Continue reading »]]> Back in July of 2007 I decided to do something a bit hardcore to this blog in order to challenge myself. I started blogging daily as a way to keep my writing skills sharp and to practice the art of daily gratitude. I mean, even when I wrote a ranting post I still managed to take a moment to think about all of the great things happening in my life. It’s been useful, and I don’t regret it one bit. Finding time back then wasn’t so bad because I really had a fair bit of time on my hands; writing sort of became habitual. I was able to capture a lot of awesome thoughts on here. When I read back at some older entries I can still feel a lot of the emotions I associated with that post. Well, that kind of brings me to where I am today. Times change, priorities change. At this point, I am not able to devote as much time to this blog as I used to.

Uh oh.

I mean, it should be obvious that I’ve been struggling. As much as I like the occasional YouTube video, I was using them to post an entry at times when I had nothing better to write. Sometimes I’d force myself to write just to get an entry in, and the resulting entry is just misshapen and wonky. Lately, I’ve fallen behind on my posts such that I’ve had to backdate posts to keep the streak going. Most of all, the pressure to get posts out regularly is making writing less fun. That’s no good. I need to reclaim the blog and not let it control me, know what I mean?

So, no, I’m not giving this sucker up. No: that’d be sort of like cutting off a limb, right? Right now, I’m going to revert the blog to a not-daily model. If I am fatigued and find myself without anything to write about I just won’t write. Seems simple enough. I think I had a bit of a fear of breaking the streak to be honest. I didn’t want anyone to go “oooh look at that…he couldn’t keep it going after all.” Well, at this point I really don’t give a damn. I still plan on writing frequently, but doing so more leisurely. Really, that’s how things should be. I’m going back to sensible. I’m hoping this will reinvigorate me. So hey, this isn’t an ending–this is a transformation.

Rock on.

Continue reading »]]> Honestly, I just wanted to try piecing together a function using LaTeX notation. Let’s see…

Yeah, that would be the Golden Ratio. Thing of beauty, that is. Get it? That was a math joke. Blah.

What’s the LaTeX notation like? Well:

\phi=\frac{1-\sqrt{5}}{2}\approx 1.618... &s=3

What does it look like as an infinite series? Hmm…

And the LaTeX code:

\phi=\frac{13}{8} + \sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{(-1)^{(n + 1)}(2n + 1)!}
{(n + 2)!n!4^{(2n + 3)} } &s=3

Neat!

Back in the day, I was kind of fond of using Microsoft Word’s equation editor tool. I found it fun laying out equations. It wasn’t about the math (although that was interesting in itself) but more about typesetting and layout. So knowing that WordPress supports LaTeX is a sweet deal. Of course, I probably don’t really have any use for the tool these days. It’s not like high school or university where I had a need to print out equations like these in reports and what not. Still, the idea that I can do it if I wanted to is pretty cool.

Continue reading »]]> I’ve been wanting to change this blog’s theme for a very long time. It needed a new look. That’s pretty much the catalyst. As much as the old theme worked, it was showing age and hadn’t really been updated by the author in a very long time. Especially with all of the new WordPress advances, I was on the hunt for something rather new and more current. I’ve tried a few times in the past to try to change the theme, but I always found something wrong with the new one such that I ended up going back to what I knew. Who knew that it would be so tough moving to a two-column layout? I’m accustomed to the three-column setup from the old theme that figuring out how to rearrange things was a challenge.

While browsing around, I quickly came across this theme. Apart from it being blue (I’m very much a dark red type of guy) it had a general feel that I felt fit well with my sense of blog-style. It took a fair bit of rearranging and tweaking, but I think I’m at a point where I’m happy with it. I do not see myself switching back to the old theme. Man, it’s 2011. Onward and upward to better things that use better tech, right?

Continue reading »]]> In my last job there was a period of about 3.5 years where I was doing a lot of web development heavy work. As stressful as it was it did me a world of good. I learned so much in terms of design and tech. Prior to that job AJAX was just a scrubbing powder, or a town east of Toronto. It forced me to keep up or get swept aside. Even if I wasn’t in charge of creative bits and pieces, I developed a good appreciation for what good design looks like. The separation was probably for the best. The creative people have a really good eye. If they provided a good mockup with pieces that I can cut up I was a happy guy. These days, that pressure isn’t on me anymore. My job doesn’t require extensive web skills–although the skills are useful when working with interface related tasks. There’s just less incentive to keep my skills sharp. Well, for whatever reason I decided that it’s important for me to stay sharp. I decided to purchase a new personal domain that I’d keep in conjunction with garneteye.com. The big problem with domains is generating content to put on them. I know that that will be my biggest issue. However, there’s a lot of random web stuff that I’ve wanted to try crafting for a while now. My intention is to use the domain as a sandbox. The only way to get better is to just keep creating and experimenting. The intent isn’t to get publicity or anything of the sort; I just need to be able to play around. I suppose I could do it with this current domain, but…part of me wants to keep this random business to its own place. I’m diving right in!

Continue reading »]]> 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.

Continue reading »]]> 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.

Continue reading »]]> 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?

Continue reading »]]> 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.

Continue reading »]]> 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.

Continue reading »]]> 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!