Johann Sebastian Bach was once censured by the town of Arnstadt for being unnecessarily involved in a sword fight with a student, after accusing said student of playing the bassoon like a goat.

While listening to recordings of The Art of Fugue, it occurred to me that the clear, crisp notes in Bach’s composition would show up nicely in an audio visualization.

The goal was to make an animated SVG using JavaScript w/ jQuery, the HTML5 Web Audio API, and D3.js…

By golly, I think I’ve done just that. With the help of a few tutorials and examples, I was able to slap together a cool little sunflower visualization. Many thanks to mbostock for the raindrop svg path shape and to Garry Smith for the awesome d3js visualization he tutorial wrote, which got me up to speed!

Enjoy the sights and sounds of Bach’s Contrapunctus XIII Inversus:

PlayPauseRestartVolume +Volume –

And, now for the code (feel free to copy/pasta to use however you’d like):

<audio id="bach-contrapunctus-13-inverted" src="path_to_audio" type="audio/mpeg"></audio>

<button class="bach-toggle" id="bach-toggle-play">Play</button>
<button class="bach-toggle" id="bach-toggle-pause">Pause</button>
<button class="bach-toggle" id="bach-toggle-restart">Restart</button>
<button class="bach-toggle" id="bach-toggle-volume-increase">Volume +</button>
<button class="bach-toggle" id="bach-toggle-volume-decrease">Volume -</button>

jQuery(document).ready(function ($) {

	var audio_elem = $('#bach-contrapunctus-13-inverted').get(0),
			frequency_data = new Uint8Array(359),
			audio_context = new (window.AudioContext || window.webkitAudioContext)(),
			audio_src = audio_context.createMediaElementSource(audio_elem),
			analyser = audio_context.createAnalyser(),
			height = 400,
			width = 700,
			svg_visual = createSVG('#bach-animation', height, width);

	audio_src.connect(analyser);
	audio_src.connect(audio_context.destination);

	renderFirstChart();
	renderChart(); // Run the loop

	// Bach Button events
	$('#bach-toggle-play').click(audioPlay);
	$('#bach-toggle-pause').click(audioPause);
	$('#bach-toggle-restart').click(audioRestart);
	$('#bach-toggle-volume-increase').click(audioVolumeIncrease);
	$('#bach-toggle-volume-decrease').click(audioVolumeDecrease);

	// Bach Audio Toggle Functions
	function audioPlay (e) {
		audio_elem.play();
	}

	function audioPause (e) {
		audio_elem.pause();
	}

	function audioRestart (e) {
		audio_elem.pause();
		audio_elem.currentTime = 0;
		audio_elem.play();
	}

	function audioVolumeIncrease (e) {
		audio_elem.volume += 0.2;
	}

	function audioVolumeDecrease (e) {
		audio_elem.volume -= 0.2;
	}

	function createSVG (container, height, width) {
		return d3.select(container)
			.append('svg')
			.attr('height', height)
			.attr('width', width)
			.append("g")
    	.attr("transform", "translate(" + width/2 + "," + height/2 + ")");
	}

	function renderFirstChart () {
		svg_visual.selectAll("path")
	    .data(d3.range(359))
	  	.enter()
	  	.append("path")
	    .attr('fill', function(d) {
	    	return 'rgb(' + d + ', 85, 95)';
	    })
	    .attr("d", function(d) {
	    	return generateRaindrop(frequency_data[d]);
	    })
	    .attr("transform", function(d) {
	      return "rotate(" + d + ")"
	        + "translate(" + frequency_data[d]*1.3 + ",0)"
	        + "rotate(90)";
	    });
	}

	function renderChart () {
		requestAnimationFrame(renderChart);
		analyser.getByteFrequencyData(frequency_data);
		svg_visual.selectAll("path")
	    .data(d3.range(359))
	    .attr('fill', function(d) {
	    	return 'rgb(' + d + ', 85, 95)';
	    })
	    .attr("d", function(d) {
	    	return generateRaindrop(frequency_data[d]);
	    })
	    .attr("transform", function(d) {
	      return "rotate(" + d + ")"
	        + "translate(" + frequency_data[d]*1.3 + ",0)"
	        + "rotate(90)";
	    });
	}

	function generateRaindrop(size) {
	  var r = Math.sqrt(size*2 / Math.PI);
	  return "M" + r + ",0"
      + "A" + r + "," + r + " 0 1,1 " + -r + ",0"
      + "C" + -r + "," + -r + " 0," + -r + " 0," + -3*r
      + "C0," + -r + " " + r + "," + -r + " " + r + ",0"
      + "Z";
	}

});

The post Coding Journal – Visualizing Bach with D3 JS appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

“I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.” – Alan Turing

After spending an afternoon with Teradeep’s May 2015 Neural Network Demo, I feel both intrigued and motivated to experience machine learning and Artificial Intelligence at a great depth.

Observations made during tinkering with their demo-app:

1. You can’t modify the app to use widescreen video. The network expects a particular aspect ratio.
2. The fps hovers around 11 on my Macbook Pro.
3. Most of the time, the network seems to “lack confidence.” As in, the percentage is often low on what category is in the frame. This could just be a byproduct of the UI/UX clashing with numbers that make more sense if you know what the algorithm means.
4. Interpreting the data output is difficult, only because I’m human. An unexpected irony, probably because of how much of a novice I am in the world of AI and image processing.
5. Some of the settings are fun to play with. You can change the number of frames that the network will use to detect objects, change the number of terms being seen on the screen , etc. I didn’t really see any major benefit to modifying the settings, though, and I assume that they tuned the AI to behave at its very best for the default demo.

Overall, this is a pretty amazing tool. I’d really like to dig into how the actual neural network model works. For example, some questions that I have:

1. What gives “confidence?” I understand that the image is compared to the large database of potential matches… Perhaps my question is this: How exactly does the algorithm apply that database to the provided frame?
2. How difficult would it be to outline the shape of a person or object? I am new to Lua and C, but it looks like the image goes into the model, then comes back out with the image and then extra data.
3. How can I improve the performance of the model? What kind of specs would it take to reach 30fps on a full 1280×720 resolution (as opposed to the cropped 1:1 ratio this demo uses).
4. If the network could analyze 4k video, how much more precise could the confidence of any particular object in the frame be?
5. At what point in time does frame detail provide diminishing returns?
6. How exactly is the processing speed of the neural network affected by the resolution of the image being fed to it?
7. Why can I only use one processing stream on my 2013 Macbook Pro?

It would be fun to build a Terminator-like video output, in which there was a much more “fun” UX/UI for the human to interpret what the neural network “sees.” Obviously, the computer doesn’t care what it looks like. At least, in the current generation of AI. Down the road, AI may develop a taste for the aesthetic, I suppose:

This sort of specialized video rendering is already being done by the team at Teradeep, but the future applications are obvious… And, perhaps it goes without saying, ominous.

I just recently read that Dmitry Rogozen, the Russian Federation’s Deputy PM, says that future tank battles will be entirely drone based, in a sense.

This leads me to a second set of questions with, perhaps, obvious answers:

1. If I were to train the neural network to recognize shapes of common weapon systems, what would be the “lowest-hanging-fruit” within the defense industry for this application? Could you slap this AI onto a drone to provide the pilot a more accurate understanding of the drone’s environment?

2. Could you train the neural network to understand any type of video feed? For example, if I build a “mini-tank” that has a thermal camera, infrared camera, and a standard camera, could I combine the three feeds to improve the confidence of the network’s output?

Curiosity abounds when engaging in what almost feels like the “dark arts” of the modern day… Namely, the vision of future synthetic intelligence combined with modern defense capabilities.

I’ll be writing more about this as I continue to tinker and test. Perhaps there is less-opaque, open source neural model I can find out there…

The post Coding Journal – Tinkering With Teradeep’s Neural Network appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

Note: This article assumes that you have basic understanding of HTML, PHP, JavaScript, and WordPress theming. Also, you’ll want to have knowledge of and access to ftp/sftp. If you do not, but you would like assistance, please feel free to send me a contact message!

So, lesson #1 in building anything is to clearly write down what exactly it is that we want to do. Using specific “user stories,” we can determine the specific tasks that will be needed to achieve success.

To begin, let’s describe what we want for the visitor:

User Stories

• The visitor should be able to visit my contact page.
• The visitor should be able to contact me with their name, email address, and a message.
• The visitor should not be able to give poorly formatted information to my contact message. (e.g., bad email address, no message given, etc.)

For most blogs, this is a simple-enough approach. We dont need to worry about dropdown menus with different subjects, checkboxes, etc. The important take-away from this article is the understanding of how WordPress handles AJAX requests.

Now that we know our general user stories, we can begin to write down some tasks that we need to get done:

1. Create a custom page template and content template.
2. Create a contact page as the WordPress Admin.
3. Write the custom form HTML.
4. Write the AJAX form event handler using jQuery’s $.ajax method.
5. Register a WordPress AJAX event “controller” in the functions.php file.
6. Sit back and relax, because you are awesome.

<?php
// Template Name: Contact Page
get_header();
?>
    <div id="primary" class="content-area">
        <main id="main" class="site-main" role="main">
            <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post() ?>
            <?php get_template_part('content', 'contact') ?>
            <?php endwhile ?>
        </main>
    </div>
<?php get_footer() ?>

<article id="post-<?php the_ID() ?>" <?php post_class() ?>
    <header class="entry-header">
        <?php the_title('<h1 class="entry-title">', '</h1>') ?>
    </header>
    <div class="entry-content">
    <!-- THIS IS WHERE THE FORM HTML WILL GO -->
    </div>
    <!-- THIS IS WHERE WE WILL PLACE THE AJAX -->
</article>

<form id="contact-form">
    <input type="hidden" name="action" value="contact_send" />
    <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Your name..." />
    <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="Your email..." />
    <textarea name="message" placeholder="Your message..."></textarea>
    <input type="submit" value="Send Message" />
</form>

<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function ($) {
    var is_sending = false,
    failure_message = 'Whoops, looks like there was a problem. Please try again later.';

    $('#contact-form').submit(function (e) {
        if (is_sending || !validateInputs()) {
        return false; // Don't let someone submit the form while it is in-progress...
    }
    e.preventDefault(); // Prevent the default form submit
    var $this = $(this); // Cache this
    $.ajax({
        url: '<?php echo admin_url("admin-ajax.php") ?>', // Let WordPress figure this url out...
        type: 'post',
        dataType: 'JSON', // Set this so we don't need to decode the response...
        data: $this.serialize(), // One-liner form data prep...
        beforeSend: function () {
            is_sending = true;
            // You could do an animation here...
        },
        error: handleFormError,
        success: function (data) {
            if (data.status === 'success') {
                // Here, you could trigger a success message
            } else {
                handleFormError(); // If we don't get the expected response, it's an error...
            }
        }
        });
    });

    function handleFormError () {
        is_sending = false; // Reset the is_sending var so they can try again...
        alert(failure_message);
    }

    function validateInputs () {
        var $name = $('#contact-form > input[name="name"]').val(),
        $email = $('#contact-form > input[name="email"]').val(),
        $message = $('#contact-form > textarea').val();
        if (!$name || !$email || !$message) {
            alert('Before sending, please make sure to provide your name, email, and message.');
            return false;
        }
        return true;
    }
});
</script>

function sendContactFormToSiteAdmin () {
    try {
        if (empty($_POST['name']) || empty($_POST['email']) || empty($_POST['message'])) {
            throw new Exception('Bad form parameters. Check the markup to make sure you are naming the inputs correctly.');
        }
        if (!is_email($_POST['email'])) {
            throw new Exception('Email address not formatted correctly.');
        }

        $subject = 'Contact Form: '.$reason.' - '.$_POST['name'];
        $headers = 'From: My Blog Contact Form <contact@myblog.com>';
        $send_to = "my@contactemail.com";
        $subject = "MyBlog Contact Form ($reason): ".$_POST['name'];
        $message = "Message from ".$_POST['name'].": \n\n ". $_POST['message'] . " \n\n Reply to: " . $_POST['email'];

        if (wp_mail($send_to, $subject, $message, $headers)) {
            echo json_encode(array('status' => 'success', 'message' => 'Contact message sent.'));
            exit;
        } else {
            throw new Exception('Failed to send email. Check AJAX handler.');
        }
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        echo json_encode(array('status' => 'error', 'message' => $e->getMessage()));
        exit;
    }
}
add_action("wp_ajax_contact_send", "sendContactFormToSiteAdmin");
add_action("wp_ajax_nopriv_contact_send", "sendContactFormToSiteAdmin");

<article id="post-<?php the_ID() ?>" <?php post_class() ?>

    <header class="entry-header">
        <?php the_title('<h1 class="entry-title">', '</h1>') ?>
    </header>

    <div class="entry-content">
        <form id="contact-form">
            <input type="hidden" name="action" value="contact_send" />
            <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Your name..." />
            <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="Your email..." />
            <textarea name="message" placeholder="Your message..."></textarea>
            <input type="submit" value="Send Message" />
        </form>
    </div>

    <script type="text/javascript">
        jQuery(document).ready(function ($) {
            var is_sending = false,
            failure_message = 'Whoops, looks like there was a problem. Please try again later.';

            $('#contact-form').submit(function (e) {
                if (is_sending || !validateInputs()) {
                    return false; // Don't let someone submit the form while it is in-progress...
                }
                e.preventDefault(); // Prevent the default form submit
                $this = $(this); // Cache this
                $.ajax({
                    url: '<?php echo admin_url("admin-ajax.php") ?>', // Let WordPress figure this url out...
                    type: 'post',
                    dataType: 'JSON', // Set this so we don't need to decode the response...
                    data: $this.serialize(), // One-liner form data prep...
                    beforeSend: function () {
                        is_sending = true;
                        // You could do an animation here...
                    },
                    error: handleFormError,
                    success: function (data) {
                        if (data.status === 'success') {
                            // Here, you could trigger a success message
                        } else {
                            handleFormError(); // If we don't get the expected response, it's an error...
                        }
                    }
                });
            });

            function handleFormError () {
                is_sending = false; // Reset the is_sending var so they can try again...
                alert(failure_message);
            }

            function validateInputs () {
                var $name = $('#contact-form > input[name="name"]').val(),
                $email = $('#contact-form > input[name="email"]').val(),
                $message = $('#contact-form > textarea').val();
                if (!$name || !$email || !$message) {
                    alert('Before sending, please make sure to provide your name, email, and message.');
                    return false;
                }
                return true;
            }
        });
    </script>

</article>

The post How to Create a WordPress AJAX Contact Form appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

This high-tech “money” feels only natural in this New World Order… This shared space in which technology has been grafted to its very backbone. Paper money is our musical cassette tape and credit cards our CDs. The latest, greatest way to trade is through cryptocurrency. It is our monetary MP3.

And much like the early days of the MP3, the methods of trade were largely peer-to-peer, in a sense. This kept the vast majority of potential investors and consumers away. Nowadays trading options are more open due to bitcoin-code.

Thankfully, today there are companies like Coinbase.

Coinbase acts as your wallet, your exchange, and your secure vault for bitcoin.

The good:

• Secure, easy to use interface.
• Full use of account both on web and mobile.
• Coinbase funded by some of the best investors in tech.
• Excellent compliance with US regulatory agencies.

The bad:

• Unless you provide a credit card, your bitcoin can take up to five days to deposit.
• Limits on the amount you can buy/sell daily until trust is built on your account.

Bottom line, the good outweighs the bad. If you plan on buying/selling/holding bitcoin, I highly recommend Coinbase.

The post Coinbase Review appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

Atomic Rockets

It’s packed with interesting topics such as “Astromilitary”, “Planetary Attack”, “Man Amplifiers and Robots”, and “Warship Design.” Each are delved into and given their due respect, often using references from sci-fi novels and other forms of sci-fi media.

Enjoy!

The post Atomic Rockets appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

I recently received a cool plaque from Izea for my participation as a speaker at IzeaFest! It spurred me to write a post on my first time representing UBD on stage. Enjoy!

I’ve heard that some people would rather die than endure a public speaking engagement. I can identify with that…

Early in 2008, UBD was asked to attend a new conference by the name of IzeaFest. We of course accepted and made plans to exhibit and be a part of the Extreme Blog Makeover panel. I ended up taking the challenge of speaking on behalf of the company, which led to pretty extreme stress, anxiety, and in the end an overwhelmingly satisfying feeling of accomplishment since companies look for different type of workers for their positions so offering yourself the right way could be essential for this, is important to prepare the right resume, and there are resources online which could help with this. Kind of an emotional roller coaster you could say.

The goal of this post is to give you insight into what it’s like to take on a public speaking engagement for the first time, and how not to lose your mind in the process.

Initial Reaction and Run-Up Time

When I accepted, I felt a tinge of fear and anxiety. Although I had several months to prepare, I still felt “under the gun.” All kinds of fun stuff ran through my head in regards to how I could miserably fail and tarnish the UBD brand while destroying my own in the process.

Alternatively, I could see the bright light at the end of the tunnel. I had confidence in myself as an expert, and knew that with preparation I could handle the pressure and come out on top.

Here are a few things to consider doing and remembering during the run-up to your engagement:

– Don’t panic.
– You’re the expert.
– Brainstorm, and write down broad ideas that you’d like to delve deeply into.
– People are coming to see YOU.

Preparation

This was rather interesting for me because I had neither spoken publicly before and the nitty-gritty details of the panel had remained a bit of a mystery until the day of the event.

What I did know is that I had about 2 weeks to work on a design for Boating in Beautiful British Columbia. Designing was the easy part, getting the slides and my content up to speed was my hurdle.

I tried to get into the mind of who I thought the audience at the conference would be. Most people that would be interested in what I had to say would be relatively new to blogging, or wouldn’t have a ton of experience on the subject. This was great, because some of the “blog design 101” is the most crucial and useful information to know. No worries, now! Just need to practice…

How much you prepare for your actual speech is up to you. Rehearse the content and slide transitions until you feel comfortable and won’t be surprised by the content that is up on the screen.

Here are a few things to consider when developing your presentation content:

– Provide advice and content that is useful to your audience (something they could walk out of the room and get going on right away).
– Be confident in your material.
– Make sure the content on your slides is easy to see, and easy to understand. Use macro ideas to help you delve deeper into the concept.

D-Day and Aftermath

I had neither spoken publicly before and the nitty-gritty details of the panel had remained a bit of a mystery until the day of the event. All I knew was that I had to show up a bit before 3PM!

It was at this time that I felt the pinnacle of fear. It wasn’t so bad early in the day, but as the time drew nearer I realized that D-Day had approached and I was about to go into verbal battle with the masses… Maybe it wasn’t that serious, but I was as nervous as I’d ever been.

After all of this run-up and anticipation, it actually went pretty smoothly. I didn’t really choke up at all or get off-point.

My main criticism of myself has to be the abundant “uh” and “um” and “you know” fillers. That being said, for my first PS event it wasn’t too shabby!

As extreme as the nervousness and fear, the relief and feeling of accomplishment afterwards was overwhelming. I felt a huge burden lift from my shoulders, and was ready to go out and have a beer immediately afterwards!

In Conclusion

Getting out there to represent yourself and/or your company can help cement your brand and gain thought leadership in the community you serve.

Hopefully you can take some of my advice and apply it to your own public speaking endevour!

The post Public Speaking – How to Not Freak Out appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

So, as the title inquires, how fast is your internet connection?

Bandwidth is everything.

If I can’t connect and move files, thoughts, money, etc. around quickly I begin to lose my marbles. Have you ever lost a cell phone and gone without it for a day or two? I have that similar feeling when my internet goes down for 30 seconds…

I strongly recommend testing your internet bandwidth for a few reasons:

• You’ll get to see if you’re getting what you’re paying for.
• If your speed is slow, you can consider upgrading to a better SD-WAN service from your provider.
• If your speed is fast, you can brag to all of your friends and colleagues.
• You can rank your connection against the rest of the world’s population.

Albeit those aren’t the best of reasons to check your speed, if you’re a nerd like me, you’ll be testing your bandwidth daily.

The Test

There are several test providers (speakeasy.net, cnet, speedtest.net, etc.) and they all do a relatively good job of metering your speed. I personally enjoy speedtest.net because of the cool flash interface. Bells and whistles are always a big factor for me when choosing products and services.

I’ll briefly explain speedtest.net to you, being as that is my recommended test provider.

• Simply go to their page, and the flash program will load.
• Next, choose the pyramid that is highlighted in yellow. This is your recommended test server.
• Sit back and monitor your bandwidth!
• Gloat to your friends and family about how fast your connection is. Alternatively, wallow in shame at how inferior your interweb connection is.

If you need fast internet for you business, visit the EATEL Business website or other providers and see your options.

That’s it, really. Now go out there and analyze that data, you nerd. ^_^

The post How Fast is Your Internet Connection? appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

The whole UBD team went, and it was a great opportunity to meet a lot of folks in the blogging world and expose the UBD brand. We networked with a slew of elite bloggers, business owners and managers, and new clients. On top of that, we were able to listen to some great speakers and learn cutting edge techniques for success. Blog World was a total win for UBD.

This year, we’ll be attending another convention in addition to Blog World…

From what it looks like, these guys know how to have a good time!

Headed by Ted Murphy, Izea is a social media powerhouse. They are well known within the industry and offer great products and services to bloggers. Check out a full list of their blogging services.

This conference is going to be all about making bloggers more successful. UBD seems like a natural fit to attend because our goal has always been to help serious bloggers take their game to the next level.

I’ll be there, speaking on the blog design makeover panel. My goal is to help attendees avoid the banality of mainstream blog design! Overshadowing my wimpy online presence, speakers by the likes of John Chow, Shoemoney, Neil Patel, Merlin Mann, and many other ridiculously qualified individuals.

All in all, this should be an awesome conference. Oh ya… I forgot to mention…

The day after the conference, everyone will be heading to Universal Studios Orlando! Like I said, Ted Murphy and clan know how to have fun. Hope you see you all there!!

The post Headed to IZEA Fest! appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

If you work in photoshop at all, you’re more than likely familiar with “layers.” Designs can sometimes consist of 100+ layers, all of which contain different elements.

More often than not, other people’s .psd files that I work on haven’t been organized in the slightest. This often leads me to a sharp pain in my forehead and several profane verbs and nouns.

“But wait!”, you say. “You can control+click on anything and the layer will auto-select.” My response…

Here’s a side-by-side of two .psd’s upon opening photoshop:

As you can see, the file on the left has been organized into family groups and each layer has been named. By keeping the groups detailed as pictured it makes changing elements much less tedious for yourself and those who may be using the file in the future. It’s just good manners to organize.

On the right you see a list of non-grouped, unnamed layers . If you can imagine this list of layers extending to ten times this length… each and every one as ambiguous as the next… it becomes incredible tedious and almost like a puzzle game to make the file workable.

In summation:

• Group families of layers.
• Name every layer.
• It makes everyone’s time working with the file much easier.

I know, it’s a tough concept to follow.

Is grouping important to you? I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts.

The post Organizing .PSD’s appeared first on Matt Blancarte.

Finally, a few months ago I finally sat down and began working on my personal blog design which was in need of desperate help. There’s something wrong when you’re a blog designer who uses a free theme for your personal blog… Anyways, I spent an entire weekend working on this design, and it turned out very well. Most of the designs I produce are spec’ed out by our clients, so having free-reign was great.

99% of blogs have white or light backgrounds and dark text (for obvious reasons) but I decided against that. I really enjoy the look and feel of dark backgrounds, so I readily employed the look on this design. Initially, it was just the solid grey of the mid-section, but Nate Whitehill came up with the idea of having a concrete texture to give it a bit of an “urban” feel. Aside from that, colors just kind of flowed and I think I accomplished a good, clean feel for the blog.

Placing pictures at the beginning of posts is a very popular choice, and something I employed on my previous design. For this design, though, I decided to fix the picture element and use custom fields so that it fixes the image into place without me having to edit it within the post. The picture does a good job of visually separating the posts, which is something a lot of blogs have trouble with. Also, I wanted to make each element its own “island. This results in an easy-to-navigate layout with strong visual separation.

Magazine themes are all the rage, nowadays. Landing pages with videos, hordes of posts, ads, etc. are the “normal” for premium design. I wanted to veer away from that for a few reasons:

• I don’t have too many readers yet, so no need for advertising.
• I haven’t written too many posts, so no need for clever content navigation.
• I don’t plan on doing regular podcasts or vlogging.
• I just like the plain layout.

Now, that being said, I do have a few cool things going on here. First of which is the dom-tab element which features my favorite posts, recent comments, and popular posts. Dom-tabs are a great way to consolidate sidebar elements! Sometimes scrolling down for links or content can be a pain in the butt… or maybe I’m just e-lazy.

I’ve also truncated my posts, so you can navigate 3-per-page. Down at the bottom you’ll notice the page navigation tabs. I prefer this style of nav over the traditional “recent posts” element. Can’t say if there is any real benefit, I just like the look. ^_-

The last little bit that I customized was the social bookmarking at the end of posts. Nothing special… but it looks cool. I was getting tired of seeing the Share This or Add This buttons, albeit they do have awesome functionality.

Hopefully you’ll be coming back to check out my views on business, tips and tricks with design, wordpress help, and general ramblings.

Thanks for checking out my new blog design. I’ve left up all of my old posts so read back through for some cool tips and ramblings. Feel free to ask questions in the comments area, I’ll do my best to answer everyone.

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