Nic Hearts NY: A New Layout To Reflect It

I feel like a brand new person as I sit here during my down time in North Carolina with freshly cut hair, waxed eyebrows, several overdue emails sent to loved ones, a new blog entry posted, two loads of clean laundry at my feet and a brand new "Aussie In Yankeeland" layout.

Huzzah!

While it's somewhat getting ahead of myself to so glaringly reflect my newfound passion for New York City, a new layout was highly necessarily and I couldn't think of a better subject matter.

I am thrilled to now have a layout that wasn't thrown together in half an hour after a long plane trip to LA.

Thoughts welcome!

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Comment Problems: No More Word Verification

So I turned off the "Word Verification" security bizzo for Commenting in the hopes this might help with the problems people have been having.

Let me know on my Facebook if this doesn't fix anything.

Here's to hoping that turning off this anti-spam option doesn't bite me in the butt.

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These Events Took Place...

You'll note that my tourist posts now open with this phrase. Now being so far behind, I figured if I myself was having trouble keeping up with dates, then you guys must be completely lost.

Obviously, also note the part in brackets at the end. i.e. June 3, 2009 (USPDT).

USPDT = USA Pacific Daylight Time

Meaning the events took place at that date in US time, in this particular example, West Coast time. It'll switch to "EDT" soon, when my activities on the East Coast are narrated.

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The Aussie has a blog for her time in Yankeeland

Finally, at long last, after chucking a serious "I can't do it, I give up" tanty at midnight before departing Australia, having limited [expensive] access to the internet at my first-night 3 Star hotel and now eventually settling in at my Specialty Lodging (i.e. dodgy) hostel with free Wi-Fi, I have completed the building of my own personal blogspot.

Despite the room service, private space, personal bathroom and several other luxuries, which do you think is coming out on top? That's right, of course a geek like me would rate free unlimited internet access over having a bellboy carry my [hefty] luggage!

As many of you know, I had some bugs in the HTML code (i.e. web page geek script stuff that controls the look and feel of a webpage) and couldn't for the life of my find and amend them. I had been altering a custom blog template downloaded at a proper template site but it failed me enormously. I don't pretend to be a web designer so I figured the failing was mine and hence my reason for not giving up until the midnight hour (literally).

Well, it turns out I'm not a major failure after all. Once I finally pulled out my laptop and got connected to the network here at the hostel after a long day out and about picking up necessities (damn 100ml carry-on limit!), I put my keen and penetrating amateur HTML skills to the test and came up trumps: using the basic Blogger code from one of their standard layouts and amending some rather tricky bits and pieces....

Voila! Here you have it: AUSSIE IN YANKEELAND!

Only a select few knew the name and concept of the blog, mainly because the tardiness of my self-imposed one-week-before-I-leave deadline got the better of my patience and I just HAD to blab to some people other than my sister who'd known for ages and my faux-mum Debbie who just thinks everything I do is spectacular.

So please check back REAL soon. Now that I have the hard yakka of the blog building itself done, it's just about to tick over midnight here in Hollywood and I've gotta be bright and sparky, front and centre for the departure of my "LA City Tour" shuttle in the mornin'.

Ooh, one final note. To calculate what my time is: add 7 hours and minus a day.

e.g. Sydney is currently 4.57pm on Tuesday 2 June. Add 7 hours and step back one day and it's 11:57pm on Monday 1 June.

Got it? Good.

Check back ASAP to hear about everything from my delayed flight to Soap Opera Conventions to my Hollywood hike (and no, there are no bush tracks in Tinseltown).

P.S. It's officially after midnight and this place is STILL hoppin'! I just heard something break and a group of people laugh.... TAXI!

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