Just showing you an update on my Mike Shinoda head sculpt. This is going to have to be really quick post, so you can check out a photo below.

This is just the first paint after some more layers it should be looking a lot better. Also sorry for the bad photo my camera just wasn’t focusing.

Keep a look out for Part 3! (yes an exclamation mark is necessary)

I have recently decided to do a brand new (big) project (I’m not going to say what is at the moment though). And part of this new project is making some head sculpts and below are some unfinished pictures of the first one. The head sculpt is of Mike Shinoda. So check them out:

Mike's Head 1	Mike's Head 2
Reference photo: Mike Shinoda

Here’s a list of my top 5 WordPress Plugins (in no particular order), so without further ado:

Maintenance Mode:

Description (Taken From WordPress Plugin Directory):

Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end.

Visitors will see a message like “Maintenance Mode – SITE is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. Please try back in 60 minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

Why I Like It:

This is a great way of editing your WordPress blog without your visitors seeing your blog change right before their eyes. Which is something I’d been looking for.

Download:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/maintenance-mode/




Send E-mail:

Description (Taken From WordPress Plugin Directory):

Add a contact form to any post or page by inserting [contact-form] in the post. Emails will be sent to the post’s author.

Your email address is never shown, and the sender never learns it (unless you reply to the email).

As seen on WordPress.com.

This plugin was imported from Grunion Contact Form but it adds full internationalization using localized string from WordPress core.

An e-mail signature block was appended to the end of the e-mail message containing the sender’s name, email address, website and IP and delimited from the body of the message by a single line consisting of exactly two hyphens, followed by a space, followed by the end of line (“– n”). This signature cut line allows software to automatically mark or remove the sig block.

Why I Like It:

Using this plugin it’s simple to add an email form by simply adding [contact-form]

Download:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/send-e-mail/

Twitterlink Comments:

Description (Taken From WordPress Plugin Directory):

This plugin will add an extra field to your comment form so a user can add their Twitter username. A user configured ‘follow me’ link is then displayed along with their details on all their comments.

The extra field and ‘follow me’ link can be configured using the settings page without ever needing to modify any template files. (unless you want to)

The blog owner has full control over the classes, HTML, link and message by using the settings page. (All options are passed through KSES using only basic HTML tags for secruity on Mu installs)

Why I Like It:

When you use this plugin you allow people viewing your site to connect to their twitter account which creates a more interactive feeling on your blog. As well as adding more links to your blog meaning you’ll be higher on Google.

Download:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitterlink-comments/

Thesis OpenHook:

Description (Taken From WordPress Plugin Directory):

Thesis OpenHook takes the process of modifying Thesis and simplifies it!

Where once users would be required to open and modify their wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/custom_functions.php file, users can now easily customize Thesis via their blog administration panel.

Not only can arbitrary HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and even PHP be inserted into any of Thesis’ hooks, you can also easily remove any of the hooked default elements within Thesis with the click of a button!

If you don’t use Thesis, there’s probably no reason you need to get this plugin, except to learn from (or port to another theme).

Thesis OpenHook is based heavily upon K2 Hook Up by Eric Marden, and so I definitely appreciate his laying the ground work! Hundreds (thousands?) of Thesis users have benefited from OpenHook, and without Eric’s plugin to inspire me, there would be no OpenHook as we know it today! Thanks, Eric!

Why I Like It:

I use Thesis on this blog/site and on others I’ve built. While it’s a great theme and quite easy to use and customize Thesis OpenHook makes some of the more monotonous coding a lot quicker.

Download:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thesis-openhook/

Light Social:

• • Digg
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • DZone
  • Facebook
  • Viadeo
  • Delicious
  • DotNetKicks
  • DotNetShoutout
  • LinkedIn
  • Technorati
  • Twitter
  • Google Buzz
  • Faves
  • Mister Wong

Description (Taken From WordPress Plugin Directory):

This is a super lightweight plugin to insert a set of social share links at the bottom of each post, focused on technical blogs.

With this plugin you have simple options to configure. Simply enable or disable to show or not the bookmark social links.

This is the list of used social sites:

The plugin is implemented using the most simplistic html code to ensure fast load and minimal impact on your blog.

Works with IE6 and HTML feed (atom, rss) readers. Handles selective placement and position of the links (working in better support for this).

Why I Like It:

I’ve found this plugin to be an easy to implement social media “hub” (couldn’t think of a better word to use ) that can fit into/with multiple different themes and plugins.

Download:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/light-social/

The unimaginable has happen… (building up suspense with a drum roll) …I have switched from Mozilla Firefox to Google Chrome (waits for gasps that never come), and here is why.

How I Got There:

(Skip if you just want to know why I like Chrome)

For the last two weeks my Firefox has been messing up (mainly with right click) so I looked to see if I could fix the problem and to tell the honest truth I got lost and confused very quickly. After that I moved onto my next option find a new browser (no matter how much it hurt), I’ve used Opera before but wasn’t very comfortable with it so that was skipped. I have always been a huge fan of Apple so I tried out Safari 4.0.5, but for some reason it would not work on my Toshiba (Macbook Pro I am coming… ) , and just like with Firefox I got lost in trying to fix the problem. And that left just one major browser left (I will NEVER use IE), Chrome.

After installing Chrome and playing around with it for awhile I realized that Chrome was not only a worthy replacement for Firefox but better for what I wanted.

What I Like About Chrome:

I’m just gonna make a bullet-point list of my favorite features, so um… here goes:

• The new tab menus (especially recent sites visited).
• The status bar.
• The extensions (I think their better than Firefox extensions).
• The Icon (I like shiny things ).
• It’s a huge amount like Safari.
• And finally the layout (it just suits me better).

That’s all I have time for, but I’d love to hear your comments.

Until next time, see ya.

P.S. I still think Mozilla Firefox is awesome

Hey there I’ve been listening to Flobots new album Survival Story which came out eight days ago (April 16). Now that I have listened to the album a few times I’ve decided that it is the best album to come out since Plastic Beach (read my post about Plastic Beach), so check it out now using the link below.

So that’s it until I update again,

See Ya

Listem to Survival Story | Follow The Flobots On Twitter

Thesis Image Border Default

Here is another Thesis Tutorial, cutomizing the default Thesis image border (the image to the right) which is to be frank quite REALLY REALLY ulgy, so add the following code of your choice to custom.css:

To remove the border totally add this code (only works with a white, but can be customized to work with other colours post area and has arial font):

Thesis Image Border Removed

.format_text img.frame, .format_text .wp-caption { border: 4px solid #0A0A0A; padding: 0 ; background-color: #0A0A0A; font-family:arial; text-decoration: normal; color: #fff; }

To recolour (Yes I’m english) to dark grey add this code (this too has arial font):

.format_text img.frame, .format_text .wp-caption { border: 4px solid #0A0A0A; padding: 0 ; background-color: #0A0A0A; font-family: arial; text-decoration: normal; color: #fff; }

To have the style of my style add this code (which is pure awesomeness =]) (this code has rounded corners for Firefox and Safari):

.format_text img.frame, .format_text .wp-caption { -moz-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; padding: 10px; border: 4px solid #0A0A0A; padding: 0 ; background-color: #0A0A0A; font-family:Beatnik SF, arial; text-decoration: normal; color: #fff; }

Give the code a go and tell me whether it worked or not (not that would happen =]) in the comments below.

Image source: Here

I’ve been listening to Stylo by Gorillaz (okay I’ll admit on repeat) while I’ve been waiting for Plastic Beach. Well it’s out now and I have a copy (since the release date march 8th, Digital of course). And after listening to it about three or four times, I have now decided that it’s one of the best album I’ve ever listened to (though the album took ahwile to grow on me).

That’s all I have to say.

… Except that you can listen to it for free here.

Okay as you’ll probaly know (if you’ve read my about page) I’m a fan of Batman especially Grant Morrisan’s new Batman and Robin.

Well today I was looking around at comic book news (I do this everyday or every other day) and I found this, the return of Bruce Wayne! (non-comic book fan probaly won’t be excited by this news). So the arc is going to start tomorrow and looking forward to reading it, when I’ve done so I’ll give my review.

Until then, see ya.

P.S. Check out a preview here =]

Anybody that has been to my site before will notice that the design of the site has changed quite dramatically. While changing the design of the site I have updated my theme to thesis.

In doing this I’ve had create some custom coding one of those being adding my author avatar to the side of the title of post’s I’ve done. So I thought I would share the code with you:

You’ll need to add the following code to custom_functions.php (this code sets the functions of the author avatar):

/* Add author avatar */

function author_avatar() {
if (is_single()) {
?>

}}
add_action(‘thesis_hook_before_headline’, ‘author_avatar’);

/* end of author avatar */

( this code is for putting the avatar on single posts only, if you want it on all pages and posts, just delete it. if (is_single()) { )

And this code to custom.css (this code is for positioning):

.custom #author_avatar {float:left;  width:5em;  margin-right:1em;}

I created a new peice of art named Orgaized Chaos, it took about 2 hours to complete. Organized Chaos is totally digital art, and is just a cool (at least I thought so) concept I came up with that I figured would be fun to make. To view the full size (and download) check deviantArt.

Critizism and comments wanted, so if you could leave a comment below that would be awesome.