2006 — Day 23 - the call of the clip-art
Every time I contemplate updating the look of, say, my main page I find myself browsing through the only real clip-art collection I have, which is a range of vector artwork supplied with Xara. And every time I end up cursing my lack of visual1 flair, regretting the need to break my self-imposed minimum of JavaScript rule, and wondering who I'm trying to kid / impress in any case...
Then, of course, I start thinking OK, why not just liven up the fonts you use? But a) other people won't necessarily either have them or want to have them and b) if I can't even persuade my wife to download Gentium... Besides, having mildly lambasted the AMIPP webmaster a week ago for using Microsoft's Comic Sans, I'd look a bit silly using my newly-acquired "WildAndCrazy" Comic Book lettering font, would I not?
Naturally, Junior's improvement suggestion is to "Google sIFR" and do that... Scalable Inman Flash Replacement.
The technique is certainly interesting, but it cautions against use except for basic heading text replacement. I have compromised, therefore, by just adding the "Diary" text button to the top of every page, re-ordering the other buttons, and making them all a bit smaller. Not exactly a visual smack in the face, obviously, but it's still all CSS so far. Next topic: archiving these meanderings. I can hardly wait! Or should I try kicking the errant Firefly Media Server a little harder first?
In other news
Last night's — this2 evening's DVD was Cockles & Muscles. Never judge a film by the silly review quotations that they slap on the artwork! Funny? Yes. Filthy? Hardly! Amusingly, as I recall New Scientist magazine's occasional forays into what they called "nominative determinism" (the apparent propensity of scientists and engineers to have names that matched their duties — a Dr Stopcock being a municipal water engineer, would be a typical example) it strikes me that adjacent films in my collection nowadays seem to share either or both subject themes and actors. "Cockles & Muscles", for example, currently nestles comfortably up against The Closet. Of course, this may merely reflect my own predilections...
I hadn't realised how visually tiring it can be to watch HD television! An hour of Alan Titchmarsh soporifically narrating the British summer followed by an hour of David Attenborough dipping his toe into the shallow seas with footage suspiciously similar to some of "Blue Planet" (all via the BBC HD satellite trial) turned out to be 30 minutes longer than either of us could take. So back to "Othello" for a break.