Archive for August, 2008
IE6 Randomly moves stuff around and how to fix it
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Recently I had to work on a layout that had a lot of javascript in it, and because the structure of the html couldn’t change, I positioned things absolutely and relatively ( position: absolute; position: relative;) in order to get things in the right place. I was very pleased with the results and Firefox and IE7 looked exactly the same. Then came IE6. It was slightly off when I first loaded it in, so I did the typical thing and just did some conditional code for ie 6. Then, the next time I refreshed, things moved into random other places. And then again on the next refresh. And then not on the next refresh. And so on. How did I fix it? On today, the 7th birthday of IE6, when others are working hard to put ie6 on its death march, here’s a bit of code that made my life a little brighter… (more…)
I’ve got the olympic fever!
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
While I didn’t watch as much of the olympics as I would have liked (Britain’s coverage really didn’t give me very much access to my canadian countrymen…), I have caught olympic fever. Yes, myself and Margaret, Irish girl from work, are competing in an 5-day olympic challenge in the first week of October. That means 5 weeks to train for events!
I’m sure you’re dying to know what the events are, so I couldn’t *not* tell you, could I? It’s 5 days… sooo…
1. Rowing 1km (her with a 12 second handicap as she has competed in rowing before)
2 & 3. Weights (spread over two days)– there’s 8 machines using all of the main muscle groups, and we get three attempts to lift as much as we can for 5 reps.
4. Running 5km
5. Swimming (10 laps for her, 12 laps for me as I’m a better swimmer)
Should be good! We’re also monitoring our bmi and our inch-loss, which will factor in to our ending score. We’re still not sure what the prize should be. Possibly a night out on the lash, possibly having to do something embarrassing. I will also be planning a chinese-style opening ceremonies.
How many things should you learn?
Monday, August 18th, 2008
The obvious answer to this is, “as many as you can.” And with the web, you really can keep on going and going and there’s so much more to learn. You start learning photoshop and illustrator, and do your best to learn the tools, learn the rules of design. And then you decide you want to build a site, and start using dreamweaver, but things don’t turn out, so you learn to hand code your html and css. This opens up a whole new can, and now that you’re designing cool stuff, you want to learn how to make it “cool” for people to interact. So you put some javascript in using jquery, but things don’t work as you want them to, so you start rooting around to find out how to fix it. Suddenly you’re spending all your time coding and you’re not designing any more at all.
This is a problem. While I agree with (some of) the experts that all web designers should be able to do decent css and html, it becomes a problem when a designer has to spend all of his or her time coding. (The debate on learning both is still raging on this actually– some experts say designers should only do photoshop, others say they should have an understanding of the coding, but that’s beyond my expertise.) When there’s no one else to do it, how do you refuse to do it?
I have always been one of those people that likes to do and learn lots of new things. Hell, I’m learning how to spraypaint, how to sew clothes, how to use blender (a 3-D program), how to make silicon moulds, besides the fact that I play piano, would like to do gardening, and like to read a bit of philosophy. A person that stretches herself or himself too far– is he/she destined to never be an expert at anything? Have I stabbed myself in the foot by trying to do too much?
resources for boxes and graffiti
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
I lllooooooovvvvvve boxes. It used to be just little boxes, such as the ones you’d get for business cards, or new cartridges (they must be square or rectangular or pentagon, or octagon or round… not one of those terribly packaged products. Everyone must have standards!).
Lately it has just gotten worse. The boxes are BIG now. And I mean BIG. I have been cutting them apart for their cardboard to use for learning spraypainting. One box that I found on the street was so big that, even collapsed, took me 1/2 hour to get into my room (it kept getting lodged in the stairwells). My room is now PACKED with cardboard… it’s tucked behind my bed, behind my wardrobe, and behind my piano. It looks like my room is actually some sort of stock room.
So, for other box lovers, I thought I would find some links of things to do with boxes…. And, more importantly, some resources on how to spraypaint graffiti!
- 37 box related crafts for kids
- How to make a beautiful cardboard castle
- Make a safari miniature golf set (complete with elephants!)
- Make a desk!
- Disney’s list of all their cardboard box crafts
- Lyrics to Rebekah’s song, Cardboard boxes(and just for the record, Rebekah, they ARE cool!)
- Join the group to say that you want to learn how to paint graffiti on 43things.com
- Learn from some pros how to graffiti in easy lessons on this site
- Geeky examples of graffiti
- Video: How to draw graffiti-style people
- The cans festival official site. Amazing graffiti! Go down to leak street in london to see what the hooligans have done
