Post archive for ‘Thoughts’
2008 by the numbers
On the final day of the year, I present my 2008 in easy to read numerical form.
I miss you, iPhone
It was a hot and somewhat humid late summer afternoon but you and I had plans to meet that day so I waited outside patiently for you to arrive. A few hours passed but still I waited because the promise of our union was too great to pass up. Finally, the velvet ropes (tensa-barrier) opened and we met face to “face.”
It was love at first sight. You were shiny, sleek, and trim enough for me to wrap one hand around you. You were everything I ever wanted… from a phone.
New design and tweaks – a long time coming
After a week of testing, I’m proud to unveil the latest iteration (3.0) of g a r y w o n g . o r g.
The changes:
- Retiring the Redoable theme from Dean J. Robinson. It had a good run – August 2007 to November 2008 – but modifying the php to implement the many tweaks was making maintenance more difficult. With the deprecation of plugins I was using in my Wordpress 2.2 installation, it was time to move on to a theme that would be more extensible.
- The new theme is Thesis from Chris Pearson. With what I was hoping to implement, it made sense to move to this theme as it’s best quality is the ability to use hooks to mostly eliminate the need to touch the core theme files. So far, it’s been well worth the $87.
- Gone is the middle sidebar, bringing this site back to a cleaner, more manageable two-column layout. As much as I liked having the sideblog in the middle column, it became really annoying to keep the text of each headline and comment to one line each to keep the clean aesthetic. The sidenotes are now asides and will appear inline, allowing me the freedom to write as little or as much as like.
- Gone as well is the monthly calendar from the sidebar – it was just taking up too much space. Also gone is LiveSearch – we’ll all just have to do with typing in a search term and pressing ‘Enter’ to perform the query. Tough, I know.
- Making it’s way over from the old musicblog is the inclusion of recently listened to tracks in the sidebar. Once again, you’ll all be able to see the eclectic selection of music I listen to.
Summer is dead – long live summer!
It’s Labor Day again and with it comes the unofficial end of summer. Coincidentally, this week is going to be warmer than most weeks we had in August. The only true disappointment this summer was not availing myself of all the free outdoor concerts throughout the city. I can make up for it next summer but it won’t be at McCarren Park as that venue is no more.
Just taking a short break
If you’ve noticed that there’s been a slowdown in the number of posts being put up (how about none at all), don’t be worried. This isn’t another sickness-induced absence but a hiatus I’d plan on taking from mid-July to September. I’ll still be posting sidenotes every weekday but weekend posting and main column posts will be on a break for the rest of the summer.
See you all after Labor Day!
Massive site changes made
I’ve added some new features and deprecated some others in the past month or so. It’s best to just get them all explained in one post seeing as how I’ve been a bit lazy in explaining them as they were implemented.
Spring in NYC is never long enough
I usually plan on writing the spring recap during the Memorial Day weekend but sometimes life gets in the way so you gotta adjust. These recaps may seem easy but my memory gets worse with time so I have to consult the calendar to see what the heck I actually did the last few months.
Moblog added
After a bit of tinkering, I’ve added a moblog to the site. It’s made up of photos from my cellphones, past and present, and is powered by Flickr.
Ending the winter hibernation
It’s the first weekend of spring so it would seem to make sense to write up a postmortem on winter. There’s only one problem.
It sure as fuck doesn’t feel like spring yet. I want my mid-50s temperatures, dammit.
Spring cleaning and other odds n’ ends
Yes, as I shiver my way through typing out this post, I am fully aware of how wrong it is to insert the word ’spring’ into the title. Still, it seemed appropriate as the long winter has almost passed and with spring training having started, it seems close enough to spring to make some changes to this site.