Monthly Archives: June 2006

Weekend Update: Tom’s Birthday, TVC + Long Nap, Site Redesign

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Spent Saturday doing mostly-web-stuff, which was mostly-fun, before going to Tom’s Birthday party in the city. It was a blast, but, when the party moved from laid-back, Zen-vibe Park to quasi-hipster Brass Monkey, Schmoo and I had a hard time keeping up. Maybe because we’re getting old, but probably because the music was so loud we had to yell at each other at the top of our lungs (at times in Scottish brogue).

Sunday at the Village Church where Sam gave a 60-minute presentation on the capital-e End times and I gave a 4-minute presentation about our “web presence”:http://villagechurchnyc.com/. Got some feedback and an offer of some help from “Josh Clayton”:http://typefield.com/ to post some photography on the site. I can’t wait to kick around some ideas with him.

Napped for a few hours, which subsequently means I haven’t been able to sleep yet, so, of course, it’s time for a site redesign. ;-) “Fickle”:http://kennsarah.net/2005/12/22/facelift/, I know, but while discussing our site design with Tom on Saturday — okay, after wildly gesturing and lip-reading over the booming techno — he reminded me of our initial design before the conversion to WordPress. It looked “something like this”:http://kennsarah.net/archives1/2005/01/09/would_you_buy_a_500_mac/index.php but featured a big, fun photo at the top of the page that I periodically updated. Tom and I agreed that the idea was still good, so the gears began to turn.

During my geek-out session on Saturday, I discovered the “plaintxtBlog”:http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/plaintxtblog/, a clever minimalist theme with a penchant for typography. After installing and playing with it, I was sold: I took the new theme and did some hacking to pull in the latest photo from Flickr from our account tagged with the word “featured”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/tags/featured/. All I have to do to update the photo is upload it to Flickr and tag it and it’s automatically resized and shows up on the site — which feels really maintainable.

There are some things I miss about the other design, and I’m not totally happy with everything with the new design, but I think this design has got some potential. What do you think?

On the Radar: Mostly Apple Geekery

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* Google Video: “George Lucas in Love”:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5058529870025933880&q=George+Lucas+in+Love (“via Cori”:http://cori.sojourn-of-grace.net/?p=84). “Augh! My Hand!” “John Bell”:http://www.effluxity.com/ showed this to me on VHS when we were roommates Back in the Day. Glad to see it made it to the web.
* ??Everything2??: “A Simple Way to Make the Best Coffee You’ve Ever Had”:http://www.everything2.org/?node_id=1181742. So, after about a year from first having received it from “Jen & Jode”:http://sojourn-of-grace.net/, I’ve started to use my French Press. I love it — four cups of excellent coffee, no stupid gurgling machine with a ginormous carafe to clean out. Thanks again, Poleys!
* ??Gamespot??: “LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy”:http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/legostarwarstheoriginaltrilogy/index.html. Speaking of George Lucas, there’s a sequel coming for the Lego Star Wars game. Sarah and I were totally ADDICTED to this game for four weeks while we played it through entirely. I can’t wait for the new one.
* ??Mark Pligrm??: “Bye, Apple”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/05/30/bye-apple. Mark ditches Apple in favor of an IBM desktop + Linux. I dunno — I played with Linux a lot in college and found myself screwing around with it more than I was getting work done. Besides, Mac OS and Windows XP both work with my iPod nano. *Update:* Mark “follows up”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks on his decision to walk away from Apple. His argument is compelling, but I’m not so sure going pure-Linux is. Maybe it’s time to start playing with this “Ubuntu”:http://www.ubuntu.com/ everyone’s been “talking about”:http://lunapark6.com/?p=1235.
* ??Engadget??: “Jobs’ glass elevator locks in group customers”:http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/29/jobs-glass-elevator-locks-in-group-customers/ (“via Slashdot”:http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/31/1319243&from=rss). There’s a joke about first-gen Apple technology here, I just _know_ it.
* ??Alex Basko??: “Rustic Vacation: Definition & Introduction”:http://alexbasko.blogspot.com/2006/06/rustic-vacation-definition.html. (RV – cell phone) + fly fishing = sanity
* ??Heather Armstrong??: “He learned this while visiting the University of Wisconsin”:http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily_photo/06_02_2006.html. We need to teach this to “Dina”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/143197375/.
* ??Steve Smith??: “Jackson Smith at Ordered List”:http://jackson.orderedlist.com/. Now THAT’s what I call a baby site (see also “Jai & Beck’s”:http://brinkofski.com/annie, “Russ & Sarah’s”:http://evan.posegate.org)! I’m taking notes for the day we get to make our own announcements. ;-)
* Wikipedia: “Microsoft Access”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Access. I’ve been using MS Access at work again. Access gets a lot of disdain from REAL programmers because, well, it’s a dumbed-down version of SQL + a dumbed-down version of Visual Basic. But, you can do some pretty tricked-out things with Access in a relatively short timeframe. Someone should register pimpmyaccess.com. :)