Guarded Revelation

Posted by hgmeister

He clutches the padding to his body as if in waiting for a baseball to sore through the air to hit him square in the chest.

But when he opens his eyes and sees it is just the aliens dancing on the sidewalk, he eases up a bit. Some things never change. It seems to him a daily parade of the mundane and the ridiculous mesh together in a dance so sublime only a drunk, like himself, sees it.

It’s his show, day after day. An old poster of a band, from long ago, reminds him that he has a wall all his own. In the other world, people go to work, come home to families, watch TV all night, and slip off to sleep, only to wake and repeat the same process day after day after day. Life isn’t meant to be a single stream of sameness in his opinion.

His memory holds the image of suited people surrounding him, while he lay on the floor. Their faces elongating and morphing into haunting images and the sounds echoed and blared loudly telling him he didn’t fit in, he wasn’t positive enough and had no business sense and why was he on the floor, anyway? But it was a long time ago.

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“Drinking Liberally – Dunwoody” to Host a Progressive Election Night Event

Posted by hgmeister

“Drinking Liberally – Dunwoody” to Host a Progressive Election Night Event

Drinking Liberally chapters in Atlanta and Dunwoody meet co-founder Justin Krebs during his book tour.
Drinking Liberally chapters in Atlanta and Dunwoody meet co-founder Justin Krebs during his book tour for 538 Ways to Live, Work and Play Liberal.

Democrats, liberals and progressives living in the Dunwoody, Sandy Springs and surrounding area are invited to an election night party hosted by the Dunwoody Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Join kindred spirits and watch the election returns Nov. 6, 8 p.m. to midnight, at Firkin & Gryphon, located at 4764 Ashford Dunwoody Road Northeast in Dunwoody. TVs will be tuned to election coverage and the menu offers a great selection of nosh and, oh yeah, Firkin has a bar. (You did notice the “Drinking” part in the chapter name, right?)

Drinking Liberally (DL) is part of a national group called Living Liberally, which is dedicated to creating communities around progressive politics. Through various social activities and events, the organization promotes engagement in politics and facilitates collaboration among other progressive organizations.

Originating in New York City, the original DL club pulls in progressives weekly to chug and chat at Rudy’s Bar & Grill in Hell’s Kitchen. There, you can get a pint of Rudy’s Blonde for $2.50 and free Sabrett hot dogs, all the while promoting “Democracy one pint at a time,” DL’s motto. And just to note, the group’s once-a-week gathering is the only thing listed on Rudy’s online events calendar.

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Whitewater Creek Park

Posted by hgmeister

Whitewater Creek Park is off of the Palisades Unit of the Chattahoochee River. While the park is open for swimming (for people), many bring their dogs. As long as the dogs are on leash, they can romp in the water, too.

Once you park (be sure to pay the $3.00 park fee), the walk is just a few yards away. The beach is long and sandy and the river is shallow to about the middle of the river. Wear water shoes as there are loads of rocks and boulders in the water that are easy to slip on. Many people make their way to the outcrops of rocks scattered in the river to sunbathe and watch the rafters, kayakers and canoes go by.

Dog Beach Island

Posted by hgmeister

Hamlet on Dog Beach IslandA secret little spot off of Lake Lanier becomes a haven for dogs in the summer. Dubbed “Dog Beach Island” the tiny mound of land is within swimming distance from the shores of Little Ridge Park, the Habersham Marina boat launch area, off of Lanier Beach South Road.

Once you park, you can either walk the trail for about half a mile or you can just hang out on the shores of the main area. If you take the trail, it will twist around through the woods to the left and eventually lead to a shore. Just off the shore is a small island.

These videos show a bit of the island and the dogs that enjoyed a summer’s day. Hamlet sure had a great time!

Click continue reading to view videos of Dog Beach Island.

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Removing the credits in the Twenty Eleven footer

Posted by hgmeister

Remember – do not make changes to the Twenty Eleven theme files. Only make changes to files for your child theme.

That said, to remove the credits in the footer you’ll need to place a copy of the footer.php file located in the main Twenty Eleven theme folder into your child theme folder using ftp or your file manager. (I rarely edit files inside of WordPress just in case…).

Once you’ve copied over the footer.php file, open the one in your child theme folder in an editor.

Click continue reading to view the code.

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Twenty Eleven plugins that can help with customization

Posted by hgmeister

There are a couple of recommended plugins for Twenty Eleven that can take the headache out of figuring out some of the coding. Especially when it comes to resizing headers or moving the navigation bar to the top of the site.

Search for the following plugins in which you can either install them from the backend of your site or manually through ftp.

Twenty Eleven Theme Extensions

Once you install this plugin, you will find it under Appearance.

Each option offers a help box, so if you want to know what the choices do simply click the question mark.

Options offered:

  • Widget Sidebar
  • Widget Titles
  • Headline Post
  • Header Image Size
  • Custom Colors
  • Custom CSS

Upper Menu for Twenty Eleven

This plugin will basically set your navigation up above the header image and round the corners. There’s no setting for it, just once you activate it the job is done. If you don’t like it, deactivate the plugin.

Of course, if you’re good with code and CSS you can always try to restyle the way these things look, but I leave that up to you.

 

Creating a Twenty Eleven child theme

Posted by hgmeister

I will try to keep up with documenting the changes I make to Twenty Eleven by using a child theme to do so. If you’d like to learn how to make a child theme, follow along. Or visit WordPress Codex here.

A note about why you’re doing this – Twenty Eleven is a framework that you can build off of with your own themes. But instead of messing with the original files, you create your own. Most of Twenty Eleven’s files will be read by your child theme. All you want to be able to do is style it and customize it to what you like.

What you’ll need:

ftp access OR

access to the file manager on your hosting area. These instructions are for a self-hosted blog through a hosting company such as Host Gator or TMDHosting, etc. You can use either ftp or the file manager on your hosting account to do this.

You’ll need to navigate to your wp-content/themes folder.

Inside the themes folder, create a new folder and give it the name of your child theme. I shall call mine squishy (don’t you just love “Finding Nemo?”). Hence, I made a folder called squishy.

Click continue reading to learn more.

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New site, lots to build

Posted by hgmeister

I’ve been attacked by jerks who have placed phishing files on my site. After a major cleanup (deleting directories, getting rid of old files and sites that are no longer around, etc.) I decided to redo my own site.

Ah, actually, dumb me forgot to backup the database for my previous site – that’s the real reason for the redo… I accidentally wiped it out along with the other databases I had built (for practice, learning and otherwise).

So……… what a pain.

I had built a beautiful site for a client using the Twenty Eleven framework using a child theme, so I thought I’d try it with my own. I customized the template for them quite a bit and built it off of the provided artwork. That site is not live, yet. But in the meantime, I will post information about the customizations that I did as posts here.

Sweet Sydney

Posted by hgmeister

My silly pooch on July 4. Sydney was a beautiful dog – a mix of keeshond and chow. He was not a friendly dog to people or other dogs, but he guarded and protected me. I miss him. He passed five years ago on Easter Sunday. This was a silly photo taken at a pet fair.