August 09, 2003
3 Legged Stool - Web Design
No idea why I decided to add this link -- apparently I found something here I wanted to keep in mind. I should have made notes at the time. sigh.
Real World Style: A three legged stool
August 04, 2003
Position is Everything CSS
Guess I liked this site as a general resoure eh?
Colors on the Web Wizard
Will hypothetically jumpstart my design slump. yup.
Colours on the web - color theory and color matching
Color Impaired
Interesting info on viewing colors.
Color Vision - by Cal Henderson
Color Schemer Online
And another! Apparently I am really in a color and design slump.
Color Schemer - Online Color Scheme Generator
More Crayons Site
Apparently a color scheme I liked?
More Crayons - Color Squares #006-#ff6
Romper Room: A Slice of American Childhood in the 60s
There is nothing I love more than reliving my childhood! Miss Betty never saw me thru her magic mirror. That explains why I turned out the way I did. grin.
Watching Mars in August 2003
Because I never watch the news or read the newspaper, I don't know if this has been in either. Apparently from now thru the end of the month we will be able to see Mars get closer and brighter each night. It should be interesting and supposedly has not happened before in recorded history (one alternate timeline I read quoted 5000 yrs). Anyway, it's something to watch for.
From what I have read, using a regular 75x agnification (like binoculars) will make Mars as large as a full moon to the naked eye. Some of you already know how much I love these "once in a lifetime" Life List-type events. "-)
In addition to the info below, the Mars Watch page at http://www.space.com has excellent info on how to locate Mars in the sky and calculate the best time to see it in your area.
Here is info from the Nasa website:
[Quoted from the above link]
Mars is approaching Earth in what will soon be the closest the planets have been in 73,000 years -- a confluence set officially for 5:46 AM, Wednesday, August 27, 2003. That night, the Red Planet will be the brightest object in the sky as it reaches its closest Earth encounter, or opposition, at 34,646,418 miles.
Mars Opposition, Summer 2003. While Mars and Earth will be closest at the end of August, the complex orbital paths required to land on the Red Planet make early summer launches optimal. Credit: NASA
At opposition Mars will be as close as it has been since September 12, 57,537 B.C. or one-third closer than the average opposition. The next approach this close is August 28, 2287 A.D at 34,620,000 miles.
The planet's bright magnitude should begin August 20 and continue through September 2 but fades rapidly thereafter as Earth pulls ahead of it and the Moon begins to grow full.
Credit Nasa for the above text and picture.
August 03, 2003
A Cast of Thousands!
Well, maybe not. But we make enough trouble that you'd think there were thousands of us!
This is a new category I added to report on the antics of The Brat and The Slacker... aka Farron and Becky. I needed an entry to get the archive category to show and this is it!
Supporting characters (and I MEAN characters - wink) are a group of Stock Players by the name of Roving Gang of Instructors. Central to this is, of course, the core Brat Pack: debbieT and Butzi. The Brat Pack has a 3rd, grown up member - our own Kat, in the role of "calming influence".
All episodes are directed and produced by Tchaikovsky and Emma.
Watch for showtimes at a location near you soon! snert.
Category Archives & Email this Entry added!
Today was a big day! Britta challenged us to add Category Archives to our main index pages, which in and of itself was simple... but I messed up a div tag so my box was shrinking with each viewing! sigh.
Then I got a wild hair and decided to add the "Email this entry" function to my posts. Oh boy.
The "Mail This Entry" that MT has in their documentation was poorly explained everywhere I looked. In other words, they tell you only how to use it one way... so explanation of what is going on so you can customize it. And since I'm not 100% familiar with their scripts and setup, I was lost.
So I used a similar function found here: Works in Progress - How to Create a Pop-Up eMail This Entry Window in MovableType (David Gagne). It includes its own CGI script and is very well explained by the author.
Even tho the tutorial says it was tried on an older version (and apparently the tutorial has never been updated), it worked fine on Version 2.64!
Here's the difference between the 2:
MT -- Sends text and/or HTML formatted copy of posting in the email; you can add youself as a blind copy if you like; provides a comment box for the sender to add his/her own text.
Gagne -- Sends a link only, with preformatted subject and text. A separate copy is sent to you (if you remove the # in the script for the relevant section of code) and the recipient's address is noted at the bottom. This script also generates a "Success" screen so the sender knows the process completed.
I don't know as much about the MT one as I said, because I didn't bother to set it up at all.
Some things I need to consider adding/modifying: None of the fields are required in this script, so a blank email can be sent; should I let them add their own note or not?
Anyway, if you set up this script yourself be advised that you need to make some basic changes to it (well documented on the link above) and if you have done extensive customizing of your site layout you may also have to make other changes to the script... particularly in the section where the actual email is written.
The format you see on this site is NOT the same as in the script at the link above. I made changes to that script to suit my purpose.
Then the email links themselves go on the Index page template and the Individual Archives template.
Anyway, another learning experience!
August 02, 2003
Web Content Access Guidelines 2.0 Draft for Public Comment
The draft is up and ready for public comment before it is finalized. Target date suggested is next year. Many of these items are extensions of standards already in place, and there are some that are included as a result of projections as to what will be available in terms of hardware and software in the future. W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Draft
Web Access Stds 1.0 & US Section 508
Like everything related to the web the standards are constantly changing. Now there's a great little tool to check your pages with: Welcome to Bobby WorldWide.
ARGHH! This page is barely 508 compliant and not close to what it should be for Web Accessibility! Well, nothing for it... I'll have to fix it all.
My clients will rarely pay for this level of work; when possible I've gone ahead and done it anyway. It's amazing to me that corporate entities trying to lure web users turns a blind eye to a large segment of the target market.
What's more amazing is that if I do it for free, they brag it up and run big ad campaigns touting their sites. With not a thank you. I even had one client that the @$^#% chair actually thought it was a waste of time!!! But he was a neanderthal.
Oh lord, I better not get started on that jackass.
The people I have great respect for work so hard to be CSS compliant, cross-browser compliant and meet W3C standards. And to force me to actually run validators. [Ahem, I think you know who you are.] It's time I put a bug in "someone's" ear about this and start running THIS validation script. evil grin.
August 01, 2003
A Dreamweaver Extension for Editing MT Templates
Might be worth looking into. HTML Editor extensions for MovableType
Opera Bookmarklets
I'm finally being forced to consider my options for the future, now that Netscape is officially on the shelf. Big sigh.
Fortunately, Opera has come a long way in the last few years. I love the browser, and their email is almost there... not quite.
However, I do use Opera more than any other browser. [At least I'll still feel the daily frustration of going to a web site that won't load in anything except messIE.] And recently I stumbled onto their Bookmarklets.
These are neat little bits of JS code that you can drop onto your Hotlist and they "do" things for you. I dutifully set up the bookmarkets that validate the page you are visiting at the W3C and other odd things like that. Yesterday I found a much better bookmarklet: the one that lets you Make an entry to your MT blog right from your Hotlist or from your toolbar!
Yep, tonight I just got a wild hair and slapped one onto the tool bar. Imagine my surprise when it worked! And then to discover that I, the USER, can actually set up the toolbar any way I want! I am in heaven. grin.
I really like Opera... it is the fastest browser I use. And the keystroke shortcuts are so darn convenient... I find myself hitting Z or X in all the other (for backward and forward) and then wondering why nothing happens. Those keys even work from the first page of a site you are visiting if the site uses Referrers. Super way to slide through without having to fiddle with a mouse.
Anyway, just something silly to post here for the heck of it.