Vivek’s Blog

Wow, I’ve been promising a new theme for far too long now.  Unfortunately, it’s going to take some more time.  I’m somewhat busy right now and next week I’ll be off to Cornell to use their nanoscale facility to pattern a silicon wafer.  The biggest hold-up right now is the header image.  I have a few different ideas but I keep jumping around from to another and am having a hard time settling on one.  I’ve abandoned my initial plans for how I wanted to modify my theme - it will now center around the colors defined in whatever header image I choose to use.

Also, I just updated to Wordpress 2.6 and it seems to be running fine.  I really love the Gears support and the ability to preview a theme within the admin dashboard before applying it.  I’ve always been frustrated by having to apply a theme in order to see how it will look on my blog.  If WP2.6 causes any problems on this site, let me know.

I’ll have another 10-Song-Playlist up before I leave for Cornell.  Haven’t finalized the artist, but I have 3 drafts in progress!

It’s true.  I’ve settled on a theme.

I’m in the process of modifying it so that it looks somewhat unique.  The things I’ll be changing are: header image, background pattern, sidebar layout, and some text colors.  I hope to be done in a few days - the major thing is getting the header image done.  Once I get the header in place, then I’ll mess with the text colors and maybe fonts to get them to match the header.  So sit back and relax.  Once it’s done, you’ll be able to see it up here as the default theme.  I’ve actually gone ahead and deleted a bunch of old themes and I might leave only two up eventually - the new theme and the current theme.  Or perhaps just the default one.  Let’s see.

I wish to announce that I will no longer be posting daily blog entries.  The reasons for this decision are as under:

1) I don’t have issues to talk about everyday

2) The comments hasn’t been ablaze with activity

3) My life is not as interesting as I thought it was

4) I have stuff to do

So, after almost two months of daily postings, I’m telling you that this will no longer be the case. Over the last couple of weeks, I didn’t post anything of significance and I had lots of filler posts.  What’s the point?

However, I fully intend to post regularly and you can expect at least two blog posts this coming week.  Other topics that I will continue to post on include my theme hunt, my laptop wait, Euro 2008, etc.

Over and out.

No, I haven’t found the perfect theme yet, but I have a couple installed right now that would be good compromises in case I don’t find anything better.  Both themes should be relatively easy to modify to my liking although they look good right out-of-the-box.  If the wait for a new theme has been killing you, by all means check out the two new themes called Soloss and Curved.  Any feedback will be disregarded.  Just kidding.  Post feedback here in the comments.  Also, I deleted Fluidity3c.  If you were in love with that theme, sorry guy.  I might take out another one of my old themes since I don’t quite like them anymore, to be honest.

Things have been a lot more “happening” in my summer research.  I’ve been given crash courses in operating an SEM, the excimer laser system, and an AFM.  Using the AFM is the most boring thing ever.  It takes ages to take images and while they certainly look cool, the effort you have to put in to take several different pictures is not fun.  The learning will continue as I familiarize myself with all the equipment available before starting my experiment.  I think EBSD is up next on Monday.  If you’re lost in a sea of acronyms, Google is your friend.

I’ve been on the look out for a new theme for my blog, as I mentioned before.  I’ve looked through at least a dozen websites but no single theme has jumped out and grabbed my attention immediately.  I’m trialling a few of the better ones I found and I may eventually go with one of these.  But I would really, really, really like to find the special theme that I can switch to with no hesitation.

Many good themes are ruined by abnormally large headers that serve no purpose.  Others are handicapped by a poor choice of fonts and/or colors.  Yet more are undone, in my opinion, by the relative lack of information displayed on the blog’s home page.  I can totally see why some people like simple, minimalistic blogs, but that’s not my preference.  I’d like something that presents a decent amount of information in a clear manner and with a dash of color.  I don’t know PHP but I can play around with the CSS code and modify themes to suit my needs.  I think this is what I’ll have to do eventually.

Also, one or more of my older themes will be deleted once I finalize the new theme.  Just cuz.