D-Allison.com Portland Oregon Website Design

Sound View Cafe

admin — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 06:36:06 +0000

Sound View Cafe, originally uploaded by D-Allison’s.

At Pikes Place Market in Seattle. We spent Thanksgiving weekend in Bellingham Washington, and hit Seattle on the return trip. We even rented a Yellow VW Beetle for the trip!

Punchbowl Falls Punchbowl Falls, originally uploaded by D-Allison's. This wonderful photograph...
Olivia & Natalie Photo Shoot Olivia & Natalie Photos, originally uploaded by D-Allison's. This...
Olivia Racing the MAX train Olivia Racing the MAX train, originally uploaded by D-Allison's....

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Portland Art Museum + 4yr old = Naked people!

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:39:10 +0000

Maybe the art museum isn’t for 4 yr olds.

So on Saturday, we took Olivia to the Portland Art Museum. We use the cultural pass which gives you free access to many of the Portland and Salem area Museums and Institutes for free. It’s a little known gem. The museum is located in the South Park Blocks, near Portland State University. My personal opinion is that it was fantastic; however we walked away with one slightly unfortunate result. Olivia now has a fascination with drawing naked people!

Of course, many artists like to draw the human body without clothes on, sometimes to an uncomfortable level! But with a 4 year old who seems to have a mild appreciation for art, seeing naked people is like feeding her 3 straight cups of Starbucks fully loaded with sugar! It’s ALL she can talk about on this particular evening, and she’s even trying to draw some of the pictures (from memory) herself. Hmmmm, maybe that was a mistake taking her there!

Obviously I don’t mean that because every thought that she has is innocent. But it does make us feel uncomfortable. Why is that?

Looks like I have to go now because Olivia’s drawings are getting a little too detailed for my tastes. Back to the Children’s Museum from now on!

Super Birthday Cake So now Olivia's 3 yrs old. It's really flown...
SKIBOWL… in the summer? Yup. We headed up to Mt Hood on Saturday to...
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Punchbowl Falls

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:21:11 +0000

Punchbowl Falls, originally uploaded by D-Allison’s.

This wonderful photograph was taken on the Eagle Creek Trail in the Columbia River Gorge. It is one of the most popular trails in the Gorge here in Oregon, but also one of the most dangerous.

While hiking it, there are steep drop offs on the side of the trail, and every year there seems to be someone who falls or is injured. But, if you are a brave and steady hiker, the 6 mile round trip to see PunchBowl Falls is well worth it.

Don’t be saddened when you arrive and you cannot see the falls, however. Get brave and wade in the frigid water to get a good view.

A steady hand is required!

Olivia & Natalie Photo Shoot Olivia & Natalie Photos, originally uploaded by D-Allison's. This...
Olivia Racing the MAX train Olivia Racing the MAX train, originally uploaded by D-Allison's....
Hawthorne Colors Hawthorne Colors, originally uploaded by D-Allison's. Variety of Signs...

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An Evening to Remember

admin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:06:58 +0000

Someone told their MAMA to vote for OBAMA.

She did, and she told her friends and apparently they did too! I found this photo on Flickr and thought it was pretty sweet.

Nov 4th, 2008 was truly an historic day, and would have been no matter how the election turned out. It is special for any number of reasons, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to see a “Black Man”, as he is referred to, elected into office. Not because of him being black, but because it’s symbolic of so many issues that I won’t get into. But moreso, I think that maybe he can be a guy that can inspire people to do so many things. I personally don’t look at him as an “iconic” figure like some do; but I don’t do that for anyone, so maybe that’s my shortcoming! I fully don’t expect him to “change the world”, because after all he’s just one man, a lawyer, a politician, and a seasoned speaker. I also think it’s funny when those on the other side think that the world is coming to an end. Seriously folks, he’s the President-elect, not the second coming of Christ!

I get more teary eyed watching E.R. than getting worked up about politicians, but I did get a little worked up over his speech on Election Night. I hope that great things come from his administration, but for myself, him getting elected was important in it’s own right. Time will tell if he’s worth the wait.

It can’t get any worse can it?

Some other neat stuff. If you’ve ever used Wingbats, or Dingbats fonts, here’s another one for ya. ObamaBats! The creator’s text is below. Enjoy…..

ObamaBats

“I’m proud to announce and share the ObamaBats: A collection of 24 high-quality dingbats featuring Barack Obama and various design elements! This collection is completely free for download, upload, distribution, use and modification. Use these dingbats to start creating your own Obama paraphernalia today!”

Download: ObamaBatsChange.zip / True Type / 344K

Super Birthday Cake So now Olivia's 3 yrs old. It's really flown...
SKIBOWL… in the summer? Yup. We headed up to Mt Hood on Saturday to...
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Should Vince Young Play Another Position?

admin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:37:56 +0000

Vince Young of Tennessee Titans, originally uploaded by daruth.

Now that the Titans are undefeated at this point in the season, it doesnt appear likely that Vince Young will get back into the starting lineup. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing! But what a waste of talent on the sidelines! Is it just me or does anyone else feel like we could be using him in another way rather than standing on the side watching Kerry Collins hand off the ball 30 times (except against Chicago). I know that he is still a valuable asset to the team, the backup, etc., but as well as he runs the ball, I think that some creative plays should be made for him in the second half of the season. Not just to use him because he’s there, but also to keep him fresh and boost his confidence. There’s no doubt the QBs in the “Not For Long” league don’t last forever, so he’ll definitely get his shot again. Hopefully not a starting quarterback anytime soon…. Go Titans!.

Super Birthday Cake So now Olivia's 3 yrs old. It's really flown...
SKIBOWL… in the summer? Yup. We headed up to Mt Hood on Saturday to...
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Yaquina Head Lighthouse

admin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 02:08:35 +0000

Yaquina Head Lighthouse, originally uploaded by D-Allison’s.

Located in Newport, Oregon

Punchbowl Falls Punchbowl Falls, originally uploaded by D-Allison's. This wonderful photograph...
Olivia & Natalie Photo Shoot Olivia & Natalie Photos, originally uploaded by D-Allison's. This...
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Boston Architecture

admin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:22:30 +0000

Punchbowl Falls Punchbowl Falls, originally uploaded by D-Allison's. This wonderful photograph...
Olivia & Natalie Photo Shoot Olivia & Natalie Photos, originally uploaded by D-Allison's. This...
Olivia Racing the MAX train Olivia Racing the MAX train, originally uploaded by D-Allison's....

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The Dekum Triangle

admin — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 06:49:34 +0000

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Wordpress Portfolio using custom fields and templates

admin — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:40:15 +0000

I recently updated my portfolio page at www.d-allison.com, which took some pains to set up. I had very specific needs, some of which I still haven’t completely figured out, but I think that it turned out nicely.

Much of my website is done using Wordpress, with a template that I’ve completely designed myself. What I wanted to accomplish is to have my portfolio main page display a thumbnail of the website that I was featuring along with a title. When you click on it, it takes you to a another POST page which shows the portfolio item.

Individual Pages

To accomplish this, I had to create an individual post for each portfolio item. I included them into one specific category; in this case web design. At this point, each page look like every other post in my blog which I did not want. To distinguish these pages from the others, I created a single post template based on the category.

Custom Category & Single Post Pages

To find the category number in Wordpress, go to the categories section in the Wordpress administration panel, hover over the category that you’re working on, and you should see the category id in the status bar of your browser. Now, armed with my category number, I take the single.php template in Wordpress, copy it, and append the category id number to it. Example: Copy of single.php becomes single-9.php. Wordpress will now look for the single-9.php template for individual Web Design posts rather than the default single.php template. This should also be done for the category page as well. Wordpress will automatically look for the archives template unless you specify (ie. category-9, category-10, etc). So now when a user goes to the Web Design category, a specific page will show the listings, and a specific page will show the individual posts. Now, you can format the single-9.php page (or something similar) to look how you want it to look.

Back to my site, I deleted the dates, comments, and other default options in the single template in favor of my own custom formatting. Besides the changes I made in the style sheet, I have a custom sidebar, which includes a related posts listing and links to the rest of the site, and a description of the post, using the Custom Fields feature built into Wordpress.

Using Custom Fields

I enter the name , type of project and other title information in the “Key” field, and the corresponding information, such as “John Smith” in the “Value” field, then click Add Custom Field. Keep adding as much information as you need. Those keys will be available for re-use on your next posting. The information that you enter here wont be useful unless it corresponds to a value on your template. To just have all the information show up in your template, simply place this code:

Again this just displays all the information in alphabetical order. I’m sure there’s away besides CSS to format this but I don’t know how. Anyway, to get a better grasp on the items, place this code:

where “ClientType” matches the item that you used as your “Key” in the custom field. By placing this code in your template, you can arrange individual items in your post, style them however you please, and have more overall control of the look and feel of you custom fields.

The Excerpt Field

Next I include a link to an image file that Ive already created in the “excerpt” section, so that I can show that information on the category page. Here’s an example:

When I have finished the look of the single-9.php page, I move to the category-9.php page. I design the page to look a certain way using CSS. I want to show the image that I placed in the “excerpt” of the posts, so I change the coding on the category-9.php page. Take this coding:

and change it to

.

This will display the excerpt instead of the content. Place a div or table around the posting on the category-9.php page that’s only slightly larger than the image, make sure it floats left and you can have a gallery that looks like mine! Here’s the link again: http://www.d-allison.com/blog/category/web-design

Future Revisions

The only things I wished I could do different is to have images on my posts in the “related posts” area. Not quite sure how to do that, and suggestions here would certainly be welcomed!

Using Javascript Image Pop Ups for Websites There are lots of ways to show your imagery on...

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April O’Connor

admin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:40:30 +0000

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