KODA

Writing CSS (CSS2) never ceases to amaze me. Whether it’s tweaking this blog, trying to re-theme a php app, or simply experimenting in the Web Developer Extension, I am always struck by how difficult and confusing it is to try to implement very simple design patterns.

Be it centering objects, making layouts use the maximum amount of space, or simply trying to use floats properly, I am always amazed by how seemingly obvious code does not work the way I should think it does. It seems rather silly to me that such a language would be designed such that web designers must resort to specialized recipes to deal with seemingly simple and common page layout designs. While powerful, CSS seems to become more and more a search for hacks and snippets to make many designs possible. Browser support is also an elusive and secretive gem; unless explicitly stated, what works in one browser will probably at some point fail mysteriously in another.

Sometimes, life gives you a decision between school, design, and sleep. Right now it feels like it’s a game of “pick two.” Tonight, I choose sleep.

Had another absolutely wonderful Aikido lesson today… and would love to go on and on about how great it was, but tonight I’ll just have to give it a rest.

Oh yeah.

Alright! The art section of chromakode.com is now officially open!
Took me a few days, but I finally wrangled ZenPhoto into something I feel has both form and function. ZenPhoto turned out very easy and fun to tweak, and I managed to get most of those things I was ranting about earlier into the site design. Oh, and this WordPress integration plugin is totally rad. Yay!

That’s about it. Ugh… I think I spent just about the entire weekend writing papers.

Sorry things have been pretty quiet here for the past day or so… I’ve been busy writing papers and other fun school-related stuff.

Well, I do have one announcement, and that is that I’ve finally found a PHP gallery app that fit my criteria, and that app is the excellent ZenPhoto. It’s just complex enough for my tastes, while being lightweight and having some neat ajaxy admin features. Not much to show yet, though it’s looking very good. I’m busy theming and tweaking things to fit the dark look of chromakode.com, though there are a few buggy things going on in the CSS that I haven’t figured out yet. Here’s a little preview, if you’d like to see what I’m talking about. There’s some old pictures up there for testing, though other than that it’s pretty bare. I’d love to hear any comments on the design, though (bugs aside).

Zzzzmm… very good concert. Sigur Rós were wonderful, Amina were excellent, and there were some really neat tracks in the setlist that I hadn’t heard for a long time. There were also some fun mixups and surprises that made the night special. I got to talk to the lights guy and meet the sound people before the show, which was really nice.

It seemed that Sigur brought back a few of their more gloomy, melancholic songs instead of the extreme happiness in the last concert – though they played those songs with an energy I hadn’t heard before. It was especially funny to hear the first encore, “Dauðalagið,” just after this morning reading john of management’s tour diary:

“when the band played daudalagid at a soundcheck in tokyo they gave up before the end, pondering later why their songs were so bloody long… go figure.”

… the studio version of that track is 13 minutes long. But hey, they made it through it tonight! And it was spectacular.

What does it mean to live life with earnesty?

Why is it such a challenge to cultivate authenticity?

Tomorrow, to my great anticipation, I will get to see my all-time favorite band live in concert. Ever since listening to some of their music on their website, I’ve been a huge fan of Sigur Rós’s music.

Sigur Rós is (are) an Icelandic band who play original, long, simple and yet very sonically “full” music. They play a mixture of rock instruments, strings, used in a genre that’s pretty much all their own. There are no (to my ear) understandable lyrics, though singer Jonsi’s often high-pitched vocals in Icelandic and “Hopelandic” (a kind of phonetic scat singing unique to the band) have a very meaningful quality, even without the words. Jonsi also often plays his guitar with a bow, adding to the uniqueness of their sound.

Today was busy… filled with all sorts of amazing and tiring things. No time for any writing or philosophizing, so today will have to do with a little journal-style post.

Woke up late today, around 8:45 with a bit of a sore throat… did some more great (tiring) philosophy stuff and it was off to Aikido practice. Today’s practice was… very difficult for some reason. Sometimes I have days where I just “know” that things aren’t going to work smoothly – and as much as I try to stop self-fulfilling prophecy, I just don’t feel as centered as usual. Today was kind of that way.

Announce’d.

It’s looking like a busy week to come, so I may not be writing a lot over the days to come. My intention is to keep up daily postings, though if I get backlogged with homework, things may have to go on hold for a few days while I get back into the loop of things.