JBot Mania

So again at 6:20am, I was out watering my plants. Today I focused almost exclusively on my trees. I’m a little concerned because they seem to be showing some signs of dry leaves, as you might be able to see from this very blurry picture.

Today I drenched them to the point of several times having a pool of water form and yet, I still think they are thirsty.

Greedy, greedy is what they are.

I also debased myself by getting on my hands and knees and giving each individual plant it’s own gulp from the JBot Hose of Progress™. I don’t get on my hands and knees for anything (Hi-yo!). Hopefully this will encourage them to stick around for a while.

I also did some clipping to get rid of those withering roses or dried bits that are inevitable in a flower bed. Happily, though, it turned out that some of the roses that were left were quite nice.

My sunflowers also seem to be perking up, as you can see from their many buds. Hopefully they will have the strength to push on when I no longer say sweet absolute-nothings into their pedal covered ears.

Flowers really have become classified in my mind much the same way stuffed animals or pets are. I could conceivably talk to them and I have already created some elaborate backstories. The azalea below, for instance, when we found her was heavily entangled with another much larger plant. In order to survive, she grew sideways and underneath the other plant. Once we freed her I gave her a little pep talk about not letting her man keep her down. It is now essential that she and the one other azalea that we saved (roughly 10% of the original) live to become hearty and full plants—to show that fucker who’s boss.

All in all, I’m quite surprised at my level of commitment to this very small flower bed that I now own. I’m keeping the faith my sistas, faith that I can keep my bushes wet and my trees tall. Mmm hmm…

**PLEASE NOTE: After switching themes I’ve had to go back and futz with this. It’s not finished yet so you won’t see the nice dimming effect. As soon as it is, you will, but the steps here will still work for you. Thanks. **

So I’ve been struggling with the non-existent image uploading capabilities of WordPress. Frankly, it has been the one real thorn in my side since converting from Blogger.

Well, I just may have found the right Plugin. Three, in fact, that make it easy to upload and insert images, as well as, make it swanky to display them.

Image Manager

Here’s the lowdown. The first Plugin that I found after reading this thorough article from Lorelle on WordPress, was ImageManager. What a fricking fantastic Plugin. It is from Soderlin and not only does it help you upload single images easily, browse images you have already uploaded, and insert them effortlessly into your posts (the biggest problem I have found with WordPress) BUT, it also lets you edit these images. Basic but good tasks such as cropping, rotating, resizing, and flipping. All of this occurs from right within your post—the way it should be. For the full scoop, check out this great flash demo on how it works.

Light Boxes

On another front, there is the display of images in blogs. I’ve tried a few methods in the past that included thumbnails with links, pop up windows, or utilizing layers, etc. etc. None of these solutions seemed all that wonderful. Then there came along the next breed of display—the lightbox.

The lightbox is a great interface for allowing your visitors to really focus in on an image, if they want further detail. What it does is “pop up” the image in a new div, while also dimming the background so that your image is front and center with no distractions. Give it a shot by clicking on the image above of my father and me on my very first day.

As you can see, the display is elegant and closing the image is easy. You will also note the addition of a caption, cleverly tucked into the title tag.

All you have to do, once you have everything setup, is to add

rel="lightbox"

to links around your images. And if you want to add a caption, simply add

title="this is my caption"

with your OWN text, of course, between the quotation marks.

Pairing these two Plugins together gives you quite the imaging arsenal.

A few notes on setting up the lightbox functionality:

There are a number of lightbox scripts out there and I chose to use Lightbox JS by Lokesh Dhakar. I might be a little daft, or a lot, I’m not sure, but I had a little trouble at first with this because there weren’t 100% explicit instructions given. But anyway…

From the web site listed above you’ll have to download 5 files. One javascript file, one CSS file, and three image files. I put them into my Plugins folder even though it’s not really a Plugin, I suppose. I put it in /wp-content/plugins/lightbox.

Once you do that, add the following to your header:
<script src="/wp-content/plugins/lightbox/lightbox.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

and remember to change the path to the path to this file to be RELATIVE to the web page it will be used on - so even if you’re using a template file, go from the root:

/wp-content/plugins/lightbox/lightbox.js

Now, for the CSS. I had some trouble adding another include to the CSS file into my header, so I just added it to the CSS file for the theme I am using. This is NOT the best solution for later on when you want to switch themes, but I wanted it done.

Once that is done, you need to make a couple of changes to the CSS file and the js file to point to the graphics that are used.

In the beginning of the js file, make sure the paths to the close button and the loading image are correct. I had to change mine to:

var loadingImage = '/wp-content/plugins/lightbox/loading.gif';
var closeButton = '/wp-content/plugins/lightbox/close.gif';

In the CSS file, you deal with the png file that gives you the nice dimming of the background. You will edit the following two lines:

#overlay{ background-image: url(/wp-content/plugins/lightbox/overlay.png);

filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImage Loader(src="/wp-content/plugins/lightbox/overlay.png"

After these changes are done, you should be all set to use this lightbox code with ease.

Batch Image Uploader

One last Plugin is the Batch Image Uploader by mogrify. What this little jobby does is, hold your breath, let you upload multiple images at once. (Let out the breath) This is hugely convenient for those image heavy posts. I have alot of posts on other sites that I manage that have multiple images, and Lord knows I want those images up as fast I can so that I can get that shit done, uppercut!

Anyway, it’s an easy to use interface and saves alot of time.

Here’s one more image for your lightboxing pleasure:

Enjoy and happy image heavy blogging!

This morning, at a bright and cheery 6:20am, I was outside in my yard—not waking from a drunken stupor that somehow left me there, but rather, watering my plants. Yes, the girl who can barely feed herself or keep a room clean for more than a day, was up bright and early watering her plants. With a hose no less! A hose that I had to drag and untangle.

It must be my competitive side.

I told my mother and stepfather that I considered it a personal challenge to see all of the plants we transplanted and the two new trees, survive for the long haul. I’m doing pretty well. I am down two rose plants but surely with one SINGLE root for each, they were not long for this world outside of whatever miraculous environment that had kept them going this long. I sense a third rose bush will also be falling by the wayside soon, but frankly, I’m not much of a rose person anyway. I need hearty, shit kicking plants. Plants that can thrive in my tough love environment.

“Water yourselves, you bastards.”

This intensive care approach that I am currently taking will wane after I am certain the plants have taken root. But until then, they can enjoy the attention.

So, I guess I am now officially a home-o. A homeowner, that is.

Wow, so I was just perusing my last post and Jesus H. Something-Something, it’s been 24 days. I’ll be honest and say that I really have no idea what happened. Well, one thing happened and continues to happen—my house. It’s still a project. I proclaimed about a week ago that the whole thing, buying this house, was a complete mistake. I have since lightened up a little, and that has been easier after this weekend.

This weekend was very productive. Thanks to Sora, I was able to unload quite the collection of unused furniture, rugs, and miscellaneous items at Goodwill. Yes, I still have yet to become comfortable driving the truck that I now own and insure, and thus had to wrangle myself a driver.

The front yard was also completely redone, thanks in HUGE part to my mother and stepfather. I even have two new trees. Yes, actual trees—things that will grow large and offer some permanece; things that I could never plant in an apartment. I have yet to name them other than to assert that one is the Charlie-Brown-iest tree ever and the other is a hearty little guy. Both are Japaneses Maples, one is a crimson or a blood something—a word involving red. The other is a typical fairly whispy, weepy looking fellow. I am currently looking for my camera to take some pictures.

All in all, it now looks like I give a damn, as my mother asserted. Hopefully I can continue to look that way even though, technically, I don’t.

Apparently you can keep up with this whole yard thing, too. I highly doubt it but I am willing to give it a shot. Once a week weeding, daily waterings until the new plants take root. We’ll see. I consider it a personal challenge to not let any of these plants die.

I like, though, how it’s “just” once a week. There are ALOT of things that are “just” once a week. Like cleaning, or doing bills, or mowing the lawn, or laundry, or weeding, or gathering and putting out the garbage. Then there are the daily tasks like cleaning dishes or making the bed. “Just” doesn’t seem so just anymore.

But alas, what can I say? How can I complain? I do have a house of my own at the tender age of mid-twenties. I was offered some religion when I began to despair over my home’s condition. If there’s a patron saint of “tired of this mundane crap”, I’d be more than happy to give it a shot.

” ’cause the bottles not empty
’cause your voices are all there
My life will fight in my body for air

Oh this friend today
Right me up
I’m not so weak

Manny we gonna get that a.m. dial just right
I’ll hold that hanger up
As long as the Sox put up a fight”

Some might say that I bought a house. In literal terms, yes, I bought a house. In figurative, and we’ll say “relevant”, terms what I bought was an activity, a hobby, a consuming task. And I PAID for this. That is the kick in the sack for me.

It’s definitely getting a little out of control. If I am at home but not doing work on my house, I’m feeling guilty that I am home and not doing it. If I am not home, I am thinking about what I need to do. Thankfully, painting is fairly rewarding because it’s fairly instant gratification. Well, a little less instant when you have to prime, but still, a visual accomplishment.

It’s a good day to be busy, though. I came up with a mantra a couple of months ago. It goes basically like this, “Eat, eat, eat. Go, go, go.” It serves two great purposes. It reminds me to eat AND it reminds me to keep moving and basically, never stop. If I stop, who knows what will happen. Stopping involves a little too much quiet sometimes. A little too much repetitive thought. Quiet and thinking have their place, but not all of the time. Push on, as they say. So, when I get up tomorrow at 7:00am to go to work as a lackey at the garage, I’ll be saying “Eat, eat, eat. Go, go, go.” If I’m not eating, I better be moving and if I’m not moving, I better be eating.

Tomorrow there will also be painting in the future bedroom. I’ll get some before-and-afters. I’m almost done with a portion of the kitchen, as well, which should prove quite fun to photograph and display my renovation prowess. Thirty hours a week of HGTV has to have some effect. Yeah, eat it TLC.

“Your face saving promises, whispered like prayers. I don’t need them. No, I don’t need them… They say that promises sweeten the blow but I don’t need them. No, I don’t need them.”