2001-08-09, 12:18 p.m., about this diary

I guess it's about time this site had its own about page. When I was using templates, there wasn't any need. But things have expanded beyond my own expectations.

For a start (and what prompted the genesis of this page) people begun commenting on my diary entries via my guestbook. And you know, I found the comments were interesting, and isn't it a shame that the commentary are isolated from what was being commented. So I decided to cut-and-paste (well, more copyandhtmlise) comments to the relevant entries. And then I found that sometimes I needed to edit out the non-informative bits.

From my GB are the readers comments taken from the guestbook. It is an excerpt, and likely taken out of context. (Although I hasten to caveat that all due care has been ensured that it is not. But sometimes miscommunication happens.)

[S] and [P] seem to be self-explanatory. They appear next to the title of the diary entry, and denote that the entry is either a story, or containing a poem. I know that poems and stories are usually dire. Which is why I'm considerate enough to give warning.

psuedo-html tags (i.e. the lesser-than and greater-than angled ascii) will have been bastardised. The symbols are constantly evolving (either the '*' or '/' or '{}' or some other variant).

The page design of this site is optimised primarily for Netscape. It will tend to look garish in IE, and probably in other browsers too.

That's about all the explanation which is needed at this moment.

Ciao.

2001-08-22, 12:42 a.m.

Well I added a title graphic. I had fun doing it. I wanted something nifty and cool. All I had was a grey graphite pencil, a lot of pens, some paper, and a drawer of highlighters. Oh, and a scanner and some graphic software installed on the computer. (Not _my_ computer, someone else's.)

What I wanted was the typical "owner's face" kind of job. But I wanted it to be eyes. Which is cool, but cliché. Pencil, paper. I like to doodle eyes. More specificallly, the right eye. Which didn't work this time around. Haven't been practising, you see.

So that's when I noticed the highlighters. Highlighters, paper. Scanner. Hmmm. Germ of an idea. I scrounged around for more scraps of uncreased paper which would absorb ink, but not too absorbant. This would have been around 2 a.m. in the morning. Yesterday morning.

I hummed as I uncapped the pink fluorescent highlighter marker. Without too much forethinking I idly liberally coloured in the pad of my right thumb until it was all shiny. Then I carefully impressed it onto the piece of paper. I did it three times to get the look I wanted (i.e. not smudged). Then I scanned it.

I fiddled around for about half an hour, or maybe a full hour trying to decided on what I wanted. (The original concept was images on a plain background, with a nifty framed edge.) But then the above concept popped out.

I had played around with the available wizards in PhotoImpact, one of which was the standard invert. So I did. I was quite pleased with how the colours turned out. Unfortunately this meant that I couldn't have pink-coloured text. The next best thing was a veeery light pink. Almost lilac, it looks like now. Depending on your colour monitor.

Btw, the text is Papyrus, font-size 32.

I spent some time trying to make the background of the image transparent. I succeeded, but only after I realised that I had to turn it into a .gif rather than keep it as a .jpg.

That was yesterday.

Today I fiddled about with the links outside of the main body table. What I would like to have is to have the links on either side of the title image, but (because of certain browser issue reasons) I don't want to use tables. Enter css positioning.

The above was the only way I could work it so that there wasn't an extraneous horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the browser in NS.

I've also added a maybe-nifty sitemeter counter. The trouble is that it seems to affect things during resize (only a prob in NS).

Chow down.

2001-08-23, 11:53 p.m.

Nothing beats plain html. Nothing. Forget css positioning; NS and MSIE have differing ideas on how it should be implemented. Nevermind. It's only me who uses them links anyway.

I've added a quote from Alexander Pope (1688-1744). I really like the sentiment there. Apart from the fact that Pope was afflicted with illness and I'm not (apart from perhaps undiagnosed paranoia and depression), I also hold somewhat "this long disease, my life" is true. Perhaps I'm going morbid again. I really need a fix of C18th poetry, careless spelling included.

2001-08-24, 10:44 a.m.

uh, fyi. I changed the date format today. It was (or still may be, I am not sure yet) yyyy-mm-dd, hh:min ?.m.. That is the easiest format for me when I add additional text to the entries. But right now it has become: day_of_the_week, month date, year, hh:min ?.m.

2001-08-27, 7:38 p.m.

search this diary?

2001-08-29, 2:48 p.m.

bah. deleted the 'search' functionality because it stuffed up the page.

2001-08-30, 11:05 p.m.

nope. something else is crashing this page. But since I can access the search via the members@diaryland, I don't care anymore. Except for the fact that this page crashes IE. Wieerd...

2001-09-05, 9:28 a.m.

couldn't help but add a disclaimer at the top of each pages. Just reminder that this diary is primarily for my own assistance to sort out my life. That this diary is perforce a distortion of me.

Also changed the format to weblog. Not sure how it will work out.

2001-09-17, 9:55 p.m.

about me

At least, there should be one. But I like the current entry so I'm just going to draft an 'About Me' on this page.

For a start, let me say: "I don't reply to forwarded jokes or chainletters. Or others of that ilk."

This is me also:
The ostrich lifted his head from the sand
About an inch or so:
'You will please excuse but disturbing news
I have no wish to know'
supplied by Flanders and Swann, The Ostrich courtesy of 8'FED.

I think that's a pretty good start. I'll give more thought on the ending.

ooh look! a link!

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(c) Sockii