Virginia Breeze

As you can probably tell I have a problem with chronic theme replacement.  Maybe you have been reading something here and you clicked on another page only to find yourself in the middle of a different theme.

I hope that hasn’t happened to anybody who is a regular reader.   If someone just comes  by for a ten second visit it really is not an issue.  But I do try to make things nice for anyone who comes back for visits.

So I apologize.  Part of the problem is that over the past year I posted too many large photos.  And now I have to go back and downsize them all.  Because there just are not that many themes that are really nice AND hold photos that are 640 pixels wide.

Also when I need to fix a theme for one reason or another I often cannot do the fix.  So I have to find another theme.

Anyway I would like to say that this theme is very nice and I am hopeful it will be around a long time.  It is called the Mountain Theme and it is by Sadish.  The font is beautiful and very readable.  I like the blue very much.  And the header will hold anything I can fit into it.  It has a contact page, an archive page and a link page included.

Most importantly it hides photos that have not yet been fixed and does not splash them all over the sidebar.  I like the idea of having the sidebar on the left because we read from left to right in the west.

And I hope the little lines under the photos are going to disappear soon.  They are already gone in older posts.  It’s an ongoing conflict between the shadow image plugin and the photos.  This was solved very nicely by the author of the Layers Theme that I use on my other three blogs.  I hope that Sadish will fix it too although I wrote to him about it and he has not responded.

I really like the Layers Theme but it is better for blogs that are primarily photo oriented in my opinion.  Although there are plenty of photos here I feel like this blog is devoted primarily to words.  And the font is now truly beautiful and much nicer than it was on the Blix theme.

So that’s why I changed again.  Hope everyone understands my issues.  Blogging is such a challenging and fun  hobby.

UPDATE//  I give up.  Sadish has a very similar theme called Sky Blue.  And it allows wider photos so I don’t have to have a cropathon.  The sidebar is on the right but that’s not as important as saving hours slicing and dicing photos.  What can I say?  Sorry?  I will bring it up in therapy?  I promise not to change it again until next year?

That last one is just a question.  It’s not a promise.

Good morning to you and a good morning it is except that Beth is outside raking the leaves from the infernal tree that has a backward internal clock and drops them all summer long.

Her presence in the front yard means that I have only a few moments before I must go out in the heat and start up the lawn mower.

But I am imbued with strength this morning after the nice comments that have found their way here. I am generally not worthy of these but feel it necessary to try and understand them. Wait. I hear a lawnmower. Never mind. It’s two doors down. That could have been real trouble.

A gentleman by the name of Robert R. Marsh who has developed the really cool similar posts plugin you see around here and many other places has been helping me with something this week. Go look at the photos over at Photolinklove.com and see if you see any difference!

These photo shadows have always put a twinkle in my eye since I saw them in Michael Brown’s blog. They are just so cool and Robert just figured out how to do it and put them here! You can’t just get these anywhere as far as I know. Sadish uses them in some of his themes. But hopefully now they will be available if Robert decides to make it so. Thanks, guy!

But that is not all! Things have progressed rapidly in an upward direction since a squirrel took his own life Thursday night and blew out the transformer out back leaving us without electricity all night long. It was like living in a cave only a very hot one.

But last night was much better as I conversed briefly but nevertheless in a very positive way with Jordin. Yes my dear readers. Just one year after she became the reigning American Idol (plus a few days but who is counting) your blogging buddy said something to Ms. Jordin that made her laugh.

I told Beth about it this morning and she was almost elated! But then she decided we needed to cut the grass. So I must leave you now.

Have a great, great day. And let me leave you with this.

Remember to follow your dreams. But also try to keep your grass from getting too long. And if possible set up some sort of outreach program for your neighborhood squirrels.

Mine need to understand that the metal tubes that are affixed to poles among their branches and homes are not rest stops. They are gateways to squirrel heaven. And it hurts me deeply when they go through that door.

Stay here and gather nuts my friends. And have a good laugh as you look down and watch the sweaty refections on the chrome dome going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth while you are bouncing and flying through the air.

Count your blessings but don’t try to make them all come true in one brief moment.

Good Evening. My name is David and I am a Themaholic. I can’t turn down a theme. It speaks to me and I surrender.

It doesn’t matter that I have pledged my allegiance to Sadish and his wonderful templates. Nothing matters except getting the next theme fix.

I keep telling myself “This time it will be different”.

Maybe it will. Or maybe I will wake up tomorrow morning full of regret and guilt because I traded Sadish and his great theme in for THIS.

But I don’t think so and besides the night is still young.

There’s lots of time left to install more plugins and see how they work. I don’t want to think about tomorrow.

When it’s still tonight.

Do you change themes very often?  Do you feel that people who change themes often are hampering their blogging efforts?

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I have tried a lot of different themes on my three Wordpress.org blogs. And I always seem to return to Sadish and his fine themes. They don’t cause me problems and they do some pretty cool things. Virginia Breeze uses his Nigarila theme and as you can see it allows me to show a slideshow in the all important upper right area of the front page. I can also put 1-4 posts up there and give them great visibility. There is also a page of options with this theme and a great deal of versatility in the admin/design area.

I am not sure exactly what you would call the photo presentation. Maybe it is an overlay? I went looking for some clues about this and found this article. The title is The Lightbox Clones Matrix and as you can see there are a lot of different options and descriptions in this area.

http://planetozh.com/projects/lightbox-clones/

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I was very happy to see his Wordpress.com theme Misty Look come to the Wordpress.org side of the street. I am not sure when that happened but I can remember asking Sadish to do something like this when I purchased Nigarila. I was using Sky Blue at the time for my third theme on the news/politics/humor blog NewsLink Briefs. And really wanted the “light box” for PhotoLink Love. The photos there clearly benefit from this presentation.

And so now he has done it. And Misty Look is free! Sky Blue is also free although it was around twenty dollars when I bought it. Nigarila was also about that much. He is always giving great themes away or charging very nominal prices for his work.

And he has many more themes. But these stand out in my mind as the best of his work.

One more thing I should not forget to mention is the ability to import a photo into the header of all these blogs. When I get restless and start thinking about making a change I find this is a very good way to avoid making too much of a change and getting into trouble. My recent experience with the photoblog plugin is a good example of what can happen in that regard. I have many 404 messages now because of it and have learned a valuable lesson.

There is only one wish left on my list of things I would like to see Sadish create. And it is something that I have not ever seen out there in the land of themes. He does not like to repeat himself so maybe he will do it sometime.

Take something like the striking header and font from Sky Blue. Add the author’s box from Nigarila. Use something a little like the side bar in Misty Look. Allow photos up to 650 pixels wide like those in the Sky Blue theme. And add the photo treatment found in Misty Look and Nigarila.

I can imagine one of those large photos overlaying a beautiful page and it would be stunning. It would be unique! It would be so fabulous he might even want to charge twenty five dollars for it!

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http://wprocks.com/free-themes/

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http://wprocks.com/

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http://wpthemeshop.com/

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Update:  I am trying out a new theme by Sadish at NewsLink Briefs in case you go looking there for Sky Blue.

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