I've installed the gravatar plugin for my comments section. Why? Because I was thinking about something I read a while back over Chris J Davis way:

The most effective gravatars feature the visage of the person, since at that moment the commenter/poster becomes more real, there is a face with that name… a real, living breathing person, not just some text on a webpage. Identity comes into play for the first time, in a way it never had before.

Of late, and for obvious reasons (and some not as obvious), personal connections have become more imporatant to me than I realized they were before. I'm hoping that people who visit this site, and read the comments might see "faces" they recognize. It's been said that no one is the same person to any two other people. Everyone we interact with influences the attitudes, opinions and ideas that we display at any given time. Therefore the comments someone leaves on my site, will come from a slightly different perspective than the comments that they leave on another site. By being able to see the differences, and similarities, in what someone says in response to various issues, and people, we can gain a fuller picture of who a person is. In this way, I hope, we are able to continue to build a community on the net.

So, if you don't have a gravatar, feel free to get one.

So, this site will be taking a sabbatical soon. I don't know how long, or what the extent will be, but when it comes back it may be something entirely different. My goal will be to have it back by my birthday. But I need to do some things with the site, and I think it will be better to start with a clean slate. When it comes back, most of what's here will be back, but hopefully there will be a freshness and inspiration that was lacking. Thank you.

The Blog is now running under WordPress 1.5 Strayhorn. Took some doing, but I'm no longer using myhacks.php If you find anything broken, let me know.

It up and running. now with three themes: Green (with wine casks), Blue (Space-Ship One) and Grey (Statue). You should get a random one each session. Let me know what you think.

Update (12/04/04)
Now there are 5 a sunrise theme, and an all new Christmas Theme. (Right now the christmas theme is weighted to occur about 10 times for every 1 time another theme comes up.)

Check out the upgrade phatness. (Okay, it's mostly a security fix, but that's good too.)
Here are the files I found that I needed to update. YMMV

• in the base dir
• wp-login.php
• wp-comments-post.php
• in wp-includes
• wp-l10n.php
• version.php
• functions-formatting.php
• in wp-admin
• wp-admin.css
• post.php
• options.php
• import-rss.php
• edit.php
• categories.php
• bookmarklet.php
• admin-header.php

Good Luck

So, I'm trying to build sub-albums into Pictorialis II, and I've got the basic structure working, but there's still a lot to go.
What I still need to do (I'm sure I'll come up with more as I go) is:

• Indicate Sub-albums from the main display
• Either, Display a link to the pics that are in an album, but not in sub-albums of that album. (Picture A is in "Holidays" Picture B is in "Holidays > Christmas") Right now, all you get when you click on the "Holidays" album is the display that for the "Christmas" sub-album, no indication of Picture A
• If an album as sub-albums, but no pictures itself, it needs to find grab a thumbnail from one of the sub-albums Then there's quite a bit of style cleanup.

So... Untill this is done and I get my pics reloaded, the photo gallery is broken.

UPDATE:
I think it's done. I ignored the second of the items on my list and decided that an album can either have sub-albums or pictures, but not both. It all seems to be working as I wanted. I'll share the code if anyone wants, but it is UGLY.

So, I think I've finally got the menu sorted. It works in Mozilla, and I've been told it looks okay in IE... so there's that. I also think I've fixed the issue with post background in IE as well. So, now the menu looks like crap for the rest of the site, but oh well. I'll fix it tomorrow in between fits and spurts of cleaning. Whoof.