Tag: thanks

If you’re not a regular WP user, then you might not have noticed there’s a large amount of anger and frustration happening in their support forums lately. Basically, some people in the community have spent a great deal of time and effort helping out WP users with layout problems that others ended up with due to quirks in the default layout and in some1 of the designs that were posted over at Alex King’s WordPress Style Competition. But that wasn’t the direct cause of the current mess in the forums; no the blame for that seems to rest with Michael’s announcement that a variation of his Kubrick style would be included with the next release of WordPress. This was the spark to an apparent holy war between WP’s community support leaders2 and WP’s developers, with a bunch of fanboys on the sidelines escalating things.

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As you’ve probably noticed already; I’ve finally switched over to the new look that I’ve been working on for CoffeeBear.net. It’s not 100% finished but it’s close enough that I wanted to go ahead and make the switch. My thanks go out to Root for his Trident interface/template on which this new look is based. Sure, my implementation isn’t fancy but it’s a nice change from the old look and is more mine than any other look that I’ve used.

Also, I’ve finally opened my Gallery for your viewing pleasure. Currently, the only thing in there are a selection of photos that I took during my Japan trip. I’ll be adding more to it later.

Enjoy!

Update: Err, I’ve noticed that the new look is busted up on my Portal page and on some of my posts. I’m working to correct that now.

Update 2: Oh and a word of caution, my gallery pages are massively picture heavy. I’ll see about sorting them out a bit later into smaller folders, but for now if you try viewing those pages over dial-up… You’ll be sitting there a while waiting for the thumbnails to load.

Update 3: I forgot to mention, my gallery is currently being powered by Paul Griffin’s Simple PHP Gallery

I’ve been back in the States for a few days now and I’ve been meaning to1 write a little something reflecting back on the trip; however with jet lag and what not2, I’ve been a bit too tired to write anything up. Since I received a friendly reminder about it from AWelkin; I figure I better hurry up and write something. First off, let’s get the gushy fan-boyishness out of the way. Going to Japan was an amazing experience and something that I am very glad that I had the opportunity to do. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here are some of the impressions that I’m left with from my visit to Japan.
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Today we had to get up and check out of the hotel by 6:00 AM (or 5:45 AM if you had phone charges to pay for like I did). Then we ran to catch the early morning train and made some exchanges to get over to Takarazuka, where we visited the Osamu Tezuka Museum. The walk to the museum from the train station would not have been so bad; if we weren’t carrying our luggage for the next 3 days with us1. The museum wasn’t as big as say the Ghibli museum had been but it was packed with stuff about Tezuka and his work. Also in the basement level, they ran an hour long “animation course”2. The course ran off a set of computer built into little desks with built-in lightboxes. You were supposed to follow along with what they were saying via your computer, but we didn’t speak enough Japanese and none of us read any Japanese, so that part was hard. Fortunately, some of the museum employees spoke enough English that we were able to participate and make our own little 2 frame animation. Mine was of my CoffeeBear character waving and it received the Astro Boy Seal of Approval3 *grin* Oh and one of the other nice things about the museum was that they allowed you to take pictures inside. So, I’ll see about posting some of those later.
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Today, we hit 3 temples over in the Kamakura region. And since I’m feeling lazy, I’m just going to post some bullet points about them for now:

    Hasudera: MASSIVE Buddha

  • Great pictures thanks to cooperative sky
  • HOT, HOT walk to Buddha
    Temple 2: Japanese shrine (maybe Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine?)

  • BLOODY MISERABLE HEAT and stairs on walk up to temple
  • Gorgeous scenary
  • Rest area near top with excellent apple juice
  • Rest area overlooks the city area and the ocean
  • saw some hawks/falcons/eagles flying from rest area, very cool
  • Got a picture of a couple of ladies wearing kimonos outside temple, really like the design of the white one with blue flowers
    Temple 3: Japanese shrine 2 (maybe Hasedera?)

  • Massive and beautiful
  • heat started to go down a bit
  • saw shrine maidens wearing traditional grab, but didn’t get a chance to ask them for a picture
  • had a small museum area with various things of interest: sword, arrows, bows, scrolls, vases, kimonos
    Shopping on way back to hotel

  • bought small something for Mom, K and Grandma D.
  • helped pick out omiyage for K-san.
  • ate dinner with AWelkin and Bryon again, this time also with Y, an old friend of AWelkin’s
  • nice itlian place, had salomn cream penne, very nice
  • got back to hotel late, tried calling Ariesna but got no answer
    UPDATE

  • This morning had e-mail from Ariesna that she’s been having a rough time (smashed her hand) but other than that she’s ok.
  • Also, I had some bizarre dream last night. Don’t remember much, but it seemed like I’d had it before and it seems there was some odd ball drug use going on in the dream. As I said, it was bizarre.