Happy New Year! I just went to the right side of this page to cut that drop cap. I like the way adezigh.net uses the drop caps. That's the page I'm really reading right now. Frank is alive and well blogging about the BlogAfrica 2005 Quiz. We failed. Claude has a quilt of favorite photos taken this last year. I pick the rose. Leslie would pick the rose if she was awake. Morgan, wake up! It's time to party. Is it snowing there? That looks like snow. It is snow.
What time is it in Germany Stu? Ah, he has a photo of Wilma. We loved that dog. I do wish I had never called Stu a bushwacker (sic). His response was to trademark Bushwhacking™. There's no way to mess with Stu and win.
Nearly couldn't find Shirl on the quilt. Looking for Grandma Bea's candle. It was way down there, now it's up there. Much Moaning has a picture of a tractor and farm fields. And this quote
meg thought it said ...
I'M RETIRED
(This is as dressed as I get)
I'M RETIRED
(This is as depressed as I get)
We misread a lot of things these days.
We aren't ignoring you Malaposta.
We aren't ignoring you Malaposta.
We aren't ignoring you Malaposta.
We aren't ignoring you Malaposta.
We aren't ignoring you Malaposta.
We aren't ignoring you Malaposta.
We aren't ignoring you Malaposta.
We aren't ignoring you Malaposta.
Copy-and-Paste Break
Happy New Year! is one way to say it. If you keep on typing it will wrap around.
Type this in your Blog or Web page.
It will look like this.
Happy New Year! is one way to say it. If you keep on typing it will wrap around.
Happy 2006
Kim says it well.
love. peace. joy. prosperity. wisdom. integrity.
2006. and ever onward.
please. thanks.
~Kim
I (meg) had successful spinal surgery late this year that allows me to work 4 hours each day in my usual occupation - Software Specialist. Mostly writing programs. Not much Web development, actually just writing some .bat files to upload and download data from the mainframe and trying to modify an old FoxPro program.
...the email
has leveled off. When I
returned to work
there were 6,941
emailswaiting...
There's some PERL in there and a little REXX here and there. No JavaScript. Never did like it. The email has leveled off. When I returned to work there were 6,941 emails waiting. That overloaded Outlook. One PC was dead, two were still powered on after 6 or 8 months, however long I was off work. Pain pills keep me blogging and I think they affect the spelling ability and more...more, way more.
Stupid Meg Tricks
- Make your own Logo
- Blockquotes with Image Quotes
- Easy CSS Pullquotes
- Small Pull Quotes
- Magazine Style with Center Float
- Center Image Float
- Polaroid Borders
post in progress...
And it may take all year. Why? Mandarin has been online since '99. When we started blogging using Blogger just one page was a blog. Now we have many pages, each one is a separate blog even though it may look like the pages are all the same. Can you believe that? There is no magic, no code behind the scenes, nothing made easy like the day job.
Blog
trashed by
We should be able to change the header and have it apply to every page, but we started it out wrong and now have to maintain each page as a separate blog. A major mistake that is difficult to admit, especially since we would never try to get away with this at work. It is not an acceptable design model. So, there you have it. There may be some smoke and mirrors but it's all just typed in HTML and CSS.
...each post is typed manually or copied and pasted fromMandarin...
We forget to spellcheck, never use the automatic link button, and don't have templates set up for even the most repetitive tasks. Each is typed manually or copied and pasted from Mandarin. And so with the new year, and even a new month, we are off to change the header or not.
This is not computer science, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to be a rocket scientist. We shoot from the hip and
if it looks good it stays if it doesn't
we just adjust it here and there. That float to the left here is a good example.
I'm adjusting the white space on the bottom by changing the
height to height:100px. It's a WAG.
The saving grace is that most of the style is in one style sheet style1.css. On the other hand, that style sheet has grown over the last five or six years, and it is in need of a serious makeover.
Site Statistics
We look at the site statistics every week or two. According to the Mandarin Site Statistics (our stats are always open) this page you are reading is the fourth or fifth most popular page at Mandarin. The ranking usually looks something like this:
But we like our backdoor friends the most - the people who visit this page. What the stats tell us is that one can never predict or control the popularity of a page or a topic. Opacity is by far the most popular topic at Mandarin and started as a simple exploration into the intricacies of opacity and transparency between various flavors of browsers.
Internet Connection Speed Test
We were going to ask for your help. The PC is so very slow today. We did a virus scan, deleted temporary files, and more. Then as the last straw ran the McAfee Internet Connection Speed Test
That was our problem. A slow connection. The PC running slow from here is rarely our connection speed, but today the McAfee test results show that we are connected at less than DSL/Cable speed. The solution might be to reboot and hope for a better connection.
Grapes of Wrath
Rob just came in with this backyard photo of the grapes and caught me sucking the life out of it in Adobe®.
"You're stepping on my grapes..."
"The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men to feel whether this time the men would break."
John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath
Merry 
Christmas
Blog
trashed by
Copy and paste this in your Blog or Web page.
It might look like this.
Blog
trashed by
Code stolen from WTJ.
Pure Text and CSS
It's a textual thing. Pure text with some inline CSS. No graphics required.
Copy and paste this in your Blog or Web Page
It will look like this.
It's a textual thing. Pure text with some inline CSS. No graphics required.
Different Strokes for Different Folks...
the layout is not exactly like what's in yours in my blog...(even i copy exactly the same coding)
WTJ
Wong Teck Jung
Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia
WTJ,
A number of questions have come in today
about various techniques, but this one is fun.
The code looks good on the black background.
It appears that the gold area is the
culprit. We can look at it and check out
the source code then try it here.
gold Text is Spilling Left
For now we have the screenshot to look at. We are showing the screenshot rather than the raw code since the character set is not installed on all PCs.
The gold text is going out of bounds to the left. In the code we
say backup with the margin-left:-20px; . That says backup 20 pixels. The intent is to slightly overlap the deeppink text, not to spill out of bounds to the left.
Why did it do that? A stray <br>
There is a stray line break
<br> after the deeppink text.
Now the gold
text begins on a new line.
It backs up 20 pixels like we told it to do, but because of the stray line break <br>, the gold text starts on a new line.
Most of the copy and paste code will look different on other browsers, screen resolutions, and more. That's the fun part. We test to make sure it looks good in the various flavors available for testing and everyone sees something that looks about the same but it sometimes takes on its own original look.
We can look at the source code and see if the placement can be controlled a little better...in progress...it's dinner time but I see that in Mozilla it looks good...oh, way cool...does it say HOW DO YOU BLOG???? Can you make one that says "Blog trashed by Mandarin"? Later, after we get this one done.
Tip for Copy and Paste
Some blogging tools insert stray <br> line breaks or <p> paragraph tags
where you think there are only blank lines.
If the copy and paste code doesn't work
try removing any extra line breaks <br> and
whitespace using the delete key.
WTJ,
We can see the stray line break <br>
between the gold text. Remove it with the delete key.
How do you blog?
Some prefer to grab a screen shot of text and make it a graphic. It's easier to work around a graphic image. The code just get's in the way sometimes.
How do you Blog?
How do you Blog?
How do YOU Blog?
How do you BLOG?
Frank Paynter asked "How do you Blog?". It is an interesting question. First we need to figure out what it means, then there is the process of describing how we blog.
