I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m ready to go back on vacation. Nothing like going from 90° F and sitting on the beach to 0° F and shoveling ice/snow. It was an amazing time, with a gorgeous wedding, crazy reception, and many days of relaxing on the beach. However, even this vacation started off on the wrong foot…
It all started on Wednesday night (the 16th), the day before we were to leave. We were finishing packing and setting our alarm clock to wake us up at 2:30 AM (our flight was scheduled to leave at 6 AM), when I noticed that my throat was starting to hurt. Not a good sign, especially when I woke up at 2 AM with a fever of 102° and a very difficult time swallowing. Of course, there was no way I was going to miss our flight or try to wait a few days. With the wedding on Sunday the 20th, there was no time for delays. So I toughed it out, loaded up on ibuprofen, and filled up the taxi with all our gear. (more…)
A year and a half seems a bit much, no? Seeing as how my web host is charging me more per month, it seems only proper that I update this more than once a year. Of course, that is what I said back in July ’08 so we’ll see how that pans out this time. I have a few ideas but I am not going to mention them now. All the previous times I mentioned ideas when promising to use the site more have resulted in disappointment. We could all use a little less disappointment, right?
The first thing to do, however, is put up a new theme. Ooh, fancy! Plenty of shiny things to get distracted with…
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Uh oh. Almost a week and no posts and no new pictures uploaded. Falling back into old habits already? Not that anyone is going to believe me, but I do have plans to update the gallery and add more pictures. Especially since a review this morning of our picture storage situation has revealed over 20 GBs of pictures with no backup system. I believe my webhosting plan has more than enough room to store them all so now it is simply a matter of determining the best method for organizing the pictures. My inclination is to keep it simple and store by date, such as in folders for each month. Now that we have two children, it would be impractical to store the pictures by category. So now I just need to find time to sort the pictures and then upload the entire collection.
I’ve found a few more plugins that I’ve installed:
- Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator – Automatically generates and updates a sitemap
- TinyMCE Advanced – Adds many options to the WordPress WYSIWYG post editor
- WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Automatically upgrades WordPress to the latest version
- WP Super Cache – Generates static pages to speed up the site
The automatic upgrade plugin was especially handy since a new version of WordPress came out on Monday. TinyMCE Advanced lets me forget about HTML although I still find myself checking the source to make sure that it’s working correctly. The sitemap generator and the Super Cache seemed like good plugins to install. It’s always good to play nice with the search engine sites and reduce the load the site generates on the web server.
I fixed the unordered list issues I mentioned earlier so I won’t get rid of the theme yet. With that out of the way, let us move on to more important things, such as my new toy: the Samsung Instinct.
I’ve had the phone for three weeks now (no, I only got it the day after it came out) and I’m really happy with it. This is only the third phone (my previous were the LG VX4500 and Sanyo Katana) I’ve ever owned and the first where I’ve bought a data plan. I long resisted the idea of having a cell phone but was finally turned to the dark side after we had our first child a few years ago. Since then, I’d long resisted the idea of using a cell phone for anything but talking. But the idea of having GPS on a phone was too tempting to resist. The other features, such as live TV, radio, Internet, and e-mail were all just added bonuses.
I’ve been having a few problems with some of the data services and one of the batteries doesn’t seem to hold as much of a charge as the other. I was told I can just bring the phone in for a new one, so I’m planning on doing that this weekend. I’d also like to get some sort of cover to put over the touch screen to keep it free of scratches. The invisibleSHIELD looks pretty nice (the ALL CAPS makes the shield stronger).
I’m looking forward to third party applications and if I had time, I’d be tempted to write something myself. They seem to have a nice set of developer tools. But I’ve got enough on my plate without adding a time sink like that.
I think I’ve found a theme I can live with. I spent far too much time looking around the official theme page without finding much that I really liked. Somehow I found myself at Blog Oh! Blog and chose the theme that you currently see. I hacked up a new logo for the top (in Word of all things), however, both that and the bottom image will have to be replaced or removed.
I promised a list of the plugins that I’m using so here they are:
- WordPress PDA & iPhone – Loads a mobile device friendly theme automatically
- WPhone Admin – Provides an admin interface for use with a mobile device
- Akismet – Reduces spam in comments
Of course, looking at that list I realize that my search for a theme is likely not over. Hyperlinks aren’t indicated in the unordered list. And the post looks great when on it’s own page, but the list is all messed up on the main page. Perhaps I can mess with the theme’s CSS and fix it.
