WordPress, Lightbox & SmoothGallery

Ryanlightbox, lightview, mootools, NextGEN, NextGEN smooth gallery, slimbox

Since I just spent an hour debugging a problem that others probably also have ran into, I’ll post my findings and workaround. I’ve been using lightbox for my images here for a while (the thing that darkens the website and pops up a frame with the image, pretty muth common nowdays). This is a great solution for an image of two in a post, but if you want to add a bunch more (or a whole gallery) all those images will really bloat up your post,  so I had a look at different picture gallery software and really liked SmoothGallery. It turns out there are two plugins that make it easy to implement the software into a wordpress blog (NextGEN Gallery and NextGEN Smooth Gallery), but unfortunately SmoothGallery breaks lightbox in WordPress (has to do with the javascript libraries they use). My current workaround is to use Slimbox as an alternative to lightbox until the problem get’s fixed (or until I fix it myself somehow). In the long run I’d really like to return to lightbox (or lightview, a pimped up version).

I hope I get around to writing post of the last few days tomorrow. Wanted to do that this evening, but I got caught up in the gallery/lightbox problems.

a bit of bouldering

Ryan

On the way home from work today I made a little detour to a playground where there are two rocks for bouldering (seems like they are from this company). Yes, I know playgrounds are for kids, but if you ignore the holds the rocks can be a real challenge. Even if they are only about 3m high (a bit less than 10ft), getting to the top without using the holds can be a bit challenging. Sorry for the crappy picture, I only had my cell phone with me …

bouldering

http://maps.google.de [urldisplaymode=nomap]

Climbing

Ryanclimbing

Yesterday we went for a bit of climbing. We have two rock climbing gyms here in town but I still seldom manage to find time to go climbing. I used to go once or twice a week, but this last year I only managed to go climbing a handful of times. Anyway, it was tons of fun even if I have dropped way below what I used to be able to climb. When doing the longer routes I really noticed my arms tiring, but that is just the missing training. Technique is still as good (or bad :-p) as it used to be and my forearms and fingertips are sore (as so often after climbing). I’ll try to go more often since it is fun, but I really need to loose some weight if I want to climb anything harder than a 5+/-6 (only managed a 5- yesterday, I really suck).
I didn’t take any pictures this time, so you all get some older stuff I grabbed from my gallery of the climbing gym …

Corn Labyrinth

RyanCorn Labyrinth

Sunday we went for a bike ride to a corn labyrinth near here. Although “near” may be an exaggeration since it was nearly 60km round trip. It was definitely worth it, the labyrinth was bigger and harder than I had anticipated. Unfortunately my foot started hurting, must have been wearing the wrong shoes the day before. Bike riding was ok, but walking hurts. Hope this gets better within the next few days.