citizen of the planet

Well, I figured that with the new month I’d go ahead and upgrade my install of WordPress.  After doing so I tried to switch around the settings on my old theme.  The settings page wasn’t accessible since that move.  Instead of bothering to figure out why I thought I’d give the new Twenty Ten default theme a go.  It’s definitely different from the look and feel of the other one.  I currently don’t feel it’s really all that reflective of my style, but I think I can tweak this one enough over time to make it more like something I’d use.  Either that, or I’ll find a theme that’s more appropriate.  Anyway, we’ll see how this goes.

ETA: Oops. Looks like I like the old theme too much.  I found that the author released an update to make the options pages work for WP3.0, so here it is back again.  Whoo.

Well, that last post was certainly interesting.  At least, it’s interesting to me.  Drunk blogging certainly isn’t something I advocate.  It’s a slippery slope, and when you’re unguarded it’s far too easy to have a bit of verbal diarrhea and over-share.  Luckily I still had enough sense to not be an idiot.  The gateway to over-share was open, and I might have peeked through, but in the end I still shut the door.  Still…the last post is kind of unfortunate.  What’s done is done.

This banner was an interesting one to create.  The original picture was taken by me back in November 2007.  While visiting relatives in Phoenix suburb they decided that it would a good thing for us to have a look at the Grand Canyon.  So, we spend a couple of hours travelling north and eventually made it to the South Rim.  I don’t recall why I didn’t have a camera on me at the time, so I ended up shooting some pictures with my cell phone.  Here’s the picture:

So, first of all you’ll notice how the colours are quite different.  The original looks kind of washed out, no?  Well, the colours in the canyon were amazing, but not quite vivid–at least, not like what I saw in Sedona.  For the banner, I cropped the image, then changed the white balance to tend toward cooler hues.  I then cranked the saturation way up, making the colours more vivid.  I then made the red hues a lot stronger.  Lastly, I turned down the brightness a notch while raising the contrast level.  The banner above is the end result.  Big difference, no?

Most of my thoughts over the past few days have been dominated by the race and all of the necessary preparations.  However, that wasn’t the only interesting thing that happened over the weekend.  On Saturday I actually attended a small get together of some other bloggers in the Toronto area belonging to the 20SB group.  That group is a community of sorts for twenty-somethings that blog.  I joined that group a while back and over time it’s put me in contact with a group of people that I would likely have never have known about otherwise.

It’s really fascinating how a group of relative strangers can get to know each other and feel slightly familiar without ever having met.  For the most part, reading the thoughts that these people have put online as well as having a look at the occasional photo have brought life into the words.  Part of me knows that there is a living, breathing, angsting 20-something on the other end typing away and crafting their own niche of the Internet.  Even so, the image that’s most often generated in my mind is pretty much limited to an avatar and a generic voice.  In the end, even if we’re in the same region, there’s a tendency to just draw a line and note the separation.  It’s like: I’m doing my own thing, and they’re doing their own thing…and there’s the vast wasteland of the Internet that separates us.  And so, this is where the meet up comes in.  Bloggers tend to share personal thoughts and feelings, right?  All of that is still impersonal to some extent.  It really only becomes truly personal and engaging when your mind can make the connection between the words you see and an actual person that you’ve met.  And that’s why I’m thankful to have had this weekend to meet some these people.

Now, I suppose I won’t go into too much detail over what I saw and what happened because, really, Erin already wrote about the night and put a good amount of detail into it.  At this point I don’t think there’s all that much to add, if I’m being honest.  Yes, it’s possible to meet a couple of crazies on the Internet, but immediately I knew that this wasn’t one of those times.  From first impressions it seemed like everyone had a good head on their shoulders, which made me feel a bit relieved.  If everyone was completely out to lunch I would have been running for the hills.  Luckily, we all had a good time.  I think there’s a great related point that Erin brought up in her post.  We were kind of taught early on about the perils of meeting people online.  Well this time nothing went wrong.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried about how I’d be received.  I think I came off well.  Prior to the event I told myself that if I just acted like my usual self I’d be fine.  In the end, I really was fine.  Then again, I think the fact that this wasn’t the first time I had met people from the Internet helped me keep things in perspective.  Prior to this, there was that cross-Japan tour that I did with a guy from Connecticut that I knew through a forum.  Two years before that there was the Tokyo tour with nine others whom I hadn’t met at all.  Interesting to note that I’m good friends now with one of those people.  And before that there was a small group I met at what must have been the 2005 Fan Expo.  So no, meeting people from the online world isn’t too new to me at all.  Don’t get me wrong, the results can still be a bit too wacky for my tastes, but overall it’s been all right.

Hear that everyone?  You’re aaaaaaaall right.

OK, so I’ve fallen asleep on the couch again while writing this so I’m ending this entry right here.

Just a few words on the new banner up top.  Prior to selecting an image I decided that I’d pick out the theme’s blue scheme for the month.  Having decided on that bit, I set out to pick a picture that suited that hue.  Going through my photos I found a picture of Niagara Falls that I had archived.  I have a lot of pictures of the Horseshoe Falls, but for composition I decided to pick this one of the American side.

So, the first thing I did was resize and crop it to an eye-catching portion.  I then adjusted the white balance.  For outside photos, the white balance tends more toward bluer light.  After that I used an automatic saturation balancing tool, which cranked up the blue saturation even more.  The result is the image in the banner, which really does look like a painting; the blueness of the Niagara river is rather striking.

The original image can be found below for reference.

Yes, it’s late. I just spent the last one or two hours creating some new header images for the theme to randomly pick from. It’s been an interesting process because it allowed me a chance to scour through my hard drive of photos to find some candidates for header images. Some of the older pictures from years ago were pretty low-res. You can tell from the results. In other cases, the picture was actually taken with my cell phone creating for weird colouration. There were some photos that looked pretty cool on their own, but lost their impact when limited to a window of 226 pixels. I added descriptions to the pictures I chose. I’m not sure if I’m liking the pixel font I chose. The font is meant to be 7 pixels high, but that was far too small for my liking. As such, there’s some heavy duty anti-aliasing going on.

Right now there are 11 images:

• Niagara Falls, Ontario
• Seafort Square, Tokyo, JP
• Chinatown, Yokohama, JP
• Big Buddha, Kamakura, JP
• Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
• Fairmont Royal York, Toronto, Ontario
• Old City Hall, Toronto, Ontario
• Wall Street, New York, New York
• Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario
• Yonge St., Toronto, Ontario
• Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario

Let me know if there’s a particular one that’s pretty cool, or if there’s one that just doesn’t work. Any opinion would be helpful. Thanks!

ETA: OK, so after sitting with it for a day or so, I’m realizing that not all images work that well as a header. As well, having a random header can be distracting. So I’m going to pick one header image and stick with it for a month or whatever time period. The first one I’m choosing will be Seafort Square. If you see fire above it’s because I still haven’t uploaded it. Keep an eye out!

So, if you’ve come here before the first thing you’ll notice is that I’ve changed WordPress themes. This one is called Mandigo. It comes from the same author as my old theme, Royale. I must say, making a change like this is rather difficult. I’ve been using Royale for about 2 years. Over time I’ve come to associate that theme’s general aesthetic with my blog. I was pretty fond of its dark background with colour accents. I’ve actually hacked the code a little bit just to get its look more in line with what I wanted. So, as you can see, I have a good history with it.

Over time, I’ve started to wonder if the theme was something that I could continue to use in the long run. What do I mean by that? Well, as time goes on, WordPress just seems to get bigger and better with each release. There are always new features being added in. With each new feature, it’s really up to the theme author to update his or her themes to be able to make the most use out of the newly developed components. Unfortunately for me, the author of Royale seems to have stopped updating that theme altogether. There have been times where a change to WP meant that I had to hack the theme just to get it functioning properly again. Recently, there was a change made to the WP interface that somehow caused me to be unable to change the colour of the accents on the page. If I had time, I could probably hack the theme interface to get it to work, but honestly I just used it as a sign that it was probably time to move on to a different theme.

So, here I am with this new one. I actually came upon this theme from Björk’s Volta Blog. From there, I was led to Royale. Since it’s from the same author I figured that the structure would be similar enough to allow me to make the transition. For me, it’s going to take some getting used to. I have to spend some time tweaking bits here and there to make it more personal, but I think it’s a good starting point.

Over at 20SB every now and then they have this Blog Carnival thing where they get people to submit a blog post on a certain topic. Then, the powers that be pick a few entries (based on some unknown criteria) and “publish” them out. I’ve submitted a post or two before but they never got picked. How’s now going to be any different? Well, it probably won’t be. I’m just doing it for free ice cream (if it hasn’t already run out). What? Ice cream?

Disclosure: This post is a part of 20SB’s Looking Back Blog Carnival, and Ben & Jerry’s is awarding free ice cream to lucky bloggers and readers!

The topic? Well, this time around they wanted people to pick out a post from the first two months of the archives of their blog. Those who know the history of my blog will know that I actually started writing back in April 2002, but lost everything in a database accident of sorts. So, my archives only go as far back as February 2003. I looked back at stuff I still have, and man, I complained a lot back then. I suppose it’s not like I’ve stopped complaining now, but, apart from my occasional emo periods, the tone is a heck of a lot more positive. A few years of experience really does go a long way. Back in February 2003, I was 22 years old and still finding my feet. At the time I was on a work term and commuting a lot. My family and I were in the process of moving from an apartment by the Don Valley Parkway to our current house. At the new house, I had dislocated my kneecap. Yikes! There’s a picture of my leg in a brace here.

The stuff I wrote back then was largely observational and rather random. When I read it now, some bits just feel manic. There was a bit of a lack of focus. I wonder why that’s the case. Maybe these days I feel like I’ve got more of a sense of purpose such that when I write I’ve got some sort of driving force guiding things. I don’t know. Maybe Twitter has changed the game somewhat. I mean, back then I got away with writing entries like this:

Excuse me…what is it with people looking at my crotch?

Ha! No kidding, eh? It’s gotten to the point where I can weed out the random thoughts, post the appropriate ones as tweets, then have a clean blog post.

Anyway, what post did I choose? Well, with a two month time frame the pickings are kind of slim. In the end I picked a post that kind of shows the fact that even if my writing lacked focus back then, my writing style was always kind of verbose, eccentric, but vivid when I allow myself to let the mind wander. I also already had a good knack for making random thoughts kind of flow into a nice train of thought. The title of that old post is: Wish I had my camera. It was posted on February 4, 2003.

It’s been one of those mornings where I wish I had my camera with me.

I got on the elevator feeling tired and sick. All the other flu symptoms that I’ve been lacking have finally caught up to me. I have a sore throat, I’m achy, I’m a bit dizzy…but I’m still going to work. I’m resolved to stay in my cubicle though. Lucky my boss isn’t here today. Anyway…

Back to the elevator. As I got off the elevator on the first floor, here I was shocked to see this line of brand new toilets sitting in a row down the hallway. It was quite the sight. You’d think you were in some sort of wongo dream or something. There were just so many. I know that the building will be upgrading plumbing fixtures in the next month, so that explains why it was all there.

Today, walking to the bus stop I had to deal with the effects of freezing rain. The sidewalks were still covered with snow yesterday. The temperature became quite mild causing things to melt a bit. It then started raining causing even more melting. By this morning, it had all frozen over again causing a hellish walk to the stop. This guy in front of my decided to walk on the road. I started to do so but I felt my feet slipping every step or two. I didn’t want to end up slipping and falling at an inopportune time causing me to be crushed by a vehicle. In the end I ended up walking through the snowy grass.

Now, because of the rain the snow was quite crunchy making the walk tougher than usual. On top of that I had to keep a close eye on the ground for piles of dog shit. Now, I don’t know what’s wrong with some dog owners, but if your pet happens to pinch a loaf in the snow it will not disappear when the snow melts. I saw lots of turds, uncrushed, and crushed by unfortunate souls who had to walk on the side like me. I thought I had successfully avoided the land mines, but then when I sat down on the second bus I could smell this faint odour of urine or fecal matter. Man, was I self-conscious. Luckily, it wasn’t me…which leaves me to question the hygiene of some of the people whom I ride with.