Happy New Year!
It's Party Time
Let the party begin...
Welcome. A few guests have arrived. Waiting in the comments for the rest of the party people...don't be shy, just come right in and introduce yourself.
We started making dresses when men were invited to the Women and Tech Blog Prom. This one was for RageBoy or fp but the shoes weren't quite right and the stitching shows. I'll work on it tonight.
Gossip from Earlier today...
Cassie is posting Coke bottles. We can't get to Punkclown. Looks like some blogspot problems. Same with 2Flower. Hmm, is that us or them. Even the link to brykmantra is going to the Blogger page. And Shirl.
The David Fletcher Government and Technology Weblog is working fine, as is Noded.
I guess you already know that Kane is back and posting regularly. It's fun to peek in at Daveynin's thing, he's in love, while MoodyMama is having a baby. Today! And she's still posting. Just like her.
A Stitch in Time is another one that we can't get to right now. Digital Common Sense is talking about Frank Paynter. We all do that, eh?
NETLAWBLOG is talking about Mandarin Design Daily's Blogging Tips in the same sentence with Talk Left. We're in good company anyway.
CelestialOfferings is another blogspot down right now. Ya'll are all welcome to party here, Let's get this party going!
Gary Turner is a must visit today, and just about everyday.
Mel has a new layout. Go Mel.
Bustinoutloud is alive and well.
And here's another one we can't get to right now Otto's new pad. What's going on out there?
FridayFishWrap has some laughter, while even WhiskeyRiver is unavailable right now. We all read WhiskeyRiver.
NoSword is celebrating in Japan. Nice local pictures.
Darn, we can't get to grlinabox right now either. Bummer.
CupOfChica has a nice looking place. Have you been there?
Dreamin and Talkin hasn't posted yet today.
LeftInFront (Brendyn) has settled down in one spot. We think.
GiggleChick tells us not to forget to say "RABBIT RABBIT" first thing tomorrow morning. Huh?
The Daily Mis-Lead hasn't posted yet today and SugarNSpicy hasn't posted in over a month. The visuals and links to awesome sites doesn't require daily updating but we are getting a little worried about Illana.
Mr. Useless is a good read today, actually it's a good read just about any time he posts. We made that center image for him one day, a bouquet of agapanthas, but forgot to give it to him. That was a long time ago.
Misbehaving has a picture...well, you decide. I'm not sure what the message is. It's an interesting place to visit now and then. The commenting subculture is alive and well.
Rodent Regatta is scaring us with facts. Facts? Now, how many blogs actually quote facts? That's unique. Most of us just make up the stuff as we go along.
Grillboy hasn't posted yet today. C'mon over and party with us Grillboy. Or, you could go read the Procrastination post at Broken.erratic.nu.
Dr. Stu posted a political year-end wrapup, while GasolineSuit still displays the blog trashed by Mandarin. Stu would never trust us enough to post a copy-and-paste from Mandarin.
Riri posted a new picture of herself. It's nice to put a face with the blog.
Lynn is decorated and has links to some nice family photos. Lynn's article Colorizing Images in Adobe continues to guide about thirty or forty people each day in colorizing their images.
Christopher Locke gave up his secrets this year in Cheap Thrills for the Beer-Budget Blogger. Thanks Chris, it started out with a bang and continues to help about thirty or forty visitors a day find good unbiased information about a few good tools.
Mecurial thinks it's time for a redesign. We'll be watching.
Shelly wishes us simple joys in 2004. I've enjoyed the virtual walks with Shelly in her photojournalistic posts. She took us places we couldn't have gone without her. Thank you Shelly.
Jeneane has the Top Spam Subject Line Predictions for 2004.
swimPC's thing put Christmas hats on his friends. Yo, Justin. Where are the New Year Hats? We all need hats.
Anita Rowland is still one of the fastest loading blogs out there. Always interesting and of course with good links.
We still visit Karina in Sweden, one of the first blogs that became a regular read.
Gary Turner asksWhat are your hopes, dreams or wishes for next year?Hmm, we're good party crashers. Gary wouldn't scold us, right? I think Wealth Bondage finally forgave us. Dunno. Party at Turner's Place? We crash parties better than we throw them it seems.
in progress...
Steal This Code!
Things You Can Do With Coke
Flip it Vertically filter:flipv()
Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
Original Bottle of Coke
The coke.gif image without the filter:flipv() added looks like this.
Coke After Punkclown
The coke.gif image after
Punkclown drank half of it was returned looking like this.
Coke Style Font?
How does it look from your end?
Thanks 2Flower for the font that looks like the Coca-Cola font on some PCs.
Coca-Cola
Copy and paste this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
Coca-Cola
Does it look like the real thing?
Blog Trashed by Mandarin
It's a stormy Monday here in Sacramento.Email...
Rieke sent these text links that look like images. You can view the source code to see how to make a link that looks like an image.
1. Mandarin Design
Mandarindesign2.coca cola
Coca Cola3. Haloscan
HALOSCANThanks Rieke. That's probably only close to how they are supposed to look. The code will look a little different here with our style sheet and conversion of font tags to <span style.
Email...
2flower sent us a nice rendition of Coca-Cola. But, it doesn't look the same here either. There must be some style sheet action going on either here or there that is getting in the way. Copying and pasting code is like that.
Coca-ColaIt looks good at 2flower and in Mozilla but not on this PC.
Email...
In another email GasolineSuit says they have earned the
| Blog Trashed by Mandarin |
honor badge (hey they called it that, not us).
Link To Us Code
Adjustable Text Link
You don't need images to link to us.
| Blog Trashed by Mandarin |
Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
| Blog Trashed by Mandarin |
You are welcome to take this text link. Fiddle with it and make it your own. Or, you can post it exactly as it is.
Uh Oh... It's a Google Goof
Google PageRank?
"PageRank is Google's measure of the importance of this page (2/10)"
- Google Toolbar
If you don't like being a slave to the Google PageRank you may be pleasantly surprised to find out that it isn't a "Page" Rank. The Google algorithm is buggy.
PageRank is actually a URL Rank that changes for each visitor depending on how you enter the page, not which page you enter. This page (any page) has a number of Google rankings just waiting to be pulled out of a hat. The PageRank that you see may not be the PageRank that we see.
The Google PageRank for that Blog is 3/10?
3/10 or 7/10? We were curious when we visited a Blog yesterday that had a page rank of 3/10 on the current blog page. It didn't make sense. So we typed in the full URL and saw a 7/10. Google, what are you doing? Without the WWW prefix it had a 5/10 PageRank.
Do you use the Google toolbar? Here, you try it. These links will simply refresh the page you are on. If you have the Google toolbar you can watch the Page Rank change. Same page, just different ways to enter or load the page.
Did everyone else already know that?
How do I type Google Goof in Color?
Google Goof
Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
Google GoofSteal This Code!
Things You Can Do With Coke
1. Put it in a CSS Centered Box:Solid Border
Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
PunkClown took the Coke, drank half the bottle and posted the half-empty bottle of Coke. Gary took a sip too.
We are still blogging from China for Jim's Journal. Jim is teaching in China and can't access Blogspot. He sends his posts via email with photographs included. No-Sword who is teaching in Japan has been posting interesting photographs and bits of local culture.
We like the teacher posts. Are you teaching? What do you teach?
Anita reminded us some time ago to label clothing donations with sizes and seasonal notes. We cleaned out the closets and labeled clear containers "size 4 Summer clothes" and "size 6 Winter " or something like that.
Happy Birthday Frank Paynter. You even look different all aligned in the new template. Refined like a fine wine.
COCA-COLA SALAD
1 C Water
1 C Sugar
1 6-1/2 oz. Bottle Coke
2 3 oz. pkg Cherry Jello
1 C chopped pecans
1 6 oz. jar Maraschino cherries
1 16 oz. can pineapple, crushed
Mix water, sugar, and Coke in saucepan; bring to boil. Pour mixture over Jello. Add pecans, chopped cherries, and pineapple. Mix well. Chill until firm. Serves 6
How to Float Your Coke
Add align="left" hspace="10" to the IMG tag.
Here's the recipe (image included).
Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
COCA-COLA SALAD
1 C Water
1 C Sugar
1 6-1/2 oz. Bottle Coke
2 3 oz. pkg Cherry Jello
1 C chopped pecans
1 6 oz. jar Maraschino cherries
1 16 oz. can pineapple, crushed
Mix water, sugar, and Coke in saucepan; bring to boil. Pour mixture over Jello. Add pecans, chopped cherries, and pineapple. Mix well. Chill until firm. Serves 6
Happy Holidays.
The A-List Bloggers
Do You Want to Know a Secret?
The missing comment. Some of you noticed that a comment disappeared from the C-List sign in post below. It was interesting to learn in the C-List comments that most of us don't know who is on the A-List and some good questions came up. What is the A-List? How do they derive that power? What measures are used?
As Rayne said
Technorati?
DayPop?
PopDex?
Google?
Alexa?
"aren't some measures purely quantitative and not qualitative? Isn't quality purely subjective? "
- Technorati? We use it. It tells us who links to us. We learn about people through Technorati and find interesting blogs.
- DayPop??? I don't know anything about DayPop and don't want to know.
- PopDex??? Please don't tell us what it is, we really don't need to know.
- Google??? I wish I hadn't learned about Google rankings. When your rank falls it can be depressing until you realize that this is software rating you, not people.
- That Bear? The Bear calls bloggers cute little names that aren't very cute. It lists the number of visitors to each site based on statistics from Sitemeter.
- Alexa????? Folks don't talk about Alexa much. The goal is to stay in the top 100,000 sites on the Internet so that you can watch your traffic ranking and compare it with other sites. If you use Blogspot you see the ranking only for the top-level domain so it isn't useful unless you have a domain name. Not many bloggers talk about Alexa. Not even those that some consider A-Listers are in the top 100,000. We're in the top. We don't have a clue why. Today we rank better than Dave Winer's site. Go figure. And that fast he spiked and jumped us. I think that is Dave's site (scripting.com) I really didn't know who he was until a couple of weeks ago.
14 or 400 Unique Visitors Each Day
Recently in an email a fellow blogger mentioned that while Mandarin gets 400 visitors each day he gets only fourteen. His blog is better than ours (he didn't say that, we say that because it's true). We immediately asked to be removed from the Bear so that folks aren't mislead by the numbers. The numbers are numbers. That's all.In the deleted comment I said something like this.
"I could tell him why we get 400 visitors a day but then I'd have to kill him".
400 Unique Visitors Each Day
Kill the Gator Now we have to tell all of you about the 400 visitors...darn. We have to tell all ten of you who are reading this (she says as if ten people will read this far). Actually, that count of 400 is from pages where sitemeter is running. Each day about 100 of the 400 unique visitors go directly to an otherwise obscure page titled How to Kill the Gator.Amazon Ads Trust me, unless you have the Gator you will find nothing of interest at that page and there is no reason for Gator visitors to ever come back to Mandarin. It's a one-stop page. If you put an Amazon Advertisement on it they will click. They don't comment but they click the advertisement and they buy stuff and we get a gift certificate for $15 or $20. Big bucks in a couple of weeks. So, if you want some traffic just copy the Gator page, spiff up the short instructions and you will get a hundred or more additional visitors each day. Surely a well-thought out Gator page would bring in a lot more traffic than Mandarin's Gator page.
the rest of the story...
Color Chart Visitors to Mandarin are not generally accidental tourists. The Color Chart gets a good share of the 400 visitors. And since it gets repeat visitors (we know that only by looking at Technorati links to the Color page) we wouldn't put an Ad there. It's an old page from the 90's, the first table I ever built. I wrote a FoxPro program to make a color chart and the end result was pretty so I posted it. Logic can be beautiful.The Blog A large portion of the "400 unique visitors" come in through this page (the page you are reading). The second highest entry page is through the front door
We don't get to pick where visitors come in. It would be great if everyone visited the pages that we think are the most important, or the most worthy. Nay, they land where they land and Sitemeter has helped us to identify and update the pages that are getting a lot of visitors that might be disappointed with the content. The ColdFusion page gets more visitors than it should but they are actually searching for items that are included on the page so we don't get rid of it, yet.
The Rest The Tutorials, FAQs, Style, and ? (I have to go check) are in the top-ten of the entry pages and then there are some pages that get daily visitors for reasons totally unknown to us. The Mandarin site is huge. We don't know how many pages are out there, it has just grown over time.
back to that A-List...
The A-List To wrap this up let's just say that none of us can say who the A-List bloggers are. We are happy being C-List bloggers and not being taken too seriously. We don't have even one sucky blog that links or visits. Not one. The whole point is to have fun. And if you have 14 quality visitors who actually read your posts then that's great. That's awesome. Over time if you stay active and want more visitors then the geometric progression will turn that 14 into 400 and then you have to use a spell checker. Thanks for putting up with us. Yes, we can type when we want to.We hope you will share your measurements and whether you use qualitative measurements or quantitative measurements. Or, perhaps you don't use measurements at all. And, the big secret. Here it is. We compiled a select list of the A-List bloggers. It will be posted here in a day or two. Mystery solved.
The End
A Chronological "About Us" Post
Yo, Stu. I'm stealing that idea.
Would the C-List Bloggers
Please Sign In
Hint: If you are not an A-List blogger then you are probably a C-List blogger.
1. Who are you?
2. Do you read the A-List?
3. Is the A-List a secret organization?
4. Would you want to be an A-List blogger?
5. Why not?
Spill it in the comments. C'mon. Talk it up.
Time Magazine Template
Time Magazine Person of the Year
"The American Soldier � They swept across Iraq and conquered it in 21 days. They caught Saddam Hussein. They are the face of America, its might and good will, in a region unused to democracy."
Make the Cover of Time
| TIME BLOGGER OF THE YEAR Your Subtitle 
MORE HERE ..... |
Copy and Paste (or type) the code below in your Blog or Web Page.
The code is a TABLE with inline CSS SPAN style and an image that is 50 x 50 pixels.
You can use an image from the Gallery or make your own image.
Maybe you can improve the Template. Show us your stuff.
Copy and Paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web Page.
It will look like this.
|
TIME
YOUR TITLE Your Subtitle
MORE HERE ..... |
CSS Centered Box
with Centered Image
Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
We took this wreath last year from The Other Side who took it from Lynn Rockwell who took it from someone...
Relative Positioning and Overlapping Text
Peace
is the reason for the season
You don't need images to achieve this Peace overlay effect. Just some CSS style. Place this code in your external style sheet.
H2.myhead {
position: relative;
top: 5px;
left: 5px;
font: italic 72pt times, serif;
color: #FFCC00
}
H3.myhead
{
position: relative;
top: -60px;
font: bold 18pt times, sans-serif;
color: #000000;
margin-left: 20px;
}
Copy and paste (or type) this code in your Blog or Web page.
<h2 class=myhead>Peace </h2> <h3 class=myhead>is the reason for the season </h3>
We used the color yellow #FFCC00. We are playing here. It's fun to fiddle with relative positioning.
If you think the text is fun you might want to try floating your text over an image. The code is in the FAQ page.
Update: Don't miss Frank Paynter's Interview with David Weinberger.
Clapton Lyrics
We Like Your Style
When we search for lyrics we usually land at a place that has five pop-ups and an automatic Gator download, no thank you. The Eric Clapton Collection of Lyrics is complete with no advertising.
Wonderful Tonight
by Eric Clapton
It's late in the evening; she's wondering what clothes to wear.
She puts on her make-up and brushes her long blonde hair.
And then she asks me, "Do I look all right?"
And I say, "Yes, you look wonderful tonight."
We go to a party and everyone turns to see
This beautiful lady that's walking around with me.
And then she asks me, "Do you feel all right?"
And I say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight."
I feel wonderful because I see
The love light in your eyes.
And the wonder of it all
Is that you just don't realize how much I love you.
It's time to go home now and I've got an aching head,
So I give her the car keys and she helps me to bed.
And then I tell her, as I turn out the light,
I say, "My darling, you were wonderful tonight.
Oh my darling, you were wonderful tonight."
If you view the Eric Clapton Collection of Lyrics page you will see elegant CSS in action. Brian McKinley Davies defined absolute positioned style for verse, bridge, title, and author. Dummied down for us (and made accessible with adjustable font sizes) the absolute positioned inline style the code would look something like this.
Verse
<p style="font-size:xx-small;margin-left: 28px;"> The verse will look like this </p>
The verse will look like this
Bridge
<p style="font-size:xx-small;margin-left: 48px;"> The bridge will look like this. </p>
The bridge will look like this.
Glowing with Peace and Joy
Cindy stole our Peace but gave us Joy in return. Thanks Cindy.
Do you want Joy? Copy and paste (or type) this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
This is DIV code with the glow filter applied. It is not an image so you can post it as is. Change the colors using the color chart. Here's firebrick, forestgreen, tomato, lemonchiffon, and brown.
A Box
Ask Dr. Stu. Hey, forget about AskJeeves.com. Stu will answer questions like WHY does English have 26 letters?.
Slake (AKA Gary Turner) has a great rendition of a new postage stamp. Susan has this blue or gray thing going on now. Nice color. It's blue-gray from here Susan.
Tish at FatShadow is writing about immigrants and whether undocumented workers should have the right to have a driver's license in California. Sensitive and serious subject matters are being discussed in blogworld. I think we need a box.
A Box
Copy and paste (or type) this code in your Blog or Web page.
We centered the text within the box and the box itself. It will look like this.
A Christmas story...
Coffee in hand ready to read blogs.
Ring ring ring
Hello
"Michelle?"
Yes
"I have Hickory Farms package for Dave W."
Yes
"He no live here, I live here now.
I call Hickory Farm they give me your number
It on doorstep so I pick up."
You are calling from New Jersey?
"Yes, I have Hickory Farm package for Dave W. I dont' know what to do."
You keep it and we'll send another to the correct address.
What a nice lady. Since she called today we still have time to send another gift off to the correct address. I'm glad we didn't buy Dave a tie. We need to send that lady a Thank You card.
CSS Float and Shadow Filter
Dude, you can float left without a table.
filter:shadow to your style and your text looks like a graphic. The shadow filter frees you from the load time of a graphic image and it makes a nice logo.
For this effect we used a DIV with float:left;. The result is that the text after the shadow filtered text will wrap around the word or title that we want to stand out.
Change the color to any color name in the Color Chart. We used the colors firebrick and forestgreen. Red and green would look nearly the same.
CSS Float
Shadow Float Left
Copy and paste (or type) this code in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
CSS Float
Shadow Float Right
Copy and paste (or type) this code in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
Bushwackers and Buckminster
Bushwacker It's a noun. However, it was used as a verb under an icon recently and the unsavory Dr. Stu caught it. The Bushwacker I am most familiar with is made with made with Kahlua, Bacardi Black Rum, and some other liquor. It's a popular drink in LA (Lower Alabama). If anyone knows the exact ingredients send them this way.
Buckminster Fuller I'm a retro-reader, mostly because the books are free. This one was loaned to me by a man who used to work with Buckminster Fuller but he passed on before I could return the book. Christopher penciled in notes like "(copy)" on some pages and so I pay close attention to those pages. He so wanted me to read them that I continue to study the words and wonder which parts he wanted me to study. It has to do with what he considered to be my social obligation as a computer scientist.
Here's one sentence from EARTH, INC
What I am trying to do
Acutely aware of our beings' limitations and acknowledging the infinite mystery of the a priori Universe into which we are born but nevertheless searching for a conscious means of hopefully competent participation by humanity in its own evolutionary trending while employing only the unique advantages inhering exclusively to those individuals who take and maintain the economic initiative in the face of the formidable physical capital and credit advantages of the massive corporations and political states and deliberately avoiding political ties and tactics while endeavoring by experiments and explorations to excite individuals' awareness and realization of humanity's higher potentials I seek through comprehensive anticipatory design science and its reductions to physical practices to reform the environment instead of trying to reform humans, being intent thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less whereby in turn the wealth augmenting prospects of such design science regenerations will induce their spontaneous and economically successful industrial proliferation by world around services' managements all of which chain reaction provoking events will both permit and induce all humanity to realize full lasting economic and physical success plus enjoyment of all the Earth without one individual interfering with or being advantaged at the expense of another.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Earth, INC., originally published by the Fuller Research Foundation, New York, 1947
|
|
One-Click Wonders
1. Test Your Internet Connection Speed
We are running fast today (1.443Mbps and 1.991 Mbps).
2. DNS Report
3. Get Your IP Address
4. DNSStuff More one-click wonders anyone? |
CSS Inline Style
HappyHolidays
Make your two-color headlines or greetings using the SPAN tag.
Here's a quick cheat for your Blog or Web page using the heading tag <h3>.
HAPPYHOLIDAYS
Copy and paste (or type) this code in your Blog or Web page.
It will look something like this.
HAPPYHOLIDAYS
With the shopping season in full swing we are already having a Happy Holiday season. We don't go shopping