I always say that I’m going to do posts about simple web developing things so that you can learn and be aware of the new stuff but I never do. the fact is that the technology, specially the web developing world changes really fast and it is almost impossible for me to keep up with everything and write about it as often as I would like.

The other day, my dear business partner showed me an incredible food blog (she’s the one who got me into baking) and besides it having a gorgeous design, it loaded extremely fast despite it having really big, high quality pictures.

I immediately did what I always do and decided to check out the source code to see if I could find out how her images had that nice fade in effect. Enter the jQuery Lazy Load plugin!

When you have a web page, all the images load at the same time when you open it. If you have big images, high quality ones or just images that have big file sizes, then the loading time can take a loooong while. Most of the users don’t like that and they will say that your website is too slow and things like that, that you sure don’t want to hear and might not know how to fix without compromising the quality of your images or your beautiful blog design.

I did a little diagram to explain how this little piece of code works.

As I said before, usually the web page will load every single image that it can find, even if you can’t really see it at first glance. In reality, when you open a website you can only see whatever it fits inside your browser window. This area of visibility is called a view port.

The jQuery Lazy Load plugin only loads the images that are localized inside this view port and as you are scrolling down, it loads the rest. It has some cool effects like fade-ins and things like that. I love how images just appear as I scroll down and it is very smooth about it.

I’ve been using this plugin for at least 2 weeks now and I don’t regret doing it. My website is much faster and I can take care of taking better quality pictures without compromising my reader’s time. I totally recommend this for blogs that are very image heavy.

Ok, I’m sold. How do I install it?

For self-hosted WordPress blogs, the only thing you have to do is install the jQuery lazy load plugin from your dashboard and activate it. I should note that if you have a LightBox plugin installed, it will not work.

For Blogger, the process is a little bit trickier since you have to edit your template file. Simply go to the Template tab on your dashboard, then click Edit HTML, say continue to the warning. Now, using Ctrl (Command) + F search for “</head>”. Above that paste this code:

<script charset='utf-8' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<script src='https://sites.google.com/site/addinblogger/how-to-add-in-blogger/lazyload-min.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<script charset='utf-8' type='text/javascript'>
$(function() {
$(&quot;img&quot;).lazyload({placeholder : &quot;https://sites.google.com/site/addinblogger/how-to-add-in-blogger/grey.gif&quot;,threshold : 200});
});
</script>

Click save and you will be done. This code was found here.

If you try it, please let me know how it worked out for you and also tell me if you would like more posts like this one.

Kisses!

On Thursday, my mum and I went to run some errands and then we went into Sally Beauty Supply to buy some staples we were missing. We needed acetone and a new nail file, I also decided to get nail polish thinner and Orly’s Tough Cookie. I’m sure you can tell from the pictures, but my nails are really small, they are thin, they peel and for some strange reason polish won’t stick to them.

Polish not sticking to your nails is the most annoying thing, my glitter gradient just peeled off like a day and half after I finished it. The whole polish came off as if it were a false nail. It really is disappointing seeing all the hours of hard work just peel off after a day and half.

Once I was home, I took off the polish that I had put on after the glitter gradient and I started working on this pink and plum gradient. the result was really cute. I used polish that I thinned as soon as I came back home and it was amazing seeing all my colours working again. Thinned polish doesn’t work as well as normal polish, but for the purpose of this manicure it really did. I applied a silver glitter coat and Tough Cookie as a Top Coat and left to see a friend of mine.

My friend and I went to a mall that is literally a street away from her house and we just walked all around. I went to search for ADSL modems and then I saw the store that sells NYX in Mexico. I went in, they didn’t have a lot NYX but they did have matte nail polish! I couldn’t believe it. I’ve been searching for matte polish for a long time and it was there. I decided to buy the matte top coat because I would use it more. After that, we went into the store that sells Kleancolor color polishes and I got two. By now, you could see little pieces of polish falling away on the corners of my nails.

Bokeh!

I applied a little bit of the bigger polish from Kleancolor Aurora on my nails and the next day I was trying to open a jar or something for my mum and my right middle finger polish came off. It just peeled off and I have no idea why. I had applied the base coat, the top coat and even did the tip wrapping technique when painting my nails. I got so mad and then I found out that all my nail polish was coming off. I just went ahead and peeled it all off, it just came off with no harm on my nails.

I’m going to give Tough Cookie another opportunity, I’m sporting darker nails this time and way less coats of polish (only 4 in total: Tough Cookie as base, black polish, fine glitter, Tough Cookie as top coat) and I’m going to follow the Tough Cookie treatment and see how it goes.

My parents had a party yesterday and my mum asked me to do her nails. Her fingers look really dry because we got pure acetone and pure acetone is SUPER drying. She wanted something more subtle than my weird gradient experiments and I did a very simple pink gradient with a hint of glitter. She liked it a lot and her friends did too.

Close up!

I don’t know why my nails are so terrible when my mum and sister have great nails :(. I must have gotten them from my dad u_u. Well, I’m going to go back to work now. See you in a few days!

Kisses!

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m really into nail art right now. Ever since my sister asked me to help her learn how to do a water marble manicure I’ve been watching way too many nail art YouTube videos and wow! You really can do a lot of stuff to your nails! I had no idea about all this nail art world beyond the French tips and the salon effects nail stickers.

One of the videos I really liked was this Plum Gradient tutorial by Klaire. I wanted to try it right away but I don’t have any working purple and pink polish, I tried the tutorial with turquoise and dark green. It looked nice but then my sister wanted me to water marble her nails and my manicure got ruined because the turquoise polish decided to fly around. It was really fun but water marbling is hard, I don’t think that I will ever attempt to do it anytime soon.

That night, I decided to try and fix my gradient and found my super cheap and pretty useless navy glitter. Surprisingly, it hasn’t fallen off and it look great. I think that the gazillion polish coats give my nails a kind of fake look that I love. I never let my nails grow because they are really thin and break super easily. This manicure gives them a little more strength and it hasn’t chipped away yet.

Here is the list of polishes that I used to make this, if you would like a mini tutorial or something I would advise you to look in YouTube, there are hundreds from very nail-savvy and talented girls.

• Make up sponge
• Fingerpaints Art Dealer Teal-er
• Fingerpaints Scenery Greenery
• Kleancolor Holo Blue
• Generic navy glitter polish
• China Glaze Fast Forward Top Coat

What are your favourite nail polish trends/styles?

Kisses!

ETA: A bokeh shot, I took this after I uploaded the post, the holographic/rainbow glitter is amazing, right? More pictures available at my Flickr account.