Paquin's Poorly Maintained Blog » pool

Update to Nextgen gallery & theme – and Pool Project update

Chris — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:17:42 +0000

For whatever it’s worth, my upgrade to 2.8 didn’t go completely without issue: even though I reported success, my Gallery plugin had some issues with new the version. A quick “automatic upgrade” fixed my issues with it though. So, feeling empowered by these recent successes, I decided to upgrade to the latest version of my underlying (iNove) theme too. It wasn’t quite as easy as the WordPress update was, but still pretty painless. I had to comment out some PHP, make a handful of CSS changes, and upload a few new images, but overall, things are the way I like them.

The new drag and drop Widgets interface is pretty neat. I don’t like how WordPress (or is it my theme??) handles ‘empty’ sections, though: it assumes that if it’s empty, you really want the default widgets there, like Blogroll. In fact, if it’s empty, that means I want it to be empty! I was able to work around this by rearranging my widgets, but it was a tad bit annoying to start.

In other news, we should be finishing up our pool wiring/lighting project today! I’ll have to make another quick trip to Home Depot, but all the hard stuff is done (base wiring, switches, etc.) and all that’s left is drilling a few holes and pulling cables through conduit. The lights themselves are coming out really nice too – I frosted the glass panes with some Valspar Frosting enamel and mounted them directly to my 5×5 PVC post caps.

WordPress 2.8 upgrade and Pool Work Continues!

Chris — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:16:05 +0000

A new minor release of WordPress was released about a week ago, and I have been tracking the user response of it so far. Given that everything looks smooth, I went ahead and upgraded. If you’re experienced with upgrading other web-based systems, you know that this process can be painful (in some cases, VERY painful), but with WordPress, it’s as simple as clicking a button – literally. It’s still recommended that you take a backup of your system, but the ease with which a major upgrade can be applied to the system is still a joy to behold. WordPress makes things drop-dead easy, and, as always, it just works.

Re: the pool – we’re almost done! The rain has been keeping the crew from handling a concrete grading issue, and we’re still without a slide for now, but overall, things are looking great! The deck is very nice and our new automatic chlorinator (we switched to a Salt Water system) is chugging away – I can’t wait until I have the opportunity to jump in and give it a shot. Supposedly, salt water pools have a very nice, silky feel to them, in addition to being easier on the eyes and skin – and, of course, not having to put chlorine in is great too!

I’ve taken the opportunity to run some wiring in the pool area, too, so we can have better night-time lighting, and more accessible electrical outlets. It’s definitely been a lot more effort than I expected, but both Mary Lou and I are really liking how it’s all coming together. Pictures of the entire project will be posted soon!

The New Rat Pack!

Chris — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:49:14 +0000

Bernie Dolan composed and shot this photo when a bunch of us were out drinking beer and shooting pool. I performed the B+W conversion, cropping, and touch-up work using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

For those who doesn’t ‘get it’ immediately, this is an homage to the Rat Pack poster that you can see over Keith’s shoulder. Jim is Frank Sinatra, Chris is Dean Martin, Mark is Peter Lawford, and Keith is Sammy Davis, Jr. Bernie (the photographer) is Joey Bishop.

For anyone who’s really interested (Bernie), here’s a Flash file that displays the before and after versions of the picture. You’ll need Flashplayer 9 to view it, but you should already have this anyway!