2011 June Archive - Chimeric Dream

Archive for June, 2011

New website theme is live

22 Jun 2011

And after only a couple days, the new theme is already live! It is pretty close to the original, but the new version adds quite a bit more color (thanks, Nick!). I am really happy with the way the theme is shaping up. I still have quite a bit of fine-tuning to to (listed below), but the majority of the big stuff is done.

Here’s a list of the items that I want to make minor tweaks to over the coming days/weeks:

For the logo, I am going to try and make the text look etched into the steel plate (and make the steel plate look a bit better). On top of that, or possibly instead (if etching is too hard), I want to add some electric effects around the plate to tie it into the background a bit more.
I have some style changes to make to the pages list in the sidebar and the popular posts in the footer.
Implement some kind of modal popup for images in posts
General typography tweaks

Surprisingly, the site works without issue in IE9 (I haven’t tested in IE8 yet, and I have no intention of testing in IE6 or 7). There are some very minor issues, mostly with typography, that it seems IE is doing differently than Chrome/Safari/Firefox, but overall I must admit to being pleasantly surprised.

Looks like I get to cross one more item off my 30 by 30 list.

Because this is brand new, I expect that there will be minor issues with it at first. So if you notice a bug, feel free to comment here!

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

First draft of new website theme; comments welcome

20 Jun 2011

I spent the weekend working on a new design for this site, and I now have a draft version to show off! I’m pretty happy with the way it is turning out so far, but there are some things that I still want to work on and tweak before I implement it.

Here is the link to the sample site. Comments and criticisms are welcome!

http://chimericdream.com/redesign/

I’m not entirely happy with the main header “logo”. I like the steel plate look, but I want to play with it a bit more.
I have some fine-tuning to do with the following sections:
- Pretty much the entire right column
- “Popular Posts” in the footer
Implement some kind of modal popup for images in posts
This is just a basic idea. I will need to make several other pages before I can make this live
- 404
- Archives
- Search
- Single post (will likely be similar, if not identical to the main layout)

Once again, here is the link to the sample page. Expect it to be updated over the next few days, and hopefully I’ll have a new theme on this site by sometime next week!

http://chimericdream.com/redesign/

Edit: Make sure you are viewing the demo in a modern browser, such as Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Internet Exploder is likely to lack (or poorly include) support for some of the CSS3 that I am using for the design. Eventually, I will probably have solutions in place for these (to an extent), but as this is my personal site, I plan to support only the following browsers upon launch:

Firefox
Chrome
Safari
Opera
IE8 & 9

Hospital Hill ’11

15 Jun 2011

As you probably already know, I ran in the Hospital Hill 10k race on June 4th. Setting out, I had two three goals for myself: 0) Finish the race; 1) Finish in 1:30:00 or less; and 2) Finish in 1:20:00 or less.

I am happy to say that my official time was 1:20:36. However, I am going to say that I met all of my goals, because the actual distance of the race was 6.3 miles (10k = 6.2 miles). As I watched my GPS toward the end, I crossed the 6.2mi mark at 1:19:40 (ish), a few seconds ahead of my goal!

So yeah… I’m awesome like that.

Though I have to admit, it’s demoralizing to be passed by a bunch of half-marathoners who finish running 13.1 miles 20 minutes before you finish running 6.2. I realize they have been doing this a lot longer, but holy crap!

Here are the pictures taken of me at the race:
Picasa web album for Hospital Hill ’11

A quick note about the pictures: I do not own the copyright on them (in case the big watermark wasn’t obvious). However, I am perfectly fine with the low-res copies of these images considering the price the company wants for high-resolution copies (if I recall, it would have cost me several hundred dollars to get my images).

So yeah… good race, bad hills (seriously… wtf? it wasn’t called “Hospital Hills“… why more than one big hill?), decent pics, and great results. Overall, I’m calling it a win.

New shoes, new treadmill, new records

15 Jun 2011

Over the weekend I got a new pair of running shoes, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I spent this much money on any article of clothing, much less a pair of shoes! Here’s a quick pic:

I have to say, they are pretty comfortable. My old shoes (only 6 months old, but still…) were starting to give me blisters whenever I’d run more than 2-3 miles, which is almost all of my runs anymore (wait, what?!). So on a tip from a friend, I tried out Gary Gribbles, a running shop on Mass St. here in Lawrence. The service was awesome! They looked at the wear patterns on my current running and everyday shoes to determine the type of shoe that would work best for me. All told, I spent almost an hour trying on different shoes and running around their store (seriously).

I tried to give the new shoes a test run (see what I did there?) on my new treadmill, but I’m not sure that it will work. Mind you, it’s just new to me, as I got it free from someone moving out of my complex, so it’s possible that it’s just too old. I need to mess around with it a bit more before I give up on it. I really want a treadmill, so hopefully I can make it work.

My last bit of news for tonight is about my running progress. I recently ran in the Hospital Hill 10k in KCMO, and it was awesome! I managed to beat both of my time goals (one of them by mere seconds, but it still counts)! On top of that, I’ve been keeping up with my training for the half-marathon coming up in a couple weeks. As part of that, and to help break in my new shoes, I went to Holcom Rec Center this Sunday to try for 8 miles on the treadmill. Unfortunately people needed to use it, so I only made it through 5.5/8, but I ran 4 straight miles without stopping! The first 3.1 miles flew by in 32:27, more than 8 minutes faster than my personal 5k record! It was enough to make me add a “treadmill/indoor track” section to my personal records page.

Well, that’s it for now. This turned into a little longer of a post than I intended, but that’s cool.

Peace out.

My first (real) 10k

6 Jun 2011

Yesterday I ran in my first (in my mind) 10k. Why do I add the qualifier of “in my mind”, you ask? I’ll tell you. In mid-April, I participated in the Kansas Marathon 10k race. That was technically my first 10k. However, after I finished, I found out that the actual route was more than 2/3 mi. short of actually being a true 10k! Needless to say I was a bit disappointed.

However, as I said, yesterday I ran another one. I am considering this my first “real” 10k, and I picked a tough one! I ran in the Hospital Hill race in Kansas City, MO. The “Hill” in the name isn’t just for show… and there’s more than just one. The hills in that race were brutal! But that didn’t stop me; I ran, in my humble opinion, an awesome race and finished with an official time of 1:20:36. Not bad for someone who hasn’t been running long!

It was a tough day, but it’s only going to get tougher over the coming weeks. Yesterday’s race was actually just another training day on my way to my first half-marathon on July 4th in Brownville, NE. More to come on that later!

For now, I need to get to bed. Tomorrow is my first day back at work after a couple weeks off… ew.