Welcome to Adventures by Burnsland

Welcome to Adventures by Burnsland!

This new site is an extension of the original Burnsland.com site. Here you will find photos and stories of our new adventures, as well as some memories from our previous adventures, too.

Why the change?

There are several reasons for this change. One reason is site speed. The old Burnsland site was created with Wordpress. Wordpress is great for a lot of things, but for me it had become a bit much. And Wordpress takes a good bit of computing work, too. For example, when you click on a Wordpress link, the system has to go grab all of the different parts - header, graphics, content, footer, sidebar stuff, and whatever else - and smush all of that into one file to be sent to you and shown on your screen. Every time you click a new link, it has to go through that page creation process again and then show the to you. Plus, I had added a good bit of add-ons to try to make the whole experience better and also faster. Yes, there are ways to force Wordpress to build a page cache and serve you a static page, but that takes a bit of work, too.

However, this new site is much simpler. Everything is smushed together in a page on my end and then uploaded, so that each page is already created when you click on the link. Faster, and less computing power.

This new site is created using Hugo, a static site generator, and is hosted on Cloudflare pages. It sort of cuts out the middle-man hosting company to make it all get to you even faster, too.

And on top of all of that, I just like changing things up sometimes. And I like learning new things, too. This new way of doing things was a lot to learn for me, and it will continue to be a lot to learn as I go. But that is part of the fun of it for me. Old dog meets new tricks!

Lots of the Same

The format here will be much the same however. Either a photo or lots of photos, or sometimes no photos at all. Stories that tell about the photo (if there is a photo). A Bible verse. And usually a bit about the photo, too. Same kinds of stuff as before, new stuff behind the scenes, and a new location.

And to keep things neat and tidy, there will be a separate Art by Burnsland section for just the art posts, too, all done in the same way as this.

That old content will still be around, in case some of those old things are your favorites. Although sooner or later it might get loaded into this new format, too. Maybe.

Life is all about changes and how to handle them. Sometimes the changes are out of our control, but then sometimes we instigate the changes ourselves just for fun.

Don’t stop changing, and don’t stop having fun!

Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect. - Romans 12:2

Puzzling

Figuring out all of this new stuff has been much like working a puzzle for me. There have been all kinds of different pieces. Some of them don’t seem to fit at all. But I have kept on going, trying to put all of the pieces together. It still may not be complete, but I have a much better idea now of how all of it fits together. Much like this puzzle we have been working on.

We are not the kind to have lots of time to spend on a puzzle at any one time, so puzzles take us a while. But that’s okay, at least until we need that table for something else.

About the Photo

The above photo was actually a late addition to this post. I was thinking that it would be good to include a photo, but I did not know what that photo would be. I had a few ideas, but none of them seemed right. And I wanted a new photo instead of just reusing a photo from a past post.

Then, I walked past this puzzle, and it all immediately made sense, tying in with all of these new pieces of the website puzzle I have been working on.

Photo: A single JPG exposure, processed in Raw Therapee. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Sony Alpha A7 II
Lens: Rokinon 35mm f/1.8
Date: March 14, 2023
Location: Williston, Tennessee