Published on
28 July 2009 in
blog.
Ok, so creating a theme from scratch proved to be an awful lot harder than I expected it to be. Luckily I found Lime Radiance, which was almost exactly what I wanted except a bit too… well… lime! Anyway I changed the background and a few other things around, and I’m pretty happy with the result. What really helped was using xampp to run apache and mySQL locally on my computer, so I could install WordPress and test out themes and modifications much faster. That was a trick I probably wouldn’t have found if I hadn’t looked to design my own initially, so it was definitely worthwhile.
I might make a few minor changes yet, but this design is pretty much how I want it. 
And the new name is the obvious pun, which I think was my original idea for the name. Then when I couldn’t get the domains I originally wanted, I ended up buying astick.net, planning to do “blog on a stick”, “wiki on a stick” etc. I guess I always preferred this name though.
Been playing around with Photoshop recently. I made this following a great tutorial. Click for bigger.
Too much coffee and not enough sleep caused me to make this… erm… thing. I blame Virgin Radio (as it was called back then) for playing “In The Morning” so much that it warped my brain. And of course rathergood.com for the pre-packaged insanity that is La La La Oo-hoo-hoo
razorlight-vs-rathergood-in-the-la-la-la-oo-hoo-hoo.mp3
Whilst searching the net (for pictures of turbine blades, can you tell I’m a materials scientist? 
, I came across this ridiculous piece of Greenwash. Yes, these people are seriously trying to sell their water as environmentally friendly because it comes in cartons rather than those nasty plastic bottles. Conveniently ignoring the fact that:
- The cartons come from a plant in Vancouver
- The water (tap water!) is put in at a plant in Minnesota
- The boxed water is then sold in Michigan …
- … where the cartons aren’t even recyclable! (Though plastic bottles are)
D’oh!
Thanks to Wikipedia I’ve learnt that Quavers, Monster Munch, Smith’s and Wotsits are ALL owned by Walkers. Which is owned by American company Frito-Lay, who also own Doritos. And they in turn are owned by the giant PepsiCo. That’s kind of depressing, apart from Golden Wonder and McCoys they seem to own every British potato/corn snack food.
Also PepsiCo own Tropicana (which I knew about), Copella (which I didn’t) and Quaker Oats (which I would have had down as brand least likely to be owned by giant multinational corporation)
