Monthly Archives: February 2005

Upgrade to WP 1.5 complete

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I’ve now upgraded this weblog to WP 1.5.

It was a bit difficult due to my customization of my comments form, but I got it straightened out fairly fast. I had to change some of the the php tags from “{ ?>” to ” : ?>” and then I forgot to transfer a couple of commas between some things that needed to be changed as well.

In order to do the comments form I took the WP Classic 1.5 comment form and just added in my changes as were in my 1.2 wp-comments form.

It wasn’t totally straightforward, but neither was it difficult to figure out, just a tad tedious.

Otherwise, I need to test to be sure old things are working still, but so far it seems that all is fine.

I used to have a script in my head section, but I took that out and put it in a separate .js file, and I just haven’t put the line in to call it up yet. So some older pages have popups that won’t work therefore. That’s all that is about.

I have exhibit installed for images, and I like that system, yet again, not. I like it for having the photos available in post as writing an already saved post, but I’ve stopped using it as it’s codes, just have used it to insert the urls of the photos into posts. I haven’t had very many photos on this blog, and when I have, I have just had them lined up without thumbs. Just as easy to add my own css divs around each photo.

I know that I won’t want to have that in use always, so I may just go back and change any posts that use it particularly and recode them to url links to the files myself. I will be getting a real photoblog set up again, so because of that I will put less photos in this blog, but probably not by much, as one or two of any “series” I’d load on a photolog would be in here in a post to link to them probably.

So all in all, I have all the same plugins working, except for that I took out the two spamming plugins I had. I need to retool and see if there are updated plugins or better functioning ones to use for the things I have.

I’m wanting to make changes to this site layout, but this one is working fine, so I won’t break what’s not already broken and since it went really smoothly over to 1.5 as a Theme, then I guess I just need to make it stay this way.

I can use this theme as a parent theme and just change the style of the site with a new theme as a color only theme, for example. I could change the way it looks, but content would be the same.

There is functionality in coding in the Kubric theme too, which I’d like to use, so I’ll be playing with things but it won’t be that noticeable since I can switch back and forth in themes easily. So if a page won’t load right, wait, and try again. If it looks very different ever, it’s just because I’ve switched it to the default theme, or one I’m working on.

I want to get some of the info off of this page and onto separate pages that I’ll link to. So that’ll get more room on the sidebar for other things, and I may overhaul my site root index page to include some info from the various blogs, recent comment updates, recent post titles, etc. recent photos, etc. It’ll be more a portal page for the whole site instead of just a slight portal front page that no one hardly visits.

So this is the first blog on this website to be fixed up with 1.5. I have two or three (or so) more to do here. :)

Sunrise after a night of Thunderstorms

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Last night we had major thunderstorms come through, including earlier in the day as well. After dark we had the worst of them, harder pounding rain and pea-size, and some a tad larger, hail. Lots of Lighting, cloud to cloud mostly, it was wonderful to watch. The sky was filled with the flashes and glowing of that sky only electricity.

Here’s a photo I took this morning as the sun was coming over the horizon. The ground was misty, light fog that would soon burn off once the sun was higher.

Click photo for a larger higher quality 72dpi version of this photo, opening by default in a new window (or tab)

Eggs for Feb 22 2005

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Eggs for 2-22-2005

9:00 AM – 1 Brown
9:15 AM – 1 White
9:30 AM – 2 White
11:40 AM- 3 Brown
PM – 1 White
PM – 1 Brown
4:30 PM – 1 White (freshly just laid!)
Order gotten in:

BWWWBBBWB

Total: 10

4:40pm Update: We have 10 eggs so far today. That’s our HIGHEST count of the year, and we didn’t get a green egg today (we may or may not still get one).

That’s 5 white eggs, and 5 brown eggs. So more than half the leghorns laid again today, and only 1 brown layer and the 1 green layer didn’t lay — that would also mean that, to include the number of Leghorns that didn’t lay, only 3 Leghorns didn’t lay today. Whoooppeeee! :grin:

WordPress 1.5

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I converted my “other weblog” over to WP 1.5 yesterday.

I’m planning on doing that here as well. It’s going to be a bit dicey though, as I need to clean up my CSS file anyhow, and to convert the existing blog, I’m not so sure I want to with all the plugins and stuff … so it’ll be a “I’m not sure how I’ll do it” thing.

I like the new functionality of WP 1.5. With it I’ll get my Photolog going again. :)

WP 1.5 will have great potential for even better plugins … so if you have WP be sure and get the new version, and if you don’t use WP, consider it, it’s a great tool to use!

The Themes that you can use in WP 1.5 make it more probable that you’ll see this blog in a very slimmed down version at first. I can use any theme out there and have my own design being tweaked in the background. So I can post and have comments and all my content available as I get things going. Just one click in Themes will change the site entirely.

Themes can also be subthemes, having another theme as it’s parent. So say like you have all the content pages coded the way you like … That is your Main Theme, then you can make a theme that uses your Main Theme as the parent, and make the site look different through the use of CSS. You can have a full theme or as many as you like, changing them with one click. Your site will load however you have chosen the theme in your admin section.

I do see this whole upgrade thing as a need to reinvent design, which I’ve been hungering for :) I’m not sure how it’ll end up. It’ll be blue, no doubt, though. :)

The Dog and the Storm

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It’s raining very hard right now. It wasn’t raining awhile ago, but I thought I heard the rumble of thunder in the distant WSW. I looked at my accuweather email for the morning and it didn’t mention any thunderstorms. So I went online and looked at the radar and sure enough, there was a nast line moving towards our area from the west south west.

I had also looked out the window, went onto the deck and looked, and it was definitely darker, more gray than black, in those directions. So it was obvious a thicker storm was moving in, but not obvious that it was heavy or thunderously filled.

The radar confirmed my hearing and other senses though. I can feel these things coming. I love them too.

So I then went to the front door to stand on the porch, the dog, Lothar, was behind me and I figured he’d run away into the house somewhere since I was going to the front door. Of course that was not HIS plan. I’ve been training him more the past few days, and had wanted to start training him to come with me to the door, in the event of me wanting him by the front door for any reason in the future.

So in split second timings this was all happening as I opened the door, and I reached down to grab Lothar’s collar and zzzippp he was out the door and whipping across the front yard to the street and beyond. Whoaaa Boy! Nothing brought him back. So with imminent falling rain and lightning bolts not too far away, I had to go running after him.

It may not be known to all readers that Lothar is a super speedy pup. He’s over a year old, but still puppy-like. In anycase, he speeds around the yard like he has a fire on the end of his tail. So knowning that about him, I was sure I couldn’t catch him.

My best hope was for Frank to come out and help, and the children had ran in to find him. I ended up having to run all over the place in our little part of the street, four houses involved, ours the two on either side of us, and the one across the street. Our lots aren’t tiny so it was a lot of ground to cover and very hilly one part goes uuup and the other way is dooowwwwn. Takes a great lot of energy reserves to do such running. I am not one with much reserves. I can output the needed energy, but then I’m tuckered out and shaking for the rest of day.

I called that dog, whistled for him, sweetly called his name, slapped my thigh called “here boy!” and clapped my hands … nothing did he attend to. Nothing did he even stop for and look at me.

He was nuts. He’s never done this before and all I can figure is that something weird happened in his brain when he saw the front door and could feel a storm coming.

Well he marked this and that place, and that other place and on and on. I just couldn’t get him, a centimeter from his collar, or tail –I got that close and just couldn’t make a grab on him anywhere. Huffing and puffing I was running and trying to shuttle him towards the house and he was way ahead of me and turned at the same place he’d been time and again on his crazy tour and just went in the house. Dumb dog.

I can use exercise, sure. But that sort isn’t helpful. If he got like that daily I’d have to seriously ditch him or pay to have it trained out of him. See animals in our area get hit all the time. Our neighbors dog got out of their yard recently and was wandering around. It was a digger, and with our chickens and our dog we coudn’t keep it in our yard, it went away anyhow. So we found out later that it had gotten hit by a car and was dead.

A free running dog is not legal either, leash-laws. I have no desire to have my dog running around the neighborhood as others have been doing since this subdivision went up.

So our Lothar was in the house, and he knew I was not happy. He was non-hyper and totally the opposite of his previous adventurous self. Into his crate he went.

I’ve had some good times with that dog the past few days, thinking I was making progress with him in paying attention to me, coming when called no matter what, listening to my commands to come, sit, stay, with help, but he was doing great compared to anytime in the past I’d tried to work with him.

I guess he had pent up rebelliousness from training and the pending storm not far away released his emotions. I am guessing.

So anyhow it’s been raining since then, pelting rain, then lulls and then more rain, then pelting, pelting rain. Crash, rumble, flash, flash, flash, rumble, crash, crash, flash, crash … ahhhh.