Author: Harry

Categories
Culture Other

Testers wanted!

I mentioned earlier that I thought it might be fun to enter a WordPress theme competition. Well, I’ve got a theme worked up that I’m thinking of entering. You can see it in action on my test blog here. As you can see, it’s a two-column variation on the Swifts theme with a different picture.

I’ve checked it on Firefox, Safari and IE for Mac, and they all look basically OK, but I haven’t checked it on Windows at all. So I’d be grateful if anyone using IE, Firefox or Opera on Windows could take a look and poke around, see if there’s anything you think might be wrong, and let me know. Cheers.

EDIT: well, I’ve just tried it on Opera for Mac, and it doesn’t work right. It’s startling how no two browsers seem to render the same bit of code in the same way.

EDIT: OK, I’ve sorted that out. Further comments still appreciated. If something looks wrong, it would help if you could give me a screenshot of it so I can see what the problem is.

Categories
Culture Me Other

web design stuff

The more time I spend thinking about web design, the more easily irritated I am. Take Spork. Look at that lovely, stylish, front cover: it manages to have something of a print aesthetic without being heavy-handed, and it’s clear, simple and eye-catching. Classy.

But then you click on the names, and the links open as new windows. Like I don’t have enough windows cluttering up my screen all the time as it is. Look, I never, ever want any link I click to open as a new screen unless I specifically tell it to.

And you just know that they’re only done it that way because someone didn’t want navigation buttons cluttering up his nice neat page layouts. Humph.

Categories
Culture

giving children the clap

Some retro educational weirdness over at the riddim method. Make sure you listen to the mp3s.

Categories
Culture

Mask of the Week

J-F, a Canadian cosplayer, in a Skull Kid costume at Balticon 2004:

Skull Kid is a character in The Legend of Zelda – Majora’s Mask. I seem to be the only person in the world who thinks that Majora’s Mask was a better game than Ocarina of Time.

Categories
Nature

103 mutations of drosophila

act up (preferred name: capulet) adrift always early amalgam amnesiac anachronism arc archipelago argos armadillo armitage arrest arrow asense atonal aubergine aurora baboon bag of marbles bagpipe bantam basket bazooka Bearded beaten path bereft big brain blistered blistery boule brahma brainiac brakeless branchless breathless bric à brac Bride of sevenless brinker broad brother of odd with entrails limited bruno (preferred name: arrest) Buffy bunched buttonhead buttonless cacophony cactus cannonball canoe cap’n’collar capricious capulet castor (common alternative name: ming) caudal charlatan scylla and charybde chickadee chico chiffon Chip chromosome bows citron clift Clock clueless collier comatose coracle corkscrew courtless cramped crocodile crooked legs crumbs cup cut dachshund daughterless deadpan dead ringer Deformed Delta diaphanous diego diminutive dimmed Disabled discs overgrown discs lost dishevelled dispatched dissatisfaction dodo domeless double parked doublesex double-time dreadlocks drifter dumbfounded dunce

Categories
Nature

Top ten animals – #2, Snow Leopard

What actually got me started thinking about this top ten animals list was a documentary about the Snow Leopard, Uncia uncia. Two film-makers had spent three years in Kashmir and managed to get about two minutes of what of the kind of action footage you’d normally expect from a wildlife programme – the cats hunting, courting, and at their prey. Apart from a few shots of snow leopards walking through rocks, and film of the film makers not finding leopards, most of the rest of the hour-long documentary was filled out with footage taken by automatic cameras set up to be triggered by motion sensors. But the only places they could rely on the cats being were the sites where they marked their territories, so it was basically a whole hour of snow leopards pissing. Which they do surprisingly elegantly.

People just don’t see these animals. They live in incredibly inaccessible areas, they can have territories stretching hundreds of square miles, and even if you do happen to pass within a few hundred feet of one, they’re so well camouflaged for rocky terrain that you’ll probably not notice it.

Here’s a snow leopard in Mongolia:

Photo by Fritz Polking. Courtesy of Snow Leopard Trust, where you can also see some video of snow leopards.

I think that they’re also the most beautiful of the big cats. Look at the colouring! Look at the tail!