Emptiness

It's interesting how the mind works, how reading something innocuous, like this post from my good friend Khaled can bring an entire missive to life, to resurrect long dead feelings and amplify the mournful cry of emptiness in ones soul.

Time for some context.

It is a little known fact that I am a classically trained fine artist.  I studied for three years with some of the finest living artists I have had the privilege to know at Asbury College.  Going into the program my only real talent was drawing, if you can call it that, but while there I discovered that I had a deep love, if no talent for, painting and I am a gifted sculptor.  It was at Asbury that I actually discovered what drawing was, and developed into a skilled drawer, specifically in the area of the figure.

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Thanks for your donation

Thank you for your donation.

Your transaction has been completed, and a receipt for your purchase has been emailed to you.  If you are a Paypal account holder, you may log into your account at www.paypal.com/us to view details of this transaction.

Thank you again for your support of Sillyness Spelled Wrong Intentionally.

Where to go next?

So where do you go from here?  Choose from the following:

★ Destinations

1. Front Page
2. Support Forms

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Silly Supporters Page

Suprisingly enough some donations from a few very generous people have started coming in, so I have setup the Silly Supporters page.

The total currently stands at an amazing $82.03!  Wow, thanks people.

The first 10 donaters, regardless of amount will be the 2005 Charter Class and will all be prominately displayed on the Support Page.  And remember anyone who donates $20 or more will be added to the site spotlight rotation.

The next two Site Spotlights will feature NuclearMoose and Morydd.

And a special thanks to all who have so far been so generous.  I appreciate it, and I am planning on having a gift for all my donaters when I return from Germany.  Stay tuned.

Silly Supporters

Silly Supporters for 2005

Current Balance: $218.64 USD

The following people have donated to help keep the Sillyness coming.  A ♥ denotes Site Spotlight eligible donaters, also the first 10 Supporters will be the 2005 Charter Members.

Being a charter member means you will be prominantely displayed here with an image of your site, after those 10 donators will merely be listed with a link to their sites.  Thanks again for your support.

Craig Hartel Charter Member ♥

Thor Farrow Charter Member

Trevor Turk Charter Member

Sean Evans Charter Member ♥

Phu Ly Charter Member ♥

Stuttgart here I come

And now for the "super secret special announcement":

w00t!  I am now listed as a speaker on the ApacheCon Speakers Page!  Now I just need to figure out what my login details are so I can upload a pic.

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WP 100,000 party video

You can grab a torrent of the video capturing Matt's little speech at the 100,000 party over on my torrent site.

If you download the file from my torrent server, help a brother out and leave your client open a bit and help the seeding.  If you need a client, a good place to start is bittorent.com.

A little update

I thought I would take a moment and update all you fine folks some on what has been happening in the Kingdom on Applegrove.  It has been an exciting couple of weeks.

Baby Davis

This past Friday, March 18th Heather had her first ultrasound.  It was a moving experience to say the least.  Watching the shape of my child take form for the first time was surreal, Heather had eaten some yogurt before we went to the appointment so the little one was very active.

Baby Davis is still too wee to be able to pick up the heartbeat without the aid of a microphone, so the ultrasound tech switched on the mike in the wand so we could hear the baby's heartbeat; it was breathtaking.  The little room filled with the thunder of 178 bpm of pure Baby Davis.  I was on the verge of tears the entire time.

Duran Duran in Concert

If you were not a child of the 80's then move along, you won't care about this portion of the article.  The rest of you are with me though right?  Sweet.

Man did that show rock, and yes #wordpress people I just said Duran Duran rocks.  That was the second best live performance I have been to, only eclipsed by U2's Elevation Tour, and that my friends is saying something.  Simon Le Bon has a mind blowing voice, and he is as good now as he ever was in the 80's... possibly better.

I really dig the new album Astronaut, I believe it is the best they have ever put out.  My favorite part of the show had to be the Anime video that was playing during Careless Memories, it featured the mates in Duran Duran as Anime heros taking on monsters, aliens and gunmen; oh and EMI their former label.  At the climax of the video a giant Simon attacks and destroys the EMI building.  Good stuff.

The Great Job Switcharoo

So I have been with $employer for 2 years now, and they have been, for the most part, wonderful.  But as we all know there comes a point when we must move on to new things.  As of April 18th, 2005 I will be the Webmaster for Asbury College in Wilmore, KY.

It was a very long and arduous journey to making this decision, but I feel comfortable with it and look forward to the new challenges ahead.  Asbury has been without someone at the helm of the website exclusively for some time, so I know there is a mountain of work waiting for me.  Just the way I like it.

The site at Asbury is in need of some standards and accessability love, and I plan on giving it as much as it can handle in the coming months and years.  The PR department at Asbury is striving to "reinvent" the image of Asbury and to maximize the effectiveness of thier branding and advertising so it looks to be a wild ride ahead.

Oh and one more thing.

Look ma, I'm Steve Jobs!

Erm, anyway as promised here is the next of my gravatar plugins/hacks.

This baby is for bbPress that loveable little bulletin board that could from Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame.

With cjd_gravatar you are able to integrate an avatar system into bbPress in 5 minutes.  Very yummy.  You can see the results over on the Silly Support Forums, more specifically in this topic.  That gets me to .500 in regards to my gravatar plugin release schedule.  You can find implementation instructions for this bit o' code over in the University, under the heading CJD Gravatars.

Stay tuned for more plugins and a super special announcement in the near future.

So you want to integrate Gravatars into your bbPress install eh?

No problem, simply download this file and upload it to the root of your bbPress installation.

Next, we need to add some code to topic.php located in /bb-templates/topic.php, NOT topic.php located in your bbPress root.  So once you have /bb-templates/topic.php open follow these easy steps:

1. Place this code: <?php require_once('./bb-hacks.php'); ?> at the top of topic.php just below <?php get_header(); ?>.
2. Then decide where you want the gravatar to show up, I placed mine between the posters name and classification.  When you have decided where you want it simply place <php cjd_gravatar(); ?> in that spot.
3. CJD Gravatar is configured exactly like the stock plugin for WordPress so just follow Tom's instructions and you are golden.

That's it people.  Save topic.php and upload it to your server, remembering it goes in /bb-templates/, not bbPress root and when you load your bbPress install you will magically have gravatars for each of your posters that have an account.

The one where I post an image

This is an image from Forgiveness Vespers held on the Sunday preceding Great and Holy Lent.  During this service Orthodox Faithful that have received their traditions from the Russian Orthodox Church take a moment to ask each other for forgiveness for any sins we may have committed against each other so far this year.

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Personality and Utopia

Recently I have been looking for a topic to write on that did not include WordPress hacks, templates or plug ins... it is harder than you would expect.  So I was overjoyed when I read Tom's post calling for articles to be written that reference gravatars.  So here are some of thoughts I had when thinking about gravatars, weblogs and curiously enough Utopia by Thomas More.

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