Spherical.org Blogs

Sometimes, surprises can be a very good thing. Many times they’re not but this one is very welcome and special, indeed. Late Friday afternoon a message arrived from Donna Stevens, our good friend at the Planetary Society, informing us of their surprise.

WordPress 3.3 hit release just a few days ago, so I dived into the code of the new Admin system to figure out what had changed.

As with all things open source, if you have a good idea that stands the tests of use and time, eventually it will find its way into core. As a result, my code is shrinking some with each new release of WordPress… Read the Full Story...

Give Me Some Space! Many of our friends, colleagues and visitors to our blogs and websites are Space Buffs. Either they work in the space industry as scientists, astronomers, astrophysicists, teachers, space artists, or are just plain crazy about space. We are, too, and we work the space theme into a LOT of our creations. We have developed many different artworks in glass of various types… Read the Full Story...

When I first went to the house where the neighbor said a litter of kittens was living under the deck, I had already captured one of them out on the road. I knew she was a beautiful little girl, but had only seen a fleeting glimpse of one other kitten – a little black one. Here is the first one I caught:… Read the Full Story...

After we found and rescued our recent litter of kittens from under a deck of a rented house a little ways up the road by the mailboxes, we were stunned at how striking their features and markings were. We looked into what breed they might be and found that they showed all the signs of being pure blood Bengal kittens. Of course, being abandoned and feral, we had no… Read the Full Story...

Loving astronomy, and becoming a glassblower, it was only a matter of time before we would try re-creating the planets and Sun in blown glass. It is an interesting challenge to figure out the right mix of colors, the density of the colors and how big or small the chips of color (frit) need to be so that they will mix and swirl together and look like whichever planet's… Read the Full Story...

In 1985, I went with my mom to our vet's office in Indiana. We were there for regular shots for some of my mom's kitties. We always have had numerous cats and I had recently adopted a tiny little striped grey girl, naming her "Crystal". But while I was waiting, I looked up and at the top of a tall bookcase was a regal and strikingly beautiful full grey Korat cat. He sat tall and surveyed his room. I was told that he was a bit over a year old and had been abandoned, so was their "shop kitty". I was smitten. I asked if I could see him… Read the Full Story...

Everything. A person's name stays with them for their entire life and long after they've departed this continuum that they share with us for too short a time. Choosing one is a huge responsibility. Choosing the right one is daunting at times. It has to "fit" and, if you're of the creative and imaginative type, like us, it has to be interesting. At its very best, a name for… Read the Full Story...

Our lives are so much more rich because we have rescued families of Maine Coon and Bengal kittens but this first post is about a different kind of rescue. Sometimes, it is difficult to know who is the stray.

We have a number of breeds as "singletons"; most of whom arrived here on their own, determined that this is a nice place and they want to stay. We… Read the Full Story...

With the release of WordPress 3.2, it's time for a plugin update. The Admin Screen layout and menus have changed a bit, many things for the better, and Ozh updated his plugin for v3.2 compatibility. My turn. Going in, my concern was how to make these new changes and not have WordPress 3.1.x users end up with screwed up menu bars. No way to know until I dived into… Read the Full Story...