MarQ1

I spent most of the weekend reading up on CSS compliance and separating content from presentation and fiddling with the site. And my sub-site that’s a work under wraps. It will combine knitting, HTML, PHP and a MySQL database. More later.

The more I read, the more I think MSIE s—cks. I keep seeing, This is a cool, efficient way to do this in just CSS, but IE doesn’t support it, but here’s a javascript work-around. I don’t want to do javascript work-arounds.

I did get a bit of knitting done during the Oscars, but, again, the hat is black and just won’t photograph.

J. suggested Saturday that I braise something for dinner Sunday. I’m not a fan of braised meats, except brisket, but I thought that if I made it myself I could make it palatable. I made a chuck pot roast, braised in beer, onions and mushrooms, finished off with potatoes, parsnips, carrots and more onions and mushrooms. J. loved it. It looked perfect. The gravy came out perfect. The vegetables were perfectly done, but not mushy. It smelled like a good pot roast. I still didn’t like it. There was nothing wrong with it, I just didn’t like it. Not the meat, the mushrooms, the carrots or the parsnips. The potatoes and onions were okay and I can go either way on the gravy. I’m not a gravy guy.

It’s a good thing J. likes it: he has a lot of leftovers to finish off.

I suspect that that had I made it into a giant curry, I would have been just fine with it.

I just looked at this site for the first time with Microsoft^® Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac^®, specifically 5.2.3 (5815.1). What manure! And I don’t mean my design.
The content follows the sidebar instead of being displayed next to it. The list bullets aren’t correctly displayed. It can’t display the one-half character (½) correctly. There’s no border around images used as links (Safari doesn’t show those either). I assume that that indicates that CSS 1.0 compliance is practically nil.

Are any of you using IE for Mac? Do you see what I’m seeing?
I’m sure I can code around it, but I’d recommend switching browsers.

Does anyone using IE on Windows have the same issue? If so, which version? I can’t check it myself.

It has now been snowing for over sixteen hours. This is a relatively light period of snow at about 7am. Yes, it really is that murky.

I spent a good deal of yesterday once again playing with MySQL and PHP and HTML putting together a web-fronted database to inventory my stash. I’ve got the data-entry bit down pat, but haven’t touched the update or reporting bits. I’ve also catalogued the yarn in the living room and in the office, including the mystery box in the closet. The bedroom closet awaits.

This blur is my latest WIP:

I’m practicing for Birch, so this is Baby Birch, with a 149 st. cast-on instead of 299. This is far from perfect, but it is recognizable as lace. I have high hopes for blocking.
Question: The kidsilk haze is difficult to see against the steel of the Addi Turbo and slippery too. Would I be better off with darker wood-tipped circs?

«Birch detail
I need to cast on something simpler, though. I can’t knit lace and watch the Olympics.

The forecast is now for 12-24 in. of snow (30-60cm), not as bad a what Ted got, but we’re going nowhere, nonetheless.

As you can see, I have finally completed the Angled Scarf. The Crystal Palace Bamboo needles helped it go a bit faster, though I would still have preferred aluminum.

An interesting note about the Elsebeth Lavold Angora: the knitted yarn got fluffier as it was handled, though the yarn coming off the needles wasn’t particularly so.

Detail of scarf »

After wet blocking this and while waiting for it to dry, I amused myself yesterday by teaching myself how to populate an HTML form from a MySQL database using PHP. That pretty much sums up the day, except for the hour or so I spent at the gym—my first time in the gym in about a year. These love handles have got to go.

This came Friday, thirteen hanks of wool from Beaverslide Dry Goods, two sampler packs of wool/mohair, which is the rainbow effect, and the one in the foreground, wool, which just looked like a something I’d like, which I do. While J might argue that I don’t need more yarn, since I don’t have any place to put it, I like having enough—in quantity and variety—to choose from when I want to start something new.
It would make a lovely rainbow sweater don’t you think? *barf*

There is, unfortunately, a slight floral scent to the yarn, probably from the wool wash used. It’s not overpowering and most people would find it pleasant, but J and I are both scent-adverse. Break out the Zip-Locs.

I was amazed at this:

I have never seen so many stamps and so many denominations on one package. Looks cool.

Different subject altogether

On the advice of my newly acquired cardiologist—isn’t aging wonderful?—I ordered fish, cod to be specific, at dinner last night instead of the hanger steak or pasta in cream sauce. People eat this? Slimy and nauseating.

Tuna and salmon are fine. Swordfish would be okay if it weren’t endangered. Cod is going to take a bit more effort.

I’ve been playing around with PHP, the programming code that runs underneath WordPress, which is what this blog runs on, and at the top of my sidebar (to the left) you see my first bit of live PHP coding. Everytime you enter or refresh this page, that counter will update (until Mom asks me to remove it.)

Counting down until my sister turns fifty just seems more fun than counting down until I do.

In what is likely to be a short-lived fascination, I’ve been random blog-reading. Geesh, what dreck! [Pardon mine]. If it were only satire, it wouldn’t be so bad. I read one three times, hoping it was, but the woman apparently really is a mean-spirited, troglodytic, witch-hunting, sugar-coated hypocrite unable or unwilling to carry her beliefs out to their logical actions. I assume that she hasn’t only because I’m sure the Austin Amercian-Statesman would have reported, and the NY Times would picked up, the crimes against humanity this woman is clearly capable of in the name of a better America.

Twenty-one-year-old Christian girls in Nashville who use the words “do-gooder whore” really should remember there are years and years and years and years left to live (or maybe not, but why live for that chance?) and you really should lighten up; you will don’t want to turn into that “do-gooder whore” from Austin. Do yourself and all of us a favor: now that you’re legal, put a nice stiff buzz on. Several times. It might change your outlook. We can only hope.

Once every seven years (or less), re-read your diaries, poems and letters with an eye for self-importance. If your writing lacks historical significance, the basis of a great novel, wit or original insight, toss it, unless you’re Virginia Wolff or Tim Burton or the like. I’ve purged everything at least three times. Even this dreck will eventually disappear.

Unless, of course, in some sci-fi scenario, all these blogs get synthesized into some massive AI, which should eventually self-destruct at the inanity. Google’s probably working on the AI now.

Blog on.

But change your template! Geez, if you can’t aspire to original thought, aspire to original design. Or at least derivative. Even derivative wants to be different. A little HTML never hurt anyone, save a headache ot two.