Tue 14 Aug 2007
After a bit of fiddling about - okay, a lot of fiddling about and trial and error, I think I’ve got the site looking a bit better. In my opinion anyway!
I’ve always meant to change the header image away from the default Connections image and have finally now done it - although I’m not overly happy with the one I’ve replaced it with! It’s an easy job to replace it though once I’ve found one I’m happier with - the nighttime shot that’s up there just now had to be cropped and stretched a bit to fit, so I’m off on a quest to find a picture I’ve taken that will fit better without the need to stretch it too much.
Apart from that, I’ve added on an extra sidebar as I thought the one I had previously was getting a bit too long and I was getting annoyed at having to scroll down so far just to log-in ;) It was either a case of splitting that one up or stop adding on “useful” little widgets, and I’m not sure I could cope with that!
There were one or two problems with the switch over, but hopefully most of the pages are now back to looking more or less okay.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
I found the new header quite interesting. Not thinking of stretching, I looked at that light streak in the sky and wondered about UFOs or shooting stars or time lapse photography. And then you go and tell me you stretched it!
I thought you were on to a winner there - a blog with a genuine UFO as the header.
My advice would be not to stretch, however. If you have a pic that you really want but it’s not wide enough, try cloning the edge and pasting it to lengthen the pic. It’s fairly painstaking to get it right but the effect can be good and you don’t get that, ummm, stretched look.
I had to do it with Rollo’s site - http://rollothreefingers.blogspot.com/ -
it’s not brilliant as I was being rushed but, with a little smudging to hide the joins, it works well enough.
As you can tell, I don’t believe in stretching.
August 14th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Don’t be too harsh Clive!!
The picture was taken one night earlier in the year, I set the camera up and got in the car before driving it up the road and back down again to get the light trail effect. I had a lend of a nice digital camera and wanted to try out a few things while I had it - I like the things you can do with them, although this picture doesn’t really do the possibilities any justice!
Because the exposure was pretty long, the stars obviously moved a bit in the sky which is why they are streaked a bit.
I did stretch the picture to make it fit nicely into the header - but not hugely!! You can see the original shot in all it’s glory here.
Keep the faith
August 15th, 2007 at 3:51 am
I didn’t mean to be harsh, Craig - if that’s the way it came across, please accept my apologies. When you do a lot of graphics work, you tend to find the methods that suit you best and look down on the rest - I guess that’s happened to me!
The full size pic is cool - now the long exposure is more obvious and no more thoughts of UFOs go flitting through my brain. A pity in a way - you could have had quite a scoop there.
August 15th, 2007 at 11:31 am
I was only joking Clive, don’t worry
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a UFO involved as this blogging malarkey could have been the making of my fortune otherwise!