Ryan J. Allen » rjanet http://www.ryanjallen.net/blog Everything RJA Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:59:52 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Food Bank http://www.ryanjallen.net/blog/2009/03/31/the-food-bank/ http://www.ryanjallen.net/blog/2009/03/31/the-food-bank/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:45:05 +0000 Ryan J. Allen http://www.ryanjallen.net/blog/?p=1508 Ladies and Gentlemen, please let me take a minute to write to you about the Food Bank.

The food bank helps people–families; children–get basic food supplies in the case of emergency and desperate need. In Ottawa thousands of people rely on the food bank every month, and in your local city I’m sure the [...]]]> Ladies and Gentlemen, please let me take a minute to write to you about the Food Bank.

The food bank helps people–families; children–get basic food supplies in the case of emergency and desperate need. In Ottawa thousands of people rely on the food bank every month, and in your local city I’m sure the food bank has an equally important impact. With the food bank your donation dollars are spread further than your donation amount through the power of purchasing and the generosity of the community.

This morning a co-worker of mine in Ottawa e-mailed to indicate that he is a member of the “Heroes Fighting Hunger” campaign. I think that is admirable, but I think it most importantly reminds us of an important cause. I donated to his campaign, but today I ask that you make a general donation or find your own Hero to donate to. You can find a list of heroes online, or make a general donation at the Ottawa Food Bank website.

I have been blessed to have never before needed the services of the food bank. If the same is true for you I would suggest that is even more reason for you to donate. If you have been helped by the food bank in the past and are now in a position to help: please think about the impact the food bank made on your life at the time and contribute to make that same impact on someone else’s life.

I know that I have readers from various cities, provinces, and countries. I welcome you to make a donation to the Ottawa Food Bank but encourage you to donate locally. Here are a few links:

Thank you for your generosity.

Update: A receipt will be provided instantly via e-mail for donations of $10 and more to the Ottawa food bank.

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]]> http://www.ryanjallen.net/blog/2009/02/14/a-hallmark-e-card-from-ryan-j-allen/feed/ 2 “I Feel Like I Look Ten Years Younger” http://www.ryanjallen.net/blog/2009/02/08/i-feel-like-i-look-ten-years-younger/ http://www.ryanjallen.net/blog/2009/02/08/i-feel-like-i-look-ten-years-younger/#comments Sun, 08 Feb 2009 09:36:37 +0000 Ryan J. Allen http://www.ryanjallen.net/blog/?p=1376 “I feel like I look ten years younger.” It’s not me saying this–it’s my web log.

Some of my eldest readers might remember a time when I was using bBlog to publish my web log, using the default theme. Eventually I found a theme very similar to the theme I use today, only with [...]]]> “I feel like I look ten years younger.” It’s not me saying this–it’s my web log.

Some of my eldest readers might remember a time when I was using bBlog to publish my web log, using the default theme. Eventually I found a theme very similar to the theme I use today, only with a red colouring instead of blue and a photo of a Bic pen rather than the Pilot ExecuGel. This theme was a WordPress theme, so I grabbed a WordPress compatible theme for bBlog and started using it.

A couple of years ago I made the move from bBlog to WordPress 2 and brought along my WordPress 1 theme. The theme felt right at home, but was still working with a sort of “compatibility” layer as WP2 added new theme features that my theme wasn’t using. This wasn’t really a problem because I could continue on with no loss of functionality.

But my theme was getting a little long in the tooth. A couple of people complained about the long list of archive links. Link ordering was out of my control. Searching sucked. Comments couldn’t be nested. And the list goes on to include various other minor annoyances.

Tonight I made the jump to a WP2 theme that is “highly configurable”. From what I can tell it simply means that they give you a bunch of text boxes in which you can edit CSS, and for this they add many kilobytes of your page size. None-the-less I spent the time to transition from the old to the new theme. A couple of you even noticed that I took the site down for a short period during the transition.

Enough with the history lesson; here’s what’s changed:

  • domain navigation links moved from the sidebar to the top;
  • front page is three columns, now showing recent comments and recent popular posts;
  • tags;
  • easier access to posts and comments RSS feeds;
  • local search replaces Google search;
  • no more AdWords;
  • link ordering changed;
  • archives are available in a drop-down list; and,
  • minor changes to design and per-post page layout

The downside of this: the new theme is slow. Combine that with a really slow (read: cheap) web host and the blog effectively becomes really slow. Whether or not this is noticeable I don’t know. To combat this I have installed a caching mechanism, which should help if a few of you happen to visit at once. But please let me know if there are any side effects.

Update: Left sidebar: gone.

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