The Basics
3 Dog Days is the personal weblog of this girl. It’s a reincarnation of former weblogs, namely JadedAlien, LVGnome & (Un)focused Logic (as well as the odd couple of others).
Why The Changes?
As mentioned elsewhere, once I moved to the US, I discovered I wasn’t as jaded as I thought I would be. Despite the fact that I do still take things with a grain of salt and there are a few things that still leave me standing there looking like a stunned mullet, I’ve found the reality to be far different to what I expected. 99.9% of people I’ve met have been wonderfully friendly, and to this day, I’m still being welcomed to my new home by complete strangers. For that reason, I chose the name LVGnome because (obviously) I live in Las Vegas and my online nick is GnomeGrrl. Contrary to popular belief, it has nothing to do with World Of Warcraft. Although I am an avid player, the Gnome refers to my Linux GUI of choice.
As it turned out, I wasn’t terribly happy with the choice a few months down the track, particularly not when the site became extremely neglected. I was looking to breathe fresh life in to it, in conjunction with another project I’m working on. UnFocusedLogic became the obvious choice after yet another night of being berated for my womanly “fuzzy logic zone”.
3 Dog Days came about because I was tired of being unfocused. I wanted something with a little more clarity to start 2012. My new home (the middle of the Mojave Desert!) is about as close as you can get for dog days, and well ... I have 3 dogs. It seemed like it would be a perfect fit.
More About Us
The site will expand as time goes on, but for now, you can learn more about the site owner and her family here, or if you’re interested in their journey to become Legal Permanent Residents of the US, you’ll find the low-down here.
The Layout
I’m using the Paper Core theme by Pexeto, modified to work with ExpressionEngine. It’s available from the Theme Forest.
The images are all my own. Most were taken locally, though there are a couple in there from our travels to Arizona and Minnesota. The turtles are my own (though the smaller has gone to the big pond in the sky). You may not steal them. Unless you ask me nice.
The Power
We run ExpressionEngine. It’s a fantastic CMS tool that I have been using since becoming a “switcher” when MovableType went commercial, back in 2004. I highly recommend it to any serious developer. It offers far more fine-grained control than it’s competitors and with add-ons, it can do almost anything you want it to do. Despite a few of my misgivings regarding how commercialized (and expensive) it’s become and a recent dabble in the aforementioned WordPress, I keep on coming back. Rather like an abused girlfriend.
A variety of modules and plugins are used to help achieve what we need here on the site and I highly recommend you check out expressionengine.com for developers add-ons as well as third-party add-ons (often found in the forums). Also check out Devot-EE for a comprehensive list.
A Note On Dates, Spelling and Temperature
Being from New Zealand and living many years with the date system and British-style spelling, it’s been decided that I won’t be altering it for this site. So, instead of month/date/year, you will see day/month/year and we will be colourful rather than colorful.
It’s partly due to the fact that friends and family from “the old country” will be visiting, but it’s also very tough to teach an old dog new tricks. It’s bad enough that my own father thinks I sound “American”.
Likewise, New Zealand runs on Celsius rather than Fahrenheit. If I said it was 112 degrees, my family would think I’d finally descended in to the depths of hell (and please, no sarcastic remarks about the fact I live in Vegas!). I will endeavoUr to use both however.
