Category Archives: geekspeak

site-related techspeak, computer crap, other technical garble not of interest to the general populace.

geekspeak

I am so addicted.

I had thought to have a computer-free day today. After purchasing web hosting, downloading MT, and almost getting it installed yesterday, I had seriously thought I could stay away from my hopeless addiction to the intarweb. I had planned to do some yoga, put away some clothes, water my plants, et cetera, et cetera. Instead, here I am, basking in the glow of my Compaq FS740 17-incher, watching my old-skool copy of WS_FTP95 (straight from the 1999-2000 ResNet CD!) zip all the Movable Type files to their new home.

Er, no, I’ll take that back. I am actually now configuring MT. So far, so good… Now I just need to set up a template, and test this puppy out.

Then comes the daunting task of importing all my old entries.

Manually.

*gulp*

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Layout (Almost) Complete

Thanks to the lovely folks at the CSS Forum, I now have my basic layout set up as I had wanted. I still need to design my very first masthead, figure out my site structure and navigation (i.e. pare this sucker down), and finish my background image to my satisfaction. Then, and only then, will I be prepared to shell out some coin for “real” webhosting. And, after that, I will refamiliarize myself with installing perl scripts on a remote server (which actually shouldn’t be too hard—I mean, if I could install a guestbook script back in the day, I can certainly install and configure Movable Type six years later).

Questions, though: Amy, I know you use Firefox. When you scroll my test page, does the “transparent” background kind of jump? I think it’s just a video RAM issue on my box, but I can’t be positive. It does the same thing in Netscape 7.2 (which I downloaded for testing purposes only). The only reason it doesn’t do it in IE6 is that Explorer is fubar and doesn’t display the background properly… but I kind of like the funky effect it gives, so I’m keeping it, even though it’s not what I was going for. Oh, and incidentally… Firefox is now my default browser.

Overall, I believe I am pleased. Any comments on the layout: good, bad, ugly? I’ll get the masthead up as soon as I get it designed. 😉

geekspeak

Getting Closer…

Well, it looks like there will in fact be some degree of image trickery in the new layout. But it’s looking better, anyway, especially in Firefox. Turns out IE6 doesn’t actually support the full version of CSS1, and barely supports the CSS1 core. So, all the little stylesheet tricks and fun things that work fine in other browsers look like toasted crap in IE6. (I haven’t tested on Netscape yet—seems that I uninstalled Netscape 6 from my computer. Imagine that.)

I wish I knew someone who used Movable Type. I know y’all are LJ junkies, or have your own other thing going on, so I can’t go to any of you for bugs/issues/how-to-install. Yes, I know, they have tech support and plenty of docs, but it just feels better to have a real human being to ask when you need help. If I can’t use my own layout with MT, I want to know now so I can give it up. Guess I should check the docs soon.

Once I’m completely ready to implement, I’m going to buy a new domain and get some real hosting at HostRocket. I know Schavitz has been going through them for years and has had little to no complaint. Upon comparing their services with others, like LiquidWeb, they seem to have more of what I want for a lesser price. Not by much, but anything is enough.

Oh, no… I’ve turned into one of those people who blogs about their blog. Shit.

site-related

CSS Is Driving Me Insane

Interesting evening. The original plan had been:
1.) do yoga while watching local news
2.) eat dinner during national news
3.) brush teeth, practice mellophone
4.) water plants, indoors and out
5.) put clean clothes away and other minor straightening-up
6.) play with new website

The actual plan became:
1.) super-hungry. ate dinner during local news.
2.) watched half of national news, then fell asleep.
3.) came downstairs at 7:15pm. turned on computer.
4.) messed with website for two hours.

Finally got it to look almost right in Explorer, but (as Amy will notice) it looks totally fubar in Firefox. ARRGH! WTF?! I enjoy a good intellectual puzzle, don’t get me wrong, but I am getting seriously peeved at this.

After all this tweaking, I just hope I can make Movable Type work with it OK without resorting to using one of their templates. Good gravy.

geekspeak

Redesign Update

If you’re interested, the results of an evening of CSS research is here. It’s still not done, and I still have a few issues to overcome (mainly dealing with the height of various elements in various resolutions), but it’s getting there.

I tested in IE 6 and Mozilla Firefox, but haven’t downloaded any other browsers to test on. The page also looks funky on any resolution other than 1024×768 (remember those resolution issues I mentioned?). I’ll continue to add to it and tweak it and keep you all posted. If you find something that doesn’t work at all, throw me a comment, yo.