Month: March 2005

I don’t know what happened, but I missed the first day of spring! It wasn’t till I was listening to the radio when one of the hosts mentioned this fact. Wha?…Where?…How?….Oh man! But I’m glad it’s here. There is a ritual that I do every year, for spring. It comes from my native upbringing, no Spring Solstice is complete without a read through Jumping Mouse. So I share the story with you.

Upgrade is complete. It’s taken a bit of tweaking, and playing but I’m now running WordPress 1.5. I think the biggest hurtle was my customized layout. Sure, the new version of the template system, is much more convenient to switch but, a pain if you have you’re own template. But, all in all, the features they’ve added are nice.

While I was at it, I made some other changes I wanted to as well. You might notice some changes, or you might not. Regardless, here is a run down of what might be different

• Calendar: this is my biggest peeve, but, it’s personal. I like Sunday – Saturday calendars. Well, this one isn’t. They say it has something to do with mySQL. I’m looking into that so I can get it back the way I want it.
• Sidebar: the sidebar has a different order.
• Single View: the new template system allows me to have different layouts for a single post view. So I’ve used it.
• Feeds: this was for fun. I’ve fixed the “more” and the “next page” in the feeds. I’ve also added in category links.

So that’s pretty much it. I’ve still got some minor things, like I just found out it doesn’t validate to XHTML, so I’m going to be working on that over the next little bit. But all in all, pretty good.

I feel incredible! I needed to yell that out into the virtual world. Why? This weekend I had the pleasure of being a child again. I went to camp. Yes Camp. It was like an intense condensed summer camp. All thanks to those at Creative Toolbox for the experience.
The camp was called The Creative Camp Experience. and it live up to it’s name and more. It was a shmorgishborg of people with different knowledge and experiences, yet funnelled to the same goal of helping creativity.

I did things I didn’t think I could; talk to people I didn’t think I would; felt things I haven’t felt; remembered things that were locked away. It was beautiful. Everywhere I turned their were connections. The first night, I found out that one of the owners grew up in the same town as me, and graduated from the same high-school. That might not be so surprising if we were in Guelph, Ontario, however we were in Chilliwack, BC.

It helped me show that when I am tapping into my creativity, there are no coincidences or “chance” happenings. Somehow it all happens and turns out in a way you can’t explain. And along the way, there will be connections. There are a whack of meta-physical ways this could be explained. I’m not going to explain it like that. The best way is, “leap and the net will catch you”.

If you get the opportunity to go to a camp organized by Creative Toolbox, I strongly suggest you go, and enjoy!

O.K. So I’ve taken a bit and I’ve pretty much started from scratch. I’ve decided to build it again…but, give me 10 day’s and I make good progress. The code behind the scenes is a little cleaner. I’ve still got lot’s to go, but at this rate, I should hopefully have something to actually be proud of by the end of this month. Who knew a little financial pressure would be such a good motivator…..

Now, that all of that is said, i need some feedback. so if you could please answer this:

• Which template do you like?
• Does it make more sense to go right into the results rather then that first page?
• Is it faster?
• Could you navigate well?
• Does the navigation even make sense?
• Does the jump to form work?

I’ve got loads more questions but these are just a few I could think of. Again, please feel free to post you feedback in the comments.

• Site Version 1
• Site Version 2

Thank you!

3 weeks ago I started a personal program called The Artist’s Way. I’ve known several people who’ve done it, and one year I even got the book as a gift. For years I think I’ve started and stopped little bit’s of it, but I haven’t really committed to doing it until now. I haven’t written anything about it yet but, I’m sure as time goes by I’ll probably mention more. After all I’m only on week 4.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing about it this week, is because of an interesting exercise for the week. No reading, including t.v.. So, news aggregator is closed; msn off; email is … email is … off. Mind you ( bad me ), I’m going to do a periodic scan on subject’s for business only. ( I’ve hidden the message view so I actually have to double click to read the email. ( Coincidentally, I noticed Steve made a post about email reading and something similar to increase his productivity. ) )

Although there is some difficulty in this exercise, it reminds me that every spiritual path ( at least that I know of, correct me if I’m wrong here ) has some period of depravation: The natives and their fasts; Christians and the whole Lent thing; periods of silence in pretty much every spiritual belief. It’s good to go without.

• Build Character. “If I can do this, I can do anything!”
• Removing Distraction. “Think of all the things I would do/think if I weren’t [ fill in the blank here ].”
• Increase Appreciation. “After not [ again, fill in blank] for so long, it makes it so much better!”

For me the best thing is removing the distraction. I am the master of distraction. I sometimes will do absolutely anything to squirm my way out of something. Sometimes, even something simple like going for coffee. When I was doing the 9-5 I could go for 8-12 cups in one day. Did I really need that much? No. It’s just that it took me 10 minutes at a time to do so. Did I go for 8 cups on a good day? Nope.

So, my suggestion to you, is take a look at your day and see what you use to distract yourself from your own truth. Once you’ve figured it out…go without. See what happens.