By Any Other Name
April 29, 2003 @ 09:24 PM
Thing One:
I never really gave much thought to the random titles I've attributed to my weblog over time. If I come up with something I find particularly witty, or fitting, or funny, or just plain "fun" without the "ny," I add it to my list of random titles. Eventually, I grow tired of some, and they fall off the face of my CGI script. Others stick around for some time.
The thing is, spiders sometimes notice these titles. Not the eight-legged arachnid variety of spiders, but web spiders. Little pieces of code that wander the web, categorizing stuff. Spiders are what, for instance, Google uses to keep its content up-to-date. Google uses titles as part of a website when it's figuring out search words that should lead to that website.
Normally, this wouldn't mean much, but I've noticed something interesting. In the last two days, no less than seven unique visitors have started at a Google search and ended up here by using the same two-word search term. That term? Anal Leakage.
Yes, that's right. If you're looking for Anal Leakage on the internet, you end up here. That, my friends, is food for thought (with Olestra).
Thing Two:
I'm in the running for the Apex Awards, which is another 'un of those weblog awards. This award (based on the other nominees) seems to focus on aesthetic quality more than much else. There are some beautiful weblogs in the running, to be sure, but I think I've got an edge over the competition if readability is involved anywhere in the equation. Mine is one of the few weblogs currently nominated whose content can be readily interpreted as containing textual elements intended to be read. The others are pretty, yes, but I've done my best here to incorporate elements of form ~and~ function into what is (I hope) an overall pleasing whole. A bunch of unformatted text without pretty graphics is still a weblog. A bunch of pretty graphics without text... not so much. (Photoblogs being a notable exception, but generally in photoblogs, what little text there is, is quite legible)
Thing Three:
Standardized buttons (such as those I use) continue to gain in popularity in the Blogosphere. Taylor McKnight has created a website for the purpose of collecting these buttons in one location for the general public. He was even nice enough to include a few of mine. :)
Speaking of buttons, I created a new button for Wander-Lust and submitted it to them today. Here's a sneak peek:
The administrator of Wander-Lust emailed me back and seemed quite happy to have my submission, so hopefully we wanderers will have a new choice in buttons soon.
Thing Four:
I took a photo of myself and submitted it to The Mirror Project this evening, though I haven't gotten their confirmation yet, so I can't directly link to it. Thus, here it is:
To The Fourth. HP C500
I like it, 'cause I caught my reflection in two mirrors, and my eyes appear twice in the metallic frame surrounding the mirrors. If I look tense, well, it's because I am. :) Dead Week is anything but, and Finals Week is fast approaching. To make matters worse, I'm not even getting the expected bonus of warm weather inspiring relaxed attire in the female population. *pout* In case you can't tell from the picture, I'm wearing a sweater (though no jacket) today.
Have a good evening, all.
Spring Cleaning, Muttering
April 28, 2003 @ 10:27 AM
I cleaned house a bit yesterday, if for no other reason than to prove to Megan that I was still capable of such things. *g* She's been taking care of the housework (and me in general, really) for a while now, so yesterday I mustered up some initiative and did the dishes, 'cuumed, cleaned up the living room, took out all the trashes (from the various rooms), and cleaned the bathroom. It made me feel as though I'd earned my keep for the day. She even noticed when she got home. :)
I also cleaned up the website a bit. I finally got around to fixing the monthly archives so they render right (I'd never re-coded them after switching to the new table-less design, and the new skins weren't working right on the old, tabled design). Normally, I wouldn't worry about the monthly archives all that much, but they seem to be what Google links to with the greatest frequency. So I thought it might be a good idea.
I've also made a few changes to each of the skins over the last week or so, though hopefully, no one really noticed. All I did was tweak the images a bit so the page would load a touch faster as a whole. I made the "Old School" skin 6KB smaller (that's a couple of seconds download time on a 28.8, negligible download time for the rest of us. *g*), the "ArcanaBot" skin 7KB smaller, and the "True Blue" skin a full 20KB smaller, which may even be noticeable on a broadband connection. Of course, the only people who will likely notice are new visitors who don't already have the images cached. And they wouldn't know the page loaded slower initially. Hrm. :)
Missed the bus again this morning, so I missed my first class. I'm starting to worry that I'll have to retake Grammar class my last semester as an Undergrad to get an acceptable grade. My tests and so on are all decent (with the last quiz a notable exception), but my attendance has left something to be desired. My clock and the bus driver's watch have disagreed with each other too often.
I'm going to be intensely stressing over my final French project these next couple of days. We finally got a couple of scenes filmed last night, but one of our group members (Troy, our star, the guy with 40% or so of the lines in the movie) couldn't make it. So I guess we're filming more tonight. You know, since the finished move is due Wednesday. And I'm the one who has to piece the whole thing together in Adobe Premiere. To make matters worse, the stuff I imported from the camera last night has an audio-sync problem (the video started to lag behind the audio at some point in time during the capture), so now I have to re-sync the audio and video for each and every scene I use. If I cry, you'll understand, right?
I think this is Dead Week. Hopefully, more of my teachers will honor Dead Week this year than in years past, and give us a chance to study for finals. Of course, seeing as how three of my four classes have assigned major projects due within the next week... I guess not. Hosers. I've always disliked how, come Dead Week, each of my professors assumes the same thing. They all think to themselves, "It's Dead Week, so the students aren't going to have anything to do in any of their classes. That would be the perfect time to assign that major project!" Of course, when ALL professors assume this, it doesn't bode well for students. No one I've talked to thus far is going to have time to study this week.
Cool Link Found: the World as a Blog (found via Metamorphosism) uses GeoURL, weblogs.com, and some fancy-schmancy scripting to compile real(ish)-time geographical locations of blogs as they're updated. And I'm pretty sure my blog will show up, so I'm happy. :)
Okies, time to get ready to leave for my French class.
What'cha Readin'?
April 25, 2003 @ 06:41 PM
Data sure is fun. I found a new site today (allconsuming.net) via my stats that collects information on what people in the Blogosphere are reading. It hourly scours recently updated weblogs that ping weblogs.com (as any self-respecting blog should do, sayeth the... me) for links to books on Amazon.com (as any self-respecting blogger should do for the books they're reading, with a very slightly possible exception for M'ris, because I'm afraid she might make the smoke come out of Amazon's servers). It then aggregates this data, and posts most popular links for who's reading what. They also allow users to keep a "What I'm Reading" list on their site, which I'm considering doing. Novel ideas, no? And yeah, that pun was pretty much intended.
This was published a couple of days ago, so I'm likely the 8,000th or so blog to link to it, but Anil Dash recently posted a nice entry on the motivation behind his time spent in "the blogging industry." He's also joined the sixapart team (makers of MovableType), so I'm all hot and bothered now. :)
I find Anil's post interesting because there are many times when I forget how good I've got it here in the middle of the state in the middle of the country that likes to beat up other countries smaller than my state. :) Forty years ago, his father lived in a village in India that had no running water or electricity. The majority of the population was illiterate. His father immigrated from that situation to 1960's USA, because he'd read of all the self-improving possibilities offered here. Wow. Try as I might, I can't think of anyplace I could move foreign enough to fully empathize with such a change. Anil suggested the moon, but I don't think that's drastic enough. Sure, it's far from home, but you and I know damn well that when (and I'm going to say when, because I'm an optimist that way) we humans colonize the moon, it's going to be a Western or at the very least a Westernized country doing the colonizing, (I'd prefer to think it will be a collection of countries working together, but you get the idea) and we're going to bring our culture and our everyday technology with us in our carry-ons. Anil can move to the moon, but he's going to bring an awful lot of the States with him when he goes.
I signed up at wander-lust.com today. It's a website for those of us that like to find new blogs. I've posted a link alongside my site badges, so check it out. You click the link, and it takes you to a random blog. Fun stuff. Their servers are a bit slow, which is annoying, but I'll just hope that will improve over time for now. I'm going to design a badge similar to the ones I've already got and submit it to them (a frustrating, sure-to-be-slow step. I prefer Blogshares's method of allowing people to create their own links), in hopes they approve the thing for use. It'd speed up site load times, for sure. And it'd fit my site a whole heck of a lot better.
I fiddled with my Blogroll a bit today. I dropped Raging Platypus because his bi-weekly updating frequency and general lack of new content were bugging me. I've clicked his link at least once a day since I added him to my blogroll, but aside from the nice badge idea and a new link or two, it hasn't done much. In recompense, I've added MemeMachineGo! to the blogroll. That's the weblog of the Zed M'ris refers to so often. I clicked, I was amused, I scrolled, and I continued to be amused. Therefore, I linked.
I need fewer Californians on my blogroll.
I'd like to make a couple of things regarding my "Ethos in the Blogosphere" post a bit more clear, just so you, Dedicated Reader, don't get the wrong impression. I'll go in order of comments. :) First, in case anyone was thinking such, I'm not complaining that I'm not popular (I'm not sure if this was the intended insinuation or not, but I thought I'd mention it). Content comes first, acknowedgement second, so forth, so on. I'm just trying to figure out the rhetorical bases for ~how~ the popular weblogs gained the ethos they have. I'm planning on doing my Rhetoric final paper on it. It's actually an idea spawned from a conversation between myself and my Rhetoric teacher regarding the insta-popularity of Where is Raed? (which I've never linked to, first because of his insane level of popularity for questionable reasons, second because he's stopped updating, for whatever reason) at the onset of the war. Want another scary Google search? Google 'Baghdad'.
Second, I understand that being gay, Asian, and Bayside doesn't make someone special, unique, or instantly better than the rest of us. It does, however, make them different enough from who I am that I can gain insight and glean humor from the similarities and differences found within our individual perspectives on everyday life. I consider Ernie's life to be not-like my life in many ways, making his perspective of interest to me. Also, the ways that my life is-like his are of interest, for the same reason. His life is not in any way inherently more exotic than mine is, and his perspective is not inherently more interesting than mine. But the differences ~between~ our perspectives... now THAT is interesting.
Read here long enough, and you'll come to find I'm obsessed with the idea of perspectives. Assuming I'm writing coherently, which I'm working on. :)
I found out yesterday that the hot girl in my Media class knows about my website now, and that she's checked it out a time or two. One of the perils of mentioning my website in a homework assignment, I guess. Which means I probably shouldn't talk about the hot girl here, or something. You know. So the hot girl doesn't see it. [wonders how many times he'll be smacked for this paragraph. And by whom. Experiments are fun, no?]
That's about it. I plan to go out tonight, assuming I can find someone to go out with. To places that cater to those of us over 21, so Megan isn't an option as an escort. That, and she's down home (in Suthe'n Eye-wuh), so she wasn't really an option regardless of my destination.
Photo Friday: Shadows
April 25, 2003 @ 07:51 AM
Ross Hall. HP C500
Normally I wouldn't post this image, since I posted it shortly after taking it a few weeks ago. However,
1) I think it's beautiful,
2) I created a new thumbnail (so it's ~sorta~ new),
3) Today's Photo Friday is Shadows, and
4) It's supposed to be cloudy all day.
So, enjoy. :)
In other news, I forgot to set my alarm last night, so I'm running frightfully behind schedule. Have a good day.
Ethos in the Blogosphere: Take I
April 24, 2003 @ 04:42 PM
Thus far in my preliminary observations as to how weblog writers (and blogs in general) develop ethos, credibility, or whatever, ethos seems to be derived primarily from one of two sources: a previously established ethos in another genre of the rhetorical tradition, or a sort of community endorsement enabling an amateur to gain a sort of professional (or maybe celebrity) status.
The outside establishment of ethos can be seen, arguably, in the blogs of people like Dan Gillmor, Chris Pirillo, and the like. Dan has been a journalist for many years: it makes sense that a trusted print journalist’s online works would gain credibility from their print-based endeavors. Chris is a long-time techie, and until recently, was a host on TechTV. People came to know and trust his personality on television, and this increased his weblog ethos. I’m sure there are countless (likely better) such examples, but these are the two I thought of off the top of my head.
The second form of ethos establishment is rather more subtle and altogether more interesting. Weblogs are a form of journalism, a form of filtering, and a form of conversation. In any of these formats, hyperlinks drive the weblog community. Because of this, hyperlinks are seen (however consciously or unconsciously) as a form of social currency (not unlike the fictional blog currency tracked and traded via Blogshares). If a weblog contains good links to elsewhere in the community, thereby showing the blogger to have good taste in their blog reading selection (assuming they’re not just A-List lurkers), this will help raise that blog’s credibility. But more importantly, if blogs that have ~already~ established an ethos for themselves (in whatever way) link back to a new, relatively unknown (and therefore relatively untrusted) weblog, that unknown blog’s ethos will be raised substantially. Doc Searls refers to this back-scratching, social currency-creating phenomenon in an interview by J.D. Lasica as “community endorsement,” and I like that phrase, so I’m hijacking it. Credibility is raised via association with those whose credibility is already established.
There are blogs, however, that don’t fit well into the second model, and don’t fulfill the entry requirements of the first genre. Specifically, blogs like mine (NOT mine, mind you. My blog, at the moment, has rather low credibility due to rather low circulation. I mean blogs similar to mine), that is, journal-style blogs. Diaries, to use the term Ernie didn’t mean to. Ernie, actually, is a prime example of what I’m talking about. Ernie is, for all intensive purposes, a regular guy. Sure, he’s gay, and Asian-American, and lives in the Bay area, all of which gives him a certain personal flair a straight white boy from the Midwest (such as myself) can't match. But does personal flair equate ethos? I don’t think so, yet even while Ernie is currently on hiatus from the blogging community, his site receives around 1,000 visits a day. And go and Google the name ‘Ernie’. As of today at least, his site is #1 on that list. That sort of recognition is just plain frightening.
So where does that sort of ethos come from? I link to his website (and I did so before I had any idea he was popular with anyone but me). I do so because I like his writing style and his sense of humor. Is it possible to develop a solid ethos over time, simply by relaying humorous conversations about coworkers and family members? Personally, I’d love to think so, but I’m worried that theory might be capable of holding a lot more feces than it can water. I’m thinking of emailing a few bloggers whose personal, journal-style sites have become well-respected in the community, to ask them for a history on how their credibility grew and developed. It might yield interesting results.
Remember, these are preliminary notes, so I might decide to change my mind on some of the stuff I’ve stated. And, as always, if you’ve got ideas on this, I’d love to hear them, either in comment form or via email.
Commercialization of Blog
April 23, 2003 @ 11:31 PM
For interested parties, I've just finished my first-ever foray into the realms of Flash. The result: a 30-second commercial about my website for my Media class, worth, I'm sure, some ungodly portion of my final grade. Most everything is in that class.
Parties that continue to be interested following my initial explanation can find the commercial here: What is Rootarcana? I'm so lazy, I just copied that link from my class homepage to this one. I'm nothing, if not efficient. I'm the first to admit that this isn't a top-notch Flash production, but seeing as how it's my first-ever, I'm somewhat proud of it.
Interesting aside: Check out the look Dwight (my boss (the guy with the long hair in the 'fascinating' scene)) is giving the camera in the commercial. My girlfriend saw that shot and said, "He looks a lot like your dad." Which, really, he doesn't. But the funny thing is, they both give me 'That Look' a lot. And they both look an awful lot alike when they're doing it. It's something of a cross between tired patience and general bemusement, methinks. They both seem to know me pretty well.
I'm loving this "We've Got Blog" book I'm reading. I'm roughly two-thirds the way through with it, so I should know how it ends (har har -- It's an essay collection. Get it? The essays don't really... nevamind) by tomorrow evening. I'm so into reading this thing, I even read a bit of it while waiting for some Windows updates to download at work. I'm so into reading it, I read on the bus, ~instead~ of ogling the hot girl sitting across from me. Well, I still ogled discretely at the stops. *g* I was focused, not dead.
Tomorrow, I get to present my group's ideas on a final project for Rhetoric on Blogging to the rest of my Rhetoric class. It should be fun. Most of the time will probably be spent explaining what, in fact, a blog really is. Thanks to all of my recent reading, I have plenty of answers. Also thanks to all of my recent reading, most of those answers contradict each other a bit here and there. I get to try and distinguish between journal-style (such as this site) blogs and filter-style blogs, and now even commercial-style and professional-style blogs. Ah well. My brain will sort the stuff out as I'm saying it. And besides, it's not like anyone will really be listening. :)
Goodnight, all. Wish me luck in staying asleep for longer than I did this morning.
Early to Rise
April 23, 2003 @ 05:46 AM
Huh. My sleep pattern has never been the most regular, but this is odd. I didn't fall asleep until well after 1am, yet I'm already awake. I've been awake for the last 45 minutes, actually, but I spent most of it in bed, trying to convince my mind and my body that they could cooperate for another hour or so until my alarm went off. No doing. Ah, well. Good morning, all.
Stop and Smell the Navel Lint
April 22, 2003 @ 11:59 PM
I was right: I didn't get my commercial done in time for class today, despite my first class being cancelled and me missing the bus to my second class, therefore giving me more time to work on it. I was also right, in that, I wasn't the only one without a completed commercial. In fact, as far as I could tell, no one had a commercial done. I like my professor as a person and all, but sometimes, he seems a bit flaky in the develop-a-curriculum department. I mean, most of us started working on this commercial in earnest on Thursday (because we had to develop a storyboard for said commercials ahead of time and have them evaluated by our peers, and this was done on Thursday), and he expected them done five days later, with a holiday weekend betwixt. Ah, well. It's an experimental course. I wish those who take it next year better luck than I've had. I also hope he irons out the course description a bit, because it's not very descriptive of the course. :) I never would have taken the class, had I known what I was going to be wasting spending my time doing.
I still have yet to find out how I did on my big test last week, and my smaller tests this week. Tomorrow, I should find out how I did on my French 'un and my Grammar 'un. I have a queasy feeling about the Grammar test I made up Monday. For one, I know that a sizeable portion of the class (somewhere in the 34%-40% range) failed the thing. For two, I think I may have gotten my gerunds and my participles confused. It's easy enough to do... I mean, how many of ~you~ know the difference between a gerund and a participle off-hand? M'ris, put your hand down. *g*
I've spent a decent portion of the evening reading for half-pleasure, which is a nice change of pace. It's half-pleasure, in that, it's reading directly related to research for my Rhetoric paper, but I would have read it anyway, because it's interesting. The book is called "We've Got Blog." It's a collection of essays about blogging by a lot of the pioneers of the art. (I'm calling blogging an art, in case I ever become widely read and insanely popular, so that I'll be recognized as one of the first to call blogging an art. In early 1999, it was called a fad. In 2000, it became a tool. By 2001, it was widely recognized as a genre. The next stop is an art.
Whee! Look! I just made a multi-paragraph aside!) The book is pretty interesting, considering it's just a collection of essays that are already published online. I don't have the time to find them all, though, so I appreciate someone else taking the time to collect, categorize, and publish them in a format that's easier on my eyes and on my printer, if a bit harder on Ma Earth. (Oh! Did you all hug a tree today? I think it was Earth Day. The only reason I know this, is because Google changed their header image for today. I'm funny that way) So far, though, I haven't found anything on the stuff I wanna focus my research on, which is the ethos of weblogs. That is, how do weblog writers develop ethos (why do we trust them, what makes them good, reliable sources of information, etc)? I suppose the simple fact that I can't find any information on the subject means it's a relatively new, interesting question, but I'd sure like a starting point.
If any of you would like to give me help on where a weblog writer's ethos comes from, feel free to leave it in a comment, or send me an email. I'd love to hear your ideas.
---
Random things:
1) My titles generally reflect, in at least some odd fashion, the content of my entries. Yesterday, my title was meant to suggest that maybe the hamster powering the brain of the girl in the library had died. Not my mom's hamsters. I may be odd, and sometimes morbid and cruel, but I am not psychic. That I know of.
2) I wore a sweatshirt today, because when I was getting dressed, I declared myself 'too fat' for all of my thin-Robby shirts. It was warm today, and I sweated a bunch and endured funny glances as a result (my pants, which refused to stay zipped, may have contributed somewhat in the funny-stares department). I'm either gaining weight or losing self-image.
3) Small World Department: Meg Hourihan, one of the developers of Blogger and one of the pioneers of blogging, therefore, as a whole, was an English major. She graduated from Tufts.
My, but it's getting late. I need to get to bed, so I don't miss yet another morning class. Time to finish my glass of Beaujolais and head for the covers.
Your Hamster Smells Funny
April 21, 2003 @ 10:13 PM
Hrm. Today hasn't been all that fun. Thus far. Of course, there's only a couple hours left in the day, and they aren't looking too fun, either. *g*
I'm still feeling a foot or two under the weather, but there was no way I was missing class today come hell, high water, or gremlins. I turned in an assignment worth 15% of my final grade today and took two make-up exams. I don't think I did that well on either of the exams, but I guess we'll all just have to wait and see.
Tomorrow, I have a commercial due. I'm not going to have the commercial done by tomorrow. Not only am I just starting to put it together tonight, I'm having to teach myself Flash in the process. My only consolation is, since last weekend contained an Easter or two, I probably won't be the only one who hasn't gotten their commercial done. In fact, we slackers will probably be in the majority, which will probably push the due date back a couple of days, which will extend my high stress level for another couple of days. :)
I tried to check out a library book at the university library today (for the second time ever). They wouldn't let me. They swiped my Student ID through the card reader, and the machine wouldn't read it. Go figure: the card is four years old, and literally falling apart at the seams. The girl at the checkout counter swiped it a few times, looked at it, handed it back, and said, "sorry, but you sorta need a card that we can read." I asked if they couldn't just type my ID number into the computer (and since that's what they had to do last time I checked a book out, I'm pretty sure the answer to this is 'yes'). She thought about it for a second, the lil' hamster in her head running furiously the whole while, and said, "we're not really supposed to do that. You need a card that works. Any card. It doesn't have to be yours."
Hrm. So. They can't use my ID number without swiping my card through the magic machine, but they're perfectly willing to let me check out a book with a stolen Student ID. Fun-kay stuff. They put the book (a collection of essays on blogs that I wanna read for my Rhetoric final project) on hold for 24 hours, during which I'm supposed to find Card Services and get myself a new Student ID for the remaining two semesters (or so) I'll be here. I thanked them for their time, and walked out. I thought I was quite composed, until I nearly shoved the glass exit door of its hinges on my way out. :)
Then, I missed my bus by less than a foot (the driver had to slow down for me as I crossed the street in front of him, and then he didn't think to wait for me to get to the front doors), and had to wait half an hour for another. I haven't said this for a while, but... Bah!
Anyway, I'd better get back to work. This Flash isn't going to learn itself. At least, I don't ~think~ it can do that. From what Flash aficionados tell me, though, it can do pretty much everything else. I can restructure my website in Flash. I can design awe-inspiring user interfaces in Flash. I read a story about a guy in Jersey that built his house out of Flash. I'm pretty sure God was originally coded in Flash.
---
interesting search leading here: textually frustrated
our newest desktop background: can be found here
my wishlist: has been updated
Photo Friday: Water
April 19, 2003 @ 10:01 AM
This week's Photo Friday challenge is: water. I know I'm late in posting, but I'm sick and couldn't get out to find interesting water sources yesterday. Today, still feeling under the weather, I gave up and found some water indoors. I present to you the inside of my kitchen sink:
Kitchen Sink. HP C500
As Megan has mentioned in her journal, I went straight from being really busy to being fairly sick, which is why you haven't heard much out of me. Yesterday, the only productive thing I accomplished was emailing my boss and professors to let them know I wouldn't be on campus. Today, unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to force myself to be productive. Monday, I have a test, two quizzes, five hours of work and a multi-hour group meeting to look forward to. Tuesday, I have a 30-second commercial due in my multimedia class. Those interested can find a storyboard for said commercial here. My boss has been kind enough to lend me his Olympus for the weekend, and I plan to use it to get some stills of those of you I'll be seeing over the holidays so I can incorporate them into the commercial.
Have a good Easter, if I don't see you. I plan to be at my Grandma's house, assuming I deem myself non-infectious and not a danger to the little ones.
The Heat is On
April 15, 2003 @ 09:40 AM
Hopefully, you won't hear a lot from me in the next couple of days. Because, hopefully, I'll be focusing every waking moment and every conscious thought and effort on school and school-related work. It wasn't until a few minutes ago that the breadth and depth of the tasks at hand hit me full-force, but now, I'm concerned. Truth be told, I'm scared. At this point, I'm fairly sure that any sleep I take between now and Thursday night is going to be a waste of time, both in that I could be using that time more advantageously, and that I doubt I'll sleep very well, anyway.
I have a project due in French today, which isn't so bad. It's done, at any rate. And I plan to attend my Multimedia class later, for no other reason than to garner ideas from the brains of my peers. Wednesday will be spent reading, writing and designing; three of my all-time favorite tasks, horribly twisted and mutated into something I fear, hate and despise. College will do that to you. :) Thursday, I have to present a project I've not yet started in my Multimedia class, hand in an essay I've not yet started in Rhetoric, and take an essay-format final that (you've got it!) I've not begun to study for, also in Rhetoric. I'm not even going to look ahead to Friday yet, because I don't need any additional stress.
So, if you need me within the next couple of days, I'll probably be somewhere in this area:
On the positive side, it was 90 degrees here yesterday (and it will be nearly as warm today, as well). My French class nearly unanimously skipped class because it was so nice outside. Seven days prior to that, my French class was cancelled due to the snow. Last Thursday, I saw one of ISU's grounds keepers mow around a snowdrift in preparation for VEISHEA. Iowa springs are kooky.
Almost Perfect, Weekend
April 14, 2003 @ 09:30 AM
Note: If the site looks funny, choose a new skin!
That having been said... hey. :) I decided to go ahead and implement the new sans-tables design for Journal Arcana. I haven't done quite as much testing on systems that aren't mine as I'd have liked, but hey. 75% of my audience uses systems like mine according to the site's stats, and that ain't bad. Besides, I like the new design enough that I've been using it instead of the old one for a while now.
But yes. Tell me what you think of the new design, particularly if there is something you like, something you dislike, or something that isn't working right. I've moved to just one stylesheet for each skin (instead of one for IE and one for Netscape), and I modeled the stylesheets after the Netscape version of each, so users of IE may notice small differences in their favorite skins.
Also, tell me what you think of the new skin, which I've decided to go ahead and call "Almost Perfect," not because I'm tha shiznit and everything I create is an art form unto itself, but because I figure that anything which is nearly touched by the hand of God has got to be almost perfect. :)
---
I enjoyed myself this weekend. Friday, I got home from work with just enough time to take a quick shower, throw the clothes I was already wearing back on, and head out the door to meet Justin, Jordan, and JJ. Apparently, J-names were a popular choice circa 1980. :) We headed to The Zone and enjoyed ourselves quite thoroughly until 10-ish. We continued to enjoy ourselves after 10, of course, but we moved ourselves from The Zone to a party at Nick Althoff's, who was my next-door neighbor for several years in the dorms. There, I had many opportunities to take a picture for this week's Photo Friday challenge (skin), but none that wouldn't get me in trouble with Megan. :) Actually, I never did get a good shot for Photo Friday (that wouldn't have my better half attempting to eliminate her worser half), which is why I never posted one. It was a good party. Some guy told me he was jealous of my hair. :) Around 2am, we headed towards my house, and picked up tacos along the way. I made everyone sit outside and eat them, so we wouldn't wake Megan up. Halfway through the tacos, Megan came walking through the parking lot, heading for the front door. Funny stuff.
Saturday was fairly laid-back in comparison. I read, I played computer games, and I enjoyed myself. I didn't go out with friends or do anything of any significance whatsoever. Which is nice, in a lot of ways. Just not very interesting. :)
Last night, Megan and I finally went grocery shopping (after picking my car up from near Justin's... *g*), and afterwards, we came home, watched Lord of the Rings, and enjoyed ourselves, as her post suggests in fewer uncertain terms than mine. Actually, Eric said something similar in his last post, too. Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't log in and post just to say I'm too drunk to log in and post. *g*
That'll do for now. I'll likely post again later, as there's more I was planning on saying, but I need to get into the shower and get ready for classes (yes, I slept through my first class again). Enjoy the new skin. Comments would be appreciated.
Send Rob to Gnomedex!
April 10, 2003 @ 11:56 PM
I'm about 95% done with the changes necessary to move to a tables-free Journal Arcana. I've done some limited testing on Macintosh systems, and was less than pleased, but not so much that I'm going to scrap the project. Internet Explorer 5.1 was doing some funny things to my page on the Mac (for instance, it would move the content of a box to where it was supposed to go, but it would forget to move the box's ~border~), but that's Microsoft's fault and not mine. :) My CSS is valid, so it's the browser that's having issues. The site looks awesome on IE6. I also have a new skin nearly completed for when the new version of the site is released, and I think you'll like it. So far, I'm calling the skin "Almost Perfect". You'll catch the double-meaning once you see the thing.
I've also added a seventh site badge to the new page, but I'm not going to bother to add it to this one. But, I want to bring it up now, so here goes. This is the site badge:
This is the explanation:
I've found a web design conference I'd like to attend: Gnomedex! It's a two-day geekathon conference in late July. For $99 dollars, I would get the opportunity to meet some of the most interesting and influential people on and of the internet, including Chris Prillo, Tom O'Reilly, and to-be-announced speakers from Google and Microsoft. The best part is, the conference this year is being held in Des Moines, so I don't have the added cost of staying out-of-town. However, I'm dreadfully poor these days (an example: for a while today, I was worth over 60 times as much on BlogShares as I am in real life. And no, my BlogShares didn't skyrocket, heh), so I don't know if I'd be able to justify going without [PubTV voice] the loving support of dedicated viewers like you. [/PubTV voice] Honestly, though, I don't really expect it to happen. I've never seen a donate button do much, except for maybe in the case of The Mirror Project. *g* Regardless, the button is there, and payments are made through Paypal, so it's all secure and legit and all that happy stuff.
Speaking of Paypal, I got a funny email message from them today. They renewed my 3-month subscription to WapJaw. Which means, three months ago today, I was fiddling with the shopping cart section of WapJaw, and forgot to unsubscribe once I'd subscribed. So I paid myself three dollars this morning. *g*
Mmm... this weekend will be my first weekend in seven months that I don't have to pull an all-nighter. Of course, this weekend is ~also~ VEISHEA weekend. So I may very well pull an all-nighter. :) Assuming I can find some friends to hang out with. I was supposed to go out tonight, but nothing of interest ever materialized, so I sat at home, alone, working on my website. Megan is out with her sister, Mandy. Mandy turns 18 at midnight. At that exact moment, they plan to walk in to Coconut Joes (a über-popular dance club on the west side of Des Moines that has an 18+ night on Thursday nights).
I think that probably makes me a loser or something. :)
Note to Self
April 10, 2003 @ 07:55 AM
Sure, it's frustrating to realize you're out of black ink moments before you need to print something off for class. But it may not be the best idea to take the black ink cartridge out of the printer, glare at it for a moment, and then -shake- the bejezus out of it to see if you can 'liven up' the ink a bit.
*sigh* My keyboard, forearms, shirt, and probably a few other places I probably haven't discovered yet look like they had a sleepover and got into mommies' mascara.
Erm, or maybe they were putting on camo, you know, in preparation for Operation: Nuclear Desktop of Justice. Yeah. Something manly, like that.
What Up, Doc?
April 09, 2003 @ 11:19 PM
I got some encouragement today to continue my education on into graduate school. My boss said to me, somewhat out of the blue, "You'd make a good professor. You should stick around for grad school."
"Oh yeah?" I asked. Somehow, probably because Dwight is Dwight and bullshit is his trade, I knew there was more coming.
"Yeah. I bet you could even test out of some of those absent-mindedness classes they make new professors take."
There's a healthy grain or two of truth in that, I guess. From day to day, I have a little trouble remembering from minute to minute. :) Dwight also said that Dr. Glazebrook had a nice sound to it. I told him I'd probably go by Doctor Rob, or maybe 'Doc G'. Doc G, Robbystylin' it all up in the clizzass, yo.
So anyway. I was flipping through the Iowa State Daily today, and I noticed a couple of funny things. Funny thing #1, I knew a couple of the opinion writers. Funny thing #2, I knew a couple of the columnists. Funny thing #3, they were running a story on ISU's television station, and I knew the general manager. It made me wonder why I wasn't doing anything. Funny thing #4, the Daily is looking for staff starting this Summer/Fall. Maybe I should apply. It'd be good practice, or a learning experience, or a resumé padder, or something. :)
And now, it's time to semi-retire for the evening. I have a major Rhetoric-related thingamabob (yeah, sounds like I'm ready, doesn't it?) at 9:30 and a French test à onze heures le matin. I have a bit more studying to do left in French, and a lot of figurin'-out to do for Rhetoric.
But, this was fun yesterday, so lets try it again:
What I've read: An article on sunproofing solar cells and a bit more of Firestar.
Coolest Link: Warphotos weblog
Funniest Link: Dear Penis (flash movie)
Oddest Search That Led Someone Here: danielle bulgier (Sorry, Dani!)
Random Sumpin: I'm worth 20 times more in Blogshares than I am in real life. :)
Oh Emm Gee!
April 09, 2003 @ 07:40 AM
It seems I forgot to update yesterday. I shouldn't do that. Daily updates are my internal justification for removing the calendar from sidebar in the next iteration of Journal Arcana. I figure, if I'm updating every day, a calendar doesn't do much aside from show people what day of the week it is. :)
I have a final project due in Rhetorical Theory in less that a month. My group has elected to make it a group project, as groups tend to do. Guess what we've chosen as a topic? Blogs! :) Blogs as a form of New Media, and how they skew (and in some ways, obliterate) the 2,500 year old rhetorical tradition. It should (might) be fun. I'm planning on coming up with a few questions to ask of those of you who blog, once I decide specifically what questions I want answered.
My rhetoric teacher visited my website a couple of days ago. Her comments were something along the lines of, "you spend a lot of time in your entries talking about the blog". *g* Which is, of course, very true. Unfortunately for my Dedicated Reader, I find web design enormously exciting and interesting. :) So you get to hear all of my geeky outbursts.
I'm very sleepy this morning, so I'm going to leave you with a somewhat random list of current Robbievents and links I've found recently.
What I've read in the last 24 hours: a paper entitled "Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of the American Culture" by Michael Calvin McGee. "Basement Magic" by Ellen Klages from the May issue of F&SF. 100-some-odd pages of Firestar by Michael Flynn.
Funniest Link: Kim Jong Il's Livejournal. (satire)
Oddest Link: We Like the Moon by rathergood.com
Oddest Search that Led Someone Here: monkey shakespeare picture
Reason There's Only Five of These: I forgot the rest.
rand(entry);
April 07, 2003 @ 11:38 PM
This is just going to be a super-quick update before exhaustion gets the better of me and I'm no good to anyone.
Silly exhaustion, anyways. I got tons of sleep last night, and now I just want more of it. When I get less sleep, I want less. When I get more, I want more. I dunno, maybe my body just craves consistency, one form or another. :)
I submitted that reflection of me below to The Mirror Project earlier, so I'll give you all that link when I have it. I tried to tidy it up a bit before I submitted, but I'll have to see it on their site before I can judge the relative success or failure of my efforts.
Right now, my site is using up 35 megabytes of its 50-megabyte theoretical limit. I could always go higher than 50MB... my webhost would gladly increase my limit, and charge me for the additional use. I'm just trying to avoid additional expenses right now. Hey, speaking of hosting companies, if any of you are looking for a new host, I would recommend LinkSky in an instant. Their servers are fast, reliable, and they have 24-hour tech support. I know, because they've yelled at me at 4am to remove my webcam. *g* Plus, if you put me down as a recommendation when you sign up, I get a month of hosting free. ~beams~
But anyways, back to the megabytes. Roughly 6 megs of that is projects I'm no longer working on, so forth, so on, that I'm going to download, zip, and probably forget about until sometime around the next apocalypse. The rest is either not mine (Eric and Megan both use a bit with mail and stuff) or stuff I've promised to keep hosting for a while.
And, as we can all see from that last tangent, I need to go to bed. I'll leave you with that image I mention yesterday:
3 Seasons. Olympus C-2500L
G'night.
Reflections, Mental and Literal
April 06, 2003 @ 10:30 PM
Last night was my last evening at DTN. As of 11:36 this morning (10:36, according to the time clock that hadn’t caught up with the rest of the world), I am a man with but one source of income. True, I’d only been doing the two-jobs thing for seven months, but I’d gotten used to it. Now, I’m just a regular uni-jobber.
In a lot of ways, last night was just like every other night there. I came in a bit early, because no one gripes if I’m on the clock ahead of schedule, and hey, every nickels counts when the nickel pool is drying up. Eric hung around for a while, and we talked a bit about nothing in particular. He eventually headed for home, and I surfed the net and worked on my website. (Honestly, I think I spend more of my free time coding than anything else. You’d think I’d be professional at it by now)
At 2am or so, everything became 3am or so, and I had to switch a few of the servers over manually. That was moderately interesting, in that, I didn’t know where one of them was, and wasted I fifteen minutes looking for it before I found it sitting on the bottom rack of an enclosed shelf. Once that was done, I headed back to Mister Computer and my website. I had an idea on how to convert everything to a sans-tables design, which is my goal, so I had to try it out.
After a while, I got bored, and wandered around the building. I found a bathroom I didn’t know existed. And I stole a couple of rolls of toilet paper from said bathroom, because Megan and I were out, and because I’m just kooky that way.
My website eventually called me back, and I started to work on it again.
The servers started their ritualistic “I’m going to produce random, cryptic errors and page you every two minutes now, because there isn’t a thing you can do to stop me” routine. I played along for a while, but eventually, I just turned the alarms off. All the data was coming from the appropriate sources and going through to their appropriate destinations as far as I could tell, so I didn’t much care. DTN employs human monitors in South Carolina to monitor me while I’m monitoring their computers anyway, and they’d call if something were awry. Systems like that, I think, are why I don’t have a job anymore. *g*
One of the things that made today different, though, is that I didn’t get tired. Usually, when the next shift comes in at 8am, I’m bleary-eyed tired, even with my website as a distraction. This morning, I was wide awake. Normally, I would’ve had a pot of coffee to myself during the night. Last night, I had half a cup. Huh.
And I haven’t slept yet, either. So I dunno what’s up. I’m getting sleepy, and that’s good, but I’d be getting sleepy around this time of night regardless. I guess I just got a Get Out of Sleep Free card last night, or something.
I made good use of it, though. I have a working version of this website operating entirely without tables, and I’ve created three new versions of the current skins to replace the six versions of the three skins that exist. Everyone got that? Good. This means, as your calculations no doubt revealed, that I’m going to be able to use just three CSS files for the three skins, instead of having one for PCs and another for Macs and the Netscape world. Oh, and I apologize to any visitors of the site early this afternoon who had funny Javascript errors and random pop-ups. I was experimenting a bit with the code, and sorta forgot the code was in use. :)
I’m only considering myself 4/5 of the way done with my sans-tables design, so don’t expect a switch in the immediate future. I have all three of the old skins looking more or less as they do now, which was the goal. And I’ve tested them in Netscape and IE, but I haven’t tested them on a Mac yet. Also, before I release the new version of the site, I want to create a fourth skin. One that can serve as an example of why I went to all the trouble of creating a site that is customizable. Now, all I need is inspiration. *g*
While I’m waiting for the thunderbolts of Zeus or the hammering of Thor (or perhaps even the gentle whispering of Euterpe) to bang a few good ideas into me, I’ll amuse you with these shots I took at work last night (click, my friends! Click and be illuminated!):
Liquid Lunch. HP C500
Mirror Me I. HP C500
Alors, la nuit is yet young and there’s already beaucoup de neige [snow]! (I do seem to love my broken French, don’t I? The funny thing is, I probably could’ve said it entirely in French without much trouble, but it wouldn’t have looked as pretty) According to Megan, it’s not sticking yet, likely thanks to our run of warm weather earlier this week. (speaking of, another missed photo opportunity: Tuesday, I came across an entire row of people suntanning on central campus, lined up along a snow fence. Damn me and my camera-less ways) According to the meteorologists, somewhere between six inches and a foot of the stuff should find someplace to stick by tomorrow morning. So we’ll see. Maybe school will be canceled or something equally magical.
I have another picture to post, one that I caught Friday as the weather was turning from sun to sleet to hail to snow, but it’ll have to wait.
My, but pictures take up a lot of space. *g* I wonder how I'm doing, server-wise?
Update, Dvorak Style
April 05, 2003 @ 10:16 AM
Minor Changes Department:
I've made a few minor changes to the site's layout in the wee hours of the morning, but nothing that should negatively affect usability in any way. Hopefully, these changes will have a small positive impact.
For one, there are now links leading to Permalinks and TrackBack links bookending the comments link for the most recent entries. At this point, all entries, young and old, have a PermaLink (a link that takes you to a page listing ~just~ that entry... good for linking) now. New entries will have a TrackBack link (useful for if you comment on something I say, and want me to know (and use something trackback-enabled to update)). It's all about accessibility, mon amis.
Also, a ~very~ minor change: I've renamed my 'Blogs' window 'Daily Reads'. I felt that Blogs could easily be misinterpreted as meaning "Blogs I've stumbled upon at one time or another that didn't suck all that much." And although I do plan to compile such a list at some point in the future for those of you who read more voraciously than I, the blogs I list under Daily Reads are just that: blogs I read every day. I check them religiously. Even when they stop updating for half a month. *mutter* When I ~do~ stop checking them daily, I plan to remove them from that list.
Major Changes Department:
I made one major change to the site last night, as well. I've included an About page in the Links menu. So far, I've put a bit of information under the techno-portion and the me-portion of the About page. Check it out. I even did one of those exhaustive (and exhausting) "100 Things" lists for the me-portion. You're bound to learn something. Even if it's something you didn't want to know. *g*
Oh, hey, and I almost forgot: I made a major change to the comments page. It has its own, static header now. I was getting tired of the comments page looking odd depending on what skin was selected, so I wasted my Friday morning rewriting the CSS and creating a header. There are advantages to getting up two hours before you have to be anywhere. :)
Satire and Politics Department:
Textism linked to this great piece of satire a couple of days ago. If you haven't read it yet, and you're one of those who likes to question the legitimacy behind the Dubya Party's reasons for Operation: Adjective Abstract-Noun, you'll likely enjoy.
Au revoir, pour maintenant. It's time to head home for some well-deserved Z's.
Photo Friday: Spring
April 04, 2003 @ 12:26 PM
UPDATE @ 13:50:
It started to hail yet again, and, after crying for a few minutes on my boss's shoulder, he graciously let me borrow his digital camera. So, after playing for a few minutes in the hail, I got these shots:
White Spring I. Olympus C-2500L
White Spring II. Olympus C-2500L
Well, it’s another Photo Friday, and this week’s challenge is: Spring. For the past three days, it’s been eighty degrees, sunny, warm, and beautiful. Today, just to spite my attempt at a Spring-like photograph, the high is supposed to be “near 40.” You know the temperature is going to be an extreme of one form or another when the meteorologist says that it's going to be “near” something. Near 40 means not 40. Below 40. Not Spring-like.
So, I open my window this morning, look out, and it’s a gray, cold, ugly day. I think to myself, “There’s no way I’m going to get a decent Spring photograph out there. I might as well leave my camera at home, so I don’t waste the space in my bookbag.” I don’t know if any of you have seen an HP C500, but they’re not tiny. So I decided to use these pictures I took ~last~ spring instead (as always, click to enlarge (and improve quality)):
Pink Spring I. HP C500
Pink Spring II. HP C500
And then, this morning, it hailed. Picture: thousands of tiny, clear hailstones the size of BBs scattered amongst the slender, brilliant green grass that sprouted all over campus in appreciation of the last three days of summer-ish weather. It was beautiful. And I didn’t have my camera.
The moral: I need a camera that doesn’t take up so much space, so I’m never tempted to leave it at home. :) My SiPix, frankly, sucks. The size is incredible, yes, but I could take pictures of similar quality with a cracker, and the cracker would have more nutritional value. The shutter button is impossible to press without shaking the camera, and the camera drains battery power like mad, *even* when it’s turned off (they weren’t smart enough to use static-state memory like CompactFlash). Anyone have a digital camera that they love, that’s small, and that doesn’t cost more than I pay a month in rent? I’d like to hear recommendations.
Watch for Seismobots
April 03, 2003 @ 09:07 PM
I’ve decided that, all in all, I’m a damnably poor reader compared to the reader I should be. I mean, I’m an English major, for crying out loud. Reading shouldn’t be tough for me. Yet, sometimes, it is.
Every weekday for the last two weeks, I’ve passed a particular sign while riding the bus to and from class. The sign is a crudely-constructed orange-spraypaint-on-plywood affair, which reads, “No Semis in Lot.” It sits at the entrance of a large parking lot which has been taken over by some construction crew or another. (In Ames, it’s sometimes hard to tell where one construction site ends and another begins. This one begins somewhere near the stadium and ends before all the pretty houses) Because it is large, orange, and otherwise stands out against a background of churned earth and asphalt, I read it every day. Nine or so times out of ten, I read it as saying exactly what it says.
A few days ago, I glanced at the sign, and thought to myself, “No seismobots. Hmm. That makes sense, I guess. I wouldn’t want seismobots in my construction site, either. Too much ruckus.”
It took me a full thirty seconds to realize that, 1) that isn’t what the sign said, and 2) I’m pretty sure seismobots haven’t been invented. Yet.
Today, as the bus rumbled its way towards my apartment, I glanced at the sign as we passed each other and thought, “No Semi-soot. I wonder why not?”
I don’t even know where to begin on that one. I have no idea what semi-soot is, or why anyone would be disallowing it (or allowing it somewhere else, either). I suppose I picture semi-soot as being somewhat chunkier and altogether more solid than regular soot.
The point is, this is how I read. Sometimes I’m fast (as an English major and writer-wannabe should be), but I generally have to slow myself down, because my mind seems to have no qualms whatsoever about creating new, novel phrases and employing them at random. And I think I’m a touch cixelsyd. Erm, I mean, dyslexic.
That having been said, I’m going to go try and study some basic French grammar and some advanced English grammar now, as I have a quiz on my abilities in both in the morning. I’ve spent the evening thus far distracting myself with my website (I’m sure no one noticed, but I converted the entire site to PHP today), BlogShares (Journal Arcana is available for purchase, for the low price of... squat), and a story by M’ris. It’s amazing how much her voice comes through in the story. Not that I’ve ever heard her voice, but you get the idea. It sounds like M’ris. *g*
Of course, I have to read her story pretty slow. She’s fond of using character names with more unfamiliar and unique syllables than a speech read by Dubya, and my mind loves to turn them into something they’re not. I tried to pronounce one of the names aloud and hurt myself in the attempt. And I may have incanted a yakshini.
Go Ahead, Push My Buttons...
April 02, 2003 @ 09:20 PM
Six! I have a nice, even six site badges at the arse end of my page now. And no, I don’t think it’s cheating that I’ve had to develop two of those badges on my own. *grin*
In fact, to prove that it’s not cheating, I’m offering these badges up to the public. In the spirit of AntiPixel and Raging Platypus, I hereby permit you to Steal These Buttons.
For those of you out there offering a flavor of your blog in WML for WAP-enabled phones and other various devices, there is this little guy:
(224 bytes)
And, for those of enjoying BlogShares (a new fantasy blog shares market, part popularity contest, part content rating system, and part game, which I’ve recently joined), I created this button tonight:
(232 bytes)
Enjoy. Download. Link. :)
---
Megan made us chocolate chip cookies tonight. We have an interesting variety to choose from: the pour-in-a-glass variety, the middle-ground-golden variety, and the chewing-is-good-for-the-jaw variety. Personally, I liked the cookie dough. *g* Just kidding, love. The cookies are yummy. Even the pour-in-a-glass variety. *beams*
Obsession in General
April 02, 2003 @ 02:09 PM
Last night, I forgot to mention that I’d made a couple of miniscule changes to the website over the last couple of days. And it’s okay that I forgot to mention the changes, because I made another, related change this morning. :)
Those of you who use IE on a PC will probably notice that the grayscale sidebar images in “Old School” are no longer grayscale. Those of you who use IE, a PC and the “True Blue” skin will probably notice that the menu transparencies have gone bye-bye. And also, those of you on Macs using IE should notice minor changes, which I can’t report on yet because I haven’t seen them myself. *g*
The reason, is, I’ve started collecting site badges. Check out the site’s footer, and you’ll notice five badges down there. Before this morning, there were four badges. I added those four last weekend when I realized that I was publishing my website in three other formats (two RSS streams and WML), but wasn’t publicizing that information anywhere. This morning, I decided I wanted a CSS-Compliance badge. Of course, I could’ve just lied about it and placed one on the site, because my ‘always’ CSS file (which is the only one that automatically loads, making it the only once the site validator finds on its own) was already 100% compliant. However, there were a few problems with my site skins that I had to fix in order to be 100% CSS-arific, so I went ahead and made those changes this morning. Which included dropping all of the IE-specific CSS I was using, which meant losing the transparency and the grayscale filters. I think I was the only one that liked the grayscale filters anyway. ~smile~
So now, I have five site badges loudly proclaiming to the world what a good web geek I am. *g* That accounts for the first two changes you may or may not notice. The third change, for Mac users, is because I found out yesterday that Mac IE was not changing the location of the menu bars and the blog content in the “ArcanaBot” skin like PC IE does. This may seem like a little thing, but a lot of what I’ve done on the ArcanaBot skin requires the flip, or the screen looks odd. The robot’s head stays on the left, for instance, but his body remains above the menu bar on the ~right~, which is bad. So, I added a bit of extra code to my Javascript, and now Macintoshes use the Netscape (fewer-frills) skin, no matter what browser is being used.
Actually, if I could just figure out a way to make Mac IE and Netscape reposition my DIV elements on the ArcanaBot skin, I really wouldn’t have a use for more than one version of each skin anymore, which would be awesome. That would improve site loading time, decrease the time it took to make site-wide changes, so forth, so on. I might look into that. It might mean a bit of site redesignination, eliminating tables and moving purely to css. Maybe I should look into XHTML (which I know nothing about) and see if that’s what I need to be using. I could get an XHTML site badge, then! *g* I guess I lied about the whole skin-thing eliminating site overhauls. :)
---
I also forgot to mention last night that the weather here is stinkin’ AWESOME right now. :) Ames is rumored to have hit a record high yesterday with 90 degrees, and today is similarly warm. Unfortunately, rumor also has it that the weather is going to take a turn for the cooler by Friday, and temperatures will drop back down to their seasonal norms. Ah, well. A few days of summer-like weather in the middle of spring is always a welcome treat. Even if the only time I spend out-of-doors is while walking from one building to another.
---
I have a guilty conscience today. As I was running out the door of my apartment this morning to catch the bus, my neighbor’s door opened. My neighbor’s girlfriend was standing there (at least, I assume it was her, as I’ve never met her). I smiled distractedly in her direction and continued on my merry way. Halfway to the bus stop, my mind caught up with the rest of me, and I realized that 1) she was in her pajamas, which is an odd choice in clothing to greet the world in, and 2) there were tears on her face as I walked past. I stopped walking. I considered going back inside to find out if everything was okay. But I didn’t. First of all, I’ve never met this girl before, and I’ve only spoken to her boyfriend once. Second, I’ve missed far too many morning classes recently, and turning back would have assured I missed one more. Third, I’m assuming brain surgery is a painful experience, and that could have been the cause of her tears.
But, what if it wasn’t? Should I have done the neighborly thing (though, admittedly, not the American neighborly thing, which is something more akin to ‘ignore thy neighbor’) and checked to make sure everything was okay? Should I have continued on, as I did? Should I express concern, if I happen to see her later? Damned if I know. All I know is, I felt bad for getting on the bus. Something in my head/heart/soul/chi/whatever thought I should have done something differently.
‘Course, it’s always possible that I’m an obsessive worrier. :)
--
Oh, and I had over 1,000 individual site views last month, so thanks for the traffic. :)
Catt's Got My Tongue
April 01, 2003 @ 07:59 PM
So anyway. I dunno what to talk about today. I spent a bunch of time working on the video for media class, and got it done. However, I was put to shame by other people’s videos when I got to class. One of the other projects in particular looked, literally, professional. So now I’ve gotta try extra hard on my next project for that class. Perhaps I’m just no good at video. Mine look pretty well amateurish. I know that they do, but I don’t know how to fix it. I guess I just don’t think that way, or something.
I think I’m ready for another spring break. *g* I had a horrible time getting up this morning. Therefore, I missed yet another morning class. Luckily, attendance doesn’t really count for much.
Random picture:
 Catt Hall. HP C500 |
That’s Catt Hall, which I’ve never actually had a class in. Although, I did spend a semester trying to learn how to juggle (but never succeeding) in front of those big steps at lunchtime. :) It’s pretty and all that good stuff. I adjusted the image a bit, since it was pretty dark when I took the picture. The result is a sky that looks daytime-ish, even though the lights on the building are on. *g*
So. Yeah. Megan and I are going to go watch a movie or something (check out her page... she finally updated). :) Enjoy le soir.