It’s that time again; I’ve finished another essay for my mixed bag of an English composition class. Today’s installment is a narrative essay about the recent death of a beloved family pet, our little betta fish, Alpha.
He was an unusual critter as he liked to play in current and seemed rather fond of our cat, as I mentioned in my last entry. Unfortunately, I was never able to get a clear picture of the little guy while he was in his big tank. From this image, you might think we tortured the poor little guy by leaving him in a murky puddle all of the time. While that perception is appropriate to the story at hand and my own narcisistic guilt, he's in the middle of a water change and was happily back in his ten gallon fishy condo shortly after.
I had a really ahrd time with this one; the last three or four paragraphs are rushed and it shows. I'd appreciate any constructive criticism you have to offer. Just drop a note into the comments box.
This is a series of haikus I wrote when Kiyoshi the Kitten first came to live with me. Posted for posterity and my own amusement.
Short version of Yoshi’s background: I found him mewling in the bushes beneath my window when I overheard some children; “The cat is still here. Do you still have that stick?” No, I did not kill any minors that day. Symbiotic wiry, lithe kitten planes and angles stretched out long safe at last in laps
tummy rubs at dawn golden eyes hypnotize me in the palm of paws
Reached my second quarter of school, relatively unscathed. After a bit of class transferring due to some overcrowding in my English class, I landed with a teacher by the name of Barefoot (no joke) who generally seems like a pretty awesome dude.
Our first assignment was to write an essay about our greatest fear in returning to college as (theoretical) grown-ups. Oh boy; writing about myself in essay format is not one of my strong suits. Like many, I have problems with conclusions and, more specific to myself and my wacky view of the world, I run the risk of getting too personal. But well, he asked. So here it is. Personally, I think I was a little all over the map in constructing the darned thing. Any tips and ideas for improvements (and future reference) are welcome.
If you are having troubles viewing the document here, click on the post title to go to the permalink page for this post or go visit the document on the Docstoc website. Coming soon, my adventures in designing my own blogger template. Good times?
Without the images, hacks, tweaks, templates, ideas, code, graphics, and generators, on this page, this blog as it exists would not be possible. Check back for updates as I find new gadgets and hacks. Think I’ve missed something? Drop me an email from the menu bar.
I found this image in Smashing Magazine’s article listing of free, high-quality blog headers. It has nothing to do with mice or writing, but it speaks to my not-so-inner science fiction nerd. I’m sure over time, I’ll find other images I’d like to use and I’ll probably rotate this image out with something else. But I’ll be looking at Sergej’s work before I look anywhere else. Professional Blog Template by Our Blog Templates
You can’t tell by looking at my page now, but this template has the option of having up to eight columns and is fully set up for a menu bar across the top, Google AdSense, and a plethora of widgets in varying sizes. Set up a test blog for yourself and try it out to see what I mean. You may want to customize it by moving the menu bar below the header, setting the embedded comments form, or changing settings so that you can remove one or both “LinkBars” (or just move them around).
Since I’m hosting my blog on Blogger’s servers, I’m not supposed to remove the Blogger NavBar (and there are people out there flagging your blog if you hide your NavBar when you’re not supposed to). There’s some debate as to whether one should modify it at all but I’m guessing that leaving it’s functionality intact while making it “peekaboo” style -- so that it only appears if my readers hover over it with their mouse – isn’t too much of a problem. Shiny. Note that if you are an IE user the NavBar is there and functioning, you just can’t see it due to a lack of support of for a critical bit of code.
The Professional Template from Ourblogger came with Hackosphere’s selective expandable posts code already installed. I removed this code with Ourblogger’s instructions, and replaced it with the “peekaboo” style and added in the fading text.
Granted it’s already a cluttered page, and adding another line of text above the blog posts probably doesn’t help that at all, but that Bread Crumb Status Trail sure is nice for helping you remember where you are, what you were doing, and how to get back to the section you were looking at to begin with.
Similarly, the Social Bookmarking links may be a little messy if one adds all of them (which I have done, sorry folks) but it shouldn’t take much work to adjust element widths and pop them into a better looking place. I’ll just get right on that.
A pretty self explanatory hack if you’re a fellow tag junkie; Blogger’s existing “List only” display for the Labels Widget just doesn’t cut it. Must. Have. Cloud. Seriously, if I had to delete every customizion done in code except for one, this would be the one that stayed.
If you're a blogger or just into reading what nerds do to CSS in their spare time, check back to this page as I add more features to the site. Peekaboo lists for label and search lists are (hopefully) up next.
