Theme updating complete. Not as bad as I’d feared, although it apparently broke the Twitter widget and I had to do it the low-tech way. Took the time to neaten up and update a few of the static pages, and make some different banners…. seasonally themed! Wow! Zowie! *ahem* Still not what I had in mind, but my patience was at a low ebb. It’ll work for now.
Category: Site News
Posts more to do with the site itself.
Mind the dust, and a couple more Pumpkin Beers
The theme I use for the site needs updating. Every time I log in, the little “1” next to the Updates tab stares scornfully at me. I’ve avoided updating, trying to ignore that little “1”, because I didn’t create a new theme and then tweak it; I directly tweaked the old theme. Naughty, naughty. But if I update the theme, it will probably break the changes I made. However, I’ve been toying with changing up the look of the site, and that would be a good enough reason to go ahead and update and break everything. Stand by, the site might look funky for a few days as a result.
Terrapin is a local company, so I want to like it. It’s got a nice orange color, decent head, and a fair pumpkin-spice odor. However, it’s also got a very hoppy taste… a little too hoppy for me. Not unpalatable to me, but still too hoppy for my liking. It tends to overwhelm any pumpkin spice taste until after the swallow; although it’s a nice graham-cracker taste then. I’ll have to give it a pass.
Blue Point Pumpkin Ale is definitely not too hoppy. It’s also not very… pumpkiny. Not very malty, either. In fact, other than the color, there’s really nothing there to distinguish it from a Bud Light. Pretty disappointing, and I’m glad it was gifted to me rather than my having wasted money on it. Probably the bottom of the list of any of the pumpkin beers I’ve tasted.
Testing the “Press This” button
Cyanide & Happiness #957 – Explosm.net.
Allows instant addition of a… web site? Link? to the blog while you’re surfing. Interesting, though not sure how much I’d use it.
Speaking of ‘blog changes (were we speaking of that? Whatever), I guess it’s about time this theme was updated, underpinnings-wise, anyway. Fiddling with sidebar widget aware wordpress themes; time to update this one anyway, seeing as it was based on a 1.5-version theme and wordpress is on, what, 3.1? Dunno what sidebar widgets I’d want to use, but I’d need an updated theme to use ’em if I wanted to. Use them, that is.
Updates and the wait
The laptop didn’t show up Friday; but the Order Status page changed… it’s now “in production” with an estimated arrival date of 11/1. Dammit, I’m an “instant gratification” kind of guy, I want my toy NOW!! Ah, well.. Maybe I’ll have it for the two weeks of Defensive Tactics Instructor class in November.
Whew!
By the time you read this, the domain transfer from ochosting to bluehost will be complete. The subdomains seem to be propagating fine, and I spent the day screwing with CSS templates to get the look right. There are still some static pages that aren’t formatted quite right, because they originally used tables. Yeah, yeah, CSS positioning is the future, more powerful than tables, yadda yadda. But they’re an enormous, confusing, pain in the ass. Up for tomorrow is attempting to make the photo gallery match the rest of the site. By the way, if you create an account on the ‘blog, it will propagate to the photo gallery. If you have a personal gallery, you will get an option to add photos to your ‘blog posts.
The other event of the day was the Sheriff’s Office annual banquet. My roommate, Ian, and I created a video for it last year that was very well received; we created another one for this year. All I had to do was show up and play it at the right time; someone else was supposed to be handling everything else, such as the sound board and speakers and all that. Unfortunately, apparently no one knew who that someone else was supposed to be, so I ended up scurrying around retrieving the sound board and speakers, borrowing Ian’s laptop and getting the Training projector, and hooking it all up. Not too happy about that. I hope someone appreciates my- and Ian’s- efforts.
I also got a letter from Household Bank saying my credit application for the new laptop had been rejected, dated the same day that Household Bank told me on the phone I was approved. Gateway says the order is fine and will be delivered on the 21st. Hmm. We’ll see.
Yet another new site
Last weekend, my previous web host, OC Hosting, unceremoniously blocked access to all my sites on 5100bac.net because the version of the forum software I was using, phpBB, was out of date and had a security hole. Never mind that if their security is set up properly, someone hacking my site won’t affect the rest of the server. I looked at how hopelessly out of date it was and decided to just switch to another method of keeping this blog and the photo album. So, we’re now running WordPress for the blog- I didn’t feel I really needed a whole modded phpBB portal for just a blog- and Coppermine for the photo album. The photo album is linked to the blog; if you create an account on one, it’s created on the other. I also switched to Bluehost for hosting; I’ve been with OC for a few years, but their service and quality has been going downhill.
Anyway, all the pictures are up in the gallery and all the old blog entries transferred; still have to update photo descriptions and re-do the theme so everything matches.