Monthly Archives: January 2012

Week 4: WeeklyCreations.com Theme

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Week 4, ahead of schedule!!  🙂

Okay, it feels good to not be posting this at the last minute on Saturday night. However, I am planning to have a second post for week 4… “planning” that is.

Anyway, this week I completed the current theme to this website; the Weekly Creations “Da Vinci” Theme. I may play around with it a little more in the future to add some fun stuff, but for now, I’m calling it done and ready for use!

Here’s a comparison of the old theme and the new one:

As a musician, it’s nice to dabble in visual creativity. It’s something I don’t do nearly as much, but I love it nonetheless. I’d like to paint one day, just like Da Vinci himself. I love and admire the vast and complimentary creativity of polymaths.

I think this little change will have a big impact on the feel of a site of this nature. It’s a “Weekly Creations” site, it should have a creative look!

Week 3: Cover of Little Wing (SRV style)

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Well, like the last couple weeks, I had to put something together last minute! But here it is. I decided this afternoon to do a cover of one of my favorite tracks to play on guitar: Hendrix’s Little Wing. I’ve always wanted to record a version of this tune. It’s always been a huge inspiration. One day I’ll have to take a little time to really make this my own, but for now, I basically just bit Stevie Ray Vaughan’s styling (and some of his licks to boot!).

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/34133935″ params=”auto_play=false&show_artwork=false&color=0044ff” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” / ]

 

The backing track I played over was created by a YouTube user (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uE0DbTvQII). I made plenty of mistakes – it’s far from perfect – but I’ve been having a blast jamming on this track occasionally over the years, so it was a lot of fun taking the time to record it today. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I enjoyed recording it! One day I’ll play it reggae style. 🙂

Week 2: SolarElectricExchange.com

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Well, I was hoping to post a new song recording or DIY project this week, but I’ve been pretty tied up ’til today, and recording just wasn’t working out when I took a stab at it. Fortunately, what I’ve been tied up with this week was an excellent website project! With last week’s creation being this very website, I was reluctant to focus this week’s creation on another web project. But I quite like the site, as well as the cause.

Solar Electric Exchange are a GTA (Greater Toronto Area) based solar panel installation company. In Ontario, the government is supporting the solar power industry by paying out $0.80/kWh to the owners of solar panels set up to contribute to the grid. As such, Ontario is quickly becoming a world leader in green energy production because it’s not only a conscientious choice, but it’s a great high-return investment.

I created the site on the WordPress platform. I love WordPress!! WeeklyCreations.com is built on WordPress as well. This open source software started as a blogging platform, but has grown into an exceptionally dynamic tool that can function as the back-end to virtually any type of contemporary website. Not only is it so well written and flexible enough of a platform that you can get a basic site up in minutes (like the initial launch of this site), but it’s also exceptionally user friendly to update, so clients love it! And with it being so flexible and dynamic, you can make a site as simple or complex as the circumstances require and always end up with something awesome.

Most of the additional functionality of SolarElectricExchange.com came from the vast selection of available WP plugins. There’s literally tens of thousands of them to choose from. Those were then embellished and sown together with some graphic design. I use Photoshop when I design. Having friends who have worked on half-million dollar websites for major name-brand clients because they can do magic when it comes to graphic design, I’m quite humble about my design skills. These days there’s a tonne of tutorials online to teach you just about anything that’s possible with Photoshop – thank God. 🙂

Week 1: The Weekly Creations Website

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Okay, so for the first week’s creation, and to start of the Weekly Creations endeavor, I’ve created this Weekly Creations website! It’s nice and simple – designed to get the job done, not glorify it. You can check out the About page for some basic info on this site and what it’s for.

It’s a simple site, but I hope it’ll be a great foundation for this endeavor. I’ve added some basic functionality, like a social plugin, a contact form and some pic changes and other minor tweaks to the basic theme. But in the spirit of social collaboration, I’d love to hear some thoughts on what would make this site better, while keeping it simple. Please comment!

And while I have a few things in mind, I’d also love to hear some ideas for future weekly creations topics!

Until next week, stay creative.