Posts in category "Random"

Wu Wei 2

Wu Wei, my free WordPress theme, is cur­rent­ly the 5th most pop­u­lar theme on WordPress.com, with over 550,000 blogs using it at the moment (not includ­ing ones being self-host­ed), and it’s become so suc­cess­ful that the admin­is­tra­tors have made it one of the default themes for new sign-ups. By far the most com­mon sup­port ques­tion I get is why the WordPress.com ver­sion isn’t avail­able for WordPress.org users (some have even offered to pay for an update), so I’m very pleased to announce the release of ver­sion 2 for self-host­ed blogs.

The theme has been updat­ed to take advan­tage of new fea­tures that came with WordPress 3.x, such as cus­tom head­er and cus­tom back­ground APIs, cus­tom menu man­age­ment, as well as var­i­ous under-the-hood fix­es and improve­ments. Tags and com­ments have also been includ­ed on the front page, to bring bet­ter stan­dard­iza­tion across WordPress.com and WordPress.org ver­sions.

People have asked me why I don’t charge for such a theme, see­ing as how I’ve poured a tremen­dous amount of time and ener­gy into some­thing used by so many peo­ple. I can only say that Wu Wei has brought me much luck since its release, and thanks to it’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, I’ve met many great peo­ple1, received new design work, and even had a chance to vis­it Britain — things I don’t think would have been pos­si­ble if Wu Wei was a paid theme.

  1. There was even a case of an old ex-girl­friend find­ing me when she decid­ed use Wu Wei before she dis­cov­ered who made it. [↩]

rose coloured veil

Thank you for friends from Scotland and moon­cake from Hong Kong.

Thank you for guests and hosts and hol­i­days.

Thank you for friends like Lisa and Flight of the Concords.

cat on lap

Thank you for healthy kit­ties.

Thank you for mov­ing base­lines and dub­step wob­bles.

Thank you for local­ly grown beef and sig­na­ture sauces.

Basia Bulat at the Ottawa Folk Festival

Thank you for inspi­ra­tions and front row seats.

Thank you for British sit­coms, old and new.

Thank you for cheeks and day­dreams.

friends playing Magic: The Gathering

Thank you for new friends and Magic nights.

You're my big bear

and that means you’d get a big bear hug the next time I see you, but they say you’ve shat­tered your rib cage, lost a pile of teeth, and bro­ken every bone on the right side of your body, save the arm.

I’ve been there man. You know that. That’s why you know I’ll nev­er judge you for what hap­pened. You told me we could always talk cause you were once on the edge of the same blade, so you should have known the same, but you did­n’t pick up when he said maybe there was a bet­ter chance you’d lis­ten to me. All I could do was sit there, try­ing to keep calm, but expect­ing the next call to be about a body.

I should be angry. Not cause you did­n’t call me to say good­bye before you took off, but because you hurt your­self and you’re my broth­er, and that means you hurt my fam­i­ly.

I can’t stay mad cause you’re con­scious now, your vitals are sta­ble, there’s no brain dam­age, and relief has sur­passed anger. They say it’s main­ly injuries to the bones and that bones heal, long as it may take.

Will I rec­og­nize you the next time I see you? Will I cry? Will you ever under­stand how scared I was? I can’t call cause the nurse needs to be by your side, and I can’t vis­it yet cause only imme­di­ate fam­i­ly are allowed for now. Otherwise, I’d be in a car, dri­ving down there with a case of Blue ready for you when you’re out.

I don’t want to wor­ry any­more. I want to see with my own eyes that you’re okay. I want you drunk at my wed­ding with your cap on back­wards, scream­ing your ass off when I walk down the aisle. I want you at every New Year’s par­ty, cause you’re one of the only rea­sons I go any­more. I want you to teach my kids how put some­one in a prop­er choke-hold cause they should know how to take care of them­selves, and you’re smart in all the ways I’m not.

We all need you as much as I do. That’s why you’re still alive, and that’s what I’m going to make you under­stand one day.

Geneviève + James — Wedding Day

Interested in hir­ing me? Check out my port­fo­lio.

Earlier this month, I had the plea­sure of film­ing Geneviève and Jamie on their wed­ding day. It was a beau­ti­ful out­door cer­e­mo­ny in the coun­try with only about 50 peo­ple, and a veg­an din­ner for the recep­tion.

One of the inter­est­ing things I got to see was the sock dance, an old French-Canadian tra­di­tion where the eldest unmar­ried sib­ling has to don a pair of ugly socks (sym­bol­iz­ing their cold feet) and do a sil­ly dance. People throw mon­ey at him or her, which is then col­lect­ed for the new­ly mar­ried cou­ple.

I decid­ed to keep the grad­ing nat­ur­al cause there are so many vibrant colours in each scene — from tat­toos, hair dye, clothes, foliage, and dec­o­ra­tions — that I want­ed to bring out for a light­heart­ed, play­ful mood. Goddammit I love grad­ing; it’s become my favourite part of the process. You can set so many kinds of tones with colour alone.

The colours also led me to decide on using Beirut’s “Postcards from Italy” for the song, as the ukulele and horns empha­size that fes­tive feel­ing won­der­ful­ly.

I also got to work with Liz, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who’s as fan­tas­tic1 as she is con­sid­er­ate. So far, she’s been the only one to say to me, “Tell me if I get in your way”, before I could say it to her. Guess who I’m refer­ring if any­one asks me for a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er rec­om­men­da­tion.

Sometimes I study the films of video­g­ra­phers I admire, and I’m inspired by their style but it nev­er feels right when I try to achieve the same for my films. They rely on edit­ing to make their films inter­est­ing, and the films end up look­ing posed or unnat­ur­al. I’ve real­ized that I have to fol­low my own style — telling a sto­ry by cap­tur­ing the beau­ty in the sim­plic­i­ty — because that’s what I’ve been try­ing to do in words and pho­tos my whole life.

  1. She has a pre­view on her blog. [↩]

the path of least resistance

on the path of least resis­tance, you dis­cov­er:

  • it is impos­si­ble to explain the appeal of dub­step to some­one who’s nev­er heard it
  • every­thing works out in the end
  • moon­walk­ing is eas­i­er to do with­out pants on
  • just hugs are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from hugs after kiss­es
  • no one is ever too old to eat Pocky
  • say­ing we can still be friends is like your mom telling you your dog died and say­ing you can still keep it
  • there is nev­er enough time
  • Dolly will do any­thing for food