in some more readers for the site here, so I added it to Technorati and WikaBlog. Let the fanbase expand!

*** I added more a day later: Thank you to blogexplosion, Blog Philosopher, LS Blogs, Blog Flux Directory, blogcatalog, Blogarama, Blogging Brits and Made With NotePad.

Just a quick note to say I’ve installed the Wordpress plug-in called Brian’s Latest Comments, which will enable you to see the most recent comments listed on the right-hand side of the screen there, newest at the top. Each article has the total number of comments in brackets, and a list of names below it: that’s the people who have commented, and the closer to black the colour, the more recent it is! How fancy, and certainly I think it’ll help you keep in touch with the new comments. Oh, and if you hover the mouse over the articles or names there, you can see how long ago they were posted! Let me know what you think.

And while we’re on the website design subject, I recently discovered that those browsing with IE weren’t getting the special bullet points I had on all the sections on the sidebar there. I’ve decided to change it now to something else, though it is still best viewed in Firefox. Ah, if only everyone kept to the same standards of formatting…