Last weekend we attended the Feast of the Giants in Maastricht.

Once every five years the gathering of the Giants takes place.  Giants from all over Europe come to Maastricht to celebrate with the city’s own giant, Gigantius and his guild.

Not only do the local volounteers participate, but politicians from Maastricht and the Limburg province eagerly join the festivities.

The rain didn’t manage to demotivate or discourage the many visitors and four-legged friends.  Apparently this soaking herd is used on a regular basis to keep the parks and city lawns neatly trimmed.

The medieval theme is carried through in the entire procession. It was interesting to see the different craftsmen, paupers, nuns and royalty reinacted. Made me seriously grateful to live in this era!

One warning when visiting Maastricht… It is addictive! The old architecture, the Maas river, the buzz. The local charm and warmth is welcoming and the people really know how to enjoy life.

Chances are good that you will end up enjoying the “after parties” in one of the many local pubs.

I tried to see what the view from my home would have looked like 50 years ago by ageing this picture I took from my balcony. Going even further back in history, the oldest mention of the church can be traced back to 1269 ad. Weird thought that 740 years ago people were completing the main part of this beautiful building. I keep trying to imagine what it would have been like to live then.
This great view never becomes boring – it keeps changing – looks alive and continues to inspire me.

Heard these guys on the radio today – for a second I thought either Elvis was reincarnated or Rhianna actually covered an Elvis song.  Turns that three German guys who call themselves “The Baseballs” covered Rhianna – in 50′s stlye – Really impressive! Guaranteed to give you that happy feeling…  thebaseballs.com

Apparently Rhianna wasn’t that impressed with them…   Eh… should I comment?

Here’s a an Apple wallpaper I created a while ago.

Created with Photoshop CS4 – experimenting with smoke, blending options and creating depth with use of colour and light.

Click the image left to save 1280 x 800 version.

While watching the Dutch Parliament collaps on tv, a reporter started to annoy me with his continuous mention of Twitter…  Twitter this, Twitter that… follow me on Twitter!  He was obviously hyped by this medium and recruiting followers at every opportunity he got.

So I decided to create an account and have a look at this hype. Turns out there’s an entire new, exciting world out there. After a few days of observing #goodies (searches) on topics that interest me and looking at (what appear to be) die-hard Twitter gurus I was hooked. News gets to you faster than tv or websites can get it to you.

What really tickled me is that most of the “information targets” I decided to follow for a while have their own blog.  Yes! I had a new subject to research on Twitter.

In the early days of internet I created a few basic sites, but never got around to really understand PHP, MySQL, and CSS. I thought the opportunity to create an up-to-date site would never come again – at least not without starting studying from scratch again.

IN COMMON

WordPress is what most of these guru-bloggers have in common! It’s a FREE Open Source system with very talented contributors.

Of course I downloaded the “system” and started playing with it. Fantastic! An eye-opener!  I can have an “interactive” CMS driven site that is reasonably easy to set up and manage! Posting stuff is easy, people can comment (if you let them) – wow, a real site is now within reach.

The only problem…  it looks boring. How can an apparent great system have such a boring look?  Twitter, here I come again!

“Listening” to the WordPress heros on Twitter – (search #wordpress) – I discovered the world of “Themes”. These are looks and functionality based “fronts” for your site or blog.

THEMES CONFUSION

Try looking up WordPress themes on google – you’ll find a such as vast array of looks available for your WordPress site. It’s hard not to spend nights going through them all. Be warned, it is addictive!

I visited so many sites, too many of them. There are so many choices – Free and Premium (paid) – it only ends in total confusion and indecision.

Of course I looked into the free themes, even downloaded and used a few of them. Fun to play with, but really difficult to personalize. The more I “listened” to the gurus, the more sceptic and wary I became of these free (some of them pirated) themes. I heard about crashes, infected files, hacked sites…   Premium themes, here i come!

Enter another confusing world. Which Premium themes do I go with? Off to Google and Twitter again.

One I liked from the start is Themeforest – a collection of themes by a variety of designers who all meet the strict Themeforest quality standards. Really great selection – amazing work. I deposited funds and went shopping!  Great learnings, fun to try out, had a really good time playing with them. The downside is that support managed by the designer him/herself. My designer just happens to be on holiday a lot, and got the info I needed from other users in the comments section of the theme page. Some was good, some not so good.

CLARITY

Then I heard of things called ‘frameworks and child-themes’.  There are professional companies who devote their time to develop and support their framework and child-themes. With dedicated forum and support department, this could just be what I was looking for.

Two companies kept coming up – Thesis and StudioPress. I looked at the Thesis site (diythemes.com), but couldn’t find a way to contact them with a pre-sales question on their terms. Finally found the owner on Twitter. He confirmed there was no way to contact his company, and that I should ask my question on Twitter. Gross… I had no real interest in posing my question in public, but did so because I wanted an answer. It appears that once you’ve signed up, you have access to all the answers. Eh… not-so-good marketing towards the newbies…

StudioPress on the other hand (studiopress.com), has a clear outline of options, FAQs and clear contact details on their site. I did have a question and decided to complete their contact form and see what happens.

Within MINUTES I received a response from someone called Craig Tuller – this ended up in an email conversation explaining, confirming and clearing any confusion I still had. I was sold! Without even looking at all their benefits and options I purchased their Genesis Framework and a child-theme. This was so impressive – that the next day I bought their Pro Plus option. It’s definitely not the cheapest solution available – but not a cent is wasted. Questions I have are answered promptly – amazing how patient and thorough their support department is. This is how it should be!

THE RIGHT DECISION

A few weeks later, following the #wordpress gossip on Twitter, I came across this article confirming I made the right choice. In this in-depth test, Genesis scored tops on all aspects but one. TWO DAYS later, they released an update fixing this.

I’m more convinced than ever that deciding on StudioPress’ Genesis Framework is the best WordPress related decision I could have made.

Please visit these links and convince yourself:

• WordPress
• StudioPress

There you have it – I now am an officially self-declared WordPress Geek!

Yes, weird – I know…

Wanted to add a mask made from tomatoes to this doggy’s face.

It was just a weird day – I remember clearly that I did this while the Michael Jackson live Memorial Service was on tv.

Don’t mess with this lady!

Adding extra elements bring a boring picture to life…

Played with light, warmth, different background, cracked the skin and new texture on the head gear.

If interested, I’ll add the original image to the post…