It’s been just over a year since I quit my full-time job and became self-employed. One of the big adjustments always mentioned in freelance/entrepreneurship circles is that you work crazy hours and the work day never ends. Now I’ve been keeping a pretty good life-work balance, making time for the gym and hikes and stuff, but one thing I’ve found is that the distinction between a work day and a the weekend is mostly gone. And it’s been such a busy spring, that it’s been a long time since I had a full day off. Add that to ‘long-time-since-I-had-a-real-holiday’, and you have one grumpy girl. I was starting to have violent fantasies. And since I care about pretty much everyone I see on a regular basis, this is not a good thing.
Enter the day off. Read more »
Posted: May 4th, 2008 under Art, Life.
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I was just working on a site that required a random header image. I’ve done random images with JavaScript before, but the script I’ve used writes out an image tag. This site was built using a CSS background-image for the header so I needed something a little different. I came up with the following after a bit of googling around and trial and error. If you have suggestions to improve this, please feel free to share in the comments. 
First, put the following code into a file called random_styles.js:
<!-- Begin
var random=Math.floor(2*Math.random());
random=random+1;
style='<!-- @import url( css/' + random + '.css ); -->';
document.write('<style type="text/css" media="screen">');
document.write(style);
document.write('</style>');
// End -->
Where the “random” variable is set, change the number 2 to match the total number of stylesheets you will switch between.
Where the “style” variable is set, adjust if your css path is different from mine.
(You don’t really need to add 1 to random, but I did that so the first number can be equal to the number of stylesheets…)
Then, in the head of your html page, just include the file random_style.js like so (with the src path altered to suit of course):
<script language="Javascript" src="js/random_style.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
Note: you must put it after the main stylesheet!
You also need to create one css file for each style. So in my case I had a main stylesheet for the site, which set a default background image in case javascript was turned off. Then, in a file called 1.css I set the same background image again. In another file called 2.css I set the image to be different.
I’m sure this could be improved, so like I said, feel free to share your comments.
Posted: May 2nd, 2008 under Web Tips.
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At the risk of publicly declaring I’m an idiot, I give you the oh-so-complicated method for changing your WordPress RSS feed to full posts instead of excerpts:
- click on Settings in your WordPress admin
- click on Reading
- change the option “For each article in a feed, show:” to Full text.
You know, I Googled this to high heaven, including my usual lurking around the WordPress codex, I read the help pages at Feedburner, looked at my Feedsmith plugin, and could not find this option. Somehow I have completely overlooked this setting in all the blogs I’ve built. Doh! So at least I can give some fodder to the search engines in case anyone else is having the same mind melt.
Thankfully Christine had the answer to this mind melt, and my whopping subscriber base should now have full feeds.
Posted: April 30th, 2008 under WordPress Tips.
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My brother Reay sent me a link to some very interesting art by Chris Jordan of Seattle. Jordan describes it thus:
Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books…
The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
The pictures might take a while to load, but they’re worth it. I would love to see these in person. Read more »
Posted: April 17th, 2008 under Activism, Art, Culture Consumed.
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Well what kind of WordPress lover would I be if I didn’t get around to upgrading my own blog and posting about it? So here you go.
As a side note, I’ve finally given in to the urge for a WordPress category on my site. I keep wanting to writing about things I’ve discovered, and feeling that maybe it’s a bit too technical for people that read my blog, but what the heck. It’s good to share what you’re learning and maybe someone will find it useful. Read more »
Posted: April 10th, 2008 under WordPress Tips.
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