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?

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.

MakeBabyJesusCryFilter

.

So I got pissed off, and spat a bitter little gob of snark into this Metafilter thread linking Christianity.com’s so-called Sexual Purity Fact Sheet.

Twine42 and Pollomacho both respond that the thread itself and the paste-in of the infamous Dr. Laura letter are aimed more at what I referred to as “those damn wacky homo-hating Christians,” to address the pick-and-choose Biblicalism of fundamentalist morality, and are not meant as an attack on what they call “true Christianity.” The thread goes on, however, to skeptical attacks on Paul and scriptural historicity (these “St. Paul was a misogynist revisionist bastard” statements have been popping up a lot in my attention lately) which cause me to question just what a “true Christian” is to them. While Christians may not all be the wacky homo-haters they think many of us are, we still are followers of a way of life and a world view which is becoming more and more alien to this increasingly secularized world.

Substrate drops more than one theological jewel into the thread with this comment: “So, according to this nobody is getting into the Kingdom of Heaven anyway.” Exactly right! We are fallen humans in a fallen world, and we are, each one of us — regardless of race, creed, sexuality, political affiliation, or MeFI user ID number — unable to inherit the Kingdom by the efforts of our own fallen virtue.

Who then can be saved?

(Of course, if you’re one of them secularist types, the idea of salvation and an afterlife is probably just a superstition from some unreliable old religious text anyway, right?)

“Good Old-Fashioned Robbery”

.

I caught my train out of Union Station to Baltimore at 7.55pm last night. About five minutes later, this happened.

Update: Changed the WaPo link to a police press release because the news story expired. Some guy walked into Union Station with what looked like a live grenade and tried to rob a store. He was caught by police. More info from the NLEOMF, commending the police officer who covered the would-be robber’s grenade till they were found to be fake.

Compensatory Linkfest, Part Deux

.

I spent the day in New York with Amy yesterday, and am now enjoying a weekend with relatives up in Connecticut. In my absence, more content for you to peruse and ponder:

– After breaking his nose by walking into a wall, Barry Manilow looks all set for what could be the biggest comedic campy-ironic comeback since Shatner.

– Maid-less in Manila: DeQuiros on living the Filipino life without maids. I grew up surrounded by a whole gaggle of maids who were constantly cleaning, cooking, laundering, and generally bustling about the house. I’ve found since moving out that I am far more suited to a life where I do my own household chores, thus helping lower-class Filipinos pursue other opportunities for advancement.

– This is old, but the story of Accordion Guy and “the New Girl” is a harrowing tale of real-life drama and deception, culminating in a series of shocking revelations. The climax for me comes when he asks, “What’s the difference between HTTP GET and POST?”

– The Guardian wises up a bit. Good. I myself am against Wolfowitz’s preemption policy, but pandering to standard far-left Bush-and-Oil rhetoric does not raise the level of debate one bit. (The latest Get Your War On, however, does.)

That’s it for now. I shall see you all Monday, when I can finally get the new random layouts up and running.