I’ve been watching Moblogging.org for possible mobile solutions for my blog, since the Bloggerbot has been down for months now. My prepaid service with T-Mobile doesn’t seem to be able to handle SMS-to-email, so my only available data options are straight SMS, or AIM, neither of which present any immediately apparent solutions. Until such time that I can get a better cellphone subscription which gives me a wider selection of data services, the “Mobrownpau” will remain an elusive dream.
Old-school blogging in miniature
Various webloggers have lately been making use of sidebar blogs as an alternative venue to peripherally collect links without interrupting the thematic flow of the main weblog. The links-only format harkens back to the original structure of the blog as web content filter, only in miniature format. Along those lines, I accepted an invitation from Jesper to co-author “Mini,” a remote collaborative sidebar blog, included via PHP and formatted via CSS near the bottom of my sidebar.
Seeing as I have only partial control over Mini, there’s a chance that questionable or inappropriate links might appear. Should you see any content ill-behooved to a Christian blogger’s sidebar, kindly contact me, and I’ll see about applying some preg_replace() filters. Or big black boxes.
Quoniam nunc?
Latin phrases for all occasions.
Quoniam nunc, vacca bruna?
Pastel Squares
Welcome to Layout 01. I admit I was strongly influenced by Clarissa’s design, combined with some of the boxy old look and feel. The new sidebar navigator (code adapted from the Z-Man’s vertical navbar) presents a more usable navigational scheme than the old horizontal “one-word sentences.”
Making Everything New
Some of the changes implemented:
New Code: I’ve rewritten the code for the weblog and the common template from scratch, using more object-oriented code and consolidating functions and content into fewer files. Hopefully this should make for a faster and easier-to-update website.
Rehashed Layouts: I had originally intended to just add minor revisions to the old CSS, but I found that the old layouts no longer seemed as refined, and many of them had display problems in Mac browsers. So, I opted for a creative reload: I’m rebuilding each layout from the ground up, using over a year’s accumulated knowledge of CSS tricks. This isn’t an absolute redesign; each layout maintains some sort of thematic connection with its corresponding original. Where possible, the old graphics were used, or variations thereof. I’m starting with just one layout, and will add more and more over the next few months till we get back to the fifty-two. Obviously this is going to take a while.
Skin Chooser: Originally suggested by Jesper, it’s over there in the sidebar. As I add new layouts in the next few days, the purpose of that dropdown will become clear. (If it isn’t clear to you already.)
Renumbered Blog Entries: It has been a pet peeve of mine for some time that my old Blogger entries were first imported into Movable Type in ascending order, numbered from entry_id 1 at the time of import and going up in reverse, so that my very first post was numbered 390. Having donated enough to merit email support, I asked the MT people if there was some magic MySQL query which could renumber the entries, comments, and trackback pings sequentially, across all the different tables in which blog data was stored. Ben responded that I could just do an MT export, empty my db, then reimport the entries. It took a while on dialup, but it worked. Of course it means some permalinks changed. Sorry. (I defy you, Jakob!)
Changed Directory Structure: Some directories got moved or renamed, but I’ve tried to catch the important changes with .htaccess rewrites. (And I only lately realized that weblogging convention is to refer to archives in the plural.) Most everything outside of blog-related content is where it was before.
Still a work in progress, but then, when is it ever not? Lots more coming soon.
So long, IE/Mac
Looks like that’s it for IE/Mac. I can’t say I’m sad to see it go; while the compliance cabal once considered it the browser of choice in a standards-parched world, recent years have seen far more worthy contenders to the throne.
Update: Tantek, Jimmy Grewal, and Craig Saila say goodbye. And Zeldman, of course.
Update: It just occurred to me that IE5/Mac wasn’t so much of a big deal to me because I got started on compliant CSS-based design a bit later in the game then most others, when browsers like Opera and Mozilla were already on the scene. Reading Tantek’s linked responses, however, really drives home just how important a step IE5/Mac was back then — at a time when I was still a budding designer, doing my nested HTML tables in PageMill and Dreamweaver 3 for a mostly-Netscape 3/4 audience. Who would have thought back then that we’d see days like these?
Comments and Trackbacks and Thumbnails, oh my!
BuSHT
Storms and Froth
Nasty thunderstorms in the area affected the MARC, causing systemwide track signal outages on both Camden and Penn lines, along with fallen trees and at least one freight derailment. All that added up to a 3 hour commute home from Washington today, on a Camden Line train which limped along the darkened rails at scarcely 15 mph.
Right now, something very strange is happening outside: large clumps of something resembling laundry soap bubbles are flying through the air outside my window, filling the sky over Little Italy and settling on roads and cars. I thought at first that it was an overflow of froth from an open washing machine in the neighborhood, but these bubbles don’t seem to be popping too easily; they roll along the street like tumbleweed and fly through the air like plastic bags in the breeze. Plus, it would take more than a dozen running washing machines to produce this quantity of hardy bubbles. The rain of amorphous translucent masses seriously convinced me, at least for a moment, that an alien invasion was in progress. Perhaps the driving rains of this afternoon caused a vat of something to bubble over in the nearby industrial district.
Lots more to blog about, but not right now. Tired, sleepy.
No Rest for the Werky
I know I said I’d have the random layouts up by Monday, and they are lurking about on the site at a not-so-secret URL, but there just hasn’t been time to get all 52 redesigned, and the common template still has a host of problems which I want to get out of the way too. Alas, like Young Russ, I have returned to the responsibilities befitting a fulltime paycheck, and, being swamped with work, cannot pay as much attention to this extension of my ego as I did in the vigorous days of my educational life.