I’ve been making some small changes to my site design, though they may be going mostly unnoticed. First, I added a background to the sidebar on the right side of the page. I think it helps tie in the header design into the side. Now I may end up doing something similar with the footer. I also added a Twitter section to the sidebar. I’ve found myself using the site more and more, and figured I should post my updates to my website, since it’s so easy to do. If you aren’t already, be sure to follow me.

Finally, I added a few more little icons to the site. This was supposed to be another easy task, but as I got into it I discovered some issues. All of the little icons used on the site come from the the silk icon collection in .png format. This works perfectly on Firefox, Opera, and other good browsers. They actually work okay in Internet Explorer 7 and up, it’s in earlier versions where the problem lies. The transparent background does not work with the earlier versions of IE, and though I found some solutions online, none of them worked completely for me. So instead of wasting more time with that, I converted all of the icons to .gif files, which are displayed fine by all browsers. However, this doesn’t mean that those using IE 6 shouldn’t update. If you won’t move over to Firefox, at least update to IE 7. You can thank me later.

Back in October I started a website for my mother’s DVD slideshow business. Well a few weeks ago we finally started adding content to the website and I think it is nearly complete. To me it all looks really great so far, and both of my parents agree. But now we need some other eyes to hit the website and offer any critiques. I won’t take it personal, so please provide any feedback to either me or my parents on the layout, the wording, the rest of the content, etc. It is much appreciated.

For over a week, I’ve been battling with Bloglines to get my site feed to update properly. According to them, it hasn’t updated since before the start of the year. At first I thought this was related to the WP Super Cache problems from last week, but I’m pretty sure that’s no longer the problem as I have actually disabled the plugin trying to get things working again. I emailed Bloglines a few days ago to seek assistance and have heard nothing back. I’ve forced pings and still nothing.

I feel bad because I know some people are subscribed through Bloglines and I hope they don’t think that I’m not writing. If they aren’t handling my feed correctly, I wonder how many others are not updating either. So I exported my entire list of subscriptions and imported them into Google Reader. And I must say that so far I am really happy with the switch. Google Reader updates faster than Bloglines does, and I actually enjoy their layout and added features. I haven’t found a good way to list everything into a categorized blogroll, but that’s a minor issue. I think this switch may be permanent.

The second that Barack Obama became our 44th president, the official website of the White House (www.whitehouse.gov) officially turned over to a new, fresh design. It obviously has a look and feel similar to the president’s official website that we’ve grown very familiar with over the past months. I’m a huge fan of the design and love that there is now a blog right on the front page (complete with rss feed). The website code also validates, which is great news for a geek like myself. Good to see some that someone involved embraces all of this technology.T

In honor of an extended weekend on the slopes starting tomorrow, I give you my Obamicon. This is an image in a style inspired by Shepard Fairey’s iconic poster. I’ve titled it “SLOPE” as it is a picture of me out snowboarding from last season. I think it turned out pretty cool despite the lack of much detail. I actually created two separate designs, one with the unedited photo (seen below) and another with the background removed as the directions indicated might produce better results. Follow this link to see the other image. Take your picture with a webcam or upload a photo, choose your own message, and submit to the gallery. I’d love to see what you come up with.

Last night I did something that I haven’t done in a long time, I designed a website (or at least I started to). As many of you know, my mother has made dozens of DVDs for family and friends for various events and even made some for our wedding for people to take home with them. She’s often considered starting a little business doing this for others, and my dad and I both think she needs a website to do so. So after registering a domain name months ago, I finally started to work on a layout for the site. After spending the entire night working on various ideas, I finally arrived at something that I liked. So check out memoriesbyclaire.com and let me know what you think. We still have lots of work to do, but at least it’s a start.

Finally, the old photo gallery has been fixed! This time it was not my fault at all and was caused by a bug in one of the systems included with XAMPP, I’d say it was Apache most likely. I installed an updated version of XAMPP yesterday and the issue generating thumbnails I was having earlier was solved. The problem wasn’t actually with the thumbnail generation, but verifying the tools that create the thumbnails were installed. Now I have the dilemma of going back to using the older photo gallery, or continuing on with the gallery that is built into wordpress. I’m having a hard time deciding what to do. Old way or new way?

There used to be a category for posting called BC, which stood for Before Categories. I had this because I used to publish my blog via blogger, which did not support categories. So when I imported all of the old posts, there was nowhere for them to go. Well today I finally finished categorizing all of those old posts into at least one of the other site categories. I did have to add a new category called College to classify many of the old posts.

In looking back on some of the older entries, there are some changes I’ve made over the past seven years of blogging. First, I could never spell definitely correctly in the early years. I’ve definately learned my lesson! Also, I think my grammar, spelling, and writing have all improved drastically since those college days. Another thing was my style used to be just writing about what I was doing, more of a journal, whereas now my writing is very specific to one topic and much shorter. However, some things never change and I’m ready for the weekend to begin!

Has anyone downloaded Chrome yet? If you have no idea what I’m referring to, google has released their very own stripped down web browser. I know they announced it weeks ago, but you have to give me a little break as I’m still playing catchup from the trip. I haven’t downloaded it so far, but from a few reviews I can’t wait to give it a shot. I love the fact that each tab runs independently from others, so if you have a crash on one site it isn’t going to bring the whole browser down. One item that concerns me are some of the add-ons I use with firefox and the fact that I may not be able to function without them.

Though most of us probably still aren’t aware, today is Earth Day. While my daily adventures on the light rail were originally intended to save money, it’s nice to know that I’m contributing one less car on the roads each day. It may take me twice as long to get home, but I’m proud that I am starting to do my part in being more environmentally friendly. To make it even easier for me and others in the Denver area, Google now has RTD schedules built into their maps and transit applications. This should help make it even easier for us to use public transportation as much as we can.

Other things that Kim and I have been doing recently include setting the thermostat to 60 degrees while both of us are at work, using refillable water bottles instead of regularly buying disposable bottles (even though they may be causing cancer), replacing standard light bulbs with CFLs, among other recycling efforts. What other easy things should we be doing, or what have you been doing to help save our planet?