Hi Folks,
Yes, you are at the correct site! I have done some major renovations to my blog as you can see. I had my old theme for many years, and started to tire of it. So for the new year, I wanted some significant change.
Earlier this year I redid the rest of my website, and now the blog. As I indicated in earlier post, I have been hunting for themes for a good 6 months. Along the way, I bookmarked some candidates and finally made a decision. I chose this theme not just for the stylin’ format (which I really love anyway) for the blog, but there are many features within that I have ideas for on other areas of my site.
As part of my earlier site redesign, I added a section called “Collections.” Well, I haven’t been very good at adding more of them, because my original design of this section is a bit cumbersome to update. So this new theme has a fairly powerful gallery generator, and I will likely start adding more collections to be under the power of WordPress.
Read MoreI know, I know, I am a bad, bad blogger – I have not posted here in a couple of weeks – and I know that is an eternity in the blogosphere. A story on NPR today about blogs made me feel even more guilty! So my apologies. The past couple of weeks have hit me with a bout of writers block, a chronic backache that keeps creeping up on me and is quite disabling, the holidays of course, rushing a few orders out before Christmas, getting sick for few days, a power outage, having to buy a generator to keep my basement from flooding, and my nervous upgrade to WordPress 2.7! And yes, I do like a little cheese with my whine. 
So forgive me while I ramble a bit to get back in sync!
Screen shot WordPress 2.7
So I am typing here in the new upgraded WordPress, which looks pretty darn slick from behind the scenes. I have yet to uncover all the new improvements they have made, but the interface certainly has a lot of polish on it. From what you are seeing, not much has changed, but for a person running the blog, a lot of welcome changes. For those using WordPress that want to upgrade – be warned, before I hit my “Update WordPress Automatically” plugin button that I wrote about before, I read many comments who had problems with in it moving to 2.7. So as helpful as it has been to date, DON’T USE IT for upgrading to 2.7! I did it the old fashioned manual way, which certainly takes a bit more time and manuevering – not too hard. A few things went wrong, like getting a lot of strange characters throughout all my posts. It took awhile to clean them up using a Search and Replace plugin. Some slight CSS tweaks might be needed to update my theme to some new 2.7 codes. But the nice part of 2.7 – automatic upgrades are now built into the code, so no need for the plugin or updating manually anymore. Wooohooo! Kudos to the WordPress folks for making such a slick interface.
On to other notes; if some of you didn’t catch it, Animal Planet just finished their season of Whale Wars. It is an inside look at the activities of Sea Shepherd in the Southern Ocean against Japanese Whaling fleets at the start of 2008. Although I have followed Sea Shepherd’s activities for some time now, I found the series fascinating on many levels. I think the series has been successful in shining more light on the realities of taking species protection to this level. In many ways I am glad it is reaching many more people now, whether they are for or against these activities – maybe it will get more attention and resolution. Animal Planet made a decent effort at trying to present information from both sides. I found some of Capt. Watson’s comments a bit over the top, but in principle support what they do. If you didn’t see it, you can get a feel for the show through some of the video clips on the site. I also just recently learned fellow underwater photographer Eric Cheng is on their latest campaign. I am looking forward to reading about his experience.
So if that isn’t a strange combination of paragraphs, I don’t know what is. I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday, and thank you again for your continued visits to this blog. As the NPR story referred to above points out, there are about 50,000 new blogs created every day. That’s a pretty amazing number. There are many, many photography related ones. And to have the new visitors, and particularly those of you who keep coming back and take time to leave comments – I appreciate it more than you can imagine. It is tough to keep things fresh and interesting. Sometimes I have an idea of what to write about, and have to search my archives if I have already written about it before. So thanks again, and again! So I am now on to creating a reflection on 2008 post and to kick the tires of this new WordPress version a bit.
Best wishes,
Mark
Read MoreSorry folks if you have seen the occasional strange comment post get in the blog lately It seems over the past 6 months there is a new type of spammer emerging – actual humans set on getting some type of advertising link into my post comments vs. some other type of automated spam They actually type some type of comment that might be related to the post, but with. ulterior. motives I think Since I can’t monitor 24/7, some of them slip through Since they appear to be posted by some random individual, they sneak past my spam plugin.
What a job that must be – just as bad as a telemarketer I wonder if they pay by the comment or the incoming links they generate?.
So if you see anything strange, or a comment show up to an old post – do not grant them the desired clicks they want I will mark them as evil spammers destined to spend eternity cleaning up cigarette butts on street corners or cleaning the filters of sewage plants as soon as I catch them.
Read MoreI am sure if you are a return visitor, you just thought – “Did I click on the right site?” :-) Yes, I have finally changed my WordPress theme after a long and hard search For you WordPress users, I am sure you can relate to the feeling of hunting and searching until your eyes are about to pop out because you find certain elements of themes that you like, and others that just completely turn you away There are thousands of themes, and the search can be quite overwhelming.
I finally found one that fit my tastes and elements I was looking for, and wouldn’t you know it has the perfect name.. “Nature’s Highlight.” It is cleaner, simpler, and has an elegant look I think I like that I can have rotating images in the header So clickity click your reload button to your heart’s content So a special thanks to the designers over at refueled.net.
Please pardon ‘my dust’ as I am tweaking it a little here to get all the right elements back from my old one I hope I don’t screw up any formatting, so if something looks wierd, don’t worry – it will probably be fixed within nanoseconds.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new look I appreciate your support and visitation, please let me know if something is not working right for you.
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“Hey, just how did he get those Sandhills to pose like that in front of those Christmas lights?” Admit it . that’s what you were thinking!
Wishing all of my great visitors a terrific holiday! Thank you for your many visits, insightful comments, participation, and wonderful support.
Read More http://t.co/1xjuh7fT - posted on 22 hours ago
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