This is my last week working with TAC at Cisco Brussels – on Friday I return home for a week and a half of study for CCIE along with a few days house hunting in Reading with my soon-to-be roommate. It’s been a really awesome time working with the security team and I’m glad I got the time to learn about a totally different area of Cisco – especially one that really interests me.

Additionally some of the work that I have been doing over the last will be featured in a Cisco Live! presentation – so really looking forward to seeing how that pans out in the future.

So, with the launch of the PhotoBlog last week I am starting to find myself getting into a nice routine of uploading images and also looking out for interesting new shots. Todays post is a collage of photos of my new Canon IXUS 220HS while I now carry everywhere. Te pictures were taken with my DSLR which is still my camera of choice for its flexibility and range of features but I have been extremely impressed with the features on the 220HS and combined with its slim size it makes it a great pocket companion. Additionally its image quality is great and it has a fantastic macro mode which makes for some really interesting images and angles. Another little bonus is the 5x Optical Zoom in place of the normal 3x on pocket cams. Also the inclusion of a 24mm lens makes for some nice wide angle shots – a really great camerea for blogging and photography a like.

I also received another new toy last week – but more on that to come later.

On the flipside, when it comes to blogging the key focus is the writing, and smooth minimalist designs that really bring the focus back to the text can be very attractive. So when I chose my current theme, I thought I was getting a mixture of both. An interesting and eye catching design but with a clean and straightforward layout for the posts. But it took me a while to settle on a theme, and even now I’m not particular sure I like it. So I thought I would give you a look into the themes I narrowed it down to.

The Minimalist

Surprisingly, a large proportion of my choices were in this area. I think its hard because at times I want my site to be a full featured site, with daily updates full of interesting news and articles collected from all over the web. Conversely, I have no time to do any of that and my site reverts to a standard blog, and the minimalist themes suit that style of writing better.

Elegant Grunge

Besides having a cool name, this theme offered a nice blend of dark and light. I love charcoal greys and really thought the contract of the header and body was attractive. What I didn’t like was the way it tended to mangle my tweets on the right hand side, and the lack of justification in the sidebar made it feel untidy and distracting.

Simple Dark

Another elegant theme, the dark gradient really appealed to me, as did the better separation of the twitter posts, making it much easier on the eyes. I only steered clear of this one as I often use dark themes and wanted to go for something with lighter colours.

Margot

Another neat theme with a good contrast between light and dark. Once again however, the lack of support for my Twitter feed caused me to toss this one aside. The design is very smooth however, and very much appeals to me if I were just reading/writing posts.

The Pretty

These few themes were ones that I found visually attractive. I actually have a lot more, but I am trying to move away from this sort of style and into something a bit cleaner and more professional.

Motion

Motion is a beautiful theme to look at, incorporating transparent bars and a futuristic background along with a clearly separated sidebar area. However, it’s almost a little too distracting and really takes away from the posts themselves. In this case, eye candy isn’t everything.

Game Site

Game site is a theme designed for news and articles. It was originally made for games but can be used along with wordpress categories to create a fully integrated platform, with featured posts, thumbed posts, javascript and ajax functionality. However, in order to do all that considerable time must be spent in configuration along with graphics design and implementation. Far too much work for me…

The Blend

These are the themes that I felt had a nice mix of simplistic layouts but pleasing to look at as well.

White Gold

This theme uses a 3 column layout – something I normally don’t like, but its blend of colours and slight 3D looks from the shadows makes it feel very natural. When it comes to reading, the layout is simple and concise although it doesn’t seem to like line breaks in text. For someone like me who loves paragraphs as a way to break up subjects or topics, it was a major downside to an otherwise great theme.

Desk Scape

Perhaps by the time you are reading this the above theme is how my site looks. This is because Desk Scape is the one other theme that I would really consider sticking with.  It’s layout is clean and simple with great use of layers. The one problem that turned me away from this theme is the post summarising which occurs beneath the most recent post. As I would be moving towards a blog, this would be one feature that I think would decrease readability and flow.

zeePersonal & zeeSynergie

Both these themes have a nice clean feel to them and each provides an easy to read post. One thing that I really don’t like about them however is their use of the categories as a sidebar, and difficulty in making them a top bar. However as simple but attractive layouts go, these two are pretty good.

So there you have it. My current theme was the best out of this bunch although there are still plenty out there if I ever feel the need to change. What do you think? Drop me a comment (top right) and let me know!

Given that, I have finally settled on a new theme. It took me a while to choose but I’m pretty happy with the results. More on that tomorrow though.

Additionally, you might notice that we no longer have a logo. This is a temporary situation while I interface with my graphical consultants and decide where to go next with it. Let me know if you have any thoughts! The comments link is on the top right!

The same holds true for my Hauku challenge, which hasn’t really gone anywhere in the last week. I’d like to blame it on all the paperwork and emails I have had to do in regards to moving to Brussels but it really was due more to my forgetfullness and my lack of self motivation. I always find it odd how i am super motivated at work and can get a huge amount done in a small amount of time when I need to, but when it comes to my personal projects, I’d rather sit and play games, or even (unfortunately) sleep on for an extra hour in the morning.

I’m really hoping this move will bring a little more regularity into my life. Sticking to a full time work schedule should hopefully whip my body back into shape and help keep me motivated on some small projects. And given the amount of work that I am going to have to do, I really have to limit my personal projects. I think the lack of stuff that comes as a result of this move is the kicker because I will have less to worry about, fix or otherwise distract myself with..

Anyway this post and myself are starting to lose focus. My brain is becoming cloudy and I am beginning to ramble so I will end here. Keep and eye out for a Haiku section however, as I hope this will help me focus more on the website (daily Haiku updates) and also on my writing.

Y’know, sometimes I really wish I had some sort of system of updating everything at once…not necessarily with the same stuff but just something that appears and makes me update stuff…

But alas, there isn’t.

So anyway, my exams are on their way in and as per usual the faculty has decided to lay on the coursework. So before the exams start I have 3 pieces of coursework to hand in. Now for once I happened to be on top of my work and I have one of the pieces pretty much done however with all this coursework going on how am I meant to get the time to revise?!

It’s so stupid.

Anyway, on the webcomic front, its defiantely up and coming so watch this space, I’m sure it will be here soon.

Also, I have been playing a fair bit of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 recently and there really is such a good change from the first one. The online play especially – the system is easy to use and understand. Even though there is only 2-3 game modes, they don’t really get old. And the unlock system is so much less complciated – I actually know how to unlock things, how I get points and how to rank up which i didn’t really understand in the first game.

And blowing the shit clean out of everything never gets old.

The game feels snappier to play too – I often felt the oldone really didnt respond well, you pulled a trigger and a second later (or so it felt) the gun fired – and that was both on and offline but so far I have been impressed with the game engine.

And the grahpics – I have this game for PC and 360 and the graphics are fantastic on both. Well the PC is much better than the 360 when turned up full with AA and texture filtering but the 360 version is also fantastic considering the hardware it’s running on.

So anyway thats all from me for now!