Well it’s 12.15am local time (midnight) and in  4 hours I’ll be going for the longest bike ride I have been on. From my house, about 35 kilometres to this place known as “The Spit” and back. So a 70 kilometre round trips up and down the coast. For me it isn’t hard to do but for some, they think I’m crazy. I think life is a test. It is sometimes hard to test yourself, and test yourself in a way that you can equally fail or pass. In my case this is fair since I am pretty fit and can ride a bike fairly well.

It bothers me sometimes however, that some people don’t test themselves. For example, I used to play video gameslike any normal guy. Not a lot, but enough to be pretty damn good at some games. That was only 3 years ago and since then I hardly ever pick up a controller or load up a game these days. Why the sudden change you might ask? Well it got boring. Games are just long puzzles and most games are the same puzzle. COD, BF, Crysis and most other first person shooters are the same to me and hence I saw no challenge since learning this skill will lead me to no skill which I can use. I do however think strategy games are good thinking games but then they can get repetative. When I tell people that I don’t play games they ask me, what do you do on a computer? I can’t help but think what can’t I do, games are just great time wasters to me, I’d rather learn skills I can perhaps use later in life and enjoy while I learn.

So I challenged myself. I became a video editor. I got a YouTube Partnership and 3000+ subscribers and was mentioned to Travis Pastrana (from what he said). Well that was pretty cool I guess, what next. Then I became a Web Designer. Built a few sites and now I could have a site up and going within the day if I felt like it. Now I don’t know where to go next. The bike challenges are just to keep me at bay until I find something to try and master next. A big part of me wants it to be university and myself. But I think this would be a pretty hard challenge to take on but I can always try. I think my next challenge might be to master Photoshop. I’ve always wanted to be able to take some crappy photo and make it something awesome.

How do you challenge yourself? Or, why don’t you challenge yourself for some people.

The basic goal of the theme was to make it a light coloured, shades of grey type theme with a minimalistic touch.

Some cool features are as follows:

• Toggle the side bar; For those smaller browsers
• About Section; Located in the footer. Can include a personal photo if you wish with acompanying text
• Separated Trackbacks and Comments
• Stylized Comment sections; Speech bubble type style
• Customizable Banner; Defaults to Text of Blog Heading
• Built in Widgets; Latest Posts, Archives and Categories. Can be turned off too
• Custom Title input; Change the thing at the top of the browser
• Valid (x)html (Strict) and Valid CSS 2.1/3 (More towards CSS3 though)
• And last but not least, a fluid layout.

To do list:

• Comment Pagination
• Dropdown Menus for top Navigation
• Threaded Comments
• Equal-Heights-Thingy for the footer

Most of those things however, aren’t too important anyway. But I’ll try and knock them off slowly. If you think I should do something more, then suggest it but keep in mind this is a lighweight, basic theme.

It will be released very soon. I just have to test out some stuff and clean up the CSS.

I read a few days ago that someone has been using the plugin called “Easy Adsenser” and apparently 1 in 20 ads shown are the developers (to gain revenue). The plugin basically places ads in sidebar(s) via widgets and throughout posts. The problem I saw was he doesn’t explicitly tell people. Making money via Adsense is no easy task (unless you’re a Youtube partner, then it is incredibly easy). Earning $3 per day is good, even making money is a good result. So this user was quite annoyed when he saw his ads weren’t shown (even though you can change it). I personally never click ads simply because none ever appeal to me. I don’t use Ad Blocking scripts either since I don’t find them annoying or even notice them.

If this user had actually gone to the (little) trouble of making a few modifications to their theme they could have setup an awesome new feature. It’s not terribly hard either. Also plugins are good at slowing down WordPress. For example, this plugin called Wordtube loads it’s javascript on every page via the header. Many other plugins do the same sine the developer has no idea where the user will put stuff. With a hack you can only add the javascript on pages you know you will place it on (no one puts a contact form on the home page, do they?).