rootarcana.facelift
August 29, 2005 @ 11:09 AM
As I'm sure you can see, I'm in the midst of Yet Another Redesign. This one is rootarcana v6, or as I like to lovingly call it... um, rootarcana v6. I never really came up with a good name for this one. It's got a lot of white in it. I dunno. Maybe I should have a naming contest. :p
As I mentioned at the last redesign, v5, the number '6' is somewhat arbitrarily assigned. I know I've redesigned my site more than six times, but this is the sixth redesign since I started counting. And since I'm the only one who actually ~is~ counting, I think we'll be alright.
The biggest change you'll notice is (duh) the look. It's whiter. There's a lot less blue in it (though you'll notice I couldn't abandon blue entirely, oh, heavens no). I think I might be committing a design sin by combining red and orange. Other changes include:
- The line spacing is a little wider
- The text is (currently) a little bigger.
- The sidebar has a bit more space.
- The "links" navigational element has become "externals."
- I added a flickr feed (photos I take as I wander the earth).
I'm not done with the redesign. Really, I probably shouldn't have pushed to publish it today, but I figured the only way it was ever going to get done is if I made it public and then felt obligated to fix it up. :) There are a lot of changes yet to make, I know. For one, the monthly archives have not yet been updated. They are, as you will notice if you bother to check, still on rootarcana v4, meaning they never even made it to v5. Turns out I get a parsing error in Movabletype (in mt.pm, the big one) when I try to update my monthly archives. I must have gotten annoyed by it the last time and never bothered to try and fix it. My portfolio also has not been updated. Movabletype (we have a love-hate relationship) ATE my portfolio blog, meaning that while the static pages still exist, my CMS has no record of it existing. Meaning I'll have to rebuild it by hand. These two changes will probably take a while to make.
Smaller changes will be made to the CSS pretty well constantly during the next week or so. For instance, the size and spacing of the text is not, in my opinion, not quite right. And the links in the sidebar are far too widely spaced. And I don't yet know if three flickr photos will fit side-by-side as they should (I'll test that shortly). Comments currently have no CSS formatting, and that is probably the next major thing that will be changed.
If you have any comments, questions, or complaints, let me know, and I'll entertain them (or they'll entertain me. Whichever). I'll either make the change, explain why the change can't be done, or explain why I made the change on purpose. :)
I swear, it's not a hot girls post.
August 25, 2005 @ 04:34 PM
Work, school, and life-away-from-school have all been busy as late, hence my lack of updates. Tis but an excuse, I realize, but seeing as how you're all just my imagined audience anyway, I've no doubt you're entirely sympathetic. :)
Random ~Weird~ Bits
I was in the bar last Wednesday (the 17th). I realize this is, in and of itself, not freaky. I was also in the same bar Wednesdays the 24th and 12th, but that's not my point either. My point is, on this particular Wednesday, something weird happened. I was standing at the bar, waiting to order, and somebody I'd never met before, who was standing next to me, bought me a drink. Normally I'd think this was really cool and all that, but he wasn't my type. Too many testosterones or something (or too few, I guess, depending on how you look at that one). Course, that didn't stop me from drinking the beer.
I was doing laundry a couple of nights ago (alone, sigh and boo), and I was going through my pants pockets to make sure I hadn't left a pen in there (due in large part to the Great Pen Fiasco of July). I'd already checked the pockets of four pairs of jeans and was getting lazy, so I threw the fifth pair in without checking. Then I had a dramatic flashback and fished them out to go through the pockets. I didn't find any pens, but I did find a tube of black mascara in my right front pocket. I still have no idea how it got there.
Random Tech! Bits
I have a new cell phone! Specifically, I have a Motorola V3 RAZR from Cingular, which I guess means I have a new cell phone carrier as well, but I tend not to bestow exclamation points upon cell phone carriers. So far I'm really liking it. Cingular, too. They're far less anal about locking down their phones, which means I've already been able to legally download my own ringtones and games for far less than what Cingular would charge. The phone is super-slim… I really do often forget it's in my pocket at all.
I also, finally, have a digital camera. It's a Canon SD200, which is a lovely, slim camera I picked up from Dell (so I could make payments instead of buying it outright). I used it to snap the picture of the lovely, slim Dani gracing the top of this post in the bar last night. That's the benefit of a tiny lil' digital camera: I can take it pretty much anywhere. I'm sitting at work, but it's in my left front pocket at this very moment. Note to self: checking pockets before laundry just became mandatory.
Random Funny? Bits
My mind has been producing some pretty odd stuff lately. For example, just this morning, I was lying on the couch reading for my noon o'clock class. Tiny was in the office on his computer. Suddenly, I let out a huge sneeze, and immediately afterward, yelled "THERE ya go!" at the top of my lungs. I don't know why. Justin found it pretty funny, though.
WARNING: The next one might be a touch offensive. Okay, more than a touch.
I was riding the bus home from class last night with (among two or three other people, including one crazy lady that always talks to herself, but is not the focus of this bit) a woman in a wheelchair. At our stop, a woman opened the wheelchair lift and said to the woman, "Oh, hi Jennifer [name changed]!" I was walking away at the time, but in my head, the dialogue continued. It went as thus:
BUS DRIVER: (laughing good-naturedly) I said no such thing! I said she was a gimp, not a crip.
FAMILY GUY'S PETER GRIFFIN: Yeah, see, I've always preferred the term "Mobiley Retarded." Mobiley Retarded.
(All turn and glare)
PETER GRIFFIN: Mobiley... what?
So basically, at some point, Peter Griffin hopped on the CyRide of my mind's eye and insulted a fellow passenger. Bad brain. Also, mobiley isn't even a word.
Last but not least, I was walking through the office about an hour ago when I decided to see what that funny bump on the underside of my water cup was. So I turned the cup over to inspect. Course, the whole maneuver would have been a lot cooler had I remembered to finish all my water first.
And now, your moment of Zen. I present a picture of my friend Kami, also taken at the bar last night:
A few too many? Nah... she's Just Right.
Grad School: Like staring at a lightbulb for two years, only more expensive.
August 15, 2005 @ 04:01 PM
I apologize for my longer than average absence, Faithful Readers. I've been without Internet access at home for the last week. My neighbor's router locked up last Sunday, and since I'm sharing Internet access with my neighbor, that meant I was without the web until she restarted it. Unfortunately, she was in the Boston/Cambridge area all this last week for some silly Genetics convention.
My birthday was fun, from what I remember, and moreso from what I do not. I do remember trying to go through the drive-thru of Burger King at 2am, but the line was enormously long, and we ended up driving off after we ordered and then waited for ten minutes. Before we did, I think I remember getting out of the car and walking into an alley to pee. It wasn't until the next day that I realized that, had I walked in the same direction for maybe 60 more seconds, I could have used my bathroom at home.
School starts up a week from today. I'm, like, excited and things. Even cooler is that I get to meet a bunch of new grad students this Friday. I'll be speaking briefly to the new English TAs Friday morning, then walking with the TA from Ross to Pearson (where I work), where we're having a new student reception. All in all, I'll probably get to meet upwards of 100 new grad students. It should rock.
I've been under the weather for the last week or so, but it finally seems to be clearing up now. Despite my debilitating illness (okay, so it really isn't all that bad), I made it out to the bar on Wednesday with JJ, Kami, Clucky, and Dani. We had buck burgers (they're burgers for a dollar, not burgers made of male deer) and dollar domestic bottles. As a group, we were able to drink the bar out of Miller High Life. Just to say we did. Then we got to switch to good stuff like Coors Light. Dani, who is a girl, is also a cute currentlySingle girl. I felt obligated to throw that one out there. It wouldn't be a rootarcana blog post without a mention of a cute girl, according to some. :)
Happy Birthday to me, I'm not twenty-three...
August 05, 2005 @ 04:08 PM
Ooh, my birthday kinda creeped up on me this year. Had it not been for JJ mentioning it last night, I'm not entirely convinced I would have remembered.
For those not keeping track, I turn 24 tomorrow sometime. I have no idea what I'll be doing to celebrate, but a solid guess would be that it'll include alcohol, and hopefully, friends. A lot of my friends are out of town, but I'll figure something out.
In the meantime, I've stuff to do. I get to go take some pictures at some grad school-related event with a really nice digital SLR camera (the Canon EOS 20D, for those into that sort of thing). After that, I'm hoping to find some friends with which to head to the bars. No idea if that'll pan out, but it's as close to a plan as I can come at 4pm.
"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"
August 02, 2005 @ 03:56 PM
I've had a pretty good day so far, considering the contents. I woke up at the crack of 7am, had a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal, and started cleaning. Why, you ask? Astute question, my friend. I was cleaning because my landlord (landlady? That sounds oddly sexist. Landbeing? That sounds alien) was due to come over at 9am to move some ceiling tiles back to their proper locales. At the time, I wasn't really sure why this seemed so important all of a sudden.
After cleaning up a bit and doing some dishes… hmm, tangent time. I'm feeling tangential today. I really dislike doing dishes in my new apartment. There are three reasons for this: I have no dishwasher (yet), the sink is a single-bin breed (no place to conveniently rinse), and there's no spray nozzle (no method of easy rinsing). The first time I did the dishes, I put all the soapy items in one of those dish drying racks, then after I was done I took them all back out, rinsed them, and put them back in the rack. That took forever. Today I only filled the sink about 1/3 the way with soapy water, then just rinsed everything in hot water, letting some water out when the sink got too full. That worked a little better, but still wasn't fun. I'm going to have to get me one of these dishwashers really soon. It's the only portable I've found that'll fit well in my kitchen.
Anyway, I cleaned and did the dishes, then sat around to wait for my landlord to show up. She finally did, around 9:30. I was getting nervous, as I hadn't showered yet, and had to leave for work at 10:30. She came over with a ladder and a broom to move the tiles, and I discovered that as long as I was standing on the ladder, I didn't even need the broom. I'm going to have to invest in a 5' ladder sometime soon. The whole process took about five minutes. As she was leaving, she mentioned in a by-the-way manner that she'd be back in 20-30 minutes with a city inspector. Ahh. Suddenly things make a little more sense. I jumped in the shower really quick and was only out and dressed about five minutes when she and the inspector returned.
The (one of the?) Ames city inspector(s?) is. Really. Freaking. Hot. :) And not older woman hot, either, because she was my age near as I could tell. I'm glad I showered and dressed for the occasion. Even if she was only there for a few minutes. I forget her name, but I think it starts with a K. I might have to look her up. I forgot to check for a ring.
Oooh, tangential funny story time! My friend JJ is staying with me for the next couple of weeks while he looks for a place to live. Last night he was really upset because he'd lost his money clip, which he uses to carry all his ID / credit cards as well as all of his cash-money. We tore the place apart for a while, with no success. I finally found it. Guess where? The freezer.
JJ'd gone grocery shopping the night before and purchased, among several other items, a couple of frozen pizzas. It seems he'd tossed his money clip in the grocery sack when he left the store, and had just transferred the sack and all of its contents directly into the freezer when he got home. The dollar bills had frost on them. It was actually kinda cool.
In other hot girl news, there was a really cute girl on the bus this morning, and I remembered for once to check for a ring (I'm absurdly proud of me). No ring! I see her from time to time on the bus, so I should say hi sometime. She looks eastern European. CuteOfficeGirl also stopped by to see her mom for a while, so that was nice. Also, I'm working on a new website at work for the McNair program, and I'm getting to mess with a lot of images, and a few of those images contain a really hot girl. Work is more fun now. The image above contains about 1/3 of her face by way of a 150x150 pixel screen grab of the mockup (thought it'd be fun to share a bit of my work). I'm sticking her on the front page. :)
The best thing that's happened to me so far today: I was walking to central campus around noon to meet Quinn for lunch, and the campanile was playing a song that I recognized instantly as familiar, but couldn't place. After about thirty seconds, my mind matched lyrics to music, with "Mama... just killed a man..." The lady in the campanile was playing Bohemian Rhapsody. :) I was laughing so hard I was crying. Those unfamiliar with the song were eyeing me suspiciously. When she finished the song, I started clapping like mad (something I've never done nor heard anyone else do). At the same instant, someone about 100 yards away started clapping with equal fervor. About a half second later, from across central campus, I heard someone cheering and yelling "encore!". It was magical.