Activities Behind The Scenes

I’ve been actively plugging away with both this site and other projects in the past few days. The employment side of things is also looking rosy, so while posts might come slow over the foreseeable future, rest assured it’s not for lack of time in front of the computer!

I completed the promised site redesign here, switching to the Atahualpa theme but keeping the same color palette from the previous incarnation. Everything is running smoothly for the time being but I need to work on the archive page. I’ve been running a pretty sleek plug-in for displaying archives, but displaying all 700-odd posts on a single page is asking too much so I’m on the hunt for a better solution.

In related news, I’m currently working on an e-commerce site running CRE Loaded. While I don’t know if I’ll ever master that particular package or the concerns and issues of e-commerce security, its great experience to get under the belt. I’m making a small sum and its given me the crazy notion of monetizing more of the various coding and design work I’ve played with for years.

To that end I’ll be retooling surfingonarocket.com to function as a professional portfolio site. Eventually I’ll be able to point potential employers there for proof positive of various skills, from writing and editing AP style to coding and designing, Web 2.0-style. I want to become more productive to that end, finally putting out some original WordPress themes and completing freelance work of any variety. We’ll see how that goes.

I took the census entrance exam the other day and answered 27 out of 28 correctly. I couldn’t for the life of me determine what I got wrong, since I was able to work through the entire test twice in the 30 minutes they gave us and wasn’t uncertain over any answer. But then when I took the practice I filled out the incorrect bubble on one where I knew the right choice, so its anyones guess. Apparently 10 correct will get you a job so I’m not concerned enough to re-take the test, and hopefully missing one won’t preclude me from an office job or anything besides being an ‘enumerator’ (the people responsible for going door to door, and, apparently, getting guns pointed at them on a regular basis – according to a 2000 census veteran). Office job will pay better too.

The final word? Even without the certainty of employment I’m planning my first track outing of 2010 – it’ll be at Monticello Motor Club with SCDA, May 17th. There will be a MINI contingent and associated discount, and I’m officially pumped. My MINI is still tucked away in the garage (now completely enclosed with very nice electric garage doors!) but it’s just a tech check and fluid change away from being ready for the event. Well, not quite, but close enough.

Till later, intrepid readers!

WordPress 2.5 And New Design

I upgraded to the highly anticipated WordPress 2.5 yesterday, and this marks my first post with the greatly revised back-end. My my, have things changed. It’s very slick back here, and the biggest change to the admin section since I began using WP (somewhere in the nether regions of version <1.0). I’m looking forward to seeing what the ‘aftermarket’ will come up with in terms of redesigning the admin section as it’s now fully and more easily themeable.

Speaking of designs, I was hoping to whip up something new for my site’s theme with the upgrade to 2.5. I use MAMP to run a virtual server on my laptop so that I can theme and change things without affecting the live site. I’ve been running a 2.5 release candidate on it for a few days, but never got around to doing serious work on a theme. (I had a pretty good one going for awhile, but overwrote it in a really boneheaded move.)

So I set about looking for something new and attractive, fresh. I ended up at this Smashing Magazine article showcasing 15 of the latest, greatest WP themes. They were all very eye-catching. But after rooting around Smashing and a few very excellent web designer websites who gracefully release free WP themes, I realized that for all of their coding and design prowess, the actual designs are far from usable. The trend is moving away from easy access and readability towards… What? Amazing design that’s amazingly difficult to use. The main content is buried and obscured by huge splash graphics and marginally useful sidebars.

How can a website like Smashing Magazine dedicate itself to design topics that I (as a relative newb) barely understand, and then go and use a design that’s so infuriatingly hard to use? Where the main content takes up less than half of the page?

Design for the sake of it? No thanks.

I don’t even mean to call out Smashing Mag. I just discovered the site and it looks to be a great resource. What I didn’t want to do was single out some designer who’s making free professional-grade themes for WP (and whose site I personally felt reeks).

But whatever. I’m currently using a very slightly modified (revised header and slightly wider) version of InSense by Design Disease. It’s appealing, easy on the eyes, and allows the viewer to focus on the content.

Maybe one of these days I’ll get inspired and hack away some more. Till then.

Site Streamlining

Even though I haven’t been updating nearly as often as usual, I am still alive and active online. In the near future I am planning to work on the site. I hope to take one of the nicer templates out there, strip it down, then build it back up. It’s going to be a one-column affair. I’ll scale back the site to the bare essentials – blog and forums.

The design will be slim, but attractive. Stay tuned.

Nicer Archives!

I FINALLY GOT NICER ARCHIVES TO WORK!

Nobody except the other wordpress techie geeks will understand what I’m talking about. But check out my archives now!

A BIG thank you goes out to Asymptomatic for providing me with the solution. For those of you who care (and understand) — apparently my EZStatic plug-in was interfering with setting up the regular nicer archives. But I go over to Asymptomatic, download the .php and upload it, and bam! It works out of the box! I haven’t been able to do that since I installed Kubrick!

I’m in a good mood! I can get through finals week now.

Monday the 13th: German test & 2 Israel essays
Tuesday the 14th: 12-15 page Africa paper
Wednesday the 15th: 10+ page Islam paper
Thursday the 16th: Final personal essay portfolio
Friday the 17th: Math exam
Saturday the 18th: FREEDOM

UPDATE:
Are my archives working for you? Someone is saying they aren’t, but they’re working for most people. What about you? Please comment if you see a php error!