Ussins

Ussins

This of my myriad digital outposts is devoted solely to the delights of my children and wife. My children have pseudonyms here, but I am Alex Hall, and my wife is Tia. Her photography portfolio is here, and my blathering blog is also here.

Our first, a son, has a pseudonym here of Mago Elf Liam; Gaelic for “Great Elf William”.

Our second, a daughter, has a pseudonym here of Nem-nem Naemh; Nem-nem is whimsical nonsense (akin to “Nummy” (Yummy) or “Nemmy” - which we also call her) and Naemh is an Irish name pronunced “Neve” (which I expect and am not bothered by confusion about); Niamh/Naevh is in Irish mythology the princess of the land of promise, which is exactly who she is.

The Design

The blog design is a modification of this great theme I found called “Lucky Duck” at 9 Moons Ago. I modified the backdrop to a plaid, keeping the original colors in it, using a Photoshop plugin called “Plaid Lite“. I added two clip art shamrocks painted to the medium green color in the plaid, and trimmed the image to tile the shamrocks in a diamond pattern. I changed the theme’s banner to rotate random Art Nouveau or other decorative tiles I found at Tile Heaven, some of which I color-adjusted.

The Blog

This blog runs on the WordPress platform, which I was won over to for its generally far easier usability than Movable Type, which I used to use. I especially like the ease-of-use of the Email Notification Plugin I found for it (though as an exception that was harder to install - ask me for help if you get stuck installing that plugin!) and a variety of other easy-to-use and install plugins, and how easy it is to change themes, and how many cool themes are out there for it. I tend to change plugins every now and then based on what I want and may one day put a page about useful plugins at my wiki.