Posted on

Quick redesign to offend human eye less ….

see src in post

Usually I have time to find a WordPress theme that I KIND OF like, but then delve into hours of rewriting, deleting and adding my own PHP & CSS so a) the site doesn’t look like every other damn site on the Web and b) it is ideally remotely aesthetically pleasing, being that I claim to be some form of artist. This time it was not too hard to futz with the p-tags, the H1s, their colors borders, shading, typography, size, weight, etc you get the idea. I made a few other updates, 1) published another podcast literally to make sure I still new how to do it.
2) Gave the site a nice easy dark background.
3) removed hideous green and red text background colors I was using.
4) Made the main site image a screenshot of recursively generated forest scene, it draws something different and remarkably realistic each time it runs — and will draw more for every mouse-click. I wrote it in the Processing language in conjunction with another lover of random numbers and trees. I’ll post the code if I can find it.
5) Masthead appears as old-timey newspaper gothic image instead of cold, sterile title and site description. and
6) I posted this, so shut up.

Posted on

Publisher, site & Cast placed on 30-day hold by Administration ….

Yes, Mr. Welke is a straight up J-cat 5150 18-wheeler on 17 flat tires TRUCK, coming to halt via e-brake, shifting into low, swervin [Durbin!] and hopefully coming in for clean landing amidst a runaway truck mound. Jerry’s easy Tenor will lighten the moment before the CHP places mne in 4-point restraints in a [hopefully] tastefully-buttoned up hospital gown. Methinks this JG classic was playing when they found the rig.I likie the ones with the blue dots.
TapCast, now finally with fresh builds of Audacity, WP, FFmpeg Encoder & libmp3LAME.dll just ejected 2 new casts to let you know the ICU found its blood type ….O-….. the tracheotomy was successful and it will slowly revive, as did this writer in 2012. You can actually place this mess via iTunes, but for you ‘ultimate lazys’ out there I have an important question; ‘do you like Huey Lewis & The News?’
Associates & ***Performers/Staff at Impulse!*** get at me via email chris.e.welke@gmail …. the undisclosed location where Q-list celebs (me) and fmr. A-listers (Miley) wear robes, play footsy, drink coffee, talk at each other re: ‘where it all went wrong’ wont be of much help. its secure/discreet/private & as a journalist i’d rather you not violate anyone’s privacy besides moi. My drop-dead-gorgeous Suicide Gurl/gf/friends/w/benefits ‘Nic’ 1st stayed there about 11 yrs ago and the clientele was shocking. Did you watch the Academy Awards? Ok folks..there they are, the bvig ass black dudes, theyve got as straight jacket…mmm..mmmmmph!!!!
eeeee yuuuuuuu exxxxxt unnnnf!!!!!! Eyerra ssss nnnn ugleeeee ffft piyyyyg!!!! uuuuussshhhhh idddddd n-eye-nnnnnn eeeeelevennnnn!!!! Rrrrrumpo is uBer eeeeyond ay……ay…..mmmmm! AY….ummmphf _AYYYY!!!!! [ok cmon psycho it’s quiet time, we don’t waste Mr. Drew’s time do we?] ‘then why did he hire two n-OOOOOOFFFF!!!!’
If you clicky I money….can you do this fucking once for me?


Before they pull it! A Mis Abuelos with the Belgian dude!

Concierto! Other Spanish stuff. Bueno!
I saw this finals performance live with Stinky (great Euph player) we’d just about had enough BD/SCV/Cavs/PR/GF/Bones by that night, burt we didnt miss out on a chance to hear this one just 1 mo gin….s#!t A Drum Corps Fans Dream, part Dos yo!,

Posted on

Testing WP 4.7.4

a recursive forest snap 1

When you sneak away to your favorite site, do you have any idea what happens when, say, you googled “Cal Poly” and my site cane up? Here’s a primer; and it helps us test that the update can at least, …. well…. update. Most of the info contained herein will only be useful if you find yourself on Jeopardy, or @Who wants to (whatever)”….maybe even not then, but you will learn, possibly be entertained and hey, we still have unsolved murders in SLO. Anyway before I get all deep and sad like. Data regarding your sites, the tools, the useless info, th tasteless jokes, the usual. You ordered it!

A spreadsheet I hope is readable
JavaScript
What is it? An object-oriented scripting language. Event-driven, loosely based on Java.
It is functional and imperative to the Interwebz.
Who created it?
Brendan Eich designed it for Netscape in 1995. Volunteers at mozilla.org, other sites and individuals have since expanded the language
What languages was it inspired by?
Java (duh), C, Perl,Lua, Scheme, Python, AWK too many to list.
What languages credit it for inspiration?
ActionScript (Adobe), JScript (Sun nee Oracle), CoffeeScript, Perl 6, .NET, Objective-J (that’s not a typo) QML, again too many to list.
Why is it so popular?
Netscape marketing cleverly piggy backed on the name of the right
Web language (Java, a fully functional language that runs servers, cars, street lights, toasters, you name it. >3 billion pieces of crap made in China run Java) *also*
It allowed for Dynamic Hypertext Markup….see how your FB feed and likes pop up likes and posts w/o
refreshing the page? Yeah, they invented that 20 years ago in Mountain View.
Also, without getting too technical, it runs on YOUR device, making it faster.
What about MariaDB? I know about MySQL and Google’s Big Data, but….(?)
From en.wikipedia.org “MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL relational database management system intended to remain free under the GNU GPL. Development is led by some of the original developers of MySQL, who forked it due to concerns over its acquisition by Oracle.Contributors are required to share their copyright with the MariaDB Foundation.” I paraphrased out some of the detritus. Tech Geeks it’s on GitHub.
What the heck is Hack? Keeping it simple, a scripting language ready-made-to-order for PHP 5 and Facebook…. also you cannot define local variables (if that makes no sense to you it’s cool just move on….)
Go? It’s from the wizard programmers at Google. A language and two compilers. They’re trying to keep all the good things about c/c++/Java and improve the rest. It makes BitCoin transactions faster, nuff said?
Erlang? A language you’ll likely never deal with unless you work at a server farm. Users clutter up intranets and networks, Erlang is a good janitor. Programmers can hot swap data; changing stuff without crashing Outlook. It’s made for real time systems (like when NASA tries to safely land a Mars rover, or when a million people try to watch the Game of Thrones preview at once). You don’t need to how…. that’s pretty much graduate level compsci and anything past the fundamentals are way past the scope of this clip.
Voldemort(????) a distributed data store that holds key values (IDs) from the good folks at LinkedIn for high-scalability. Yeah…. they named it after a Harry Potter character.
That’s all for now dudes and dude-ettes. *Phew* I did this whole post on an iPhone.

Posted on

Due Diligence for readers – new ad categories allowed per Google optimization suggestions ….

    As you may know, we here at the Pick deny advertisers from Google’s ad-universe for a variety of reasons–

  • Ads for any product or service that is a scam or appears “scammy” (certain online universities, too-good-to-be-true and the like …)
  • Ads containing visually unappetizing imagery or text (pictures of foot fungus, or weight-loss “comparisons” or “shaming” pix = image of a grossly obese & scantily clad person, yech!)
  • Organizations that interfere with the publisher’s morals or ethics (stalker apps, Penn State ….)
  • Any product that disguises itself as a clickable portion of MY PAGE (despite my compliance and strict adherence to adequate labeling/positioning/sectioning away from legit content…)

The featured image (above) shows a snippet of data you won’t be able to read unless you are a Google client, employee or Ad-partner (like us!). In it, I’ve continued to deny online gambling ads. Gambling is by far the worst and most damaging — to self and those close — of all the addictions. Worse even, than cigarettes or alcohol. Today, I’ve allowed “downloadables” which I presume is “freemium” content, like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush. “South Park” did an episode on this, entitled “freemium” [if memory serves] if that word sounds like guttural French to you, well, it kinda is, but if it MEANS no more that something guttural in a dead language, I recommend Trey Parker & Matt Stone’s take on it to explain. I see no ethical issue [downloads are usually free, the extra content, levels, truncated wait-time is available for purchase if you are wealthy, extremely impatient or extremely gullible ….] As election 2016 approaches, being a media outlet, I’ve opted IN to “political ads” if you’ve seen my awful caricatures, listened to Bill’s rants on TapCast or read my #RNC2016 coverage & editorial, you’ll know that this writer is not a fan of Trump…but this is ‘muhricuh…dammit! I’ll defend his right to plaster “Make America Great AGAIN” all over ever single ad unit on this site if he wants…that’s free speech 101.
If you ever see an ad that offends you, is in poor tastes, looks “scammy,” or represents an organization, institution you despise,take the time to leave a comment. If we agree I’ll ban the shit out of it, promise!
to do list for this site

  • update to wp 4.6 (must backup custom php 1st)
  • posts – [with original artwork!] re- election, the economy, career choicers, investment projections, fresh ideas and the two new languages we are hip-dep in Swift and R
  • design – ongoing [wip] updates
  • learn to create a child theme + tutorial
  • more regular and higher quality podcasts, possibly including original music [stay tuned!]

Orange-u-glad-u frequent a site where the publisher goes out of his way, not only to keep content fresh, original, timely, interesting and worth that 15mins/day where you have nuthin better to do, but keeps the site secure, updated, continually upgrades design, appends how-to’s regardin’ CMS and front-end-webdev where applicable…but is also are excruciatingly anal about 3rd party content. Hopefully the political ads and “downloadables” are not too ugly — all ads are subject to ban, same with blacklisting of the organization/companies they bleed from at any time for any reason. here we go kids, below is a footer style ad that ostensibly will not offend your (or MY) delicate sensibilities.




*****update – the 1st published version of this post contained a poorly-drawn picture of a human foot with big nasty looking toes, therefore the advertiser was susequently banned, sorry if you had to see that. The biz seemed legit, but no ugliness on my aesthetically-pleasing site consarnit!!!!

HAPPY LABOUR DAY – PS CHRIS W. IS FOR HIRE! GET AT him USING THE COMMENTS, VIA SM OR text the BUSINESS LINE IF YOU ARE LUCKY & POSESS IT

Posted on

(not so) Pretty picture test ….

Now I have the capability to interface with a computer using a “pen.” I’ve always liked drawings/drawing …. the mouse can never express accurately what I’d like to draw and display on the Web. post-lengthy comparison research (+now field test) we at self-sim-studios settled on the iPad Pro. We signed up for the Adobe Creative Cloud trial and made a few scribbles. One major problem is that the device itself doesn’t “talk” to my site nearly as fast as my (aging – 2014 – HP 15 laptop) but…ok…we make the pretty pictures on the pad and mess with the WP front-end via Windows 10*
To me it makes a whole lot more object-oriented sense to draw on the screen directly. I like it so far…ill try to present a few samples, all drawn in a hurry..still in the “see if it works to adequate spec” portion. ONCE it works? The crazy, cool, hip, strange and most of all all all all ALL original artwork of Chris Welke and Bill Feynman will be available via the SoCal Pic…where we ostensibly report news; but mostly tinker with the site and share all that is cool (art, music, tech, code, ideas…) w/ you, dear reader. Ok so here’s a few sketches…

Three boxes, squiggles and different colors
Three boxes, squiggles and different colors
tapper's 1st rendition of cerebus for the web
Cerebus sleeping off a good one in the Lower City….Iest, Estarcion (tavern unknown)
$1 to Ursula Vernon, whom partially inspired this foray into thsi type of image design/presentation; thx!
$1 to Ursula Vernon, whom partially inspired this foray into thsi type of image design/presentation; thx!
another logo test
another logo test
magnets...lol
$1 to Vince Gilligan and Oliver Age 24…w/ apologies.

***update***after more self training, here are some hopefully better ones….

Portrait #1 Groucho w/ cigar
Portrait #1 Groucho w/ cigar
Cirinist soldier at work in the lower city.....
Cirinist soldier at work in the lower city…..

image

Portrait #2 F. Scott Fitzgerald
Portrait #2 F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Portrait #3 Abe Lincoln
Portrait #3 Abe Lincoln

You should be able to see a marked increase in quality as I learn the UI and tools to …errrrrrmmm better express myself.
*Yes I finally gave in and allowed it to force me to upgrade – no disasters thus far yet. We also use iOS 9.3.1 (also recent). WP just upgraded too. (version “Lester Coleman” methinks?) oh ! and plz use chris.e.welke@gmail.com to get ahold of the publisher of this fine website….the webmail donated by my gracious sponsors is no longer fully-supported, so hit us on gmail if you need to…sorry it’s not quite as secure and nothing we can do about that. (Don’t use gmail to send anything you wouldn’t stand up on yout desk and say at full volume; just to be on the safe side)

Posted on

wip – new stylesheet – it look weird it works better …

A pic of songs

soon it will work great.
here in the midi I just developed for drum & bugle corps hornline…
Hornline Etude “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” by Tapper7
the design will improve asap and another tapcast is in the works.
To be fair – below is an ad you most likely will not click on.
se la vi!



we upgraded WP to….um…I forgot – fixes, hacks, glitches and howto’s will be found here if the update causes more than that basic problems. or leave a comment and ill show u how to fix it. -t