It’s all Geek to me
It may look as if I’m not busy here, but it’s like a swan, you know? On the surface all is calm and serene, feathers barely ruffled, while below the waterline I’m paddling like crazy. OK, maybe not the best simile, but it’s an elegant excuse for the superficial but time-consuming changes to this blog, namely the tabs at the top of the page (floating too high for my liking) and, more significantly, the photo gallery spinoff of this blog: Ria Galleria.
I’d been wondering for a while how to display my photos more effectively. Gallery One was a heavy flash-based gallery generated by Photoshop, but didn’t offer easy customization and updating. I went deep into Coppermine (example) and decided to get out after a few days in the darkness. (I’m amazed by its success as a photoblog; it’s so obviously based on bulletin board design and with its album-based presentation in tables, it takes me back to the early nineties when I first went online.)
I’ve settled for Johannes Jarolim’s falsely modest Yet Another Photoblog Plugin. I like the single image presentation and the easily customizable options. On top of that, I used Mac’s moody theme, Grain. Unfortunately, this required me to upgrade Wordpress to the latest version … which in turn meant that Christine Davis’ little sidebar gem, Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW), no longer worked and my tag cloud vanished. I took the opportunity to look at other tagging possibilities. Pod from Korea offered a nice looking Flash Tag Cloud, but it looks terrible in a sidebar, and in my own version, a single tag is repeated 40 times. Guido’s version at Liquidshadow looks a lot better.
I tried Wordpress’s native tagging, but it lacked the personal tweaking possibilities that I’d enjoyed with UTW. Finally, with young Amaury Balmer’s Simple Tags, I got my sidebar tag cloud close to what it had been before I upgraded.
In summary, introducing new element x requires upgrading element y, as a result of which element z is disabled, which requires installation of element sub-x. (I suspect this is a model for the future.)
So you see: not being lazy at all; lots of paddling, not quite at the shore …
… getting cramp in my little toe …
November 20th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
[…] DesportoAveiro wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerptIt’s all Geek to me November 20th, 2007 It may look as if I’m not busy here, but it’s like a swan, you know? On the surface all is calm and serene, feathers barely ruffled, while below the waterline I’m paddling like crazy. OK, maybe not the best simile, but it’s an elegant excuse for the superficial but time-consuming changes to this blog, namely the tabs at the top of the page (floating too high for my liking) and, more significantly, the photo gallery spinoff of this blog: Ria Galleria. I […]
November 20th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Welcome back! :-)