by ·Comments Off on Ain’t technology grand?

As a late birthday gift to myself, and after a year or so of research and some saving, I took the plunge this past weekend and bought myself a blu-ray theater.   I actually didn’t buy the one I’d been researching and set on (a Panasonic to match my TV), but it had the features I’d been looking for.  It was also a bit more than I thought it’d be, but oh well.  Continue reading

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Article on CNNMoney this morning was discussing the “recall mania” of various autos that have been announced or are due shortly.

Toyota – brake/acceleration problem
Chevrolet – loss of power steering
Hyundai – door latch problems
Nissan – brake/guage issues
Mazda – seat heater

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amusing that a loss of power steering is considered a real safety hazard (as posted in the comment replies on CNNMoney)?  Cars continue to function without power steering (although I love my powered steering, I can continue to drive without it being a large danger).  Then you’ve got issues with cars randomly accelerating or won’t stop.  Let’s think about that one for a second.  Or the malfunctioning seat heater might burn your ass.

Suddenly, a relatively minor inconvenience is “proof” that GM is a shitty manufacturer?  Puh-lease.   Give me safety before convenience.

by ·Comments Off on I wish they made it easier…

I spent the better portion of an hour and change this morning grabbing most of my photos off of the livejournal gallery and moving them to my newly established gallery here.  (Nevermind how much of a pain that was to get working).  You’d think that as big as LJ is, they’d make it easier to get the pictures in a simple download rather than having to go to each full-size one and saving it to the hard drive.  That’s what really took so long.  Getting them here once they were downloaded… pretty easy.  Continue reading

by ·Comments Off on A New Addiction

Since shipping off HalfTon 1.0 to the twins over the weekend, I’ve spent the last few days getting even deeper into the intricacies that are WordPress Theming.  I think it’s safe to say at this point that I’m addicted.

Since Saturday, I’ve done quite a bit of work to the theme for their site.  It’s enough to me that I’ll wind up actually increasing version numbers. =)

I’ll provide a laundry list of changes:

  • Internalized most of the Java to use the WP-packaged binaries (you mean I don’t need to include over 50k of scripts?! No wai!)
  • Re-formatted the post comments area
  • Created an additional admin area to include “regular” post data that they generate – Restaurant Info, post thumbnail, etc.
  • Created a theme options page where they can change the variables for the links.

Those last two items are huge.  As I’ve been discovering, the theme options are what really makes a theme stand out, especially in the “premium” category, where it’s about the only way to distinguish yourself against the competition.   There are some really amazing theme option pages out there.  And some others that truly suck.

All of this work has led me to want to start in on another theme – but right now, I’m kind of lacking in the “graphical inspiration” category.  I suppose that’s what I get for spending too much time on the code aspects of my reading and not the design aspect.  =/

BTW, if you see any random theme changes around here, don’t despair.  I’m just looking through the various themes to get an idea of popular theme options.  I’ll be back to the regular BlackPress theme here soon.