Generic greeting

Tue Feb 17 2004

david_suitChanged tonight:

  • In a fit of passion, I redesigned the main stylesheet. The biggest changes: a new bevelled look to the rough stripeys, and the addition of a logo and tagline at the top of the page. This looks cool, and I like it conceptually, as my use of rough, handmade-esque lines and broken-typewriter fonts has always been intended as a spoof on the freakishly linear designs at other sites.
  • I finally solved my homepage dilemma: the links are staying where they are, and are now floated to the right so that stuff wraps around them at the bottom. I'm still undecided w/r/t the left side -- I'm thinking pretty pictures.
  • Thousand Words now includes some new photos, more categories and an improved interface for browsing the collection, chock full of DHTML-enabled hand-holding. If you use it enough, you forget how annoying all that JavaScript is. Also, the thumbnail frame thing has been changed: it's gone back to a slick-lookin' thing with a bevel and drop shadow. Yay Eye Candy.
  • Reader Services (user registration and login for such features as the Oscars Game) has been slightly improved; the logging-in functions are now a little more generalized, which should enable me to set up new Services quite easily and quickly. Also: some of my homemade site-management appliances now use RS for security, and are set up to accept only my own Reader ID.2 This will enable such fun things as the Wireless Oscars Game (mostly of interest to me), Gleaner 2.5 (mostly of interest to me) and improved Practical Webmail (mostly of interest to me and certain friends).
  • My chart of All-Star Survivors has been updated.
  • What illusions I held that Robert Altman was ever a maker of interesting, watchable films are now gone. I can see the importance of McCabe & Mrs. Miller on an intellectual level, but especially given the profound shittiness of the print, I hope my fellow cineastes will forgive me for deciding that this evening was better spent drinking and coding. Hell, I'm writing the paper on Chinatown anyway.

Regarding Thousand Words and dating

dropletOne little trick I taught my puppy today: whereas so far 1KW has just taken the date the photo was processed into the web server as the date, it now checks for EXIF metadata and uses (if available) the date and time the photo was taken.

I also made a fun Photoshop droplet that reduces my super-huge digicam photos to a size and weight more appropriate for the database, and wrote a PHP script to handle bulk uploads with user authentication.

I was really, really bored. And speaking of which...

Gothic moment of the day

Taking advantage of one of my all-too-frequent minor nosebleeds, and having written a psychotically poetic valentine to nobody in particular, I decided to paint the heart in my own blood. I hasten to re-re-emphasize that I was bleeding anyway, I am out of red watercolor and, like, now I can say I once embellished a love letter with my own blood.

1 What I mean here: let's say that Moblog, David and Clippings are displayed in that order in the categories list. If you want to see Moblog and David (but not Clippings), or David and Clippings (but not Moblog), that will work. If you try to see any of the three alone, that will work. If you want Moblog and Clippings, things get weird.

2 You may be wondering, "what are these appliances? Why has he never mentioned them or linked to them?" Hmm, gee, that's a good question -- why wouldn't I tell the whole world about the page that let's any old schmuck add photos to Thousand Words, or update the Remaindered Links, since I'm too lazy to secure such things?