Global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it, is hot (pun intended) news these days. Coming from a South European country myself, I usually joke with my Dutch colleagues that global warming is the best thing that ever happened to The Netherlands – the weather is getting hotter and sunnier every year. Which is great, considering that the climate here is pretty much a gray and depressing affair most of the time. I usually start with “we should pollute some more, it’s great for tourism!” and then go on about how the best idea right now is to buy property in the north of Denmark or Finland, since in a few years it will be the next tropical paradise
Actually, this is no laughing matter, and we all know it very well. The negative effects are pretty obvious – draught, floods, raising sea levels, you name it. But for us, the world-travelers to be, it also means that for some places, we are running out of time. In just a few seconds, I could think of three examples of places that either won’t be there, or will be dramatically changed in a few years by climate change, or the action of man in general:
- The Maldives are sinking
- The Tibetan glaciers are melting (well, they are *all* melting actually)
- The Three Gorges Dam will completely change the Yangtze
Just three simple examples, I’m sure you can find more.
It’s an uneasy feeling – knowing that you either see it really soon, or you’ll never get the chance…

Tags: climate,ecology,global
Categories: China, Maldives, Tibet
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Finally, after a few months in the making, here is the new 3 series! Yes, it look a very long time, more than I thought at the beginning, but a lot of stuff happened in the meantime, and one can only go so far without proper sleep
What’s available now? New and improved cool stuff for latest & greatest versions out there:

• vSlider 3 for WordPress 2.2
• vSlider 3 for Gallery2 2.2.1 (using WPG2 2.x and 3.0 beta)
• KBurnalizer 3 javascript library
• KBurnalizerG2 module for Gallery2 2.2.1

See? Can’t be more up-to-date than this!
You see it running on this website, so I guess its working…

So, what’s new? Tons of things. For a complete list, check the specific download pages on Cool Stuff, but here are the highlights:

• New and expanded Theme Administration page
• Full pixel-precise control of the width of theme
• Option for fluid layout! Fills your entire browser, whatever the dimensions. Everything resizes automatically (this one was tough… )
• Complete control over colors without coding. You can use one of the provided color schemes, or create your own. You can create as many as you like, and select individual colors for every visual element.
• Place the sidebar on left or the right of the page.
• Administration page for all the nice little icons - sliders, RSS feeds, quote symbols, etc…
• Several options for the header, including auto-rounded border. Yes, that’s for all the people that kept asking for the Header template Now you can just use normal rectangular images and the theme will create a nice round border for you
• The Gallery2 theme has been redesigned with a more consistent look and LightBox support.
• Everything done using CSS and Javascript - no images used for either layout or graphical backgrounds. Not even for the rounded borders. This gives you the most flexibility for customizations without coding.
• Aahh… just check the download page for the full list….

I tested as much as I could, but there were so many changes and new features, a few bugs are bound to appear. If they do, please let me know and I’ll try to fix them ASAP.
Also there were a couple of other features suggested by some of you that I thought would be cool, but didn’t make into this version (you have to draw the line somewhere). They might make it into version 3.1 later on…

I also take this opportunity to present another side project I started with my wife - OneWorldToSee.com. No, it’s another WP theme or another nifty tool. It’s kind of a “life project” - a plan to travel around the world and see *everything* worth seeing. The OneWorldToSee.com website is a blog about this plan and the passion for exploring in general. I invite you all to become members and even post your own texts about travel experiences.
It is also a way to finance it, since we decided to “sell” the world in order to see it - you’ll understand once you see it

All the stuff I’ve been making here in iRui.ac is free and will continue to be. I used to have a donation page and even an Amazon wish list, but that’s all gone now. Instead, if you feel compelled to show your appreciation and help us in process, hop over to OneWorldToSee.com and see how you can contribute.

Have fun with vSlider 3!

Categories: Maintenance, Tips 4 Geeks, Way of the web
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We did a massive update today. The blog is finally taking shape, both in page structure and content. Hard work, I have to say… my dreams at night are filled with killer Javascript functions and monsters made of CSS declarations We sincerely hope that it is all worth it. The passion for travel keeps me going

Categories: Maintenance, Netherlands
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Yep, it’s almost there. Crossing the T’s and pointing the I’s and all that. I need to do some more testing in different browsers, since I recently discovered that vSlider 3 was badly broken in IE6. To be honest, I shouldn’t even bother, since everybody should just use Firefox anyway. But unfortunately, according to the stats, IE is still the most used browser in the world, so I can’t just ignore it. I’ve already used some pretty horrible hacks, and I still need a few more to get everything to work nicely.
On the good news, IE7 seems to be far more standards-compliant (no big complains so far) and Apple launched Safari for Windows, which enables me to actually test stuff in Safari for the first time

Categories: Maintenance
7 Comments »

Everybody knows this already, but sometimes I forget it. Every once in a while I’m reminded on how really, really bad IE6 is.
I’m spoiled by Firefox, and that’s what I use for web development. When Cristina tried it on IE6 at work, the site looked absolutely awful. All kinds of layout issues creeped up. At least IE7 is not as bad.
Another lost weekend with hacks and workarounds.. pfff…

The only bit of good news is that Apple release Safari for Windows, so now it’s a lot easier to test on it too. It looks perfect - cheers to the Mac people!

Categories: Maintenance, Netherlands
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