Archive for April, 2008

Food for thought

Published April 30, 2008 in blogs and travels. 16 Comments

Update: Yup, you’re right about the comments. I’ve darkened them and made them larger. Check it out. I’ve also increased the size of the font in the posts. This theme isn’t widgetized, meaning I have to go into the code to make changes in the sidebars.

This “What Not To Wear” blog styling exercise will not go on forever, so stay with me a few more days. I have a few more outfits I’d like to try on.

This one is called Zen and is yet another Milo design. I think I have a Wordpress Theme Crush on Milo.

It’s foodie, Asian and orange.

My typist’s garret is orange.

My leather jacket is orange.

My purse is orange.

My wallet is orange.

So why not an orange blog?

You tell me.

I’m feeling blue today

Published April 29, 2008 in Uncategorized. 13 Comments

This theme is called Flush.

It’s a clean two-column blog, also designed my Milo.

I like the drop-down menus on the top and the blue water design is very refreshing. Almost makes me want to go for a dip to wash away the blues.

This is my fourth theme this week. Yesterday’s theme with the Mac mess on the left side has received the most positive response thus far.

Thoughts on this one?

And now, for something completely different

Published April 28, 2008 in blogs. 18 Comments

This one is called McMac. It’s a Wordpress theme designed by the very talented Milo, who designed the “Summer” theme I had up on Monday.

The messiness could be distracting, but I must say, it does represent the state of my desk on most days. You find the strangest things on my desk, and my office is littered with malfunctioning keyboards and mice.

I’m still liking yesterdays “summer” theme. It took a bit of messing around with the widgets and some fiddling with the CSS. (there were a few snafus today as I attempted some high-diving acts. Sorry.)

I still have a few other themes to try.

I really appreciate the feedback. So please feel free.

Welcome to Summer (theme)

Published April 28, 2008 in blogs. 13 Comments

So. I’ve heard you. Yesterday’s theme wasn’t doing it for you.

You said no personality. Corporate. Boring. Blah.

I wonder what Simon and Paula would have said.

So, here’s Monday’s theme. It’s call Summer. And appropriately it’s sunny outside my window this morning.

I’ve flirted with this one before. I’m going to make a few small changes to the font of the title, etc.

What you tink?

Does this theme make GT’s bum look fat?

Published April 27, 2008 in blogs. 13 Comments

Update: I’ve been playing around with the CSS code and have done the following

  • put colour in the header
  • changed font from stark arial to a more laid-back verdana
  • reduced most of header fonts to lower case (because I don’t like to yell)
  • reduced the size of the fonts

I have a graphic of an old fashioned typewriter for the header. I just have to figure out how to insert it.

Original post:

This week, GT will be experimenting with some new skins.

Having upgraded the back end last week, I wanted to update the front end, you know, to do something nice for GT visitors. You gotta keep things fresh ;)

So now we’re in the changing room, slipping on little numbers and gazing in the full-length mirror to see how it looks.

This one’s called IAMWW W2 DnD. Catchy name, eh? I gather it’s code for “I am Will Wilkins” (the developer’s name) version 2, drag and drop.

On first glance I like the clean lines and smart sidebar presentation. I’ve always found the blogroll in my previous theme (K2) to be small and hard to see. And we wouldn’t want to be obscuring the fantastic material in the blogroll now would we?

There is no picture in the banner which means less demand on my bandwidth. (Yesterday I was crawled by something called the Jarvis Purchasing Company. Over 200 hits in a half hour. I like hits but I want them from real people not spiders. I’m not a hit whore.)

Anyway, let me know what you think. Be honest. If it makes my bum look fat, I want to know.

I am a hamster and I live on a wheel

Published April 26, 2008 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

So, I go through the whole white-knuckle ride of updating my Wordpress platform.

Hounded by the failure of Website Updates Past, I studied the “codex,” backed the whole thing up four or five times, and scoured through YouTube demos. This prep went on for days. History would repeat itself over my dead body.

My hands were shaking as I began the deleting: admin files, gone, php files, gone, includes files, gone, js files, htaccess. All gone.

Then I loaded loaded the new version and after a couple fatal error reporters (The horror. The horror) and some quick reloading, I was successful.

I had my brand new Wordpress 2.5 platform. I rocked!

Until today, when when I logged onto this message: Wordpress 2.5.1 is available. Please update.

Oh hamster wheel of the blogware world, where is thy off-ramp?

Barbie? Flat? Come on.

Published April 25, 2008 in Uncategorized. 12 Comments

Read my Herald column here.

You could call the Barbie doll many things. But flat is not one of them.

And yet that is exactly what they were saying about Barbie this week in the business news. Apparently Barbie sales were flat for toy maker Mattel.

On one hand, I say good riddance to this grossly distorted representation of womanhood. What woman looks like that?

On the other hand I resent a bunch suits with MBAs blaming a much-beloved icon of my youth for Q1 flat sales. What do the suits know about Barbie?

Part of me wants to say that Barbie is not real. She’s just a toy onto which girls have projected their imaginations since Barbie’s birth in 1959. Girls don’t want to look like Barbie.

And another part of me hates her for the way she warped expectations of women.

Some girls did want to look like Barbie. And do look like her. I saw them when I went south a few weeks ago - real-life Barbie clones - thin, evenly tanned women with hard, gravity-defying super hooters lounging at the pool or bouncing up and down the beach.

Barbie dolls, if ever I’ve seen one.

So good riddance Barbie. It’s been good knowing you. I think.

Was it Newton or Einstein who stated:

Published April 24, 2008 in Canada and blogs. 16 Comments

That if you get your snow tires taken off on April 23rd, there will be snow in the forecast on April 24th.

Sorry I forget the physics genius who worked out the Law of Springtime Road Rubber Change and Frozen Precipitation.

But I do know that it is a cause-and-effect action.

Change tires = snow.

I awoke this morning to the words “wet snow” on the radio.

Why don’t I ever learn?

Here’s a bright idea, School Board

Published April 23, 2008 in Canada. 13 Comments

Why don’t you just make it easy on everyone and tell us the days you WILL be available to teach our kids.

You could just say that schools will be open this day and that day and this day. It would be so much easier than splattering our schedules with closings and early dismissals. That’s so negative.

Most parents work for a living and have to make alternate arrangements when school’s aren’t available to teach our kids. What with professional development, union meetings and report cards, you can hardly be expected not to close as often as you do.

Next week, you’re closing schools for two days in a row. And of course there’s no economic impact, inconvenience or problem for the tax-paying, working parent who just somehow finds a workaround to accommodate those days.

So wouldn’t it be easier and more positive just to say when you’ll be opened. That way we would make permanent arrangements, you know, to accommodate you on the days you aren’t available to teach.

Far be if from me to suggest that you do your professional development in July or August. Everyone knows that the reason schools are closed for those months each year is so that children can help their parents around the farm. And it goes without saying that teachers and school board employees are busy on the farm too.

We wouldn’t want to use empty school buildings for educational purposes in summer because that could lead to a collapse of our agrarian society. And we couldn’t have that.

So just tell us when you’re schedule fits with the teaching and leave all the other non-teaching day arrangements to the taxpayer with children.

OK, School Board?

Happy Earth Day

Published April 22, 2008 in Canada and environment. 12 Comments

This day marks the birth of the modern environmental movement which began in 1970.

Back then, the issues were pollution, extinction of wildlife, construction of freeways and dumping raw sewage into the ocean. Today the issues are more focused on global warming and clean energy.

Days like Earth Day do create awareness and momentum but political leaders are the “deaf, dumb and blind kids” of the environmental movement. (Canada just cut its environment department budget by $50M. Ah, leadership!)

Neither Earth Day nor our visionless political leaders will stop our hyper-consumption and oil-guzzling ways. That will happen when the supply of oil declines.

Just last week I read that the CEO of Total - one of the biggest oil companies in the world - is worried that global supply of oil is not keeping up with global demand. Think tanks have predicted that this scenario will result in rising fuel prices and food prices.

Hmmmm. This is happening now all over the world right now, isn’t it?

Me? I hang out my clothes, turn off the heat, click off lights, stay away from malls and take the bus.

I like doing this stuff but I don’t think it makes much difference. I think the laws of supply and demand will rule the day and achieve some of the goals of Earth Day.

Taggage and Baggage

Published April 20, 2008 in Uncategorized. 10 Comments

My very favourite Bad Tempered Zombie tagged me for this meme. I’ve been falling down on my meme activity lately - sorry Beth and Moxie.

So here is my attempt banish my shame.

This meme requires you to link your five favourite sites and then tag five others to do the same.

BBC Radio. Without question, the best public broadcaster in the world. I tune in first thing in the morning and listen for most of the day. Radio Four offers superb documentaries, arts coverage and world news. But my true love is Brit radio comedy which is sharp, fast and witty. The Now Show, Ed Readron’s Week and the News Quiz being amongst my faves. Radio Two offers Jonathan Ross, the funniest man in British Radio, and Humphrey Lyttleton’s Best of Jazz. (I found Russell Brand here two years ago.) Radio 7 offers the archive of Brit radio comedy which is classic. Radio 6 is good for music.

The Language Log This blog is for word nerds. Being a typist, I take an interest in language, idioms, dialect, changing usage, regional usage and inscribed meanings. This blog is well referenced, funny and smart. This site is in my blogroll.

Meish.org Unbeknownst to her, Meg of Meish.org has taught me heaps about blogging. She’s a New Media guru based in London who has been blogging since the 90s. She’s head of new media and communities at The Guardian newspaper which is on the cutting edge of on-line content delivery. She’s also a photographer, sharp social observer and a good writer.

Lynda.com Because I am self-employed, it is necessary to keep my IT skilz up to date in order to remain relevant. I’ve taken courses and studied books. But one of the best sources of skilz knowledge is this site. It offers courses using Quicktime movie clips that allow you to learn at your own pace in your own office. I’ve learned many Photoshop skilz here, also Dreamweaver and Excel. Now I’m doing the Flash course.

Tagged and Bagged Because this blog title is so similar to the Taggage and Baggage meme, I thought I’d throw it in for fun. The Tagbagger scans the nooks and crannies of the city, photographing graffiti tags and public murals. The blog offers colourful slide shows and informed commentary and decoding. It explores the debates around graffiti as art, public expression, advertising and vandalism. For the most part, it interprets graffiti as underground art, but it pulls no punches when taggers vandalize public spaces.

Oops, forgot Flickr. One of my faves, but that makes six.

I tag these people to tell us about their fave sites

Write Procrastinator (Because of the rich and fertile mind that lurks within)

Megan (because she puts her money where her mouth is)

BeckEye (because she loathes memes, but will probably post five sites on Idol reject Michael Johns and I want to see what she’s been reading on him)

Dick (he doesn’t have a blog but can post his five faves in comments here)

Dale (because he’s rejected my meme tags before and to quote the knife-wielding Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction “I won’t be ignored”)

Hooray! Hooray! I’ve updated Wordpress

Published April 19, 2008 in Uncategorized. 9 Comments

All by myself!

Geeks will laugh at this supposed triumph. But this stuff is not easy for a geek wannabe like me. It involves things like roots, wp-admin, php files. htaccess, wp-config. Some of these things you have to delete and some you don’t. It’s all very hard on the head and it makes you want your blankie.

Last time I attempted this without an adult or guardian present, the whole freakin’ blog went up in a puff of smoke and I had to go crawling to my excellent host Zipium to beg for help. Definitely an undignified “Waaa Waaa” moment.

There were a few fatal errors blinking back at me this time. But I ruthlessly tracked down the funny little .php files that were showing up in the warning and fatal errors. I found the little bastids in my downloaded unzipped version and then transferred them over again by FTP.

And lo! It worked.

Now I have to get familiar with the new dashboard etc. Right now I’m going to celebrate with a nice crisp glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

Dear Facebook, We’re over

Published April 18, 2008 in slack woman. 21 Comments

See my Herald column here.

The writing’s on the superwall, Facebook: We’re over.

I’m just not that into you anymore.

At first it was fun and all about the friends. But then you started throwing donkeys, turkeys and one-eyed pirates. And poking and superpoking and the mass invitations. I was getting Facebook Fatigue.

You became needy and demanding. I didn’t want to be in a co-dependent relationship with social networking platform. Then you started with the sneaky tricks - getting me to do things without my knowledge.

I felt jerked around by you, Facebook. You weren’t so much fun any more.

So I stopped checking and I didn’t answer your invitations. The flame just sort of dwindled. Then it extinguished.

I’m so over you, Facebook.

Spiders ‘n webs

Published April 16, 2008 in Canada, beauty and photos. 17 Comments

Go here to view this set in Flickr.

Early one sunny August morning, I turned off the highway to take a picture of a beautiful still lake. The lake was pretty, but it was in the field next to the lake that I stumbled upon gold.

There were hundreds of spiders’ webs*, their gossamer fibers sparkling with the dew.

It was like entering a fun park with only ferris wheels or walking through a diamond farm. I had to pick my jaw up off the ground and for two or three short seconds, I was speechless. (And this speaks volumes.)

I only had my 17-40 wide angle so photographing these webs meant getting close. Many of these shots were zoom cropped for a close-up view of the dew.

Spiders are fantastic engineers, but I never realized they were such gifted artists too.

If I had to make a top-ten list of the best moments in my life, this would be right up there on that list.

* Keen GT followers will recall some of these pictures from previous incarnation of GT.

Terrorists? Seal hunt protesters?

Published April 14, 2008 in Canada. 11 Comments

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams is describing the seal-hunt protesters as terrorists.

Excuse me, Mr. Williams? Terrorists?

Is that like the terrorists who hijacked the planes and flew into the Twin Towers killing thousands of people? Or is it like the suicide bombers who sometimes blow themselves up in Baghdad markets, taking 30 or 40 or 60 innocents with them?

Exactly what kind of terrorists do you mean, Mr. Williams?

The captain and first mate of the seal-hunt protest vessel Farley Mowat were arrested after the Canadian Coast Guard boarded their ship on the weekend.

Mr. Williams may not agree with the seal protesters or support the form of their protest, but these people have not killed anyone or committed any act that could be described as terrorism.

Regardless of your position on the seal hunt, this sort of inflated diction is an insult to the victims of real terrorists and real terrorism.

This drama is receiving much international attention. We can only hope that this self-interested, clumsy overstatement will not land all of Canada with black eye.