There is a plus and a minus to flailing about blindly.
The Minus
I spent much of yesterday plodding through html and css trying to cram it all into my brain in, oh, a day as opposed to a few weeks or a month. For some insane reason I feel stupid for not knowing everything about everything and, silly me, I get frustrated and angry with myself when I can make things do what I want in a short period of time.
What I forget (or perhaps never really learned) is that people tend to only use minimal levels of things as tools to get the job done. For instance a photo album blog. Most people would have researched different photo album plugins for WordPress, installed the chosen one, maybe changed the color in the “options” tab and have been off and running uploading photos to their website. If I’m to be completely realistic, many of them would have just put their photos on some file sharing site like Flickr or Google Web Albums and looked for a plugin to either show photos on their site or link the site to their photos.
But me, I would like the photo album integrated with the blog header AND I absolutely have to have maps in the page. I like maps - so I want maps - I think it’s important. But no one does maps the way I want my maps done so I have to learn (on top of general Wordpress knowledge) 1) php to screw with the maps display function, 2) html/php/css to put the maps on the page the way I want, and 3) Javascript and Google Maps code. It sounds so simple, but it’s not. I’m not even learning how to create php code, but I’ve managed to get my way through enough of it that I actually understand the sections to the page now. And let me tell you - web design has come a long way baby - structure and style are separate.
So yesterday, after trying many, many things to try and get a map to show up on my page, I gave up. Later in the evening I began flicking through the theme options in a half hearted attempt to jog my brain to “be smarter” and lo and behold something sunk in and I remembered that I hadn’t re-entered my Google Maps API keyafter updating WordPress. Such a small thing, so stupid. Hours of flailing about blindly, ready to give up - for a one second epiphany. Now there are maps on my individual image page - I’ll worry about the style later.
The Plus
After a day of flailing and failing it was time to return to the house/dog sitting locale that had just been extended two additional days due to a changed flight. But first, because of these additional days I needed additional food and decided to head to the Whole Foods at Union Square. I was listening to Balkan Beat Box in an attempt to forget about my failings of the day but headphones and a crowded food store after work is not really the best mix - so I listened to the people around me instead.
“It probably tastes like any other chocolate”- a twenty-something female referring to Les Vosages Tibetan goji berries,pink Himalayan salt,deep milk chocolate bar. I can vouch that chocolate and salt is a great combination and it unlike any other chocolate combination, but hey it is an overpriced candy bar. And then there was the metrosexual man behind me saying in a petulant tone to someone on the phone, “I’m boiling water right now, Dad just wanted some pasta but I’m stuck in this hideous line. (I can only assume his father was visiting) … I found some sauce that is probably crap and it’s so expensive, but it’s not like I’m going to start from scratch and chop tomatoes.” OK - so you went to the most centrally located Whole Foods in the city during the after work hours and left water boiling on your stove at home? And then to complain about the quality of what you are buying - you know you could just go across the street to one of the crappy other grocery stores in the are and buy some Ragu. They may be losing their hippy, granola ways, but Whole Foods, if nothing else, has decent brands and tasty fresh foods.
Anyway - after the quickly moving express line I headed off on a subway adventure. Long story short, I just kept taking trains, express trains at that, and got home via 4 different trains - 2 of the express trains. I could have ended up headed back up town but by luck I had taken and express 4 (that wasn’t making all of it’s stops including the one I needed to transfer to an F) and then an A train that was apparently heading to Brooklyn (I though it was heading uptown and was going to make the F transfer at West 4th). Imagine my surprise when I was at Jay St-Borough Hall, right where I needed to be and faster than I had expected. Yippee - flailing about blindly got me home faster - all while listening to some kick ass gypsy music.
