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Happy New Year to everyone who was on holiday over the festive period. 2008 is upon us and it's great that you've all been busy posting.

Now for a little bit of housekeeping news. Apologies for the recent delays in seeing submissions published or even wandering off into the ether! The technical glitches with the blogging engine appear to have been rectified so thanks all for bearing with us.

I know how frustrating it is when posts don't appear regularly. Island Blogging's recent affliction affected IBHQ's posts in the same manner as everyone else so we are aware of the problems and are doing our best to solve them. No, it wasn't an overdose of Christmas spirit as suggested by Island Threads!

If you have any queries or difficulties, please do get in touch: islandblogging@bbc.co.uk and I'll do my best to solve them.

Bye,
Carol at IBHQ

Hogmanay may be over for another year but we still want your photos!

We want to build up a photo gallery of how Scotland saw in the bells and we'd love to show pictures from the islands. Where were you for the bells? What did you get up to? How bad was the hangover? Send us your photos and help us establish a record of Scotland's Hogmanay '07.



Email: hogmanaylive@bbc.co.uk

Hello everyone

After spending the day beneath the bonnet of IBHQ, it looks as though Island Blogging will need further maintenance work to deal with the disappearing comments.

Earlier in the week, this issue did appear to be fixed though it now seems that the blogging engine is still recovering from the recent festivities.

Apologies for the inconvenience. Please bear with us in the meantime as work is ongoing and we're hoping that the situation won't last much longer. Thanks for your patience.

Carol

After much tinkering, most of the comments which went for a wander along the halls of IBHQ have been rounded up and published on Island Blogging.

We are aware that there are a few highly spirited comments which have yet to be published and this will happen as soon as the blogging engine allows. For those of you who haven't had escaping comments, it seems that the spam filter which was introduced to deal with the, er, spam has been too efficient! Hence, some legitimate comments were wrongly assigned as spam and not published.

We'll be carrying out further maintenance work to deal with this issue so please bear with us while the spam filter goes on a tea break and has a massage to get it up and running again.

Thanks all and please do get in touch via email to islandblogging@bbc.co.uk if you spot anything awry.

Bye,
Carol

Hello fellow pussies, Toffee the tom here to tell you about Hogmanay in all black land. It was, compared to some year's, a pretty tame one.

I spent it at a neighbour's house, where I usually squat when the man with the crazy glasses is out at work. Then his other half lets me in and even on to the BED! On the night, loads of humans were speaking in funny languages --most of them unknown to a gentleman of my race. Man with the crazy glasses brought stuff from a place called France which was called "foie gras" yuk! His other half made loads of starters, an English couple made loads of roasted veggies, German's made schintzel, Belgians made fruit salads and the men looked after the liquid stuff.

As you can see, at the start of the evening I was quite relaxed. Then at 2355 all the lights went out on the sky tower, leaving just the warning lights for aircraft switched on. Then it seemed like the tower was exploding, to the"oohs and aahhs" from the humans --very strange. The neighbour's other half was making strange noises onto his shoulder! Humans, what a water comes out of their eyes!


1--- Me in my second favourite place.


2--- Final countdown


3-- Apocalypse now

All my meepppss to fc, marmers, mia, pepper and 5 cat gang

Hello

By now, you may have noticed that some errant comments are still taking a detour enroute to being published - some of mine included. The cheek of it! As mentioned in earlier posts on the subject, we've been trying different ways to minimise any loss of comments.

The majority of comments are now being published with no problem at all. For those naughty comments which insist on taking the scenic route before being published, we're now doing a trawl through the virtual halls of IBHQ and publishing these wayward submissions each day. This usually happens late morning. So, if you submit a comment which doesn't appear on Island Blogging during the course of the day and provided it doesn't contravene the House Rules then it's likely that it will be picked up, given a reprimand and gently helped along its way to be published on the site the next day.

Ideally, all comments should be publishing immediately and we'll continue to look into this so please bear with us in the meantime.

As always, you can email IBHQ via islandblogging@bbc.co.uk

Carol

A very warm welcome to new blogger 'A twisted adventure' who has become one of our Island Blogging number this afternoon.

Ac has decided to stay - hooray, meanwhile Tws is taking a sojourn from blogging for a little while - come back again soon.

As ever any queries or thoughts can be addressed to me at islandblogging@bbc.co.uk

Carol

I write this in a moment of sadness here in Auckland. Over here everybody is shocked and deeply saddend on hearing of the brutal murder
of Orkney girl, Karen Aim. This is really a great place to be, with everybody so kind and friendly, it's hard to believe that even over here there are some people
who have really sick minds. Along the road from where I am staying there is a "backpackers hostel" like a youth hostel back home and the youngsters
have been really jolted by this news, as thousands of people come over here backpacking as it's a great way to see this beautiful country and to meet
the great Kiwis, who's friendliness and hospitality is world renowned. As one Scot to another's bereaved family please accept my condolences and deepest sympathy.

A very warm welcome to new blogger 'Hebridean Life' who has become one of our Island Blogging number this week.

Any queries or thoughts on Island Blogging can be addressed to me at islandblogging@bbc.co.uk

Have a good weekend.

Carol

For those who have been following Carol's adventures in New Zealand (not IBHQ), here is the photo of The Searchers in Auckland.

On Sunday night a programme was broadcast called 'Killer Whales in the UK' in which a cameraman went zooming around Shetland looking for whales.

Anne, the previous inhabitant of IBHQ, says 'Shetland looked great in the programme and there are lots of lovely wildlife shots.'

You can still watch it on the 主播大秀 iPlayer where the programme is available for another three days.