jemjabella

Summer Reading Challenge

I’m taking part in the Transworld Dan Brown Summer Reading Challenge!

Between the Lines (Transworld Publishers) are having a summer reading challenge which should give me the opportunity to read and review some books for free! (My favourite price.)

I've picked the following four (the first I've wanted to read for a while, the others I picked at random):

1. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
2. Assassin by Tom Cain
3. Lockdown by Sean Black
4. 61 Hours by Lee Child

If you're EU-based and taking part, let me know what books you're reading. If and when you post the reviews let me know and we can get some inter-linking review fun going on. :D

OMG Ninjas in my Layout!

So, here it is, finally all coded up and polished and pretty. My shiny new layout, which is totally awesome and 99% down to Ms Bloody Awesome Lilian. Yes, I have given her new names.

I say 99% because I tweaked the titles and made them not-italic because I have secret feelings of dread when it comes to italic. Of course, I could have been a good client and told Lilian this in advance (instead of saying "yeah, just do whatever") but I don't like to make life easy for people.

The new whizzbang layout comes with all the parts ready for me to turn on the tumbleloggyness of Habari + my uber coding (or... well, not, because I've broken it at the moment) so look out for that coming soon too. :D

Please tell Lilian how cool she is, because I've run out of ways to say it.

ETA: the ninja is in the sidebar on the front page ;)

Kim Kardashian; Tits or GTFO

This is Kim Kardashian:

She thinks breastfeeding in public is only OK if you use a cover^{1 2}

Riiiiight.

Let's just say I won't be taking tips on modesty from her.

Did I plan on becoming a natural parent?

There's a thread on one of the forums I read, "Did you plan on being a natural parent?"

Hahaha, I don't think anything could be further from the truth. I had two plans: 1) that I'd breastfeed, and 2) that I'd try for a 'natural' birth to decrease the risks of buggering up plan 1. (I ended up having pethidine, in case you don't remember.) Aside from that, we bought a cotbed and mattress for nearly £200, a travel system (car seat and pram thingy) for £80, a bouncy chair, baby sleeping bag thing, blankets etc. Everything was going to be hunky dorey for my mainstream baby. You wouldn't catch me putting a baby in my bed, I'd never spoil it with cuddles, pandering to her every whinge...

Except, babies have other ideas, and so do mummies when suddenly hormones are raging through their system and they've got a naked, purple baby lying on their tummy opening her eyes to the real world for the first time.

I don't know if I'm classed as a natural parent as such, because I believe homeopathy is bollocks and I am pro-vaxx, but I think my 'experience' certainly reflects that it doesn't matter how much planning you do, how much mental preparation, it means bugger all til you're there and in the moment and getting on with things.

As it is, most of my parenting decisions are based on laziness (couldn't be bothered to get out of bed, so co-slept; couldn't be bothered to mush up food so do BLW; couldn't be bothered to struggle with a bulky pushchair so use a wrap; couldn't be bothered to settle Izz in cribs and chairs so keep her on/with me all the time — and I find out later on that these things hold similarities to attachment parenting) but it's interesting to see how much they differ from what I'd had in mind all those months ago.

My cotbed makes a half decent dumping ground for books and spare pillows, and the buggy part of the pushchair might get the occasional use in the future. Maybe.

What have I learnt? Never say never...

Wordpress Child Pages Page... or something

OK, back to srs business posts now...

One of my current top secret projects (it's not that exciting, I'm just helping someone convert their site to WordPress) involves creating pages with a list of child pages on 'em. Back in ye olde days I'd have done this manually (which meant every time a child page was added the parent had to be modified) or farted about with SQL queries but Modern Day WordPress seems to have a function for everything and so it's much simpler. So, without further ado...

Create the template:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Sub Page
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="content">

	<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

<?php
	$children = wp_list_pages('title_li=&child_of='.$post->ID.'&echo=0');
	if ($children) {
?>
		<ul>
			<?php echo $children; ?>
		</ul>
<?php
	}

	if ($post->post_parent)
		echo '<a href="'. get_permalink($post->post_parent) .'">&laquo; Back to '. get_the_title($post->post_parent) .'</a>';
?>


</div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Save it as subpage.php, upload it to your theme directory and then whenever you just want a list of sub (child) pages, select Sub Page from the Template dropdown on the right. Ner nerrr!

Tip: if you wanted a section intro instead of just a list of links, bung <?php if ( have_posts() ) { while ( have_posts() ) { the_post(); ?><?php the_content(); ?><?php } } ?> after the h2 title stuff.