Tag: meta

  • Words

    We’ve become obsessed with fancy designs, responsive layouts, and scripts that do magical things.

    But the most powerful tool on the web is still words.

    I wrote these words, and you’re reading them: that’s magical. I’m in a little city in British Columbia; you’re probably somewhere else. I wrote this early in the morning, June 20th, 2013; you’re probably reading it at a different time. I wrote this on my laptop; you could be reading this on your phone, a tablet or a desktop.

    You and I have been able to connect because I wrote this and you’re reading it. That’s the web. Despite our different locations, devices, and time-zones we can connect here, on a simple HTML page.

    I wrote this in a text editor. It’s 6KB. I didn’t need a Content Management System, a graphic designer, or a software developer. There’s not much code on this page at all, just simple markup for paragraphs, hierarchy, and emphasis.

    via Words.

    In my never-ending quest for a new blog theme, I’m constantly on the lookout for something that looks similar to the ideal theme I have in my mind, which is as whimsical as a light summer’s breeze. I’ve used the current theme for around two years, and as much as I like it, it might be time for find something new.

    Choosing a new theme is harder than it might sound: you can’t just pick any theme that you think looks good. Most of the time, the live demos of potential themes don’t really give you a feel of how your content will look in different skin. When looking for a new theme, you have to consider things like typography and layout, and even then, you still have to worry about the WordPress-specific stuff; post formats, video embeds, images with captions, and so on. You have to be super picky about the theme that you do eventually choose, because it’ll likely represent the whole look and feel of your blog/website for years to come. It’s no small undertaking, if you take it seriously (which you should).

    And honestly, one of the hardest things about making choosing  a new WordPress theme is that it’s kind of hard to find something even vaguely suitable, never mind one that has the layout and features you might be looking for. There’s an absolute tonne of themes out there — which you might think is good, until you actually start looking for something that suits your particular site. Check out any theme catalog and you’ll see a million and one themes which are totally unsuitable for a blog. I know that WordPress is now a fully fledged CMS and whatnot, but remember when it was about writing content that you could publish online? What’s with the portfolio/magazine/everything-but-a-focus-on-actual-words themes all over the place? Look at the first nine or so themes on WooThemes — apparently one of the better WordPress theme shops out there — and tell me how many would be suited to, you know, publishing actual words.

    Even those statically-built websites (Jekyll, Octopress, and the like) have great default themes. As much as I like WordPress, I’ve been tempted to switch to blogging with Octopress in the past, but haven’t really looked into it seriously. There’s a lot of WordPress advantages that mean I haven’t left just yet. It has an insane community, for starters, and it’s extremely extensible and customisable. Plus, I’m kind-of, sort-of, familiar with PHP, making WordPress a pretty good fit so far. Unfortunately, it’s also a victim of its own popularity: it’s gotten to the point where trying to find the right thing for what you want to do might be more trouble than it’s worth. Maybe I should have backed the Ghost Kickstarter after all.

    Either I’m not looking in the right places, or what I’m looking for — a minimalist theme with great typography that’s responsive and optimised for the kind of writing you see right here — just doesn’t exist. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever find the perfect WordPress theme. The current theme — Minblr, from Themify — is pretty good, but it’s not perfect. There’s honestly not a lot I could do to improve it without making some major changes, and if I’m going that far, it might just be easier to find another theme altogether, you know?

    Of course, I could just go ahead and make my own from scratch, but WordPress themes are a lot of work. Besides, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel — if I can get by with customising something someone else has already made, I’ve saved a tonne of hassle, and probably extended my lifetime by a few years to boot. You don’t know pain until you’ve experienced web development pain.

    Continue Reading

  • On Starting Again, Earth-Scorching, and Legacy

    You’re familiar with the scorched earth concept, right? Wikipedia says it’s a military strategy where a retreating force destroys anything in their path that might be useful to the enemy. It’s this idea that if the enemy captures that territory, it’ll be useless to them. The scorched earth concept is mostly applied to retreating forces since there’s a higher likelihood the enemy will capture that land anyway, but here’s the rub: it can also be used for advancing forces, too.

    I’ve been toying around with the idea of starting an entirely new blog in my head over the past week. Not just “Benny Ling’s Bling 2.0”, but something entirely new and fresh.

    On the one hand, the idea of starting again is exciting. Leaving all the old stuff behind so there’s no baggage, nothing tying me down or holding me back. Free to explore new horizons, a place to write about stuff I find exciting and things I’m enthusiastic about, and so on.

    On the other hand, I’m the kind of person that would feel extremely sentimental about all the old stuff I’m leaving behind. I mean, I get sad throwing away parts of my childhood, even stuff that I have absolutely no rational use for today or in the future, stuff that I haven’t touched for years. There’s quite a number of posts here that are nothing more than short sentences on a particular topic — which is great, sure, but compared to some of my longer pieces?

    When I first started this blog I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be a Tumblr-style reblog-fest where I’d repost any old trash from my social network, or whether I wanted it to be only about my writing. At first it was the former, and for a little while, I wrote a few bits here and there about cool things. But somewhere along the way I must have decided that maintaining such a blog was either daunting/exhausting/too-much-work or all of the above, because I soon stopped posting about stuff I had written and simply linked to stuff online that I thought was cool.

    And don’t get me wrong, I still think most of that stuff is cool and/or worth your time, it’s just that, well, is my blog the right place for it?1 Do I want that stuff to have the same permanence as the stuff I’m proud of, the stuff that I’ve written personally? Stuff like my gaming reviews, pieces on why iOS is kicking Android’s butt, and putting together home servers.

    Which is why I’m drawn back to this idea of starting again, and having a place for just my writing. It’ll mean less updates, even more sporadically than they currently are, but maybe — hopefully — it’ll mean an increase in quality.

    Continue Reading

  • You win some, you lose some.

    You win some, you lose some.

    On the plus side, link posts now work, which means I can send you down internet rabbit holes much, much easier (click the title of this post to look at a nice picture. SFW and all that).

    On the minus side, YouTube embeds have an issue where they’ll display larger than they’re supposed to. HTTPS Vimeo links didn’t work either, but I can deal with that.

    You win some, you lose some.

  • A few blog-related things…

    Quick update time: after much gnashing of teeth and fighting with ALL THE STYLESHEETS, I’ve made the theme a little wider which means it now fits images a little less than 720 wide.

    The good news is that this theme is nice and responsive, which means it looks different based on how wide your monitor is — go on, resize your browser and try!

    The bad news I think I broke YouTube links. I think YouTube videos now look a little different than they did before, but it’s not a huge deal.

    Oh, and I also updated the theme, which means that photo and video posts will actually show photo and video content when you’re looking at the RSS feed. Sorry to my RSS subscribers who had to click through every once in a while.

    That’s it for now!

    This post part of Blogtober 2011, just a little thing of mine where I (attempt to) post something up on my blog every day in October 2011. — last week, people. Home stretch!

  • Blogtober 2011, or, Because I Don’t Have Enough Work On My Plate As It Is

    Basically, because I don’t have enough work as it is (October 2011 pretty much means Battlefield 3, I’ve already put some 12+ hours into the beta in just under a week), not to mention the end of the Uni semester (Official release of Battlefield 3 is October 25, last exam for the year is October 29, you do the math), I’ve decided to take up Blogtober for another year.

    The last time was back in 2009, and that went okay — let’s see how we go, two years on.

    Same rules as the last time: a photo here, review there, random ramblings scattered throughout, but always a post a day. And catch-up posts where I forget — and sometimes even a little WordPress trickery when I’m a little late. I probably won’t be publishing anything from Posterous, but you might see the odd video or photo from me. Oh, another new rule: all posts published must be as original as possible. Photos taken by me. Video taken by me. Etc.

    Epic Android post, coming right up…

    This post part of Blogtober 2011, just a little thing of mine where I (attempt to) post something up on my blog every day in October 2011.

  • 1000 Posts!


    good idea

    via Buttersafe – Updated Tuesdays and Thursdays » Archive » Lightning Safety.

    Have you ever had an idea that made total, complete sense at the time, but looking back you see that that couldn’t have been further from the truth? Hindsight, after all, is 20/20.

    That’s pretty much what the above comic illustrates.

    1000 posts, huh? This doesn’t have anything to do with hindsight, apart from the fact that I’ve never regretted a moment of it. Seriously, I’ve had a blast — when this little blog started up at the end of July 2008 with a massively profound video from Steve Jobs, I had no idea what to expect.

    Hopefully this blog has been a little slice of the internet as experienced by myself — from the notorious “is awesome!” posts to every post that contained a part that (usually) didn’t have a “Part I”. From all the posts that were posted via email from Posterous (that I’ve now stopped using), to the post that explained why social networking is hugely overrated (oh, wow). Through all the good times, the bad, and all the cute girls inbetween, it’s been awesome.

    So, dear reader, it’s late and I have work tomorrow — here’s to the next 1000. Perhaps if I feel like it I’ll post up something a little more meaningful a little later on, but that’s it for now.

    Oh, you said you wanted a pic for proof?

Benny Ling's Bling

Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.