furiousBlog

I am taking the next two weeks off from work. I'm really really really looking forward to it. I've gotten a little burned-out over the past couple months. There's just been a lot to do, and a good portion of it wasn't of the fun or interesting variety. Also, non-work life has been pretty hectic, too. What with the house not selling, stuff breaking, and some pressing Cub-scout obligations I'm going a little crazy.

The first week my whole immediate family (my parents, siblings, siblings' spouses/significant others and kids) will be going down to Lake Lure in North Carolina. There we'll swim, boat, hang out, play games etc. We're also planning three outside activities: touring the Biltmore Estate, sliding down sliding rock, and climbing Chimney Rock. Of course, I'm also really looking forward to taking a lot of photographs. I'm even planning to get up early (pre-dawn) a couple of the days and get some early-morning shots of the lake, hopefully all misty and sunrisey. We'll see if I'm able to stick to those goals. I think I should be able to since a lot of the time will be relaxing lazy lake type stuff, so I should be able to take some naps.

If I have internet access while we're down there, I may attempt to blog and/or upload some photos. If I can't find a wi-fi hotspot then my cellphone has the capability of acting as a bluetooth modem for a laptop which I've never tried, So, we'll see. If there's no blog entries next week, both options failed. Another distinct possibility is that I fell asleep and didn't wake up for the whole week.

There's nothing really planned for the second week. I'm looking forward to getting some stuff done around the house, some personal website stuff, and some other random projects I've been wanting to do. Also, I'm planning on doing more photography. I'm also toying with the idea of attempting to make a fiberglass skimboard. You may remember this entry about skimboards (on a side note, that may be my favorite entry I've written). We're toying with the idea of camping at the beach for a couple nights with just us and the kids. It'd be really cool if both me making a skimboard and us going to the beach happen, but we'll see. After a week at the beach, we may be just fine with sitting around the house for a week.

Like I said, I'm very excited for this little break from normal life.

Tomorrow will mark two full work-weeks of standing at my desk (previously discussed here and here). It looks like it's going to stick.

By the end of the day for the first few days, I was really ready for the (sitting) drive home; my legs were killing me. But, after those first couple days, my legs got used to it and now I don't even feel them. At first, I would sit down every few hours for a 10-15 minute break, but now I don't have any problem standing basically the whole day.

I can't say that I've lost a ton of weight, or noticed an incredible productivity boost, but I'm pretty sure I feel better and I think it's making my back feel better (not that it was really bad or anything--just your normal aches).

So far, so good. Next step: the treadmill! I'm not sure when I'll get to that, though.

I've always wanted to put a list of the blogs and photoblogs I frequent on the sidebar, but I didn't like the various options provided by Serendipity (my blog software). Yesterday, it occured to me that I could use the del.icio.us plugin to only show a particular tag, and that I could use that for blogs and photoblogs. One benefit to that is that I only have to post the link to my del.icio.us bookmarks page (which I would've done already) and it's automatically added to furiousBlog.

So, I did that.

As you can see (unless you're reading this via RSS), I've redesigned furiousBlog. Please post a comment (include what browser you're using) if you notice any weirdness.

Update 2006-07-21: I found some weirdness when viewing the site with the oh-so-crappy Internet Explorer (shocking!). So, I had to make some changes to how the columns were positioned. I wanted the left column to extend down the entire page no matter how long it was, but that caused IE to render the right column too wide for the screen. So, I went back to my original code that made the left column stop after its contents' end. I've also done a couple other little tweaks, so if you notice anything wonky, please comment. Thanks.

I installed a cool new plugin for the blog. It's a script called Lightbox. Basically, what it does is change the link on an image thumbnail so that when you click it, the large image appears as a layer over the current window, instead of in a new window.

It's easier to understand with an example. Click on the thumbnail and wonder at the magic:



(It won't do the magic if you have javascript disabled.)