Some Awful Amusement Park Designs
Funny stuff. These amusement parks will bring nightmares to some children.
Some more photos added…
…in the album ‘People.’ One of the most interesting and engaged photo shoots I have done. Thanks to ZM and KM for having such cool, confident, and relaxed personalities.
6 more photos added…
…in the albums “Animals and Nature”, “Events and Streets”, and “Scenery”.
OGC, a British government office, shakes up its old logo
Governments are well-known for being smart and efficient. Just another example:
NYTimes Article About Discrimination Against an Atheist Soldier
Link to article: Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats
If such incidents form a trend, not isolated incidents, that is very disturbing. Why such hostility toward people who do not have the same religious beliefs? Another aspect of American life that makes it not so free as people make it out to be.
From the article:
“There are so many religions in the world,” he said. “Everyone thinks he’s right. Who is right? Even people who are Christians think other Christians are wrong.”
-Specialist Jeremy Hall
Built My Own WordPress Theme
It is a historical day as I have completed building my own WordPress Theme, almost from scratch. I named it NC-Simple. You can guess what the NC stands for. I have built a number of static web pages and tweaked other people’s WordPress themes before, but this is my first original theme. This calls for a celebration.
I first prototyped it using plain HTML and CSS. I then built a WordPress theme based on the prototype using the WordPress default theme as the skeleton. The key was simplicity, so I deleted some template files, did not use any images, and tried to stick to a very simple stylesheet.
It’s now running as the active theme. It still has a lot of rough spots, which I will work on over time. For example, some template files are near copies of the original default theme. And integrating the photo album plugin (fGallery) into the new theme is turning out to be a bit painful. It works, but you will notice that if you go to the “Photography” page, the “Blog” button on the top will be highlighted instead of the “Photography” button. (The problem is now fixed with some JavaScript. It was an annoying workaround. Also, I noticed when viewing the photo album, the “Blog” link does not work correctly. I fixed it by using the WordPress template tag bloginfo(’url’).)
Still, a good day’s work.
WordPress seems broken, so changed theme for now
I just upgraded WordPress from 2.3.?? to 2.5, the latest version. It seems a lot of the features are broken. My site had been using a slightly modified version of a theme by Jillij, which I liked a lot because of its simple and clean looks and a very nifty nested navigation bar. The theme’s navigation bar stopped working when I did the upgrade. I have been wanting to build my own theme from scratch, so now might be a good time. Meanwhile, this theme named Colorful will have to do.
I am thinking of a clean and simple theme that doesn’t have much frills. I did some sketches, and I keep coming back to designs similar to Jillij’s. I might just do something similar.
More photos uploaded
In the album “Scenery.”
Did Another Set of Photos for “Untamed”
In November 2007, I took some photos for “Untamed”, Dartmouth College’s student feminist magazine. I had a great time taking photos of a lovely undergraduate student out in the nature. The magazine wanted to depict a strong woman out in the wilderness. I think the photos came out more like glamour photos, but it was a truly wonderful experience.
In February 2008, the staff of “Untamed” was generous enough to ask me to do another set of photos. The theme this time was “gender-bending.” We again had a great time, but I was not satisfied with the photos I took. When I take photos, especially photos of pretty women, I have a tendency to forget about the theme at hand and become very focused on each individual. In hindsight, one effective way to explore the theme of “gender bending” would have been through showing two people in the same frame with a very strong contrast in their expression of gender. We could have had one person dressed up in a stereotypical female garb and the other in a stereotypical male garb and photograph them in the same frame to emphasize the contrast. Or have two people dress up in a nearly identical way except for some very subtle differences like eyeliners, facial hair, etc. Even going further, we could have had a man and a woman cross-dress and photograph them in the same frame.
What often makes photos more interesting are the relationships between multiple entities - between a person and an object, a person and the surrounding, a person and a person, etc. Looking back, I think that is one aspect I often neglected to explore. The photo shoot would have been a great opportunity to explore it, but I missed it through my tunnel vision.
The “Untamed” photo shoot was probably the most strangest and edgiest one I have ever done. In fact, there were some photos I really liked, but they were never published because of their edgy nature. It was a bit frustrating, but publishing them would have probably caused “Untamed” to lose college-sponsored status.
So I am telling myself I will do better next time. If you want to see some very weird photos, check out the current issue (winter of 2008) of “Untamed” available for free in various spots in Dartmouth such as Collis and Robinson.