*
The design and code behind the new site is about 98% done, but there's still one thing that irks me. Apparently fonts are rendered very differently when you compare OS X and Windows.
The new design looks wonderful in Safari and Firefox on OS X, but some of the DIVs are not wide enough on Windows. Why the heck is it that "verdana 10pt" isn't the same size everywhere?! On OS X the menus look neat and tidy. On Windows the characters get huge and start wrapping around to a new line. Meh...
I'll have to bang on that a little bit more :/
Posted in:
darn
,
font rendering
,
overhaul
,
redesign
,
website
*
The design and code behind the new site is about 98% done, but there's still one thing that irks me. Apparently fonts are rendered very differently when you compare OS X and Windows.
The new design looks wonderful in Safari and Firefox on OS X, but some of the DIVs are not wide enough on Windows. Why the heck is it that "verdana 10pt" isn't the same size everywhere?! On OS X the menus look neat and tidy. On Windows the characters get huge and start wrapping around to a new line. Meh...
I'll have to bang on that a little bit more :/
Posted in:
darn
,
font rendering
,
overhaul
,
redesign
,
website
*
I've no clue what's going on and I don't like it. No sir, I don't like it at all.
I've almost finished the programming work on the new version of my website. Most of it seems to be working rather nicely and I've hammered out most bugs. Most of the code has been greatly improved and I've taken away a lot of the extraneous PHP files. For instance, no longer will I need six separate PHP files to display blog posts and the archives, nor to add or view comments. All of that is now handled by two site-wide scripts. Nice.
Of course now that things are wrapping up it's time for the
weird bugs to show up. I should've learnt my lesson from
The soul of a new machine. I mean, I've only read that book three times. :/
Anywho... This morning I added three articles to the database, through Firefox on my Powermac. All three of these articles show up with completely screwed make-up. The CSS is completely ignored, as is the HTML and some parts of the text itself. Two articles that were added after that show no problems whatsoever. The problems are independent of which index.php file I use to view them as each of these shows A) the buggy posts incorrectly and B) normal posts correctly.
So there's -something- in these three posts that's interfering with the post displaying code that I've written, that doesn't show up with any of the other posts. Remarkable. At first I thought this might be due to these posts having been written on my Powermac, as opposed to my Macbook. Who knows, maybe there's some difference in character encoding or whatever between the two. But no dice. I replicated one of those posts using my Macbook and the same problem pops up.
Weird.
I'm gonna have to spend some midnight oil on this =_=
Posted in:
overhaul
,
programming
,
website
,
weird problem
*
* Family
My mother and her husband had flown over to the Netherlands for a long weekend, so we went to see them at my sister's yesterday. It was very nice to see them again since it'd been at least a year! I'm sorry to say that we had to leave early, in part due to the crap I described in my previous blog post.
@ Anu: we're sorry for leaving so early, we really -do- miss you you know? :)
* Website
I've been cooking up ideas for a completely new build of Kilala.nl. Most of the content will remain the same (although some parts will be taken offline) and the change will be mostly visual. I plan on finally -really- learning CSS so I can implement some nice, graphical trickery.
In order to get to a point where I can start working on the new code I'll first need to get some things sorted. I'm already working on moving all archived blog posts into the database (only 2002 and 2003 remain) and I've set up MySQL + PHP on my Powermac so I can run a local version of the website. Still, it'll be a very long road 'till I finally get to the end result and I hope that the creative process involved will keep me a bit happier.
* Doubts about work (see
yesterday)
One of the doubts I was talking about earlier, about work, is that I would love to do something more creative than systems administration. Of course I "make" stuff now as well, but I can never go: "This is me! This is what I've built! Marvel at my handiwork!". Scripts and proposals and solved incidents just aren't tangible like that.
I think this website is here to at least partially fill that gap: I'm trying creative processes that I never would get to use otherwise. Thing is though, jobs with tangible, creative processes start to sound more and more enticing! Jobs like gardening, cooking and carpentry where you make something and people care.
That's something jobs in IT are renowned for: most people outside your sphere of influence, but inside the same organisation, don't really seem to care about what you do. So if you're part of a team of sysadmins the "we care"-level drops steadily once you moved outside your department.
For now I'll stick to my current job and get more creative hobbies. There's still that sewing project lying in the corner and woodwork sounds rather relaxing by now :)
Posted in:
family
,
mother
,
overhaul
,
website