Welp, here it is. Only 6 or so months after the last revision, I’ve once again changed the look of tb.com.

This time it came out of sheer frustration with my own disregard for proper web design. You see, when I first launched the blog version of tb.com, I simply hacked apart someone else’s WordPress theme (the files associated with how a blog looks) and altered it to my liking. I went at this knowing nothing about wordpress or the markup used for their themes. I had to teach myself CSS just to get by. So as you can imagine, the resulting website worked, but just barely. I put plenty of effort into you not knowing how shaky it’s foundation really was.

But as time has passed, and I’ve worked on other wordpress blogs, I began to learn more and get a better idea just what was going in inside all those .php files.

Even six months ago, when I altered the tb.com design slightly, I stuck to the original, hacked together layout, doing with it what I could. I didn’t want to redesign the whole thing, but it did need some change.

But a month or so ago I tried to make one small adjustment, changing a link in the header, and found that I couldn’t do it. I have no idea how, but essentially my blog was so fundamentally backwards in it’s construction, I had actually forgotten when there header files where, and was unable to find them. Anyone who knows anything about web design either thinks I typo’d, or their scratching their head at “header files“. You only need one header file. That’s how horrific this was put together.

So, this disgust came conveniently at the same time as I decided to build a new website from the ground up. TonyandJuan.com has expanded to TonyandJuanandAdam.com (coming soon) and I didn’t want to do another tear down of someone else’s theme. So I learned how to build a WordPress blog from the very first file, all the way to what you see here. Well, I learned on what you will see at TonyandJuanandAdam.com in the future, but here’s what I practiced on afterward.

Overall, the functionality of the site is the same, with one small change. The photos ‘page’ is no longer a static page with those scant four galleries. It is now simply a way to find all the photos I’ve posted. It’ll list them with the title of the post they belong to, and they’ll link back to their original post. That’s all really. With that feature I plan to start posting more short-form posts that are picture centric. Like this one. Really it’s best for us both. I still feel like I’m entertaining you, and you don’t have to read so much. That’s a win in my book.

Oh, one more thing that I want to ask of you. I have a tag over there on the right called “classic.” These are posts that I think are the creme of the crop. At least in my eyes. If you happen to find a post that you feel in quintessential tonybullard.com, then please, let me know in the comments. This is for two reasons: 1) this helps me keep my falsely inflated ego afloat. 2) It’s a nice way for new-comers to get an idea of what this site is all about. On rare occasions.

So there you go. New tb.com. And by “new” I mean, “same, but different looking.” So you know, it’s like tb.com got a haircut. Heh, haircuts.

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Doing a little remodeling. You can probably already see the fairly major changes. There may be a few kinks here and there, but hopefully I’ve done thing right and it’s all turned out fine. If you catch anything, please leave a comment letting me know what I can fix.

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You may notice things look slightly different than they did last time you looked at them. The design is pretty much the same, but the big change is the content area. I’ve stretched the measly 375 pixel area into 490 pixels. What does this mean to you? Less scrolling, and bigger, better pictures of Noah. Oh yeah, can you feel the excitement? I can too. Or maybe that’s just the taco I had for lunch.

Either way, what used to be this:

Is now this:

Look at that…you can count the tears. It’s tonybullard.com…IN HIGH DEFINITION!

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Yesterday it was made official. Every branch of the Anthony Ambrose Bullard Sr family tree has a blog.

I’ve had tonybullard.com for a long time, since it was given to me for free when I bought a domain for my old death metal band, Soul of the Savior.

My parents have had bullardsailing.net for a while now, in order to keep the extended family on top of their goings on as they travel the world via floating Chinese junker.

My oldest sister started to blog in late April, reasoning that she’s a journalist, and every other journalist seems to have one, so at the very least she’d get practice writing. She picked the title “Household 6″ which I never understood until I ran into another reference to it online. You can find out about it’s origins here.

Finally, giving in to peer pressure, my second oldest sister, Page, started her own blog, Brain Blur which I think sums up parenting fairly well, and really does give a good imagery as to how I would assume her mind works. Or how it manages to work I should say.

So now I guess I can say that my family is “with it.” Maybe we should all join a social network and share links and stuff. Oh wait, I’ve already friended my siblings on Facebook. If nothing else, maybe this post will educate my family on the ever-so-cool art of linking.

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it’s 11:08pm. I should be in bed. But I’m going to try and upgrade my blog to the newest software. Things may look weird for a bit. Or, worse case scenario, you can’t read this at all. We’ll see.

see you on the other side.

EDIT: WELCOME TO THE OTHER SIDE!
So everything is upgraded. You may not notice much of a difference except for the menus over there on the right—>
They look a little different, especially the meta section and the status RSS feed. I may try and hack away at those some more to get them a little cleaner looking, but for now, I’m just ahppy everythign works. Yay!

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I bought a house.  I should say, my wife and I bought a house.  We’ve closed and all that, and we’re getting ready to move in this Saturday.

The house is great.  It’s a nice little starter home, perfect for a couple and a kid.  The previous owner seemed to have an eye for design, so it’s very tastefully painted and wallpapered. 

Every time we went to see it, I noticed a box in the back yard.  It’s a medium sized black box, that I always assumed was a utility box of some sort.  Every time i saw it I thought to myself, “I need to go give that thing a look.”
(more…)

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If there’s one thing the internet is good for, it’s helping a lot of little people make a big voice. You can easily see the difference in the world from five years ago when you consider the nearly instant onslaught of the “blogosphere.”

Well, at least from my perception, one voice in particular has really been growing in the last year or so, and that’s been the voice of the militant atheist. Richard Dawkins has become a familiar name to many, and many are joining in the idea that it’s no longer enough to just sit back and watch the silly religious poeple do their thing. They believe it’s time to step up, and speak out against religion, calling for an end to it.

I can’t blame them. (more…)

Filed under: blog, internet culture, rambling, spirituality, video by tonybullard
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I know it sort of sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s probably one of the things that reading this blog may give you a new look at. The Homeless Guy Blog is written by Kevin Barbieux, who is a homeless man in Nashville. I know you’re probably thinking that if a homeless person can have a laptop and an internet connection, he can have a job and a place to stay. Well, I’ll let you in on this little jewel, he also owns a digital camera that he records video with. But that’s one of the things that this blog will teach you, not all homeless people are urine-soaked drunkards who sleep next to dogs to keep warm. Some homeless are better off than others. But if you spend your time reading this blog looking for ways to discredit the guy, you’re just wasting your time. The blog has little to do with himself, and a lot more to do with raising awareness of what it’s like to be homeless, and what the world looks like from the streets. He writes regularly, and well, and if nothing else, to me, it’s a reminder that not everyone in the world own an iPod and an Xbox.

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I’ve spent the last two weeks, off and on, doing pretty intense work to get tb.com together. I learned CSS just so I could feel a little better about my prowess as a web designer. And then I found WordPress to help me get this whole blog thing together, and that was a feat on it’s own. Not that WordPress is hard to work with…but coming up with your own layout that doesn’t look exactly like everyone else’s…that’s a little more difficult. (more…)

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it’s funny how excited i am about re-launching tb.com. if things keep going at this pace, tb.com would have been down for all of a week and a half. maybe. but i gotta admit, as soon as it was shut off, it made me sad. it kinda felt like being homeless. i wandered around the internet, and while i had a few well known haunts…there was no home for me. no place where i could go that i knew was mine. call me a dork, i don’t care, i love having my site. not to mention that of all my site designs, this one is my favorite. or at the least, it’s the one i’m most proud of. i’m learning more about photoshop as time passes, and lately i’ve been spending a lot of time on learning how to fake pictures and whatnot. stuff like this one i did for my band. so i just kinda pulled up a picture in photoshop and started playing around, and the design just sorta fell into place. it wasn’t the most difficult thing i’ve ever done, and any photoshop pro could figure it out real quick, but it took me a little thinking and recalling several aspects of photoshop’s abilities, and well, it took some skill, and that makes me proud. that was one long sentence. so now i’ve just got to go through and copy and paste a ton of html to format the old pages into the new design. this is where having fancy web design programs pays off. but i’m a purist, and i will continue to use the ever faithful notepad. so hopefully soon here i’ll have the site up and we can all enjoy tb.com like we use to. or perhaps differently. who knows.

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