aboveboard
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Use it or lose it
Spent much of today struggling with cascading style sheets. I maintain an amateur website and intended to update it with CSS a year ago. However, I am no artist, and the end result was only slightly better than my efforts with plain HTML. My enthusiasm dwindled and I started something else. Today I resumed work on it and had to start from scratch because I had forgotten what to do. I shall persevere; one of my new year resolutions is to update the website and then keep it updated.
Thought for today
Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.
Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)
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1.1.08 20:43
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Youth is wasted on the young
On Boxing Day I visited my brother and his family. I collected my mother from the care home and drove over for lunch. My brother has three sons and a daughter (aged between 19 and 23). The daughter is the only one with any get up and go. Metaphorically she has gone twice round the world before her brothers have got out of bed. Their lethargy gives me a mental boost. In fact it was one reason that I resumed my struggle with CSS; I want to have achieved something by the end of the year. I achieved a lot in the garden last year but I want to study something, want to have to use my brain, want to have to learn something. How long this will last is another matter. It's only the second day.
Thought for today
The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
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2.1.08 20:18
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So much to learn, so little time
Cascading style sheets are moreish. I found a site whose design appealed to me, saved a copy on my computer and then spent most of yesterday evening trying to dissect it to discover how it was assembled. Some of the gifs were missing from the files my computer saved so I went looking for them (successfully) on the net. I thought today that they are probably still in the cache but I don't know how to find that. There's nothing like taking something to pieces to see how it works. The problem comes trying to put it together again so that it still works.
I had a little triumph this morning; I went to the library for an hour's surf and came away with a favicon for a website that I am updating. An online favicon-generator made the task easy. I designed the favicon on the back of an envelope during breakfast.
One thing occurred to me while I sat at the computer in the library: do the keyboards, and the mice for that matter, become covered with germs? There is a winter vomiting virus currently doing the rounds. I do not wish to get that or any other virus. A woman sitting next to me yesterday kept coughing. Libraries are places to exchange ideas; they might also be places to exchange viruses.
Yesterday was cold. The woolly hat count was high.
Thought for today
We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything.
Cardinal John Newman (1801 - 1890) English churchman, theologian
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4.1.08 19:50
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A problem solved
My triumph with the favicon yesterday was short-lived. When I looked at my site on the internet, the favicon was missing. It took me most of this morning to discover the reason; it was due to the lack of a forward slash.
Worn out after solving the mystery of the missing icon, I dug up my Jerusalem artichokes in the afternoon. There are 7kg of them; that's several weeks worth of wind. I weighed them on the bathroom scales just now. Initially I went downstairs to carry the bowl with the artichokes upstairs but realised that it would be sensible to carry the scales downstairs as they are lighter. Amazing how the obvious can be elusive.
Quote for today
The knickers saved the day.
Jenny Marsey, whose size 18-20 'emergency pants' were used to put out a frying-pan fire at her home.
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5.1.08 19:15
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Cold weather for cameras
Went for a long walk this morning and remembered to take my camera with me. One of my new year resolutions was to carry my digital camera with me and use it. I would then have a stock of photos to add a touch of interest to my website and my Christmas newsletter. It takes me so long to get the camera out of its container (a Hill's Bronchial Balsam tin) that, by the time I'm ready to take a photo, the subject has moved away or become bored. Today there was a different problem.
I came across a field of llamas which, as luck would have it, were by a gate eating from a pile of hay next to it. They looked up as I approached. Llamas are attractive creatures; they are related to camels and look a bit like goats, except they have longer legs, long necks and friendly faces. (The one el lama, he's a priest. The two el llama, he's a beast.) I had to take a photo. I got out the camera, pointed it at the llamas who were still looking at me, and pressed the button. A little red light flashed and on the screen came the message that the battery was too low for the photo to be saved. I charged it yesterday so the cold weather was the problem. By the time I'd warmed the camera in my hands and was ready to try again, the llamas had resumed their eating. They were more interested in the hay than in me. They kept their heads down and wouldn't look up.
I shall have to keep the camera in a padded bag when the weather is cold, or else in an inside pocket.
Thought for today
Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.
Nathalie Sarraute, in the Times Literary Supplement, 1960
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6.1.08 19:21
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Saving for posterity
The internet will be used increasingly for the storage of data. This was a prediction of someone on World Business, a programme on Radio 4. Ordinary people, not just businesses, will use it for this. They will store photos, files and videos for their grandchildren. Lucky grandchildren, I thought. The digital age enables people to bore more.
I have twice been shown people's holiday snaps on their computers. The displays were endless. I tired after the first twenty pictures. Digital cameras don't enable people to take better photos; they enable them to delete poor shots. However, some store the whole lot and trot them out for those mug enough to agree to see them.
Thought for today
The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.
Arhur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) German philosopher
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7.1.08 19:31
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A great day for a walk
Today's walk with a local rambling group turned out better than expected. This was for three reasons: one, the heavy rain stopped mid-morning; two, the food was good at the pub where we stopped for lunch; three, we had to cross a wooden bridge that was under water. The third reason gave our day a sense of adventure. The bridge was over a stream swollen by the rain and made worse by a dam of debris. It was under about eight inches of water, enough to come over our boots. Attached to the bridge on one side, at a disconcerting angle--it leaned towards the stream--was a wooden barrier which, fortunately, was strong enough to take our weight. We crossed cautiously, one by one, by walking along the lower horizontal beam holding on to the top one. No one fell in.
There was a programme on telly last night about road rage in London. Parents on the school run became angry at delays, and cyclists became angry at policemen on bicycles who chased them when they cycled through red traffic lights. The highlight of the programme was scenes of hoards of cyclists who rode naked in the middle of London in protest at heavy traffic. One woman in a taxi, delayed by the cyclists, became incensed. Not only had she missed her train but she had never seen so many little willies. I wondered if the sight of a few big ones might have pacified her. It seemed the little willies added insult to injury.
Thought for today
It is easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.
George Eliot
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8.1.08 20:33
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