Year: 2004

Categories
Burningbird

Styles redux and identity

My thanks to those who provided feedback on the styles. At this time I’ve dropped Cabinet and Clashing, though I’ll keep the clashing style in the ‘about these sheets’ page – it is a rather interesting way of looking for web site colors.

I was surprised by the variety of answers I received when I asked people which stylesheet they were using. Since I was primarily interested in ‘weeding’ out the unused ones, and the other stylesheets are currently being used, I’ll leave them, as is.

The only other change I may make is to convert Walker Evans to being a Black & White photo stylesheet, and vary the photos and photographers.

Christine mentioned that the alignment of the columns in some of the sheets was off. If anyone is finding that this is happening in their browsers, please let me know, email or comment, and provide browser and OS. In addition, there should be no horizontal scroll in 800 x 600 or higher mode.

David asked the question:

The thing is, though, which ones do you think speak to your personality?

My answer is: all of them.

The black and white Walker Evans style represents my interest in classic styling and photography, not to mention Evans; Burningbird of Happiness is my love of green and growing things; Lemon Shakeups is my whimsical, silly side; Fire & Ice represents my passion; Random Shots also represents my love of photography, and has a touch of the Missouri Green in it; Deep Thoughts is that techie, future looking, digs science me. Old Bird is, well, old bird–my roots.

Emotive not only represents my interest in semantics, it also tells me a little something about myself. More than once, I found myself a little surprised at my own choice of tones for some of the posts. Intellectually when I thought my writing was of a certain mood, I found that the associated style didn’t work and I picked another, instead. A very interesting experience at times, and better than yoga for getting me in touch with myself. I probably wouldn’t give up Emotive even if no one was using it. If anything, I’m going to be adding several more ‘tones’.

Even Clashing represented my experimental, somewhat chaotic side. As for Cabinet, this might be surprising, but it was one of my favorite styles. I love red, white, and blue as a color combination; and I loved the odd, strange, surreal mixing of images and photos.

However, it’s also offended some people more than a little; what is the good of a stylesheet that just pisses people off even before they’ve had a chance to read what I write? Let the people get mad at the words, not the box.

But I am salvaging some of the style for one of those new emotive ‘tones’ I talked about. I’’ roll it out tomorrow, on the 4th of July.

Again, my thanks for the feedback. Now, I’ll stop messin’ wit yer heads. At least, when it comes to stylesheets.

Categories
Just Shelley Weblogging

Nudging Burningbird out of the way

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Another change I’ve made recently is add my full name to both my syndication feeds and to the weblog pages.

Perhaps I’ll be more careful with what I write, now that my name is so prominently attached to the pages. Or I’ll feel more ownership of what I write, I don’t know. But I want to begin the process of nudging Burningbird to the side; I am no superhero, and don’t need a mask to protect my identity.

Last week I received an email from a weblogger I’ve been reading some time, and I totally blanked on his name – I was so used to thinking of him by his weblog name. In fact, I’ve been doing this too much lately, an unfortunate consequence of using an aggregator such as Bloglines or Feedster.

Now that we’re nameless in aggregators, yet another step away from the person, does this make us a little meaner to each other? Do we hurt each other with more impunity? Dammit, I don’t know the names of half the webloggers I read. That doesn’t seem right.

In fact, I remember someone suggesting a while back that all non-anonymous webloggers attach our names to our syndication feeds, just so we don’t forget who the people are behind the links. That was a good idea and I should have made my ‘name’ change then.

I am Shelley Powers. I write a weblog called “Burningbird”. Now who are you?

Categories
Technology

Stuck battery in new TiBook

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I have one of the first runs of the TiBook released in 2001. Yeah, I know – never buy a first anything from Apple.

Anyway, it’s a wonderful computer that puts up with all sorts of abuse. However, I can’t get my battery unstuck. I can get it to the point where it seems to release just a tad, but it’s caught on something that won’t come lose. I gather this was a problem with the early TiBook designs, and they’ve since fixed the design.

Anyone have any suggestions on how I can get the battery out without breaking the laptop? Or sending it in to Apple? If you do, well, I’ll think up some suitable reward to go with my sincere appreciations.

Categories
People

He never met an offer he could refuse

I liked him for the fact that he had no problem with telling Hollywood to stick it.

I liked him for his acting, especially when he was younger.

He defined “Godfather”. But he blew me away with “On the Waterfront” and “The Wild One”.

And he’s finally met an offer he can’t refuse. Rest in peace, Marlon Brando.

Categories
Burningbird

Time to trim

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Now that I’ve had fun with CSS and stylesheets, it’s time to cut back on their number.

A dynamic stylesheet is a very effective approach to styling your site, but not if you also combine this with a dynamic stylesheet selector as I do. The reason is that when each page is accessed, all stylesheets are loaded the first time you access the page. For regular visitors, once loaded, static stylesheets should be cached and not loaded again unless they change. Dynamic stylesheets, on the other hand, are always loaded.

Having one dynamic stylesheet isn’t a bother because I’m using a lot more resources just to serve this page, the recent comments, and other functionality.

However, three dynamic stylesheets, two of which access external files, combined with multiple static sheets isn’t thrifty, and I am a thrifty developer.

Now that I’ve had fun with styles, time to cut back. Which styles to drop, though, is an issue.

Question for those with a spare minute: what is your preferred stylesheet at this site, and why? Is anyone using the dynamic stylesheets?