So we finally started watching Firefly, Joss Whedon’s short lived science fiction show, for which a movie is coming out this fall. (Serenity)
We just watched the first episode (“Serenity Parts 1&2”) and so far I really like it.
Which has lead me to a rather confusing realization: Although I typically can’t stand to read science fiction, most of my favorite movies and TV shows are science fiction: Deep Space Nine, The 5th Element, Star Wars, The Matrix. I may hate Star Trek (the original series) but really, it’s because William Shatner makes my skin crawl.
And I love to read fantasy, but for the most part it’s not my favorite stuff to watch. Not only have I strenuously avoided The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter movies, I’m actually actively opposed to watching them.
I don’t get it. Stuff that I’d hate reading, I love watching, while stuff that I love reading, I hate watching. Is everyone weird like this or is it just me?
Of course it doesn’t hold true across the board. Love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost Boys, but also love Charlaine Harris’ vampire books. I adore fantasy set in Japan and China (or their imaginary equivalent) and thought that Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers were fantastic.
Maybe this is why I don’t watch a lot of movies.
Drat! Darn! POOOOOP!
(sigh)
All the cool CSS stuff I did the other day? Well, fixing one thing, broke another. So I had to roll back all the lovely fixed positioning navigation panes.
Apparently linking to an anchor will move that portion of the page to the very top of the page–behind the fixed position elements. And I can’t find any style information that would allow me to tell the browser to start anchor links, say, 12ems down.
So it was a lovely idea, despite the fact that it failed in execution.
But if I ever figure out how to fix the anchor problem…
ADDENDUM the First:
But, I redid my main page, to get rid of some of the ugly IE quirks. So even using IE, things should look good now.
Geek Stuff!
I’m really pleased with this.
Non-geeks may wish to quit reading here.
I figured out a work around for the fact that Internet Explorer doesn’t support fixed positioning. Not a big deal if the element is on the side, but I wanted the fixed element at the top of the page, and IE would mush everything together making the text at the top of the page unreadable.
However if I place the fixed positioning elements inside an absolute positioning element, IE seems to read it correctly, while Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera will keep the fixed elements at the top of the screen.
Cool!
Inspired by Stuff on my Cat, S has taken her own foray into cat decoration.
Now we just need to convince her to get the pictures developed.
Tom’s post on Driving in Portland reminded me:
WVU’s fall semester begins Monday!
Any driving you need to do in Morgantown should be completed by Thursday, after which traffic will come to a complete standstill for the next month, until students start skipping classes.
A full size recreation of a Viking boat–made of popsicle sticks. The goal is to sail across the Atlantic.
That is really really really cool.
So yesterday I spent the afternoon and evening relaxing on the sofa reading (and it was good too, let me tell you.) Yet somehow yesterday evening, despite the fact that I did nothing more strenuous that brushing my hair, I managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder.
(This is the point where you make the joke about how you’ve seen my hair, so obviously it was the hair brushing that hurt my shoulder. You’re very funny.)
So I really don’t know how I did it, all I know is that when I straighten my elbow and raise my arm my shoulder hurts.
But really, how many people can say they pulled a muscle reading? Aren’t you jealous of my extreme geekiness? I thought you were.
Yesterday we watched The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Like Star Wars I hadn’t watched the movies in years. Now to be honest, when I first watched The Empire Strikes Back I hated it. I was 11 when The Empire Strikes Back came out, and knowing that I had to wait three more years before I found out what happened was awful. At that age three years was an eternity; I was miserable. So by the time Return of the Jedi came out I was glad to know what happened, but the magic was gone.
But coming back to these movies, I really liked them. Being able to put in the next DVD made the ending of The Empire Strikes Back perfectly fine (although I still hate cliff hangers). The Ewoks were still cute, but they weren’t as cutsey as I remembered, so I was quite pleased.
Until I got to the end of Return of the Jedi. At which point I began to scream and curse in absolute RAGE. Why the hell did George Lucas have to completely screw up the ending and stick Hayden Christensen into the last scene? It was like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, reminding me that no matter how much I loved these movies, George Lucas had to mess everything up with the vile Phantom Menace. I couldn’t just happily pretend that the prequel hadn’t happened, but he has to stick in that reminder.
Couldn’t he just has let us think that that was how Anakin *would* have looked had he not been turned into Darth Vader?
Grrr….
If anyone comes out with a DVD copy of the Return of the Jedi that has the correct, original ending–I want it, and I’ll pay good money for it. Actually, I want a copy of all three movies without the edits–no screwed up Jaba scene in the Mos Eisley space port, no extended scene in Jaba’s palace, although I’ll take the extra Cantina scenes. Those were lovely.
So I decided to play around with CSS menus.
Translation: I did something really geeky.
If you are using any browser other than Internet Explorer (Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Firefox) and you go to my main page and place your cursor over the the first three options on the left (Books, Pictures, Misc) a sub menu will appear.
If you’re using IE, which doesn’t correctly render CSS, you won’t see the pop-up menus, but the options will still work. And the boxes will look screwed up. (So you should really be using Mozilla or Firefox.)
This is quite a geeky acomplishment, and I’m rather proud of myself.
In case you were curious, I’ve been somewhat busy tinkering with the website. Trying to get the Books section to be more useful, and trying to get the Fantasy page pared down so that it doesn’t take a full century to load over dial-up. (I’ve tried to make it so that even if it does load slowly, at least there’s something to read while you’re waiting.) I achieved partial success by moving Science Fiction (both books) and Graphic Novels (which is almost all Neil Gaiman right now) onto their own pages.
Michael suggested breaking the page into multiple pages, however I have made links to that page that will all be broken. So I think I may just suffer with things the way they are, although I worry some, because that page is only going to get bigger, the more books I read. I’m considering taking some of my favorite authors, whose entries are longer, onto their own pages, while leaving a link on the main page. Hmm….
I also made some superficial changes to the cats page. I have lots more pictures of the cats, but I’ve never bothered to add them to the page. Does that make me a bad cat owner? Too bad.
I’m probably due for a major redesign, however I’m lazy, and school starts in two weeks, so it probably won’t happen. So enjoy things as they are. Or not. Your choice.
I’m:
Really, really bored.
(more…)
I got a really disgruntled look from Kit the other day, when I started singning along with the radio.
(more…)
An 81-year-old Frenchman has been given a one-year suspended jail sentence for firing a hunting rifle at helicopters dropping water on a forest blaze.
David Thiel opened fire on 21 July when the low-flying helicopters disturbed his afternoon nap near Grasse in the south of France, court sources said.
During his arrest the man swore at the policemen and hit them with saucepans.
