Author: Kristen Ankiewicz

Writer, artist, shameless goof

Responsive design

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I have updated several of my websites to be more cleanly responsive. A responsive website will fit any layout, including phone and table. Additionally it should elegantly resize between various sizes on a desktop. Responsive design is best practice because in today’s world of proliferating devices, it means one set of code serving up the widest set of platforms; it also doesn’t lock the user into a specific design.

I build responsive websites using a combination of pure CSS media queries (using Sass, or Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets), Bootstrap, Respond.js as a responsive polyfill for older browsers, and Google’s HTML5 shim for older browsers. Ankiewicz.com is built using WordPress and PHP. Monsters.net is built using Jekyll and Liquid. Both sites use jQuery and JavaScript.

Resize the following websites in your browser, or visit them on your phone and tablet:

Want a custom theme, a WordPress install on your own domain, or a responsive design? Contact me.

jQuery Isotope

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Sort by color or type

I created a new portfolio with a brand spankin’ new user interface. I arranged the art by color, type of art, and many other criteria, without leaving the page. It’s like playing Tetris with my artwork. Zoom in to see bigger versions, and zoom out again! This is a demo of the Isotope jQuery plugin.


Watercolor image of a face by Kristen Ankiewicz

Bucket of leaves

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I thought this bucket of leaves was pretty, so I took a photo. I like the contrast of the blue against brown, and the murkiness of the water. It reminds me of fall in New England.

Fall in New England

Mona Island Cave, Puerto Rico

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Mona Island Cave

I visited Mona Island, Puerto Rico on a caving expedition a while back. There were a series of caves overlooking the ocean. We camped on the beach for two weeks! The weather was amazing. I snorkeled in the ocean, explored the caves, and hiked.

My pet frog in a YouTube

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white's tree frog

My pet frog. I took a series of photos for a stopmotion animation of the plants growing in his tank. Here is the full video below:

Night time in San Francisco

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San Francisco is great for taking long exposure photography. I took a bunch of long-exposure shots in the South Beach neighborhood.


Long-exposure shot in San Francisco

Extra-kick mushroom asparagus curry soup

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The hexadecimal color of today’s mushroom asparagus curry soup is #5e2300.

Spicy, but you can handle it.

Ingredients:

  1. Maybe 1 cup of water
  2. Maybe 1/3 cup of soy sauce
  3. Maybe 1/2 cup of veggie broth
  4. Maybe 1/2 cup of chicken broth
  5. About 2/3 a container of white button mushrooms
  6. Green onion bunch – I could’ve used two bunches
  7. A handful of bean sprouts
  8. Two tablespoons of red curry paste
  9. One teaspoon of chili oil
  10. Two tablespoons of crushed garlic
  11. Asparagus bunch
  12. 2 baby bok choy, 3 if you feel like it
  13. A tablespoon of salt

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Start a medium heat on the water.
  2. Add broth parts.
  3. Shake in some soy sauce. Soup’s a little brown at this point.
  4. Toss in the bean sprouts.
  5. Toss in the mushrooms (I buy them pre-sliced, but slice ’em if you prefer).
  6. Slice up the green onions and toss them in. I probably could’ve used two bunches.
  7. I use crushed garlic from a jar. Add two tablespoons from a jar, or 4 crushed cloves.
  8. Add two tablespoons of red curry paste and one teaspoon of chili oil.
  9. Soup’s reddish brown at this point! And nearly to a boil.
  10. While that’s working its way to a boil, chop the asparagus bunch in three parts. Toss in all the pieces *except* for the heads.
  11. Quickly chop the bok choy. Toss the white parts in, save the leaves for last.
  12. TASTE SOUP RIGOROUSLY! But be careful, it has kick. Add more soy sauce & water if it’s too spicy; add more chili oil if you want more kick.
  13. Add about a tablespoon of salt (or skip this step – YMMV).
  14. I prefer a balance with more curry and only a tiny bit of chili oil.
  15. At the very last minute, throw in the bok choy leaves and the heads of the asparagus.
  16. Boil it for maybe two more minutes.

TAH DAH!

This will serve two fairly hungry people. Or one insane lady.

The secret to feet happiness

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So lately I’ve been running more and more frequently, most often with a coworker (Edwina) but also with a friend (@shoutingboy) who runs with Team in Training. In order to get past three miles without blisters, I needed a better set of socks/shoes/inserts.

Here’s the new formula:

  • WrightSock Anti Blister Double Layer Coolmesh Quarter Sock
  • Tuli’s Heavy Duty Heel Cup (great if you have flat feet or fallen arches)
  • New Balance 587B sneakers (designed for flat feet/pronating feet)
  • Russel Athletic sweatpants (this doesn’t help the feet, but they do make good jogging pants)

So far so good!

Last Saturday I ran 3.6 miles with no issues, 3 again on Monday, 3 again on Tuesday.

Robert Crumb butts

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You may know of a comic Robert Crumb. He came out of the drug and free love era of the hip 1960’s. His politics are evident in his comics:  the character “Mr. Natural”, the comics “Weirdo”, “Snatch”. He’s a visionary who has been in trouble with the American government for his drawn opinions. He was a woman-chaser, for at least part of his life. His relationships with women were complex. Because of his openness and willingness to express all of this, we have a lovely body of work, in which he works out his demons, his desires, his fetishes, and his lusts.

What I want to talk to you about is how he draws butts.


Source: Amazon.com

Strong… muscular… tank-like. Able to give a grown man a piggy-back ride. With a bit of a shelf. Is it culturally inappropriate to call this a badonkadonk? I don’t know. All I know is, I have one. And it’s growing. Talk to me, ladies. Do you have a shelf? Can you rest things on it? Do you show it off? Do your partners appreciate it? Have you seen this Robert Crumb fetish? My ex-boyfriend did in fact ask me to give him piggy-back rides. Because I do have load-bearing lower body. Pants never have enough “bucket” for my shape.

Nowadays, women are pressured to be built extra skinny, with no calf muscles, and butts of no consequence. Thighs that can’t carry anything. Women toil at the gym to achieve this goal even if it is not their natural disposition.

Now I will not disparage the natural Twiggies of the world – everyone’s got a style and there’s beauty in every body. My point is that we should not forget the Robert Crumb bums either. Be proud of your shelf. Be proud of your powerful thunder thighs. GIVE someone a piggy-back ride. Climb those stairs! I live on a fifth floor walkup. I need those powerful legs! Don’t give into media pressure. There’s a place in the world for every type of butt, and I am here to celebrate the shelf-butt.

Let’s have a party for big strong Robert Crumb butts!

Sneaky Tulum iguana

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We visited the ruins on the beach in Tulum. I like ruins, but honestly, I was more interested in taking photos of the iguanas that were all over the place. The iguana shown here made it into this photo quite accidentally. This photo reminds me that the waters of the Mexican Riviera are turquoise and beautiful.

Tulum iguana

Yucatan Travel Report – Mexican Cenotes

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Iguana sunning himself in Tulum

Tulum Iguana

 

The first thing to do if you are travelling to Cancun is to rent a car and drive southwest on route 307. The map below covers our destinations: Playa del Carmen, Akumel and Lagoon Yal-ku, and Tulum south of the next juncture. We also visited Coba and Punta Laguna to the west.

Map of Yucatan peninsula

Cenotes and caves of Mexico. Kantun-Chi, Cenote Aktun Chen, Dos Ojos Cenote, and Gran Cenote.

I highly recommend stopping at ALL the cenotes. We swam at Cenote Kantun-Chi, Cenote Aktun Chen, Dos Ojos Cenote, and Gran Cenote. See the travel photos and pictures of cenotes. Cenotes are caverns with freshwater pools in which you can snorkel or dive. They are not very well protected or secured. While this is probably not great for the environment or the cenote, it was convenient for our vacation. Tread lightly!

Fishy lake in Cenote Aktun Chen

Cenote Aktun Chen

Stalagmites and stalactites in Cenote Aktun Chen

Cenote Aktun Chen

Cenote Kantun-Chi

A Mayan statue inside a beautiful Mexican cenote, Cenote Kantun-Chi

If you drive a half hour or so south from Cancun on route 307 you’ll hit Playa del Carmen, which is very nice, full of open-air restaurants and cute little motels and some quantity of culture. South of that is Akumel, which is nicer still, particularly because of the snorkelling in Yalku Lagoon and the lovely beaches. Tulum is maybe 2 hours south of Cancun, on the map it is just south of Club de Golf Puerto Aventuras. Tulum is extremely excellent, mostly because you can rent a little cabana on the beach and eat awesome Yucatan-flavored seafood while watching the waves come and go. Coba has some fantastic ruins, and is more full of jungle (we saw monkeys there).

Mariposa the monkey, at Laguna Puntas park near Coba, Mexico

Mariposa the monkey, at Laguna Puntas park near Coba, Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula.

At the end of December it was amazing sunscreen & shorts weather. All the beaches we hit were very swimmable.

Akumel and the beach at night

The beach at Akumel in the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, at night

I really liked the area south of Cancun, but I recommend against staying in Cancun itself. It’s a big city of enormous, absurdly priced hotels. We stayed at the Holiday Inn there our final night, probably would’ve gone back to Tulum if we’d been less tired and hungry. We had to wear plastic bracelets so that the security would know we were okay to come and go. An hour later I wanted to gnaw my wrist off. My boyfriend had to cut the bracelet off with a key.

The water didn’t look very swimmable. The whole place was crowded and urban. It was a giant, faceless hotel, with no character. Hugely overpriced.

Akumel, Tulum and Coba all get an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Hot springs at Esalen!

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We took advantage of the $20 midnight bathing deal at Esalen. If you make a reservation, you can make use of all of their tubs (wonderful geothermal tubs overlooking the ocean and open to the sky) for $20 between 1am and 3am. Being natural night owls, we took advantage of this.

The next morning we hiked to the beach at Andrew Molera State Park.

Andrew Molera State Park

Updates to ankiewicz.com

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I have updated ankiewicz.com using JAlbum, PHP, and mySQL. I use phpMyAdmin to access my database.

I have loaded new photos to the front page. I also made the entire gallery structure of the site less deep, so that a user can more quickly get to the large (pretty) photos. More galleries are directly accessible from the photos home page.

I like the way my web pages look when the images are all the same size. However, I have a number of photos that I like that happen to be vertical. I’m not sure if they can be cropped horizontal and still look good.

It’s probably more worthwhile to spend my time labelling and describing the images.