(identity 'myron)

Mon, 13 Jun 2005

Updated Some Stuff [/announcements]

Updated some stuff, including the about me page.

// posted at 23:08. permalink   comments

Fri, 04 Feb 2005

dyndns [/announcements]

I set up a new, easier-to-remember url, courtesy of dyndns.org: http://myron.doesntexist.org/. It's just a redirect, so there's no real url change.

// posted at 16:06. permalink   comments

Tue, 15 Jun 2004

Blogs I Read Search [/announcements]

Added a neat search utility that piggy-backs google. I think I'm really starting to push the limits of static web pages here.... :P It's cool that it lets you do searches on weblogs on my blogroll, though it's yields pretty strange results at best—it includes everything from personal blogs to news sites to web design to politics. :P

// posted at 12:14. permalink   comments

Mon, 14 Jun 2004

More about the new layout [/announcements]

This design took me about 2 days straight of coding and I'm still not quite done tweaking some stuff. As usual, everything's just slightly off in IE—centering problems and some extra whitespace along the right of the first column. I hate IE. For a while I even had Chipa helping me out by taking screenshots of IE rendering my page since I didn't have access to a windows box. A true pain in the ass. I've since given up on getting it to look proper in IE. It's at least just positional defects and not functional ones, so I figure I'll save myself the frustration and let it go.

Anyway, the new design is pretty obviously inspired by csszengarden with some layout ideas I picked up from looking at my friend Eric's work. Time and again, the zen garden layouts have proven that just one good photo can make for a pretty decent design. I figured I'd center the layout around one of my favourite photos I took while in Japan so it would keep the Asian feel of the site. A few hours of css hacking, suggestions from Chipa and hours upon hours of deep house at netmusique later and voila, new design.

I've also rechristened this site with the name (identity 'myron), which sounds a bit cheesy, but hey it's a blog, and it's also a runnable lisp expression.

I'm pretty happy with all this so far since it's only the second time I've done any substantial web design. I finally figured out how to use the gradient tool in gimp. I also have a newfound appreciation for typography and fonts especially....

On the left is a Trebuchet MS letter gee and on the right, Bitstream Vera Sans Serif. I'm convinced the letter g alone makes or breaks a font. The left is pushing the limits of sans-serifness, I think, but achieves perfect balance in including the special ligature curly tail thing whereas most other sans-serif fonts don't even bother.

In any case, feel free to leave any comments or suggestions for the layout. I also hacked a blosxom plugin to cut off stories in the RSS feed. Sorta defeats the purpose to have the entire content syndicated....

// posted at 14:54. permalink   comments

Sun, 13 Jun 2004

Hola, new design [/announcements]

Worked hard on this.... I'll talk more about it later. For now, I really have to get going on some homework I've neglected. ;)

// posted at 21:21. permalink   comments

Sat, 13 Dec 2003

New stuff [/announcements]

Strange persistent headache today, so I've been home all day tinkering with things, including this site, as you can see in the last post. I've coded up a new chunk of javascript to set cookies and tell you if there's any new comments on stories. So um, turn on javascript and cookies. And uh, as always, use Mozilla and nothing else. Hmm, well there goes my readership, eh?

Anyway, that was sort of fun. Javascript is a @#$%! to code in sometimes what with the lack of almost any decent builtin functions at all. There's not even any way of traversing an associative array properly unless maybe you store the keys in another indexed array and use it as a lookup table. What's more is that there's no way to serialize objects. And of course, this is a purely static site except for the comments system hosted on a public service, HaloScan. So now I'm storing bits of code in a cookie that gets eval'ed by javascript when you visit the site, telling you how many comments are new. Funky eh?

Still testing it all out though. Already it seems that it doesn't work in any browser but Mozilla. Oh well. It's set to die gracefully at least.... Send feedback to let me know what browser you're on and whether or not it works. Code is here if you wanna help me out.

// posted at 22:50. permalink   comments

Wed, 03 Dec 2003

RSS feed on comments [/announcements]

Added a link to the comments rss feed on the left panel of button links. Subscribe if you wanna keep up with comments as they come in. Dunno why I didn't post this up before.... Oh well.

// posted at 04:18. permalink   comments

Sat, 25 Oct 2003

Suzuka Race Circuit [/announcements]

Suzuka Race Circuit and amusement park. Day trip with Nagata and Shutou. Be warned, as is usual with me, some badly lit photos and some that are completely out of focus. Was too careless to compose decent shots.

// posted at 06:36. permalink   comments

Sat, 27 Sep 2003

Redesign [/announcements]

Redesigned again, for the one person who's out there reading this in IE (*cough* Kenji, install mozilla dammit *cough*). In any case, this is a tentative design. It should be easier on the eyes; I've never been too fond of bright text on a dark background no matter how cool it looks. The calendar seems a bit out of place though, rather funny looking....

Comments have now been added care of HaloScan. Oh, and there's a direct translate to Japanese button on the left using Babelfish.

// posted at 04:44. permalink   comments

Thu, 04 Sep 2003

New (old) pictures from Kobe [/announcements]

Finally got into posting some old pics from an office dinner cruise in Kobe. Pics were taken from other people's cameras, some of them a bit blurry. Hit the photos:Japan link at left to see 'em.

// posted at 15:24. permalink   comments

Sun, 31 Aug 2003

Ongoing Re-design [/announcements]

Well, with the help of my friend Chris, this blog seems to be coming along somewhat nicely. Although not everything's quite as it should be yet, and my css file is quickly filling up with commented out experiments and whatnot (read: it looks like crap).

I think it's good enough for now, though. CSS is definitely a neat concept that really changes how you think of web design. Instead of drawing up tables to throw your content in, with CSS it's like you have a canvas on which you draw your content. Sometimes you can sloppily throw your text into an html file ignoring how it'll look, then go on to fiddle with the CSS file moving bits and pieces where you want them until they look right. It sure beats having to plan out every column and row of a table and what will colspan and what will rowspan or whatnot.

Oh well, it's time to get some dinner.

// posted at 01:52. permalink   comments

Fri, 29 Aug 2003

Re-design [/announcements]

Yeah, re-design on day 2 of my blog. The blogger templates were ugly and I wanted to switch to blosxom anyway for some more features. Now there's an rss feed and the ability to display entries by theme. The css trick used here was borrowed legitimately from the complex spiral demo on css/edge.

I've gone a little overboard with the buttons down below, but hey. It takes effort to be css and html compliant and be churning this stuff out in vi, on a mac, with the assitance of gimp, oh and by the way I'm Canadian. ;)

I was going to stick on another badge for Japan, but all I could find was this:

Pretty lame. What is this supposed to mean? Segregated web-site viewership? Maybe it's just another example of engrish. Anyway, this isn't a Japanese only site or an English only site, so if you need to translate this page, click the "FF translate" button up top.

All badges came from Steal these buttons.

// posted at 14:08. permalink   comments