I had the chance to go again today to the DigiBarn out in Boulder Creek and take a tour.  I went last October and they’ve added quite a bit in the last year.  Pics are up now on Flickr.

I also have spent some time in the last couple days playing around with a local installation of WordPress on my computer in preparation of launching a new site that will host my blog for sure, maybe photos too.  I was hoping the design side of setting up a site would be easier because the tech side is actually not that hard.  Obviously if I was trying to host it on my own server or had to deal with really high traffic levels it would become more difficult.  But for the low ammount of traffic I get (about 150 hits per week) it’s really easy.  Especially looking at a service like GoDaddy, who obviously hosts a ton of WordPress blogs.

What is difficult is the CSS coding to control the colors, text, and images.  Even that, the code itself is easy enough to play around with and eventually get the desired effect.  What is difficult and annoying is trying to figure out what each element on the page is called.  What is the difference between “header 2″ and “header 3?”  Which content entry to I need to change to control the alignment and possitioning of the page.  Once I get that up and running on my local machine though, it won’t be long before I set up a site.

Anyway, with summer winding down here at the Herm, I have the time and energy to start looking at some photography, tech, and design projects I’ve wanted to work on.  As you may have seen, I’ve already purchased a Wacom graphics tablet to help with my photoediting and also give me the ability to draw custom graphics for the web.  I have a big purchase looming in a couple weeks when my trial of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom runs out.  It’s a $300 (!) software package for photo-editing which is pricy considering I can do most of what it does with the free software I already have (Digital Photo Pro and the GIMP) but Lightroom is what the “real” pros use and what I need to master if I ever want to have a shot at a photography job someday.  I thought about the same logic for replacing my laptop when I was looking at the possibility of going with a MacBook.  The only problem with that is I would have to buy a program like Lightroom in both PC and Mac formats, doubling my cost.  So I’m sticking with all PC for now at least.  Well, Coffee Cat is winding down and I’m kind of tired so I’m going to sign off for now.  Ciao!

Filed under: life, photography by Jonathan Assink