Month: May 2011

Green Valley Falls Hike

Monday, 30 May 2011, 3:49pm

Green Valley Falls Hike! I was able to visit my family in California a few weeks ago and while I was there my mom organized a hike through her hiking club. We went to the Green Valley Falls which are essentially in the backyard where I grew up. A short drive down the road from my parents house you have these beautiful hills and this fantastic trail.

The trail and valley are owned by the city of Vallejo and they restrict access year round granting occasional authorized and guided hikes. The falls are just outside the city of Fairfield out toward Cordila off of Green Valley Road. Those are the hills that separate Fairfield and Solano County from the Napa Valley.

The trail was only a few miles round trip and there is a slight elevation change. We were lucky to go in the first part of May after a pretty wet spring so the falls were full of water and the vegetation was very lush. We had to watch out for poison oak and there were lots of birds, butterflies and other animals during our hike.

I have included a few pictures that I took while we were hiking. They were taken with my Nikon D300 and the first three were five or seven exposure bracketed and then merged to HDR. The last image is of my sister, her boyfriend and my mom. Enjoy.

Website Redesign

Monday, 30 May 2011, 12:54am

Website Redesign! Earlier this weekend while working on various projects I had the thought that my website was looking a little out of date and never really had the right design for my tastes. After spending a few minutes looking through WordPress.org’s extensive theme collection, I came across one that was designed by a developer in Sweden. The theme is called “The Common Blog” and had most of the elements I was looking for my site and figured I could add any element(s) that were missing.

After downloading the files and exploring the theme on my test server I was able to make some changes to the theme to meet my needs. Some of the core strengths that attracted me to this theme were the open spaces and larger fonts. It seems cleaner and easier to read. My previous theme also had a large variety of different colors that I found distracting to my photographs. This redesign has me going in the right direction but there are still lots of little details that I haven’t tested or investigated.

This a screen shot of my website that I captured a few months ago:

It is a little sad to see that old design going away. Luckily I still have all the files and if I ever want to revive it, the process would take a few minutes because I have all the source information.

Feel free to let me know what you think of the redesign and if there is anything that seems broken. I like to think of websites as complex machines that have many bells, levers and controls and changing any one can make or break the system. Enjoy!

Sunday Smoothies

Sunday, 29 May 2011, 11:49am

Sunday Smoothies! After a great workout at the gym and all the work put into the garden, Charlie and I decided to make a tasty smoothie with some strawberries, oranges, bananas, and various juices. Yummy!

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U2 360 Concert

Friday, 27 May 2011, 9:59pm

U2 360 Concert! After being delayed one year we were able to experience the U2 Concert at the Rice Eccles Stadium up at the University of Utah. I actually saw the show when it was broadcast live from Los Angeles at the Rose Bowl in 2009 but it was definitely worth seeing in person. The concert was amazing and the stage, video and music were fantastic. I’ve included some snapshots (they don’t qualify to be photographs) from the concert. Enjoy!

Raisin Chocolate Walnut Oatmeal Cookies

Sunday, 1 May 2011, 9:09pm

Raisin Chocolate Walnut Oatmeal Cookies! We thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful weather today and we were able to get some things done and enjoy the clear sunny skies. We adapted the recipe from the Food Network via Ina (Barefoot Contessa): http://goo.gl/64X3w. We decided to make some cookies and I took a few pictures. Right as the cookies were coming out of the oven the news networks turned to some special announcement from the White House. Enjoy!