Credits
Many thanks to the lovely and talented El Pisces, along with friends and fellow astrologers too numerous to list here. I’m deeply grateful for your support and understanding as I pull at and write about the loose threads of my thoughts, and wrestle with my own transits.
Main orange background image by The Dogfather. Various stock pieces and vector images used to build the new logo are from iStockphoto. mp3 player and other icons from Geomicons.
Design & Technical
Theme
Signs of Potential has always been a WordPress-based site. The original Signs design was a citrusy combination of clean lines and paisley built on WooThemes’ Headlines theme. It aged well, but the theme itself became increasingly popular; after it was released to WordPress.com as a free theme I knew it was time for a facelift. After some debate I returned to WooThemes and built the current site on the newly updated, super-flexible Canvas theme.
Typography
The masthead and signature typeface of the site is Cipher, by Todd Bushman. It is paired with the geometric sans serif Century Gothic, which has experienced a certain revival as a “green” typeface thanks to the University of Wisconsin. All headers and navigation items are set in Lato by Łukasz Dziedzic, while the body text is in the old web standby of Arial.
Content
All code, writing, and original images are created within the Cult of Mac, first on a 2nd-gen black Macbook, and now on a unibody MacBook Pro running 10.6 Snow Leopard. I write straight in the WordPress dashboard or in simple TextEdit files. Post images are either my own, or are from the Flickr Creative Commons pool. Graphic images are created in Pixelmator or Photoshop CS5.
Astrological
First release
Signs of Potential first launched in May 2009, and although I had been practicing astrology for a long time I did not elect the date, since it was originally a spontaneous and entirely personal project. It was an intense period, transit-wise: at the time Pluto was trining my moon and the detox stellium was stationed on my Part of Spirit, opposite my Mars and trine my Libra planets. Mercury was indeed retrograde at the time; rx periods are often the most productive times of year for me, as Mercury is retrograde in my own chart. The Sun-Moon-Saturn grand earth trine is the other dominant feature of the chart.
{14 May 2009, 12:47a, Dania, FL}
Sun – 23.32 Tau – AN INDIAN WARRIOR RIDING FIERCELY, HUMAN SCALPS HANGING AT HIS BELT.
Moon – 19.33 Cap – A HIDDEN CHOIR SINGING DURING A RELIGIOUS SERVICE.
Asc – 1.15 Aqu – AN UNEXPECTED THUNDERSTORM.
Mercury – 29.54r Tau – A PEACOCK PARADING ON THE TERRACE OF AN OLD CASTLE.
Redesign
I decided to redesign and relaunch the site in July of 2011, a few weeks before the final pass of my Saturn return. The transit took a toll on my health and writing with Saturn in my 3rd squaring Pluto in my 6th, and I’m thankful the veil is lifting enough for me to return to my work here with a renewed sense of focus.
Unlike the actual birth of the site, I did elect this date and time. Venus is squarely on the ascendant with the sun close behind (on my own north lunar node), trine Uranus at the midheaven. Taurus moon for bonus familiarity points. I didn’t look up the Sabians until afterward, however. Some things are better left to synchronicity and shouldn’t be engineered.
{25 July 2011, 5:10a, Seattle, WA}
Sun – 2.13 Leo – A MATURE WOMAN, KEEPING UP WITH THE TIMES, HAVING HER HAIR BOBBED.
Moon – 27.44 Tau – A MATURE WOMAN REAWAKENED TO ROMANCE.
Asc – 25.51 Can – GUESTS ARE READING IN THE LIBRARY OF A LUXURIOUS HOME.
Mercury – 28.14 Leo – A MERMAID EMERGES FROM THE OCEAN READY FOR REBIRTH IN HUMAN FORM.
