Apr 092013
 

As I’m sure you’re well aware, I’ve been really struggling lately with how to keep blogging manageable. Now that I’m traveling more or less full-time, plus running my plugin business, maintaining US Radar’s core software, and of course keeping up with daily life – fitness, social, etc – there simply aren’t enough hours in a day. So rather than continue to complain while I fall farther and farther behind, I’ve come up with a more concrete solution I’d like to try out.

The thing is, it’s really the writing and proofreading that takes so much time – I’ve already got thousands of photos I could share, but my format of “a column of photos on the left, a narrative on the right” requires that I produce and arrange enough text to fill the space beside each and every one.

So instead, I’m going to try out a more typical gallery-style approach: grids of photos, perhaps split up with little blurbs but documented primarily by captions. Of course this will result in far less detail – I won’t be describing every little encounter or thought – but I’m hoping it’ll prove sufficiently less labor-intensive to allow me to catch up. And stay caught up. Or at least, stay closer to caught up than I’ve been in the past 😛

So I’ve written some new shortcode to this end, designed to work alongside my typical-style photos when necessary. The following will be my first such post; please let me know your thoughts, about the idea in general or the setup/style/etc.


When I went back to review yesterday’s blog notes, I realized I got so tied up in my “general observations” that I completely omitted the second half of the day. Preah Khan, the latest photographs I included, actually only brings us to about 3pm. By that time I’d been on the go for more than 10 straight hours – I was exhausted, drenched in sweat, and developing a noticeable heat rash – but I still had to push on. The weather was just too perfect, and I was right around the corner from the temple I’d been most eagerly anticipating:

“A visit to Ta Prohm is a unique, other-world experience. The temple is cloaked in dappled shadow, its crumbling towers and walls locked in the slow muscular embrace of vast root systems. If Angkor Wat, the Bayon and other temples are testimony to the genius of the ancient Khmers, Ta Prohm reminds us equally of the awesome fecundity and power of the jungle. There is a poetic cycle to this venerable ruin, with humanity first conquering nature to rapidly create, and nature once again conquering humanity to slowly destroy.” -Lonely Planet


So that’s my idea for a new post format: really just a different layout, which should let me crank out photos more easily without needing so much text. Thoughts?

  5 Responses to “Exploring Angkor: Ta Prohm & Phnom Bakheng”

  1. I think the new photo + caption format strikes a nice balance between keeping the posts interesting and making blogging a little more manageable for you. Glad to see a new post!

  2. New photo format works really well! 🙂

  3. Perfect! Just hit photo 1 and hit the next arrow to read the post as a photo blog. Great job, JK, awesome post! What an amazing country. I have to visit Cam someday.

    So happy to have new material coming again!

  4. Arrow keys to control the pics works well 🙂

  5. So glad to hear everyone likes it! 🙂

Leave a Reply to Allyn Cancel reply

(required)

(required)


(required)

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

Contact | Terms & Privacy
©2004-2024 Justin Klein
whos online
Feedburner
HTML5 Valid
03-28-2024 08:47:14UTC 0.30s 70q 31.63MB