Posts in category "Random"

Wu Wei WordPress Theme

I’m offi­cial­ly announc­ing Wu Wei, a free, open-source, GPL-licensed WordPress theme I designed over the course of a few months.

I real­ly enjoy web design. The only prob­lem is that I when I’m sat­is­fied with a lay­out like this, I don’t feel the need to change it (aside from small tweaks), which means I don’t get a chance to come up with some­thing new.

So I decid­ed to cre­ate a WordPress theme for the pub­lic. That way I can con­tin­ue to flex my design mus­cles, and oth­er peo­ple can have the ben­e­fit of using it.

Wu Wei has been a labour of love. This is the theme I always want­ed to cre­ate — bold fonts, a clean look, with lots of con­trast. The dev­il is in the details, like the way every­thing aligns neat­ly to the grid.

With almost 2000 down­loads so far, there’s been some nice buzz:

Someone also sent me this e‑mail:

Hey Jeff, I love the theme. I was casu­al­ly brows­ing around for some­thing very clean and mod­ern look­ing — I saw the name “Wu Wei” and I down­loaded it imme­di­ate­ly. It turned out to be per­fect!

As a prac­tic­ing young taoist I fig­ured the name was per­fect.

Take it easy,
Justin

I love see­ing how dif­fer­ent peo­ple are using the theme, whether they’re blog­gers, come­di­ans, pho­tog­ra­phers, review­ers, or design com­pa­nies. You can check out the demo page here.

This theme is only the first of a tril­o­gy of WordPress themes I have planned, based on Taoist ideas. Wu Wei is ded­i­cat­ed to my Tai Chi teacher, Michael Babin. And since the con­cept of wu wei or “effort­less action” is impor­tant in inter­nal mar­tial arts like Tai Chi Chuan as well, I thought it was only fit­ting that he should have the hon­our of the first ded­i­ca­tion.

I Could Be Dead Right Now

That’s what I keep think­ing when I look at these pic­tures.

Accident 1

Accident 2

Accident 3

A few week­ends ago, Aaron invit­ed me to ride with him dur­ing an out-of-town cruise with his auto club. I ini­tial­ly accept­ed, until I found out that was the same day and time Frédéric and Misun were leav­ing Canada. So I had to turn Aaron down, since I did­n’t know when I’d see them again.

That was also the day and time that it hailed for about an hour — in late spring. And on tak­ing a turn, the hail made Aaron lose his trac­tion. Both him, and the per­son dri­ving behind him, spun out of con­trol. The per­son behind hit a guard rail. Aaron went into a ditch.

The impact on the rocks was on the pas­sen­ger side. Where I was going to be sit­ting. And it was strong enough to shat­ter the back wind­shield.

Thankfully, Aaron is alright, with the x‑rays show­ing that he only has tis­sue dam­age. I may not have been so lucky.

The Kissing Map

There were patch­es of skin on her body that would build, and turn white, and flake.

She was always self-con­scious of those areas, to the point of tears, but I called them my kiss­ing map, as each patch would lead my lips to the next. In the dark, the spots revealed them­selves in their tex­ture, like del­i­cate wounds. How dif­fer­ent they tast­ed, how strange that skin felt against my own.

I would always kiss those spots, in hopes that my lips would con­vince her that she had noth­ing to be self-con­scious about around me. To ease, and share their bur­den.

To acknowl­edge that she was flawed, as we all are on earth, but I still loved and accept­ed her, despite it all.