imagine a different world of grilled cheese.

My old blog design, shown above, is no more and I blame it all on Smashing Magazine and their 50 Beautiful Blog Designs article. After reading this article and ooh’ing and aah’ing at all of these amazing blog designs, I decided it was time for a change. A change to something less boring and hopefully more interesting. I know this new design comes nowhere near those other designs, but you have to start somewhere. Plus, It was time for me inflect some life into this already stale blog. Read the rest of this entry »

Blue Line? Green Line? Red Line? Orange Line? Gray Line? Where is the White Line or Black Line or Fuchsia Line?! Read the rest of this entry »

People my age are spoiled. We have information at our fingertips and have grown up without knowing anything different. Who was the main actor who played in the movie The Wizard? IMDB.com has it in a second. Who was the 23rd president? Wikipedia has that answer. We don’t need a library, we can travel to our nearest computer and obtain the answer to any question in just a matter of moments.

Not only are people spoiled because of the Internet but also because of photography. If you didn’t know, cameras weren’t always digital, people did use film at one point. My mom still continues to use it to this day. And they also had darkrooms as well where each person had to process the film. Not one-hour pharmacies that can do it for you. And well, color wasn’t always there either. Read the rest of this entry »

After some delays, lack of updates, and multiple blog designs, the A Photo A Day project is back on track. What do you think of the new digs?

Photos are now being updated very quickly for everyone to see, with most photos receiving their own blog entry, courtesy of Flickr.com. Photos are being viewed in their natural ratio, instead of being stretched or squished to fit into a certain design scheme. Photos are displayed in all their glory to be enjoyed by anyone and everyone. Hopefully you have returned to the blog to see all of this in action.

On the topic of a recent photo entitled Contemplation, most everyone did guess correctly what was different about me: my new specks (aka glasses). People did mention my hair, which is getting long, at least in my book, so I actually combed it and therefore it has somewhat of a different look. Besides mentioning the glasses or hair most people said I looked angry, which I most definitely was. However, I was going for a different look, something that wasn’t 100% happy, maybe something a tad dark. Instead of smiling, or trying to, I merely stared directly in the camera and arrived at that expression.

Since the photo didn’t really turn out “dark” or “somber” on its own, according to my own rules, I could not touch it up if I wanted to use it for A Photo A Day. I could however, touch it up for my own enjoyment and that is what I have done. Please keep in mind, these were very quick studies and could probably be enhanced.

You can view the two photos below, one being really dark and one not so dark. The dark one has my name and web site address included in the photo, while I left it out of the light one. Please let me know what you think…

I have been saying that this blog needed some sprucing up for awhile now. However, I never actually acted on that thought no matter how many times it crossed my mind. Well, tonight I did thanks to a very good article at Smashing Magazine entitled 100 Excellent Free WordPress themes.

To be honest, way back, I tried to start creating my own WordPress theme but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was floundering out in the ocean with no life jacket or any sort of flotation device. I was lost, completely and utterly lost.

So when I came across this article, and realized how easy it was to install these already created and designed themes, I thought why should I have to reinvent the wheel? I shouldn’t, smarter people already invented the wheel just fine the first time. I looked through all 100, picking out certain ones, trying them out on this blog, seeing what worked and didn’t. I kept coming back to the first design I found, the one I am using now. Something about this design, besides the fact that there is blue involved, struck me, made me say wow, that is pretty cool. Something about this design made me choose it over about 8 other possible candidates. I don’t know what it was/is, but I am just glad I found it because it looks great.

There is only one problem, which isn’t that big of a deal. On the old blog you were able to look at my Flickr photos without visiting Flickr. You could do so by simply going to myblog.imagine24.net/photos/. However, as you have already seen if you clicked that link, that page is to put it bluntly, ugly. It seems as though the new styles have made that page go haywire and look just absolutely horrible. The fact of the matter is, I bet only me and maybe one other person ever visited that page, so the loss isn’t huge. I can still place Flickr photos in blog posts without a hitch, which I need to do eventually, I just can’t have my Flickr albums appear on here, which as I have come to realize, isn’t that great of a loss. Oh well, I and the rest of the blogosphere will be able to go on with their lives.

Anyways, enough of my ramblings. The title of this entry asks a question, so please, if you would, tell me what you think of the new design in the comments below, I would really love to hear them! I have already begun to make a few simple tweak and would love to hear your suggestions for more!

Enjoy the new design, and I hope to see you back here real soon! Oh and I forgot, thanks to Michael Whalen for creating such a cool WordPress theme and great thanks for making it free. I greatly appreciate it!

According to Ingenuity Cleveland’s web site, the festival is “four days of creativity and innovation.” I would agree with that statement. My folks and I went today to walk around and enjoy the festivities. When we arrived, we were greeted by the sounds of Beat the Donkey, Featuring Cyro Baptista. The music was unique and very entertaining. People all around the stage were dancing and simply enjoying themselves.

I took out my camera, acted like I had a press pass, and just started shooting photos of the band and the crowd. Unfortunately, I got so caught up in the rush, I didn’t really check my photos to see how they were coming out, as I took them. That caused a good amount to be blurry and pretty much worthless. However, there is a positive side. I enjoyed greatly taking these photos, and pretending like I was a professional photographer.

I sit at a desk Monday – Friday, 9-5, and well, it seems as though that job has become very stale to me. By 2 or 3 in the afternoon, I am falling asleep in my chair, pretty much bored out of mind. However, last night, I could have listened to that music and took pictures for hours. It was fun, energizing and the rush was amazing. Sure the photos I took weren’t as good as I hoped, but you know what, practice makes perfect. Hopefully that practice will take me from an amateur photographer to a professional one.

Anyways, back to the festival. After the music, we walked around to look at all the other exhibits. There was a game where you strapped a headband around you, sat in a chair, and tried to sit as calmly as possible. The person was the most relaxed, moved a ball on the table towards their opponent and then eventually won the game. Next to that exhibit was a robotic chess player who was nowhere near a robot, he was a human.

Other places there were holographic images of the human form, a video shot on the walls of eyes changing from different people and races. There was a circus area with different sculptures providing shadows and fun.

To end the night there was a music group that was playing simultaneously, in real-time,  in Cleveland, Columbus, Florida, Fairbanks. It was cool, but after waiting 20 minutes for them to work out the technical difficulties, it pretty much lost its luster.

Today’s A Photo A Day comes to us from an exhibit inside where a quartet of musicians were tied up to computers to watch their vital signs as they played. It was very interesting and definitely cool to watch. I am not sure all of the particulars, but enjoy the photo where you see the 4 players, and their signs being displayed behind them.

Hopefully, one day, I will not just be taking these photos for fun…