Damon’s Blog was a quiet blog. He kept to himself and died a slow, lonely death.
He will have a better life in the place where all un-read blogs go, wherever that may be.
Reast in peace.
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I have decided to try my hand at running a photoblog. Since getting my Canon 350D digital SLR two Christmas’ ago, I have been madly snapping and trying to improve my photography. I figured it might be good to get a bit of feedback on some of my shots from the vast resource of photography-loving people who reside within the interweb.
My plan is to post a new picture every single day. With a little luck, some people might stumble across the site, enjoy the shots and maybe even leave a comment or two.
Before I go, I guess I should give you a link: photos by damon
I just read an interesting article about the popularity of blogging. A research company has predicted that the number of bloggers will begin to level out in 2007 and hover around the 100 million mark worldwide.
Apparently, if you are interested enough to start your own blog, you will have done it by 2007.
The article also mentions the fact that many people start writing a blog because they think they have something to say, but they often grow tired of it and move on. That sounds a bit like me, but I think my blog has slowed down because I have developed different priorities now.
Now it’s about keeping the house clean, walking the dog, working longer hours, spending more time commuting every week, riding my bikes, etc etc. Not to mention the fact that the only people to “read” this page are search engine spiders and spammers trying to post comments inviting me to buy cheap drugs and gamble on all manner of US sports.
Anyway, I’ll keep making the odd post here, just to humour myself. I still add photos of family evets and celebrations to the gallery, just in case people want to see them.
If I don’t get to it before next week, merry xmas everyone.
Hello friends,
A large proportion of you - my readers - have commented that the last colour scheme was too difficult to read on-screen. Because I am a very accommodating kind of guy, and because you had made the effort to provide me with some feedback, I would do the right thing by you and make the site a bit more accessible. After all, when 2 out the 3 people who read this site were not enjoying the experience, it’s was time to do something.
Now the site is a simple black on white design. I have made the main content column narrower, and I have changed to a serif font. I know it looks pretty boring, and I might get around to spicing it up a little soon, but for now it should do the trick.
Of course, feedback is always welcomed.
After a family meeting last night, it was decided that the “Reds and Browns” colour scheme was a bit like a pile of poo. So with the help of everyone, a few large pizzas and a few Boags Draughts, we came up with this new colour scheme. I will call it “Carbon Inspired”, because the base charcoal-y colours are pinched straight from the Carbon theme by Mincel for Gallery2.
This has the added advantage that I might be able to integrate my Gallery more easily while using the Carbon theme (which incidently is my favourite one). It’s a steep learning curve and is taking longer than I had first thought but I’ll get the eventually.
If you want to download this theme, you can do so from the Themes page.
If you are a return customer to damoncarrdesign.com, you will notice that I’m now using a new theme for the site. It’s one I designed and constructed myself, and I have called it “Reds and Browns”.
I borrowed some bits and pieces from the default WP theme but totally changed the colours and some of the layout. I would appreciate any feedback that you may have with regards to useability, readability and general asthetics. This is my first ever attempt and I would be happy to modify if it will help the end user.
Also, as it is my first crack, there are probably some things that I have missed. If you spot something that looks like it’s not quite right, please let me know so I can try and fix it.
If you want to use the theme for your own site, download it from here.
Anyway, that’s about all for now, enjoy!
I’m making slow progress on the integration of my Gallery into the Wordpress theme. I have successfully installed the necessary plugins and they seem to be working fine. As you can see, I can add a photo from the gallery to this post quite easily.
Now I just need to make sure everything fits together nicely. Shouldn’t be too much longer I hope.
**EDIT (01 June 06 - first): D’oh, now the Gallery is buggered. Who knows whats happening?!?!?
**EDIT (01 June 06 - second): It seems to be fixed now. I think everything got mixed up after I put another installation of Gallery in a sub-domain. I have sinced removed that installation, and before testing if it had any effect on my primary Gallery, I also added a new DB user to the primary Gallery DB.
So, by employing very poor experimental technique and procedures, I can’t be sure which action helped to resolve the issue. Oh well, at least it’s all working again.
Hello visitors. As you can see, I’ve changed the site yet again! I decided that the extensive set of features that Joomla provides is a bit excessive for my humble little website. I wasn’t using half the features so I’ve decided to go back to a simple WordPress powered blog site.
I’m still running the Gallery in the usual place, but I hope to integrate it fully into this blog interface in the next few weeks, so you don’t have to hop backwards and forwards between the two sections.
I also plan to make my own theme, so I don’t have to be “just another WordPress weblog”. I don’t actually know how to do this, but there seems to be plenty of tutorials available. It could be a very interesting experience. Make sure you stay tuned for all the fun.
You might also notice that I seem to have lost some of my earlier posts. This is because the transition from Joomla back to WP didn’t work very well. I have a backup of the old posts and will restore them soon. I will also move most of the content from the old site over to this one. If there’s somthing specific from the old site that you’re looking for that you can’t find, let me know and I’ll try and fix it up for you.
**EDIT (25 May, 19:10): I have finished restoring all the old posts and comments. I feel complete again.
