Oh my gawd. No words can describe how this Star Wars geek (and lover of toys) feels while looking through these photos by photographer extraordinaire Avanaut.
Go check out his Flickr page to see more…and don’t miss out on his Indiana Jones set!
Via Bit Rebels.
Last October, photographer Jason Lee’s über-creative pictures of his two daughters became viral. I was quick to share the item on my Google Reader and tweet about it, but I don’t believe I ever blogged about the father, his camera, and his two adorable girls.
Jason Lee is a wedding photographer by trade, but when his mother became ill with non-hodgkins lymphoma in 2006, he set up a website called http://kristinandkayla.com to keep her up-to-date and cheer her up with whimsical pictures of her granddaughters.
Kristin and Kayla are incredibly adorable in their own right, but the way that their father poses each shot to give each scene a curiously playful spin is what makes these photos so unique and loved by many.
Why am I choosing to blog about Jason Lee when it’s been three months since his photos first gained popularity on the web? Because he just released a new photo — one that I know J (and millions of others) would love: one with an Angry Birds theme!
You can keep updated on Jason Lee’s latest projects via his Flickr stream.
Just in case you weren’t aware, today marks an important holiday for the Asian community: lunar new year. This year is the year of the rabbit, and while I hardly pay attention to astrology (western or eastern), I can’t help but share this awesomely cute picture with you:
(image source)
Because today is such an important day in the Chinese culture, J took the day off from work. And he gave me the best new year’s day present —
He took the baby out with him to dim sum and left me all by myself.
For three, GLORIOUS hours.
(Well, the dog was home too but let’s just pretend he wasn’t there for the sake of the story.)
You guys, I can’t tell you how happy this made me. How refreshed and recharged I felt afterwards. How — and this will irk some of my readers, I’m sure — it made me miss the days before the baby.
Look, I love Claire. I really do! I would lay down my life for her and I would do anything for her happiness.
But motherhood is tough. And only recently have I come to realize that it is especially difficult for introverts like myself.
Contrary to common belief, being an introvert does not equate being shy. You can be an introvert and be outgoing, just as there exist shy extroverts. The true definition of an introvert is someone who derives his/her energy from within. An extrovert, on the other hand, derives energy from other people.
J is an extrovert through and through. He gets cranky and depressed when he is alone for long periods of time. And only after he has been around others that he is “recharged” and becomes himself again.
I have always been an introvert. My parents tell me that even as a child, I much preferred to be alone, reading in a corner somewhere rather than play with the other kids. And while I had my extremely social, outgoing days in my early twenties, I have found that I am becoming more and more introverted as I grow older.
This causes a huge problem for me, because being a mother is a 24-hour job which requires me to be with someone else at all times.
I know that taking care of a baby does not require much interaction. But you can’t deny that a baby is still a human being — another person an introvert like myself can find extremely draining.
And while I have been very blessed to have others help take care of the baby while I was out running errands, or even the couple of times when J and I have been out on dates, today was the very first time since the baby was born that I was able to be home — a place of peace and rest and comfort — all by myself.
Right before J left with the baby, he said to me, “Don’t call me in 10 minutes crying about how much you miss her!” to which I replied, “I would only call to tell you guys to take your time!”
I was only joking with him, but the complete and honest truth was that I didn’t miss them. And I feel like a horrible wife and mother for feeling this way, but it’s the truth. I really, really needed those three hours to be home by myself and I am so thankful that J was able to give it to me.
And you know what? I feel like I was able to be a better, more energized and happier mother after taking some time alone.
J immediately noticed the change in attitude and energy and suggested that he start doing this more often. It was his very first time taking the baby out by himself and while she wasn’t a complete angel, I could tell how proud of himself he was when he described how he was able to calm her down from a bout of crying.
And I’m sure they had fun. Because you can’t be taking pictures like this when you’re not having fun.
Now we get to the nitty gritty fun: developing your own WordPress theme! To make things a bit easier on myself — and for my readers so that they can see a live sample — I will detail how I built the theme I am currently using:
(From now on I am going to assume that you have some knowledge of HTML and CSS. If you do not, I really, REALLY recommend that you learn! I truly believe that even a BASIC understanding of HTML and CSS will help you out tremendously as a blogger. Go check out W3Schools for some great tutorials.
What about PHP — the language that WordPress is based on? You do not need to know PHP to build your own theme, but it does make things a lot easier. Go see PHP 101: PHP for the Absolute Beginner if you’re interested.)
There are tons of free tutorials on the web that teach you how to build your own WP theme from scratch, and I invite you to check those out instead if you want a more in-depth, detailed lesson on WP theme development. But since the purpose of this series is to help the everyday blogger, I will try my best to keep things as simple and easy as possible.
First, you need to set up a testing environment where you make whatever changes you want to your new blog theme without your readers wondering what the heck is going on.
If you have an account with a web hosting company, you can easily create a new database and set up a new WP installation in a subdomain (e.g., demo.geekinheels.com) or a new directory (e.g., geekinheels.com/demo).
However, the easier option is to set up a local test server — off the web and on your own computer. You can do that by using XAMPP (Windows) or MAMP (Mac).
Next, download the latest version of WP at http://wordpress.org/download/.
If you’re using XAMPP follow these instruction for installing WordPress on your local test server.
If you’re using MAMP follow these instructions for installing WordPress on your local test server.
You will also want some content to see what your blog will look like once it’s filled with posts, pages, comments, etc. You can choose to upload an export file from your existing blog, or you can download dummy content. See here for a list of downloadable dummy content (I am partial to the WP .XML Test Data Import).
Now we can finally get crackin’ at the theme! You can choose to start from scratch…but why do so when working from a blank theme is so much easier?
Look through the list at 10 Blank/Naked WordPress Themes Perfect for Development to find a theme that is perfect for your needs.
For my theme, I chose to go with ET-Starter. It’s not entirely a blank theme, per se, but it gives you the option of easily toggling between single, 2, and 3-column layouts and includes a built-in jQuery drop down menu.
(Note: the ET-Starter website is no longer up, but you can download the theme at http://code.google.com/p/wordpresstemplates/downloads/detail?name=et-starter-1-4.zip)
Now that you have downloaded your blank theme, go ahead and open the different PHP and CSS files using your favorite text editor. As mentioned in the last post in this series, my favorite is TextWrangler, but Notepad++ is another great option.
Take some time to look over the files and familiarize yourself with them. My personal preference is to organize the lines of code while doing this step so that it will be easier to work with as I am customizing the theme. Because isn’t this —
Easier to work with than this?
Next up: preparing the bare-bones layout of your theme!
I always have a gazillion projects en queue in my head, am usually in the middle of several at once in real life.
A couple of weeks ago, when J mentioned that he was thinking about blogging again (he was quite an avid blogger when we first became friends), I enthusiastically endorsed the idea and even thought of a great domain name for him.
What he didn’t know was that I had a mini-project brewing in my head since that night —
— a brand new spankin’ blog, tailored just for him!
Meet Mister Geek in Heels:
I will unveil the URL once he fills it with some content. We are now a blogging couple!
Carinsurance.org has created an infographic which illustrates the cars behind the Autobots. I didn’t watch Transformers much as a kid (I preferred the likes of Thundercats and Masters of the Universe), but J tells me that it was one of his favorite cartoon shows while growing up…and had the toys to prove it!
He probably could have authored this infographic himself, but I know that he — and other fans of the original show from the eighties — would still get a kick out of it. Enjoy!
I wonder if a Decepticon version is in works…?
Via Bit Rebels.
I promised to write about making your WordPress blog look the way you want…if there was enough interest, and sure enough, there was!
This post is the first in a series called “WordPress for the Everyday Blogger.” Why the Prelude before jumping into Part 1? Because this post will deal with those who are making the transition to WordPress from another blogging platform. I myself had a heckuva time transporting my blog from Squarespace to WordPress (mostly because I had over 1,000 posts!) and wanted to document the transition for others who wanted to do the same. I also know that this post will benefit at least three blogger friends of mine — Bien Living Design, OMG I’m a Mom, and Two Wishes — who are about to, or in the process of making the transition to WordPress.
This will also probably be the longest post in my “WordPress for the Everyday Blogger” series, so please bear with me!
1. Export your old blog posts.
If you are making the switch to WP from another blogging platform, rest assured that practically every blogging platform allows you to export your posts so that you can import the entries to your new blog.
If you are not sure how to export your blog data, go check your blogging platform’s FAQs.
For Squarespace, go to Structure Editing Mode, then click on “configure this page” and scroll down to the “Data Export” section. You should end up with a text document that looks similar to this:
That was easy enough, right? Wrong! Because the file you have downloaded has the URL paths to your media (ie, all the photos you have uploaded) but not the files themselves.
The good news is that most of the time, you can easily download the files via FTP. (My favorite FTP client is Cyberduck. It is easy to use and the yellow duck icon looks mighty cute in my dock. However, its Windows version is still in beta so if you’re a Windows user who prefers a more stable version, I recommend FileZilla. Not sure what FTP is? Go check out FTP for Beginners.) I suggest that you keep your media in their folders and upload them the same exact way so that you do not need to change the URL paths in your existing blog posts.
The bad news is that not all blogging platforms support FTP. This was the case with Squarespace, with whom I had been hosting my blog.
Luckily, I have a lifetime account with Squarespace so I chose to keep my old files there and just change the paths to those files (more on that later). If you choose not to do this, you will need to download all your files one-by-one. Not fun.
2. Edit your exported blog data accordingly.
You can choose to keep your old URL structure and everything will be easy-peasy. For example, my Squarespace blog was at https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/ so I could’ve installed my new WordPress blog at that directory too.
However, I wanted my new blog’s URL structure to omit the “/blog” portion — in other words, I wanted my WordPress blog to be at my domain’s root directory.
So I performed a search and replace on the blog data file I had exported, replacing all instances of:
geekinheels.com/blog/
with:
geekinheels.com/
And because I was keeping my old photos at Squarespace, I replaced the existing URL paths to my media to the new Squarespace URL. In this case, because all my media were stored in the /storage directory, I replaced all instances of:
/storage/
with:
https://www.geekinheels.com/wp-content/uploads/old/
If you have a good text editor (I use TextWrangler), you can use the find and replace function to even get rid of additional image formatting, extra line spacing…practically anything you want! Note that TextWrangler supports Grep patterns in their “Find” function, which I found highly useful in this step. (I will not get into Grep patterns here but if you want to use it and are confused, just let me know and I will try my best to help.)
3. Upload your old blog data & files to your new blog.
I am now going to assume that you have installed WordPress (if you’re not sure how, go check out Installing WordPress). Once you are logged into the Dashboard, click on the “Tools” menu on the left and select “Import.” Follow the instructions and voilà — all your old posts should now be imported.
If you have media you need to upload, upload them to your new host using the same exact folder structure. If you do not, all your images will show up as broken links.
4. Redirect your old blog URL to the new URL (if needed).
Caution: be very, very careful when doing this step!
As mentioned above, my old blog URL was https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/ and I wanted my new blog’s URL to be rid of the “/blog/” part.
But since all my old posts begin with https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/...., I needed to create a 301 redirect — which tells the internet that the URL has moved permanently — to have all my old URLs redirect to my new one.
To do this I had to edit my website’s .htaccess file. Many FTP clients won’t show the .htaccess file by default, so using Cyberduck, I navigated to my domain’s root directory, went to “View” in the menu and selected “Show Hidden Files.”
Even when you download the .htaccess file you may not be able to see it on your computer. So I downloaded it using the “Download As” option and saved it as 1.htaccess.
I opened the file using a text editor (such as TextWrangler) and added the following line to the bottom of the file:
redirect 301 "/blog/" https://www.geekinheels.com/
This essentially tells the internet that everytime someone tries to visit
https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/....
they should be redirected to:
https://www.geekinheels.com/....
So for example, if you type in:
https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/2010/12/29/the-beauty-of-pixar.html
you will automatically be redirected to:
https://www.geekinheels.com/2010/12/29/the-beauty-of-pixar.html
After adding the line to the 1.htaccess file I uploaded it to my root directory, and renamed it to .htaccess which replaced my old .htaccess file.
5. Change your permalink structure to match your old blog’s.
Again, this is to ensure that all the visitors who are coming to your blog through another website — including Google, since you don’t know when it will crawl your blog next — will not end up at a 404 Error (not found) page.
After logging into your WordPress Dashboard, go to “Settings” on the left menu and click on “Permalinks.” Examine your old blog’s URL structure and copy it into the “Custom Structure” field.
In my case, my old Squarespace URL structure looked like this:
https://www.geekinheels.com/blog/year/month/day/post-name.html
Very similar to WordPress’ “Day and name” option, but the Squarespace URL has a .html at the end.
So I changed my WordPress installation’s URL structure to this:
https://www.geekinheels.com/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%.html
I did not worry about the “/blog/” in the middle of the URL since I took care of that in the previous step.
Note that in the field above, you only need to type in /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%.html
6. Double-check everything.
Even if you have performed multiple find and replace commands, even if you tried your best to keep all the URLs the same, it is likely that your new blog still contains some broken URLs, images that are not showing up, etc.
I have found that the best way to combat this is through the use of two plugins: Broken Link Checker and Redirection.
Broken Link Checker does exactly what its title implies. It goes through all the links in your WordPress installation (including images) and gives you a list of what is not working. Its nifty interface lets you ignore the broken link, correct it, or remove the link right from its Dashboard page.
What if you don’t want to correct a broken link, but you want to re-route it instead? What if you want to make sure that every time someone tries to go to a certain URL in your domain, they will be re-routed to another URL? That’s where the Redirection plugin comes in handy. Instead of messing with .htaccess files to create URL redirects for every broken link, this plugin lets you do that via an easy-to-use interface.
I recommend that you keep these two plugins activated even after the successful transfer of your blog. When you have as many posts as I do (and links!), there are bound to be new broken links on a regular (in my case, daily) basis.
Using the steps above, I was able to transfer my Squarespace blog (with over 1,000 posts) to WordPress in just one night. But importing your old blog is just the first step. Starting with the next part in this series, I will show you how I made my WordPress theme!
I am loving these Little Golden Book-style illustrations by Josh Cooley. Some of them are a bit morbid and definitely not appropriate for children, but seeing these famous movie scenes done in a whimsical, youthful way breathes new life into familiar performances. Here are some of my favs:
Individual prints are $50 each (limited runs of 100, signed and numbered by the artist), or you can purchase a book with all of them here.
Via Laughing Squid.
Last week we took Claire in for her 4-month checkup. Our pediatrician declared the baby perfectly normal and healthy for her age…but voiced her concern at Claire’s weight gain.
When Claire was born, she weighed 6.7 lbs (23rd percentile) and was 19 inches long (33rd percentile).
Currently, Claire weighs 14.6 lbs and is 22.75 inches long. While her height remains at about the same percentile range, her weight is now over the 90th percentile!
Our doc asked us how much the baby was eating and how often, and told us not to worry about it too much. However, if Claire cries to be fed again within 2 hours of finishing a 6 oz bottle, we were to try giving her 3 oz of water instead.
I know that Claire is just a baby and that she will probably grow into her weight when she becomes more mobile. But as someone who has struggled with weight almost her entire life (I have more curves than the average Asian and am actually considered overweight in Asia), I couldn’t help but be a bit worried, especially since they say that formula-fed babies are more likely to become overweight as they get older.
J and I puzzled over Claire’s weight the entire way home from the doctor’s office. “How could she be over the 90th percentile?” we asked ourselves. “Look at her — she has some baby fat rolls but no more so than the average baby!”
Then we figured it out. It’s because of her giant noggin!
What’s that you say? You think I have a big head?
Why don’t I distract you by taking off my diaper instead…
No? That’s okay — I’m a shy little girl!
(And before you start judging me for what I’m about to write below, remember that I am Korean. We have a tendency to obsess over head sizes.)
I have always been self-conscious of my giant head. If you think that I’m exaggerating, I can tell you with confidence that my head is larger than anyone else I know…and I only stand at 5’1″. If you’re curious, my head circumference is 60cm. That’s almost 24 inches!
As such, ever since I got pregnant I had been hoping for a baby with a small, or even an average-sized head. Not only because it will be easier to give birth, but so that my children will not have to grow up with the teasing that I had endured.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the nurse first informed us of Claire’s stats right after giving birth, because her head circumference was 34 cm, or the 31st percentile.
But as she grew, so did her head. Today, while Claire’s height remains below 2/3 of babies her age, her weight and head circumference are both above the 90th percentile.
And as you can see in the pictures above, Claire is not a fat baby. She has a slight tummy, but that’s most likely due to the fact that she had finished a 6 oz bottle mere minutes before these photos were taken. So the only likely culprit for her above-average weight is her above-average head size.
And before the “How can you criticize your daughter? She’s just a baby!” comments start pouring in, let me say that I am NOT criticizing her. I am making an observation, or at least trying to think of a reason why her weight seems to be so high for her height when she does not look fat.
J and I actually think her big head is adorable. We are also well-aware that babies’ body parts grow at different rates, so her head may very well be average-sized, or even below the average size a year from now.
And if she grows up to have a big head just like her mommy? Eh, I don’t like that I have a big head but the teasing eventually stopped and I’ve learned to live with it. Besides, my mother tells me that I had a bigger head when I was Claire’s age.
I have a tendency to keep all the extra screws, nuts, and bolts that come with electronics, toys, furniture, etc just in case we have a malfunction in the middle of the night and ohmigosh this thingamajig just fell apart because it’s missing ONE screw but Home Depot isn’t open! So as you can probably imagine, our toolbox carries a giant mess of various fasteners in all shapes and sizes.
I could never really tell the difference between each nut or bolt, or even what they’re called.
Enter Bolt Depot’s interactive guide to fasteners.
Not only does it describe the different nuts, bolts, washers, etc, it also tells you what each should be used for and offers a downloadable PDF for offline viewing.
For instance, did you know that there exists a category of bolts called sex bolts? And that they function exactly how you would think they would (minus the naughty bits)? Well, now you do!
Go download your PDF now. I, for one, immediately saved it in my computer for those just in case moments.
Via Lifehacker.
I like books, gadgets, spicy food, and art. I dislike shopping, hot weather, and the laws of entropy. Although I am a self-proclaimed computer nerd, I still have a love for handbags and makeup... and I am always teetering on high heels. To learn more about me, visit the "About" page.
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