It’s a fine line

Here I am calling myself a Web designer but using someone else’s theme.
Why? Because of insecurity? Well,maybe.I’m pretty new to WordPress and this is only my 3rd WordPress project.Once I got the idea that I simply had to move on from my other blogging tool I wanted to do it right away.Once again I told myself I didn’t have the time to learn the insides of WordPress, that getting the project done was more important. The funny thing is I ended up learning WP finally with this latest project. Oh, not that I am now an expert, ha ha. But I did pick a theme with out the dynamic sidebar and that wasn’t widget ready. That step was amazingly easy,by the way. But I didn’t know that until I tried it for myself.That’s a lesson right there.
I was already used to the concept of templatizing a site since I’d done it many times when using the CMS, doop. In fact, my site was basically just put together using this flat file CMS and that flat file blog; SimplePHPBlog.

Not that I overlooked the fact that a visitor coming to my site might not like the change in design flow when going from my regular site to my blog. I was never very happy with this change but I found SPB a bit daunting to say the least. And so I just lived with it.

I ended up making my own template right before I made the switch to WordPress,and might’ve gone as far as customizing the blog to look exactly like the rest of my site. But it occurred to me: why not do all that work with one of the best blog tools available? I do sometimes tend to make things harder for myself then they have to be!

I am not in any way knocking doop or SPB. They served me very well for a whole year had great support forums and at least doop kept upgrading and upgrading. I felt obligated to stick with doop since they helped me have a dynamic site back when I didn’t know how to make one for myself. They are great alternatives for anyone who can’t use a mysql connection for whatever reason.But sometimes you find you have gone as far as you can and have to move on.

So back to the theme:Activate-10
by Brian Gardner.It is a 3 column theme I converted to 2 columns. I put in a script to rotate the header/banner images.I didn’t want to use all the background images,so I didn’t.I spiffed up the font css away from px to percentages of ems.
But the layout is still not mine. It is not different enough for me to call mine.This is that fine line I mentioned. I might be tempted to claim this as my work since I did a lot of work on it myself.But it wouldn’t be right.
One should always give credit where credit is due -after all I wouldn’t much like it if in the future I saw someone using one of my themes and not giving me credit for it.

HBO Shows

cartoon_john.jpg
When I heard about the new show I was skeptical I wasn’t so sure even the guy who thought up Deadwood could interest me in a “Family of troubled surfers” ( that’s the ridiculous way HBO chose to announce John From Cincinnati ). I guess they are surfers. I guess they are troubled. The New Yorker wrote the show off based on the 1st episode(or maybe they get to to view more than the pilot show?)–but they were unimpressed to say the least.
I steered clear until I went to Utah and mom –who will watch anything as long as it is sort of science fiction or fantasy–got me to watch a show.I thought it was good.So when I got home I watched all of the episodes I’d missed,about 5,on On Demand and wouldn’t you know I am now fighting with my baseball crazed roommate for control of the remote on Sundays again.

Part of what got me was the weird, stagey way the characters talk,the actors from Deadwood and how Rebecca de Mornay stomps around and kicks people and stuff.That and Al Bundy and a theme song by Joe Strummer…I was pretty sure it was him singing but then got to see the very last 10 minutes of the documentary Let’s Rock, again which confirmed it.
Schlubby Moes
If you’re a snob like me and pay any attention to the opinions of the New Yorker,try to ignore your snootiness and watch a show. You know they got us anyway since the Sopranos,Oz and Six Feet Under and Sex and the City are long gone.

But screw Entourage! If I have to see one more glamorous model / actress get swooped down upon by some schlubby moe I will spit.

I have a big mouth

I was on a friend’s Twitter and went from her Twitter to her friend’s Twitter page. This in itself should have given me a clue. But it did not. I checked out her portfolio site and then blogged about it and I wasn’t so nice. I didn’t say really bad things but I shouldn’t have said anything at all. I defend my tables nazi stance when it comes to Web design but this is no reason to bash the friend of a friend. I don’t mind getting “caught”. Because we all need reminders that what we write can have repurcussions and we have to be ready to stand up or apologize .I got this reminder when my friend called me and asked me what was up with what I wrote. Thank heaven she wasn’t upset. I think she just thinks I am nuts. I can live with that.

Will Wonders Never Cease…

I can’t believe it. A month ago my hosting nemesis, Purehost, performed a server upgrade. I sort of read their email about it but did not grasp what they were babbling about when they mentioned this upgrade would improve site performance.

Curious, I checked my dad’s site that I designed and web master for,and saw his old index.html page up. Not good. I guess they somehow put it back. So I took it down. The site ran slow as molasses and you couldn’t login to the blog. Checked the file permissions. They all had wierd capitalized ST’s in them.

WTF?

I uploaded new copies of the same files and the login problem was fixed. But I was logged out if I clicked on any part of the blog functions.Weird. I decided to remove all the session_save_paths I had to put in to make any script with session_start(); work .That did the trick. I removed it from the CMS as well. And now the site is chugging along fast as ever.

Great success!

This makes me wonder if now we can have better stuff for the site.Stuff that works! What a concept.I hope my days of purehost-bashing may be over…we shall see.