New decade/year. New design for the blog. New resolutions.

• Reduce (overconsumption?) by about 35%.
  Partly because I’m trying to be more environmentally conscious. Partly because, although I knew the cheap stuff I bought probably meant someone was being under-paid to make it, it didn’t resonate loud enough until I heard Annie Leonard, in The Story of Stuff, say “I’m not paying for the things I buy”. I’m a proud person. I don’t want other people to pay for my things (by being exploited).
  I’m not going for Voluntary Simplicity this year, but I’ll try to develop better buying habits.
• Continue to give blood.
• Go to a festival. Hot-air balloons, western, whatever.
• Become better-informed about environmental issues.
• Eat less meat. (Meat pollutes. Heck, meat kills animals.)
• Start to give small chores to the kids, for them to help out around the house.
  So far, I’ve asked them to put away the cereal boxes after breakfast, sort the silverware from the dishwasher, and take out the place mats for dinner. Any other ideas?
• Find a physical activity that is useful (ie. motivating…).

PS. About the new design: it’s going to look super if you’re using Google Chrome (CSS3, yay!), good if you are using Firefox, and ok if you are using standards-carefree Internet Explorer. (Seriously people: IE is dragging its feet in adopting the standards, do yourself a favor and upgrade to an alternate. You will find the web looks better than you thought.)

A couple of years ago, Émilie asked me to set up our WordPress installation to allow publishing in both English and French. So here is how we achieved this. Technically, having a bilingual blog isn’t that complicated – it’s writing all the posts twice that takes some patience.

After trying out several things and plugins, we finally found what we needed: Polyglot. We still use the 0.4 that existed back then – and which still works nicely – but I’m sure the newer 2.5 version is even better (as a matter of fact, I really should update that eventually).

Polyglot is really simple to install and use. For installation, one must modify polyglot.php to define the languages to be used, then modify wp-config.php for the default language. Next, to allow visitors to view the site in the preferred language, the parameter &lp_lang_pref=en or &lp_lang_pref=fr must be added to the link for language choice. This parameter will create a cookie that will remember the preference of the visitor. As for the RSS links, they can be located by adding ?lp_lang_view=fr or ?lp_lang_view=en to the links.

For composing, it’s not complicated either: everything that is between <lang_en> </lang_en> tags will only appear if the language parameter is ‘en’. For example:
<lang_en>Here is a cool picture</lang_en><lang_fr>Voilà une belle image</lang_fr><img src=’coolpic.jpg’>

In this example, the text is translated according to the visitor’s language, and the image appears in both cases (no need to repeat it because it is not included in a language tag).

For more advanced users, it is also possible to create your bilingual theme by using a php Polyglot command directly in your theme files; for example this text that presents recent posts:
<?php lp(’<lang_fr>Récents articles</lang_fr><lang_en>Recent posts</lang_en>’); ?>
In version 0.4, it was the lp command that was available, it think this has changed in the newer version to p__ or p__e.

When we started using Polyglot, bilingual blog plugins were pretty rare, and those that worked even more so. Polyglot has met our needs. There are probably more possibilities today, but I recommend it because it is simple and handles the job well.

There. Now all’s left is translating this post.

Oh, I’ve had fun with this redesign. If you’re wondering what I’ve been doing lately – except for raising two kids, working part time, cooking/eating/sleeping/cleaning, working on my project for this year’s BW secret santa, figuring out logistics for holiday festivities and all that – this is it. This has been my little hobby island these past few weeks. And you ain’t seen all of it yet.

Let’s note first that I’ve changed the blog name. Partly because I’ve outgrown my liking for it (let’s face it, we’re not Italian), and because I really should have googled that previous name before adopting it. It’s now called “The Stories of our Lives”, because that’s what the blog is.

As for the theme, I call this one “Kaleidoscope” (it was either that or “Rubik”), because I can change its look in different ways. The head photo can be replaced, of course, but I have also built up (as of yet) four nuance schemes with the same original structure.

1. The present one is “Snowflakes”, meant for the holidays/winter;
2. there is also “Sepia”, a more antique look;
3. then “Suit up”, contemporary/masculine;
4. and finally “Rainbow”, which I like a lot, it’s very much a preschool look and I’ve used authentic chalk drawings of Xavier for the background.

These other nuances will dress up the blog alternatively according to how they match the header photo.

I have to thank Frank for a couple of things:

• Coding the PHP gizmo that updates the kids’ ages on the logo tab on the left.
• Setting up the widget that drops random pics from our Picasaweb albums on the right.

Enjoy the new theme – I know I do!

PS. We might be adding soon a little menu that will let visitors go from a nuance to the next, as they wish. To be followed…

Frank has played with the blog setup, and enabled cookies for the bilingual preferences. In standard English (ha-ha…), this means that, once you have clicked on your preferred language on the top right of the page, (almost all) the text will be displayed in that language. This preference will also be maintained throughout the blog – as opposed to reverting back to English once a link is used, as it annoyingly used to do.

There is also a French RSS feed available now, which is great news for all our French RSS subscribers. (If there’s one of you out there, feel free to drop a comment and surprise us.) You’ll find the link in the sidebar.

I might or might not use this feature for post titles. I haven’t decided yet if I prefer having a title in each language, or just one title with the accompanying translation in the other language (and a bit of language education at the same time, in a way) – opinions are welcome.

New theme! w00t!!

Well alright, the background image is the same, but that’s not the point. The layout and interface is all-new.

Like the last theme (NF Tree), FamiliaFlex is a flexible chameleon: I can just switch the background image and two or three colours in the CSS and the site looks entirely different, according to season or mood. This one pushes the idea even further with transparent backgrounds and a nifty footer. The code is cleaner, too, since I prepared this one from scratch, though I’ll admit I copy-pasted a lot of stuff.

Oh that reminds me: browser IE 6 and older will probably break all the transparency, so if you’re using that, UPGRADE already! Don’t do it for me, do it for yourself (and as a favour for all web designers world wide).

Exactly one month later, we are back with some content. Of course, the most interesting days and weeks of the year are the ones where one is too busy to post anything.

Holidays
I have a couple of things I’d like to post about, but for now I will start with a recap from the holidays, which were quiet and nice – ie. not too crazy. We didn’t travel too much – ie. we skipped on my family reunions in Beauce this year – and kept to simple and cozy celebrations with my close family and Frank’s relatives in town. Xavier was wonderful throughout, even when we woke him up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to celebrate. But let’s cut to the chase… pictures and video.

We have a full album up of Christmas with my (Émilie’s) family, and Frank’s mom put up her pictures of Christmas with both of Frank’s extended families. The complete albums will be more interesting for relatives, but here are a couple of favourites for everyone:

Xavier learning to unwrap gifts:

Serious negociations between boy and uncle:

Learning guitar:

Xavier’s not the kiss-kiss type:

Merry Xmas:

Little elf:

Most (all) pictures from the holidays with Frank’s family were taken by Frank’s mom and dad, since we were pretty busy filming the event. Frank edited a video of the holidays; it’s a little long, but for interested relatives, you will find it here.

Manon’s birthday

Right after the holidays, we had a family dinner to celebrate my mom’s birthday (Jan.9), and an album of pictures is up for this event as well. Of course, Xavier stole some of the spotlight with his face full of chocolate icing:

I don’t think mom minded, seeing as she was his main provider of cake:

Funny videos

And if you’ve made it this far, well surely you deserve a little treat. Here are two funny videos of (you guessed it) Xavier.

Xavier dancing:

Jumping Xavier (w/Frank) – they’d been at it a while before I started filming, too:

What Xavier is exclaiming during breaks is his version of “encore” (again)…

That concludes our very long post for today. We’ll be back (quicker than last time, surely) with more family news. Meanwhile, please receive our warmest wishes for 2008!