Well, I have not given anything about the upcoming version of Powervortex except an early logo I threw together in a brief fit of graphic design inspiration. I’ll give a bit more today. Here is the working (and possibly final) color scheme for the main site:

With the tentative design I am working on, there may not be a seasonal series like there was with Haiku that is in use now. More likely, there will be one flavor for the main site, one for the blog, and one for the gallery. With the design, this is doable, even with color variations. I am planning for the main site to have the above dark-green style, the blog to be blue, and the gallery to be (again) red. Otherwise, the new design will be slick, bold, and completely not modest the way the Haiku series is.

Functionality wise, the theme will be more free-form (no more control-freak tables like now…*cough contact form *cough) and there will be a lot more Web 2.0 stuff like AJAX. I am planning to implement K2 for the blog.

Well, thats it for now. I hope to produce a screenshot of the new look next time.

~DC

The gallery has just been upgraded to the recently-released ZenPhoto 1.1.3. This new release of ZenPhoto is much more stable than the previous along with many new features and security upgrades. Fortunately, I got the gallery up and running in no time after the upgrade as there were no major (actually, none at all) changes that needed to be made to the Haiku.Inspired ZP theme. However, much of the configuration were reset during the upgrade so there are still a bit of renaming, retagging, and reordering that I must do. Other than that, the upgrade went very smoothly.

ZenPhoto is a light-weight, easily customizable web gallery script that can be easily bridged with Wordpress and other blog software or can function as an excellent standalone photo album program. For more information and to download, visit ZenPhoto.org.

~DC

I am excited to announce that Powervortex:gallery, which is proudly powered by the gallery application ZenPhoto, has been featured in the ZenPhoto Showcase. The Showcase “is a selection of sites that make exceptional creative use of ZenPhoto either as a pure installation or in combination with others systems like Wordpress.” I am greatly honored that my website has been given such recognition and I would like to thank the ZenPhoto team for inducting my site into their Showcase and for developing such an excellent product.

ZenPhoto is a lightweight, efficient, Web 2.0-grade gallery software that is not only easy to use but also highly flexible to customize. It is a great gallery program for those of you trying to finding something to integrate with your blog that is not bloated like Gallery2. In any event, it is an excellent gallery script that truly “does have everything you need for your online gallery.”

~DC

Apparently there will be a new administrator control panel design with the next version of the blog software, Wordpress version 2.4. While this looks nice and is a good change from the current style (which I have tried to replace with modifications such as SpotMilk), this new style is still under heavy construction by the WP team. While it does not resemble the concepts of the Shuttle Project that announced to replace the WP-admin style, I still look forward to seeing the completed new style and the new features of Wordpress 2.4. Once again, great job Wordpress team.

~DC

Today, Microsoft released the 2.3 firmware for Zune. This release is a minor release that does not add new features but fixes a battery problem. Many users, including me, have experienced a draining battery even when the player is “turned off” by holding the Play button.

After upgrading, other than the fix for the battery issue, there is also a very apparent increase in performance. The player tends to freeze up much less often and the animations are a lot smoother.

~DC

Coming 2008.

Well, I haven’t really been here for a while. With the amount of commitments I have been in for the past few weeks (and right now) blogging has been put in the back burner.

As an update report, I have revamped some minor organization aspects of the site, including standardizing the top menu (Home, Blog, Gallery) and more polished the themes for the main site, the blog, and gallery. As you can see, I reorganized the sidebar here too adding a tag cloud and a box that tells you how much spam my Askimet has filtered. However, the ZenShow pseudo-widget is still acting arthritic and screwing up the mySQL connections of the rest of the widgets so I’m waiting for the people over at ZenPhoto forums to hammer out this flaw.

Other than that, a much belated Happy Thanksgiving.

~DC

Esta poema es actualmente mi segunda poema en español. Es una oda a la estrella que simboliza la esperanza y la destina en la vida.

Solo he escrito dos poemas en español porque ahora estoy estudiando el español y todavía estoy un gringo.

Estrella del sueño
el resplandor eterno
de esperanza, de amor
de inspiración
de la corazón, siempre
adelante en algún lugar allá
iluminando mi destino.