5 July 1999: The Dreaded Redesign

Monday, 5 July 1999:

The Dreaded Redesign

Today was an odds-and-ends day.

The guy came out to look at my refrigerator. He says this GE model has had persistent problems with its compressor. He said there was a lot of dust clogging the air intake, and that might have had something to do with it, but the compressor might also be bad and I should keep an eye on it. If it continues to have problems, then the landlord will probably have to replace it; I guess getting a new compressor isn't cost-effective.

Spent some time in the afternoon playing more Starcraft scenarios. Did the first two Zerg ones, which are pretty easy. The third one is a little more challenging, since you don't yet have access to the really nice Zerg units.

The fitness center was closed again today. I had thought it was closed yesterday and open today, but maybe it was the reverse. They didn't have holiday hours posted when I went by; annoying. So, I bought some groceries and came home.

Then, as you've probably noticed, I redesigned my journal front page. Anita Rowland suggested a good site to download some free fonts from, and then I started playing around with my layout ideas, which basically consisted of:

Use smaller fonts, so everything fits on one page.
Keep the blue-and-purple color scheme.
Give the graphics transparent backgrounds, which I hadn't been able to do when I first built the page.
Use a gradiated color sequence next to the entries.

It pretty much came out the way I wanted. It's nice that it's not quite so vertically oriented, and I broke a long-standing rule I've had and set page-wide link colors for the page.

Next, I'm going to revise my year, month and entry templates to fit the same format, as well as the "Curiosities" pages. I'm not going to do all my old entries, obviously. Like every other journaller who does a redesign, I'll only do the current and future stuff, and leave the old stuff as-is for posterity, or something.

I'd forgotten that HTML design can actually be fun!

Went to Borrone tonight for dinner and to read. Finished the Mutts book, and started Lois McMaster Bujold's Komarr. I decided I was in the mood for something light and entertaining, and was doubtful whether Kage Baker's the Garden of Iden, which I'd gotten about 30 pages into, would fit the bill. I still want to read it, but felt I needed something more familiar to try to jump-start my reading.

Komarr is a somewhat slower and less flamboyant book than the earlier Miles Vorkosigan novels, though, at least through the first 60 pages. We'll see.

Back to work tomorrow...

Michael Rawdon (Contact)