Archives » Laura Blalock

Laura Blalock Archives

August 2010

Newness: In Site; I’ve finally finished moving all my sites to WordPress 3.0 using the new multiblog feature. This will let me manage all my sites from a single interface and skip installing software updates multiple times. It was a lot of work made possible at all by liangzai’s post giving step-by-step instructions on how to use the [...]
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Expanse: In Layouts; Download expanse.
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Nice and Clean: In Layouts; A minimal blog layout. clean
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Photo Blog: In Layouts; A simple photo blog template emphasizing the daily photo. photo
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Blog Co.: In Layouts; A CSS layout for the popular corporate design with three columns. blogco
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Business Layout: In Layouts; A sample business webpage layout created with CSS and available for download. business.html
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Hello world!: In Site; I’ve moved over to WordPress 3.0 so there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. Please forgive the hiccups.
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June 2010

WordPress 3.0 Roundup: In Technology; The blogosphere has been spending a lot of time lately talking about the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0. It includes many new features like a new default theme, the ability to manage multiple blogs from a single code installation and an easier method of creating custom menus. I’m personally looking forward to the multi-site ability [...]
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April 2010

Oh no, an AD!: In Site; I once said I’d never do it but if you look over in the sidebar you’ll find an ad for Bluehost.com. Worse, an animated ad. The fact is that as a freelancer I need to make money however I can and the payoff affiliate funds I get are nothing to sneeze about. The important part [...]
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March 2010

How to create a 3D stained glass effect in Illustrator: In Personal; I came up with this technique while designing a glass art logo. The results were pretty nice so I thought I’d share. This is written in Adobe Illustrator CS3 but it should be fairly simple to implement in other programs. First, create the basic shape using the pen tool: Next, slice it into chunks using [...]
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February 2010

Kicking it out of the nest: In Themes; After 2 months, the “learning project” that wouldn’t end is off my todo list. I took the H5 blog theme which is coded in HTML5 and designed a minimalist blog theme with it. One of the things I wanted was a sidebar with columns so there are four widget areas in the theme. One in [...]
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Socializing: In Site; Check out the links in the sidebar for my social networks.
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January 2010

My Favorite App: In Technology; Why Evernote is my favorite web/phone/desktop app.
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A new decade: In Site; My New Year’s resolution.
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December 2009

Adobe Design Center – Columns and articles from experts on web design and motion graphics: In Design; Many young web designers view their craft the way I used to view pop culture. It's cool or it's crap. They mistake Style for Design, when the two things are not the same at all. Design communicates on every level. It tells you where you are, cues you to what you can do, and facilitates [...]
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October 2009

Systematizing the Graphic Design Process | Webdesigner Depot: In Design; Unlike other forms of art, graphic design is not just about taking paper and pen and letting the work flow. Graphic designers have to help viewers get the message and help sell a service or product. Creating a design for a client with little or no strategy just doesnâ€™t work. Unlike traditional art, graphic design [...]
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September 2009

Finally finished: In Design; I’ve been working hard on an update to the Midsouth SLA website and it’s finally done. I’d love some feedback.
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August 2009

How to make a widget sidebar in WordPress: In Technology; How to easily adapt a Wordpress theme for widgets.
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July 2009

New Toy in the Box: In Design; Typography has long been a problem in web design. Technology in new browsers brings a practical solution to custom type.
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What is Design?: In Design; My thoughts on the nature of design.
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June 2009

Delicious Library 2.1 First Thoughts: In Technology; My first thoughts on playing with Delicious Library 2.1 and the new iPhone app.
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What is Twitter?: In Technology; I try to explain to casual Internet users what Twitter is and how they can use it for personal and business gain.
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Layouts: In Site; A long, long time ago (in Internet time) and far away (on another domain) I posted some pages I had made with html and css as templates for others to use as I was learning them myself. I’ve added to these occasionally since and today I pared them down to the ones I consider the [...]
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February 2009

What I learned about design from Iron Chef: In Design; Yes I am one of the many geeky Iron Chef fans. I loved the original and I love the American version as well. It only hit me tonight though, the may things I had learned from a mere tv show that ca be applied to my own, non-culinary pursuits. Have a plan They may not [...]
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How to Succeed Marketing to Generation "G": In Business; How to Succeed Marketing to Generation “G” Copyblogger There’s a brand new generation for online marketers to adapt to. This time, however, the generation is not defined by date of birth. This generation is defined by repulsion at the corporate and political greed that has plummeted much of the world into economic doldrums. In other [...]
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November 2008

My favorite iPhone Apps: In Technology; Thanksgiving and I finally have a break from school and time to work on other projects. Evernote is my external brain. There is a desktop app for Mac or PC, an iPhone app and a web app that all sync automatically. There’s even a Thunderbird extension that sends things to your account. Text, audio, or [...]
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February 2008

40 Free and Cheap Stock Photo Sites to Punch Up Your Blog Posts: In Business; It’s a common rule of thumb that using images as part of your blog posts helps draw attention to them and illustrate what you’re saying. Finding and creating these pictures can be difficult if you aren’t a photographer but there are plenty of places on the Internet where people are sharing their own photos for [...]
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Second Life as a design outlet: In Business, Design; A number of graphic designers have successfully converted their expertise into Second Life businesses. Everything made in Second Life relies on texturesâ€¦ pictures made in an image program like Photoshopâ€¦ to not only make it look like what the creator wants it to be but to give it depth and reality. So an orb becomes [...]
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Research on the Web: In Business; The Internet is a decent place to do research these days. The idea that “everything is online” is still not true but it becomes more so every day. The problem for everyone is that much of this information costs a lot of money to access for large institutions much less small organizations. Help is often [...]
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A NewsGator System Review: In Technology; Newsgator has released all of it’s individual products for free. This was quite a surprise as they were/are among the leading desktop applications for reading RSS feeds for both Macs and Windows computers. However, they explained clearly that most of their money is being made from business licenses, so the more individual desktops they can [...]
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January 2008

The New Mac Goodies: In Technology; I was as excited as everyone else to see what Steve Jobs had for us at the 2008 MacWorld Keynote. And I oohed and aahed at the MacBook Air. But on further consideration I’ll be waiting for the new Macbook Pros to drool. It is clearly designed as a second computer for people with a [...]
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August 2007

Looking the Part (Whatever that is): In Business; It is a fact of the human condition that we are judged on our appearance. We rely on our eyes a great deal in life so the first impression when meeting a new person can be critical in how we view them. In casual situations, this doesn’t matter much but in business it can make [...]
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July 2007

Buying local is good for your business too: In Business; Recently I was running errands and noticed a sign for a new local restaurant along the way. Always looking for something to ward off the chain food blahs, I stopped on my way home. It was nice inside, obviously a new family-run place, busy with what looked like a mix of people dropping in like [...]
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Hacking WordPress as an easy updatable link directory: In Design; By now WordPress has been bent, folded and mangled in any number of ways to for custom CMSs. One of the most interesting ways I did it was to both manage a website and create a small Yahoo! like link directory within it. The website was part of a grant project for helping senior citizens [...]
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Working with Bad Organizational Colors: In Design; My first professional website. I was so excited, I had worked so hard to position myself within my department for it. Then I realized, I had to work with our official color: orange. Not a nice warm earth tone, or a bright energizing version either. But what I’m pretty sure is the ugliest web-safe color [...]
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Introduction: In Personal; I’m a librarian who’s leaving academia to enter the world of web design. Yes, I am insane but that doesn’t have any bearing here. In truth, design is where my heart has been since my first web class in grad school. It just took me a few years to realize it. They’ve been productive years [...]
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