April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Blogging

This is What a Feminist Looks Like

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Julie Zeilinger, is a 16-year-old high school sophomore from Pepper Pike, Ohio and the owner of theFBomb.org

In this case the “F Bomb” stands for “feminist.” However, the fact that the “F Bomb” usually refers to a certain swear word in popular culture is not coincidental. TheFBomb.org is for girls who have enough social awareness to be angry and who want to verbalize that anger. TheFBomb.org is loud, proud, aggressive, sarcastic…everything teenage feminists are today.

Never let it be said that feminism is dead!

Congratulations and good luck with your blog.

You like me! You really like me!

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April Reign has been nominated over at the CBA’s in the Best Non-Partisan Blog and Best progressive Blog categories. Thank you for the nominations!

Unfortunately for the mods at the CBA’s they must sort between traditional blogs like mine and such feminist stalwarts as BBW. 😆

Good luck with that mods and good luck to everyone nominated. Especially the progressives 😉

WordPress themes and other things

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I’ve been lax on my political blogging, though much of what I’m reading makes you wonder if the human race has jumped the shark.

What I have been doing is building WordPress themes Serenity was my first one. I had thought about calling it “it’s my first day”(Simpsons fans will get that)

The second and third are a wide and narrow version of the same theme. It’s called Dark Room (920px version here)

I’ve also built a theme for a contest so can’t show it here. Probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it.

I’ve also been doing a lot of living in the land of plugins both WordPress and Firefox. Plugin developers are truly unsung heroes of the web.

I think I’m going to work on a theme for Canadian political blogging next. Anyone have any ideas they would like to see incorporated into something like that?

Shameless Promotion

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April Reign is now the proud owner of two new blogs.

Fat Cat Designs: Building and designing on wordpress.

Fat Cat Designs does everything from full site design to adding some graphics or tweaking code.

Mousetales: Is a place to discuss all things tech. Blogging platforms to the latest games.

New so short on content but new content will be added constantly and we are accepting authors or articles if you are interested. (at this point just for the glory,not for pay. 😉 )

Hope you will stop by and check us out!

WordPress 2.5 and so on

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alternate title “Sunday Self Indulgence”

The last few weeks have been very busy, not so much with front end blogging but with back end tweaking (file that under things that sound dirty but aren’t)

After the very busy and lengthy Bread and Roses forum overhaul, I did the forums over again completely using Brian Gardner’s beautiful forum templates. They are much smaller, easier on download and well built. Brian also designed the Revolution template that AR runs on. Again a well designed, well coded template makes all the difference. How could a leftist not love a template called Revolution?

I’ve been trying the various trial versions of 2.5 and I’m quite impressed. The image handling might prove interesting for those on older computers, but it is certainly an improvement on the old style. For anyone who likes to show off their digital pics the gallery abilities will be welcome. Spent yesterday uploading the new version to all the Bread and Roses sites and updating and fixing plugins to make sure they were compatible.

I added this theme Massive News Mobile and a theme switcher. Don’t know how much use it will be but it seemed interesting.

I redid a site for a client on a template that seemed simple enough but was a PITA, came out well though. Sadly this was strictly gratis. Sigh.

Coding skills and graphic abilities are getting a workout.

pogge posted this great video over at BnR the other day. Enjoy!

10 Reasons why I don’t care if you don’t like my blog

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Seems there is a meme going around with people making conform or else lists.

Never being one who enjoyed being dictated to, I’ve decided to counteract that meme. Join in if you wish!

1) My blog is my space and will be decorated and re-decorated to suit my tastes and reflect my interests, passions, and needs. If you don’t like the colours, layout whatever…go decorate your own blog.

2) I write to what interests, inspires, angers or moves me. Not everyone will share those impressions. But I am writing from my experience not yours.

3) I like techie things. I like the feature galleries, and video embedding etc. My last template was pretty slick that way. Unfortunately some people are dealing with older computers that no likie that. So I downsized my techie. Still sad 🙁 but I do love this template too.

4) My topics, and lately it seems to be the same one or two, won’t appeal to everyone. I’m not trying to garner mushy middle readers. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. – Bishop Desmond Tutu

5) I am not a grammarian–again with the rules. If you are focusing on editing instead of reading you probably aren’t interested in what you are reading anyway.

6) I’ve set this blog up with different areas for different subjects, an Activism area and a couple of ads for BnR affiliated sites. Likely no one reads the extra areas but some things I do as much for me as anything. 🙂

7) Me, me, me. Of course there is a lot of me in my blog. Were you expecting someone else? 8)

8 ) I don’t have the time to write to every news story or political development. I also run two aggregators, a board, a board blog, write to Birth Pangs on occasion, am trying to start a business and in my spare time have a house to run and kids to care for. I don’t have time for the multi post type blog. And I refuse to do partisan politics. My emphasis is on rights and freedoms and caring for the environment. None of the parties are impressing me with their commitment to same.

9) I used to have as an avatar on the board a quote by Maggie Kuhn; “Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind — even if your voice shakes.” I see blogging as way to speak my mind, to take back power, to allow more than the pre-packaged pablum much of the main stream media has become to filter through. My voice (writing) may shake, but I will speak my mind.

10) If you don’t read my blog it probably won’t affect either one of us greatly. I won’t stop writing, you may not start reading. But it is in the act of allowing each of us our space, our way of doing things. Our unique gifts, talents and expressions, that we embody the best that can be said of any culture; “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” Voltaire