A Change of Scenery…

If you’ve visited round these quiet parts in the past couple of days you may have noticed a change in the winds. Actually not in the winds at all… just a change of this site. It’s now sporting a new look, but I’m sure it looks familiar.

You see WordPress 3 came out and I wasn’t that fussed but obviously upgraded. You may or may not know that the default WordPress theme has now changed with this new release and I thought ‘what the heck, might as well use it and have a site that looks identical to a million others.’

OK, that’s not what I thought at all but I wouldn’t blame you for making that assumption! No, I thought that if I used the new Twenty Ten theme (as it’s so-called) I would be using a theme that was the most up to date and most reliable to work with the new version of WordPress. I hate it when themes break from upgrades. It’s frustrating to no end.

The theme I used before, Bold, worked fine with WP 3, but, there’s always a chance it won’t with future upgrades and I’m going on blind faith that this won’t happen with Twenty Ten because… well, the WordPress peeps themselves coded it.

So I very randomly, a week ago today actually, sat down in front of a local WordPress installation on my laptop and started tweaking Twenty Ten to my liking. Now I haven’t done any sort of web designing/coding/fondling for… probably the best part of two years at least. Where the idea came from to just start doing it again still remains a mystery to me.

Any who, I did said tweaking with some very important ‘rules’ so to speak, in my head. These were:

  • Any customizations that could be done through the WP admin panel should only be done through this route, and not through editing the core CSS etc. (E.g. the header image and the main background colour in this theme’s case).
  • All editing to be done through my own child theme, so that when things go ‘SGRISHGIRUOS – T’EME NOW DED. KTHXBYE’ I could start all over again. Thankfully this didn’t happen and I named this theme Twenty TEmz. A lot of thought went into that. Clearly.
  • Keep editing only to the CSS as much as possible. I didn’t want to mess with the code much. I’ve taken bits out (none that will cause damage by being gone) and slightly changed some (nothing that can affect any upgrades) but most importantly I didn’t add any code. OK, OK, I added one tiny little snippet. From previous experiences it’s the addition of random coding tidbits that causes issues with updates.

And there you have it. This theme ain’t much, I’ll admit, and there are some parts I haven’t even looked at yet that need a lil’ bit of work but on the whole it works and it ain’t too shabby. The CSS file could do with a little tidying up, and I’ll get round to that eventually. Maybe.

I’ve been using other people’s themes for over two years now, and it feels a little nicer now using something I put a little bit of time into making my own. :-)

Posted from Norwich, England, United Kingdom.

Filed under: Oceanus-Anima.com, Offline Life, Online Life
Tagged , , ,
4 Comments

Three Years of Spewing Crap to Twitter

Yup. You read that right. Three years ago yesterday, June 8th, I signed up to Twitter. In that time I’ve written just over 700 tweets. As much as I know that’s a fairly low number, that’s 700 little snippets of my rambling, and that, my dears, is a lot.

I have no idea why I signed up to Twitter, and to this day I’m not really sure why I’m still using it. Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoy spewing out little crap nuggets online, but I’m not so sure I should be doing it! I have gone through stages of not using it for months, and other stages of posting daily, even multiple times daily.

Of course the other side to Twitter is following other people, I follow few, but those I do, I love reading their 140 character or less messages.

I would like to say I’m going to try to post better to Twitter in the future, to post less often than I do now and to say more meaningful messages. But let’s face it that’s not going to happen! So here’s to another three years of spewing crap to Twitter! ;-)

Here’s some (not so) specially selected tweets from my 700+ archive:

Drunk. And oh so oh so oh so oh so tired….. please give me sleeeeeep!!! PLEASE!!! Falling asleep at my iBook at the moment! 10:54 PM Jun 29th, 2007 via Twitter Tools

I have written to Twitter  whilst drunk many, many times. I would do well to learn not to! Wish my iBook hadn’t broken a little while after this.

Watching six million balloons fly past my window. Very random if you ask me. 1:53 PM Sep 3rd, 2007 via web

Six million is a number I always use if I don’t actually know what the number is. Eg, if you asked me how many JD & cokes I’ve drunk in my life I’d say six million. Unfortunately, I probably have drunk six million JD & cokes!

Bet you can’t guess where I am! Empire State Building! Hell yeah! 12:04 AM Nov 6th, 2007 via txt

Yup. I’m that sad – standing at the top of the Empire State Building and posting to Twitter of all bloody things!

Want to see how small Pumpkin Princess really is? Just look: http://flickr.com/photos/hooofooey/2474605302/ 10:00 PM May 7th, 2008 via web

Gorgeous kitty eventually got to a fairly normal size. I was not happy. She’s  still gorgeous though!

YES! 27 days straight at work are over! Day off tomorrow, yippee! 11:20 PM Aug 28th, 2008 via web

I would never be stupid enough to work that many days ever again.

The best birthday present – being added on Facebook by my two cousins I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to be in contact with for over 13 years! :-D 9:32 PM Mar 22nd, 2009 via web

It’s been lovely having contact with them. Facebook isn’t all bad I guess!

Something ab-sah-tootley awesome has just occurred! Effin’ hell I can hardly believe it! :-D 5:52 PM Jun 11th, 2009 via txt

The tweet after this one showed my unconditional offer to go to uni. A very happy day for me. :-)

http://twitpic.com/92noz – My short hair! Had 6 inches chopped off :-O not had it this length for about 5/6 years. Will take some getting used to. 9:09 PM Jul 2nd, 2009 via TwitPic

I had it cut again a little while after and it still didn’t look short!

Spent the evening painting donuts! Hands are covered in paint! 9:28 PM Jul 23rd, 2009 via Twitter for iPhone

Hell yes I’m that cool! (Painting decorations for  a Donut Eating Nerds party – dress as nerds, eat donuts, not the other way round!).

Had a fun evening titled ‘Four Cheesestrings & Energy Nuts’ :-D 10:51 PM Aug 25th, 2009 via Twitter for iPhone

Went longboarding (not the surfing type) with my sister. I ate four (four!) Cheesestrings and she eat a bag of energy nuts. I told you, I’m cool (longboarding, not eating like a pig!). :-P

Walking to work for my last ever shift! Unemployment here I come @ 5pm! 7:40 AM Sep 12th, 2009 via Twitter for iPhone

And I’m still unemployed today. Lazy ass student instead!

Rather enjoyed being Action Barbie at an Action Man vs Barbie event last night! Uni has some random themes sometimes… :-P 11:18 AM Oct 21st, 2009 via Echofon

That was just the beginning of all the random fancy dress nights out I’d have!

I’ve been back in England less than 24 hours and I already miss #surfing in #Morocco. #Taghazout is an amazing village! 12:08 PM Mar 29th via mobile web

Went surfing in Morocco for my 21st birthday – the BEST week of my life. Ever.

Just got off the phone to my sister, we were chatting/laughing for over 2 & 1/2 hours and could have continued. I love her SO much! :-) 9:00 PM Apr 29th via Twitter for iPhone from here

Just reading this tweet makes me smile. Sister cried when I told her that I’d written this!

Gotta <3 uni. Spent over 2hrs chatting with male best friend about the future (pretty deeply) WHILST playing with a balloon! Awesome stuff. 12:41 AM May 4th via Twitter for iPhone from here

Seriously, a balloon! Uni has given me many random yet beautiful moments like this one.

I wonder what I’ll be chirping about for the next three years?

Posted from Norwich, England, United Kingdom.

Filed under: Offline Life, Online Life
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
Leave a comment