Monkey House

I never thought I’d find myself rinsing off river stones.

The short version: although the layer of weedblocker fabric that was under the rocks was still doing its job (no weeds were growing from the ground itself), there was so much compost/sediment built up between the rocks that weeds were growing anyhow. A lot of them. Rather than just use herbicide of some sort, we took the rocks off the weedblocker (which we also replaced while we were at it) and put them through several stages of rinsing (not really by choice but out of necessity… the muck was stubborn!) before finally replacing them.

We only did the left side. The right side is a bit larger to begin with, and also extends down the side of the deck. It’s roughly twice the size of the left, all told.

Several, SEVERAL hours of rinsing and back-breaking shoveling. You can’t see the difference in the pictures, but it WAS an effective solution. Only problem is, too labor-intensive for the trade-off. When we do the right side next year, we’ll just use eco-green herbicide (I know, quite an oxymoron, eh?)

It was never intentional for me to advertise for Envato and their marketplace for so long (and for free!), but for some reason I never got around to removing the ads. Not that there’s anything wrong with Envato– on the contrary, it’s one of the best places on the web to get themes, graphics, audio files, etc… (there, one last final freebie for them. )

What I’m about to explain is hyper-obvious for anyone with web dev experience, but for those of you who are using the Androida Theme as users not as programmers, here’s how to get rid of the ads:

1. Log in as an administrator
2. Go to “Appearance” –> “Editor”
3. From the list of files to edit, select Sidebar (sidebar.php)
4. “Comment out” the line that loads the sponsors.

“Commenting out” means adding comment symbols (which are different from language to language to language) around a piece of code. These comment symbols tell the browser, “This is just a note… don’t do anything to render me.” The reason for using comments is so that you can easily reverse your changes later.

To add comments in HTML, you add “<!–” at the beginning of your comment and “–>” at the end. Now, I wasn’t sure if PHP would still get executed even from inside a comment (certain non-HTML code WILL get parsed, like the code in-between css style tags), but the first try of using the HTML comments showed that it in fact worked.

Here’s the change you need to make (note the comment symbols.. only one line is changed and the others are shown just for context):

That’s it! No more ads. And easy to undo if I decide to put some ads in there.

Alex says to me the other night, “Any way to fix the emoticons on the blog?” (this was after her first post in which I am assuming she wanted to use some emoticons).

Easy peasy! Says I.

The problems are that the emoticon is going off to the left and have spacing/border, as per this image:

First step: see what’s going on with the existing emoticons. Using FireFox, bust open a blog post with an emoticon, KABLAM, open up Firebug and focus on that image. Firebug tells me that the styles for the emoticon image are applied to “img” (images) within the class “entry”:

Well, if you know CSS, you already see the problems: the border, the float, the margin, and the paddings. So basically, the whole class is messing up the emoticons! Non-destructively inside Firebug, I modified those declarations just to prove concept, but the problem was so obvious that I probably needn’t have bothered.

Newbies to CSS or who just sort of learn by trial and error (and we all were at one time) might look up the “.entry img” class in the CSS and start making the changes. However, this would break the rest of the images inside the “entry” div. The example image of “what was wrong” above in this post would be affected along with the emoticons. And we probably don’t want that. What we want is to zero in on the smiley images and style them accordingly.

Back to Firebug.

Firebug tells me that although the styles are inherited from “.entry img” there is in fact another class that the smileys belong to which is even higher up in the hierarcy: “wp-smiley”. THAT is the class that needs to be either added or changed. I know not everyone goes all guerrilla style, so use whatever editing method you think is safest or best for your site. Me, I just went right over to WP’s built-in Appearance Editor and selected Stylesheet (“style.css”). Doing a search for “smiley” turns up the fact that although the post uses that class, there are no styles assigned to it. In other words, “.wp-smiley img” does not exist. No problem, just have to add it to any reasonable place in the CSS. The original author commented a few “categorized” blocks for CSS, so I’ll put it somewhere in the “Main Content” area:

Float is set to none. Margins are set to zero. Padding is set to zero. Border is set to none. Note: I don’t know why it has to be “img.wp-smiley” instead of “.wp-smiley img” but it does. Something to do with inheritance? Dunno.

All done. Update Stylesheet (“style.css”) and you should be ready to rock. If you apply this change to your own site, you MAY need to SHIFT+Refresh to grab a new non-cached version of the CSS. Here’s the end result:

It seems like a small thing, but if you’re a non-developer just trying to fix some niggling little things with this or any other theme, sometimes the small things count!

Greg has been after me for awhile to post on the blog.   Its not that I haven’t wanted to but most of my computer time has been one handed since Cole joined our family.  He is down for a nap and I’ve got a few things to share.     

100 Day Challenge

Those who know me know what an important part exercise plays in my life so it should come as no surprise that I’m going to talk about training.  While I have no races planned at the moment I do want  to get back into a regular workout routine which I let fall by the wayside with all of our renovations and the pregnancy over the last year.  As a motivator I’ve joined a 100 day challenge on my favorite running forum  www.runningmania.com .  As of Wed. Sept 23 there were 100 days until the 2010 and I plan to do some form of exercise for at least 20 minutes each day.  Approved exercise (approve by me that is) includes running, biking, swimming, strength/core work and once a week walking will count in the interest of having a rest day.  Quite conveniently I’ve been enjoying doing the Jillian Micheals 30 day shred video which is an excellent high intensity 20 minute workout with a  mix of cardio/strength and core work .  

So far the week has looked like this:

Mon – AM: Jillian Michaels 30 day shred level one  PM: 20 min bike  

Tues – 30 min bike + core 

Wed – Jillian Michaels  30 day shred level one

Thurs – 30min bike + core 

In addition to loving to exercise I tend to stick with a pretty healthy diet.  One of my fall/winter time favorites is Apple Lentil Soup.  I can’t take credit for coming up with this recipie but I’m happy to share it.   Not only is this soup delicious, it freezes well so you can make it ahead of time for busy days and the leftovers reheat well for lunch the next day. 

Apple Lentil Soup

1 med to lg white onion diced

3 apples diced (I like macs)

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tbsp flour

4 cups chicken broth (vegetable broth also works)

1 cup dried red lentils

2 tbsp parsely

To make the soup soak and rinse lentils 2 or 3 times.  In a large soup pot mix onions, apples, oil and butter and cook until the apples and onions are soft and fragrant.  Stir in flour and add broth gradually brining it to a boil.  Add lentils and simmer over low heat for 20 to 30 minutes.  Add paresly, salt and pepper to taste and then serve.

Enjoy!

Blanket!

I asked Alex a few weeks back, “You know how some kids are ‘blankie’ kids? How do they GET that favourite blanket? Where does it come from? Is it a receiving blanket that they’ve just never given up?

As it turns out, some blankets arrive as really awesome gifts!! We got an email notification a few days ago that something was shipped to us. At first I thought it was spam, but then I realized it was legit. The email did not say who the sender was, only the origin which is a baby goods retailer who sells a bunch of stuff (You Name It, Baby!), so we didn’t know what it was going to be, either. It felt like a wee little Christmas… we knew there’d be a prezzie arriving soon, but we didn’t know what it was going to be (or who the Santa was).

It arrived today. This blanket is awesome. You can’t tell by the pic, but it’s doubled-up thick fleece (with a brownish back), and obviously personalized to our little monkey! “Soft” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

And the Santa? Our good friend Andrew. Thanks a million! We love it! Cole will be jamming it into his mouth (as he does with all fabrics these days) in no time!

Laughter and Joy…

Being a new parent is pretty awesome. You get to go through the early phases just being amazed that you’re responsible for a little life and being glad that you’re up to the challenge. Then you see the first smiles that are really just reflexive reactions to gas and pooping (note: I still smile about gas and pooping, so I don’t think things change THAT much). And now at approx. 3 months we’re starting to see even more of an individual little personality emerge.

The best thing for me in the past week or two has been the genuine laughter, which has now arrived in full force. Snorching like a piggie into his neck or belly makes him break out into his huge dimply smile as he giggles at his papa. Every morning as he awakens from sleep, he looks around slightly confused until he sees his mother’s face, at which time he lights up with genuine joy. It’s so great to see and to be a part of.

…and Sometimes Not So Much

Not wanting to paint the world rainbow colours, though—last night and a few times recently he has let loose with some absolute doozies of screaming fits. He tires himself out and won’t nap, yet when he’s finally had the biscuit he still resists sleep and lets loose a hollerin’. Similar reaction also comes from being put into his car seat most of the time.

One of the stories our friends Natalie and Steve told us was how once their daughter was crying her eyes out and was inconsolable… they just looked at her and sobbed, “We don’t know what you want!” The story is told in a humorous way, but holy moly I can see how it wouldn’t have been funny at the time! I just look at him sometimes when he’s mad at the world and think, “I don’t know what to do for you, buddy! Help me out here!”

Joyful Feet

Our little monkey has discovered his feet. This has two implications:

1. Serious cuteness. He grabs those suckers and pulls himself up into a little ball, completely amazed at his own discovery of the extremities of his limbs. When we clap his feet together for him or use them to kick at Jaques Le Peacock above his change table, he is in some little piece of heaven.

2. Serious difficulty changing diapers. He’s so fascinated with grabbing his feet and curling up into a ball that it’s tough getting a nice snug diaper on him. This is where I envy parents using disposables. I’m sure those would be a lot easier.

Seacrest out!