Friday, January 16, 2004

CSS Zen Garden

One of my favorite web development tools is Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS is an extraordinarily simple, yet elegant and very powerful language for controlling webpage presentation. For those who aren't into web development, a stylesheet is basically a text file of look/feel instructions that you "call" from a webpage (HTML). The CSS tells the HTML page how to display itself, and achieves the web development goal of separating content from presentation.

One of the coolest examples of the power of CSS that I've seen is this CSS Zen Garden project. It's a project for graphic designers where the rules of the game are that you can alter the CSS file as much as you want, but you cannot touch the HTML file. Pick a design from the "Select a Design" section (it's available on every page, somewhere on the page). The results are pretty dramatic....

This is your art. This is your art on drugs.

This link came in an email newsletter today. Very interesting. A patient is given LSD, then asked to draw the same picture over and over again. The resulting drawings illustrate that, while drugs are undoubtedly bad for you, they probably explain the success of much modern art...

Now, go see the results...if you dare.

Thursday, January 15, 2004

Aw, Nuts

Peanuts. I have decided they should be eaten one at a time, no handfuls. I think that ruins the sensory experience. Instead, one peanut. One at a time. One of the reasons I love going low-carb...NUTS!

And then the fuzzy white dog came along and raped them all...

I guess I do have some news to report. Yesterday was Dakota's first birthday, and in commemoration, she got to go to Doggie Daycare for the first time. What a hoot! HappyDogz (that's the esteemed establishment) has a "doggie cam" where you can check in on the status of your playful pooch at will between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.

She appeared to have a blast. It's amazing how those pooches just wander, and wander, and wander. All day long. Very few had the smarts to lay down for a moment. Now I know why Dakota took only five minutes to eat and drink when she got home, then dropped into a canine coma for the rest of the day (and night). Nice quiet night for Mom, if nothing else. :)

There appears to be a "date rape dog" who frequents this particular daycare, though. Some fuzzy white thing who kept humping my baby. She didn't seem to mind too much, though. I guess even spayed girls like to go through the motions...

Anyway, happy first birthday to my dog. Or, seventh birthday, if you're counting dog years.

It begins.

The Wild Wendish Pirate Princess has created a blog. What will happen? The first post must be the hardest, because I'll be damned if I can find anything ingenious to say. So, I won't say anything at all...until next time inspiration strikes.