It’s Thursday again, so I guess that means it’s time for another weekly update. Yeah, why the heck not?
If you are assisting me in checking out the new setup and format for the business site, please be patient. I have another wedding this weekend, then I’m off of weddings for a month, but right smack dab in the middle of that is our High School soccer tournament and I’ll be out of town for three days. With all the shenanigans that took place this summer, I am thus still going to be in a bit of crunch finishing client proof sites and album design. And since I’m behind, the likelihood of pre-Thanksgiving (and certainly pre-Christmas) print orders is very high as well. So, just please bear with me. As much as I liked the work the young lady in Germany did for us, I’m going to use that template for the fine-art site (synthaetica) because I can afford for it to be that ‘edgy’ but not the business site. I would gladly pay her more money to finalize the business site, but I don’t even need to ask the Spouse Unit whether or not she would come unglued if I did so. As a result, I am slowly hand-tweaking one of the more elegant wordpress templates (hemingwayEX, if you’re interested) to meet our needs (which basically means more imagery) for the business site—something I was desperately trying to avoid in the first place, but we all know what my karma is like, so go figure. I am currently stuck on having a background div semi-transparent but the overlay (content) div fully opaque, is the trouble I’m having. it’s probably something simple, but after working on it for several hours, I gave up, and I really shouldn’t have spent that long on it to begin with.
I made some formative changes behind-the-scenes to the otherwhirled over the past couple of days as well. They’re little things. First, I finally found the Sociable plugin (i didn’t know what it’s called, and these plugin developers do a relatively crappy job of describing what their plugins do, so finding the right one ultimately requires a lot of clicking and a lot of reading that a responsible person doesn’t really have the time to give to it). Anyway, I found it and got it installed, only to discover that the pHp call to the html header information needed to be in the header.php file, which is not how the theme I’m using over there works. So, I had to tweak the index.php and and the header.php files to make them compatible with Sociable. Luckily, that worked on the first swipe. I also changed my post template over there so that photo credits would appear directly below the photos, which is a relatively common expectation. I also added the Earth As Art gadget to both blogs, partly because I think it’s cool, and partly because the Spouse Unit had something to do with it. It changes with every page load, and it’s pretty easy to add to your own site as well, which I recommend doing, because, isn’t it rather nice to see our government doing something beneficial for the public for once? I think so.
No technological changes (except for the Earth As Art thing) over here for the time-being. Bigger fish to fry. Glub-glub. Sizzle.
I had a wedding last Saturday morning up in Brookings. I mentioned this in that other blog, but that’s not the place to go into detail on what is essentially personal stuff. I started off the morning, after the drive to Brookings, with coffee at Cottonwood Coffee with Rachel (tramplingrose) and her husband Jay (who I assumed is the trampled rose). Here’s a funny thing. Run this Google search and notice that Cottonwood Coffee is outclassed in search statistics by one of its own employees. Pretty funny. Said employee wasn’t there that morning, though, much to her personal sadness at not having been able to meet me, I’m sure. Anyway, Rachel and Jay and I had a nice conversation which ranged from blogging to family (with a smile) to family (with a wry grin) to work. I only had about an hour to spend with them, but would have enjoyed more time. They be nice people, and it was very enjoyable to get to know the personality behind tramplingrose, whom I’ve been reading pretty much since she started blogging.
After that, it was off to shoot me some wedding people over at First Lutheran Church. As I was driving up to it, I quickly understood why the locals refer to the church as “Touchdown Jesus”. Jesus Christ on a football, that’s a hell of a religious mural, isn’t it? (My apologies to all those I just offended, but you should have known to expect this from me by now). The church is a lot more boring on the inside, and dark, too. Ceremony pictures were kind of tough to pull off, but the portraits were done early enough that the sunlight coming through the east windows was a big help. The wedding went well, if a bit longer than expected (go figure), and I wish Kyleigh and John the very best. Sorry I’m a bit behind on proofs processing, kids.
If I’m not mistaken, that’s the first time I’ve ever linked to a church website before. My good deed for the day, I guess. I have to admit it’s kind of a cool place, and it was very nice that they have that mission coffeehouse there (eek….I did it again, no less!) , especially since I didn’t plan ahead for lunch despite the fact that we were doing portraits over the lunch hour. The sandwich and smoothie that I got there were quite yummy.
Back to the technical side of things, with all the links in this post, you may notice something that I do as a standard because I’m still kind of a geek at heart. Links to images will always open in the same window or tab (depending on your browser configuration), no matter what post or page they’re linked from. Links to websites or blog home pages open in their own window or tab, links to specific internal web pages or posts open in their own window or tab, and links between my blogs and websites keep to their own tab or window as well. This should help keep your browser clutter and open tabs to a minimum. If you don’t like that, just Ctrl-click (Command-click for you Macintosh nerds) the link and it’ll always open in a unique tab or window. I do that across all my blogs, by the way, and I’m trying to write a plugin that will handle uniquely-named tabs or windows for the blogroll links as well. Anyway, take it or leave it, that’s how I do it, because I absolutely hate having a bazillion tabs open at once, especially for something that I look at once and then don’t return to.
It’s nineteen days until I can contact the Elder and Unknown directly. I’m still undecided on what to do there, but the consensus from my personal friends is that I should just call her. I dunno about that, because I don’t know what would be a good time for her, and I don’t want to freak her out. Maybe I’ll ask the Spouse Unit to ask her. Pfft. I just don’t know. There’s not really a need to push, either.
I have not had a good summer and early fall. Not that I mean to complain, or even excuse myself. I’m behind on work, I’m behind on some personal goals, and there were some projects that #1 Son and I had intended to complete this summer, and here it is a week after the first frost, and not only are those projects not finished, but they were never begun. Naturally, I beat myself up over this virtually all day every day, but I’ll get over it.
HEY!!! I MOVED!!!
once again, without my permission, the calendar has rolled around to Thursday. i have found myself living from Wednesday to Wednesday this soccer season, because I’ve been so busy refereeing: 12 high school games and 2 men’s league games from last Thursday through this past Tuesday, for example. theoretically, i’m in better shape, but i’m tired, of course. that’s okay, though. it builds character, right?