17 May 2006
I was trying to describe to someone what a 3 phase 32A 415V socket looked like (at least in Australia) the other day and discovered nothing of assistance in Google at all.
So here are two photos.
Note the easter-egg in this image. If you go to Sydney and need to show someone what one looks like, there are about four on the front lawns.
Feel free to steal these images, etc./link to this page. Deep link images and die a horrible death. I’ve refrained from doing BadThings to a couple of MySpace users thus far, but if anyone with slightly more brains tries it then the images will probably turn into things you’d rather they didn’t. Here ends the warning that also applies to every image published here.
17 May 2006
So I’m back to building stylesheets. Feels good. Gets the blood pumping.
Makes me want to strap a bomb to my body and go into Microsoft’s offices ;-)
IE is fun, but PNG support is seriously painful sometimes. Do anything slightly adventurous and it all blows up in your face (no pun intended). I’ve decided IE needs a mascot like Firefox (a cute fox) so that I can get a voodoo doll stuffed toy that can sit in the corner of the office to be pummelled as required.
17 May 2006
So I’d accidentally replaced-from-HEAD a project in CVS here, having not worked on it for a week or two and having forgotten I had, in fact, made changes. Oops.
Fortunately, Opera will save your tabs of everything forever in a tab-cache (as well as a file-cache, but rendered), so as soon as I fired that up I knew I was saved! Such a liberating feeling. I love Opera. *saves images, markup + CSS and hurriedly checks in*
16 May 2006
No pretty PDFs of this one. I wrote it in a normal word-processor (because jaggy, unjustified lines are easier to read) so there were no LaTeX sources to make documents from. OpenOffice does PDF export but there’s not much point. Shrug. Speech follows, ~5mins (probably over, closer to 6). ~950 words.
Scene 4 in Act 2 of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline affords us a great deal that is of interest when examining the development of romance narrative throughout time.
This portion of the play is a scene — just in case, you know, everyone doesn’t, ah, remember what the reading was — a scene in which Posthumus is in the house of Philario, discussing the present political situation that exists between Rome and England. As Penny Gay mentioned in her second lecture on Cymbeline, there’s a certain departure from history at this point. We are made aware that there is trouble brewing over the cessation of the payment of tributes to Rome, and, in Posthumus’ words, “this will prove a war”.
It’s unabashed nationalism, completely shameless, and written in such a way that a contemporary audience would thoroughly approve: “You shall hear/ The legions now in Gallia sooner landed/In our not-fearing Britain than have tidings/Of any penny tribute paid.” O’Neill would, however, have us call this something other than the re-writing of History.
It is the construction of a fictional world — a fictional world that, it should be said, bears some mark of reality… but a fictional one nonetheless. In fiction, as O’Neill explains, everything is contingent upon nothing aside from the whim of the author; that term, of course, extending to include “playwright”, “poet”, and all other manner of narrative-creator.
So in this fictional world, against this backdrop of political turmoil, Iachimo enters. He enters amidst Posthumus’ nationalistic outbursts, and it almost appears as though Posthumus doesn’t realise the issue at hand has altered, so unfaltering is his courage in his spouse, as with his nation.
“I hope the briefness of your answer made/The speediness of your return.” — he could well be speaking of an emissary’s rebuttal at the hands of a foreign power demanding tribute. There is something diaphanous about the edges of these themes, as though Shakespeare has feathered them together intentionally. Our conception of “state” is quite different from that of marriage, but perhaps there is something to be made of the way in which they are together, here. I think it possible that we are being invited to examine Posthumus against expectations of what befits a “good” husband, specifically with regards to his leadership qualities. As a potential statesman, Posthumus has not yet been thoroughly disqualified. That comes in the scene following this, wherein he throws a hysterical, misogynistic, tempter tantrum.
I consider this juxtaposition of political and relational discussion something that is meant to connect the two in our minds: Posthumus is, afterall, being evaluated not only as the condemning husband of Imogen, but also as a potential ruler of the state. His aptitude for both roles is seriously brought into question throughout this play: and often through the same events.
In an environment of ironic crudity, the supposed elite of Renaissance Europe gather in Philario’s house, jesting about the constancy of, in particular, Posthumus’ wife Imogen. Posthumus is agreeably confident in his wife’s fidelity, but, somewhat less agreeably, willing to subject her to the approaches of one Iachimo. In concluding their wager, Posthumus declares:
Only, thus far you shall answer: if you make your voyage upon her, and give me directly to understand you have prevail’d, I am no further your enemy; she is not worth our debate : if she remain unseduc’d, you not making it appear otherwise, for your ill opinion, and the assault you have made to her chastity, you shall answer me with your sword.
This doesn’t take too much unpacking. In the case that Iachimo succeeds, Posthumus explicitly says “I am no further your enemy”. Back in Act II Scene IV, Iachimo is speaking of the particulars of Imogen’s chamber, and says he must speak in greater detail to justify his knowledge. Posthumus agrees, stating: “So they must,/Or do your honour injury”. There is a concern here for Iachimo’s honour even amidst his defamation of Posthumus’ wife. Again, on line 124, Posthumus responds to Philario’s rational suggestion that a corrupt servant may have taken a token on Iachimo’s behalf, saying “I am sure/ She would not lose it : her attendants are/ All sworn and honourable”.
Sworn and honourable, in fact, beyond the honour of his wife? Apparently, in Posthumus’ mind, this is true.
All this has a fantastic irony about it, as it serves both to critique Posthumus as leader, and as husband. The two are inseparable; Posthumus has failed in ways a Renaissance man is not permitted to fail, demonstrating his crudity, his lack of faith, his inability to lead responsibly even his wife — in the eyes of the audience, he has failed.
This is realised through a narrative that is calculating in its gradual revelation and construction of the character Posthumus: we see this in the establishment of the wager, Act 1 Scene 4; its continuation as Iachimo slowly unveils his deceit in Act 2 Scene 4, and Posthumus’ propensity to doubt his wife jealously; his tantrum in Act 2 Scene 5; and, later, his ordering her murder; and, later still, his groveling repentance rather unlike Iachimo’s stoic admission of guilt. Iachimo is, in some respects, an anti-Posthumus. He is calculating, not impulsive; cunning, not deceived; and orchestrator of much action with regards to Posthumus’ relationship with Imogen: he leads their relationship, whilst Posthumus is (falsely) led.
This should not be taken to mean that Iachimo is a paragon of great leadership — this is, afterall, a comedy in a world suspended between historical fact and Renaissance discourse. There is scope for some degree of reflexivity within this play, as Shakespeare pokes fun at his own characters, using others to delineate their foibles and propel the narrative towards its inevitable, genre-defined, close: poetic justice.
16 May 2006
In my copious amounts of spare time, I’ve been contemplating redesigning this site. And disliking the fact that screens are different sizes.
Maybe it’s just that the sites I’ve spent the most time building with CSS at Raw Ideas have been sufficiently indifferent to anything less than 1024×768. Or that the content of these sites is so disposable that sustainability isn’t really a great concern. Either way, I know what I should be doing in terms of design, then I’m aware of what is being done for various reasons, and they’re not matching up.
For this site, I’ve got a design concept lined up… my only concern is execution of that.
Felix Miata is an absolute legend by whom I find myself constantly pursuaded (though not always, for various reasons–mostly professional/design inhibition/the culture of superficiality-over-function so prevalent in web design–, able to follow), and he’s built this really compelling example of why not to use fixed-width/px-based layouts. I don’t think he particularly cares about design, and comes across somewhat like RMS does in his fanatical advocacy of a particular approach to styling web pages.
Only, unlike Stallman, his agenda is not some arbitrary and often unrealistically-founded ideology (yeah, I’m trolling. Go on, rant. Stallman can’t see past his own version of open-source, and his attitudes provide no realistic migratory path from closed- to open-source solutions; such zero-tolerance rejects the pattern that has become established in IT, so there’s no point in moronic reminscences of a time when there were only twenty people in the world using computers and they all shared, yada yada yada. No one cares.) but a practical NEED and independently corrolated evidence regarding people’s desires for larger text on websites.
So the text is staying big here. But that’s a given (well, at least on this site… I’m trying to sway other places, and the best I’ve got thus far is text-resizing styleswitcher controls on a design I got handed last week. Usability will prevail! Gosh that sounded like the government propaganda guy from V for Vendetta. Ah well. This post is now officially very digressive!), not my main concern.
No, my main concern is this site winding up looking like the BBC’s does on enormous screens (see Felix’s page linked to above). I’m a fan of whitespace as much as the next guy, but 800×600-wide on a 2000-pixel wide screen just doesn’t do it for me.
And, going the other direction, I just bought a mobile/PDA which means I’m now going to be designing mobile stylesheets as well (at least I have that option!) for a 320-pixel wide screen. All new challenges.
Fluid layouts are all dandy until you introduce graphics.
Here, I’ve got a policy of editorial graphics (i.e. pretty much everything except photos that exist outside of blog context/are linked to as files denoted as full resolution) not exceeding an inviolable maximum of 700 pixels. This is, in my thinking, not negotiable. I’m building for an 800px wide minimum, which means a main-content column width of 760px tops.
Plus I can get away with lots more in terms of editing photos from my excellent-except-for-in-low-light-as-most-consumer-digital-cameras-are camera when the publication requirement is kept low. I like to fill the column with colour as much as possible in a vain attempt to balance out the (comparatively voluminous) amounts I write… I’ve started to use the “Read more” functionality again for publishing essays and other not-originally-designed/written-for-web material (where PDF equivalents are available), in order to hide fulltext from the front page. You’ll note that on the second of today’s Cymbeline posts.
So, I’m torn between keeping everything narrow and keeping control, or, well, not.
Centred layouts, when done properly, cater even for people with StupidlyLargeScreensâ„¢. They’ll probably be using 120dpi fonts to start with, which makes things reasonable even at “Normal” font size. IE will go up two more steps… every other browser well beyond that. That’s probably reasonable. The “challenge” to me there is simply to size the centred layout in em’s, so that scales as well. My greatest concern is that I cannot style images to fill a set percentage of their parent element (scaling appearances don’t, for the most part, concern me… this is mostly pulled off without too much damage if the difference is slight), because of vast amounts of legacy content. I think specifically of instances where I’ve floated images that exist purely to support the article, not providing any great amount of content in their own right… these images are usually from 200 to 400 pixels in width, and often sit adjacent to text. Refer to Cymbeline example again for an instance in which images are helpful and effective, but it would be foolish to style them globally.
Legacy content is the reason this can’t be achieved… I could conceivably go throughout every one of the just-shy-of-1000 posts on this blog (in other milestones, we had a second birthday three days ago) and add classes as appropriate. But I won’t.
My (final, because I need sleep) concern with scaling layouts is using background images in CSS, which don’t scale, and can’t be sized in percentages unless you do stupid things with redundant markup (non-semantic IMG tags) and abuse z-indexes to the more worn edges of sanity.
It all comes down to loss of artistic control. I embraced that with the present design, which I’m well aware people say looks like crap. You know, I don’t mind hearing that. The fact remains, it’s probably the most functional design I’ve ever built.
That said, I’m off to get my hands dirty with some ink.