digital

The Albizia theme

0
29 Aug 10

There’s obviously still some tweaking to be done and a few elements I neglected to add in last night when I made the unexpected but delightful theme change and yeah, it would be easy enough to sit here and play until I had to stop and get showered and dressed for my plans today, but I’d really rather take a hike through the canyon, finish listening to “The Host” and jump into either “The Golden Notebook” or “The Devil’s Queen.” The latter is fairly new to my growing Kate Reading collection and I’m really in a very Kate-Reading-centric place right now with audio books, so I suspect that will win the coin toss. In fact, I listened to a short interview she did with her husband about the Robert Jordan “Wheel of Time” series and I’m left with the thought that Kate Reading may be the audiobook answer to Nicola Bryant and her Peri Brown accent. I can’t tell if she’s British or not; I’ve read that she is and I’ve read that she isn’t (we’re talking about Kate Reading here) and this interview did nothing to convince me either way. She fades in and out of accents – both American and British – that it’s hard to pin it down. It’s sort of like Nicola Bryant! To be honest, I still have a hard time picking up any British accent slip-ups when I watch her in Doctor Who, though she does run the gamut of American accents. I think I’ve noticed New York, the South, and the Midwest (though nothing approaching the accent the sister’s got these days).

But back to the topic at hand, namely the new theme and not a discussion on audiobook narrators or companions and accents…I am not sure how I’m going to add in the rotating companion images, since there’s apparently very little editing one can actually do. Same goes for my stat counter, though as time goes on, I really care less and less about who found strange cousin susan how and for how long, so I might Fat Man that. I’m loathe to lose my rotating companions, though! However, luckily I found the css file to change the colors (no, it’s not in the stylesheet.css!), but that’s something I’ll work on later.

So, what do you think of the theme overall? I know the colors are a bit messy right now, since they totally don’t go with the background image, but if you can overlook that, do you like it? Do you not?

: books, digital
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All roads lead to Rome…and Byzantium, Normandy, and Gaul

2
11 Aug 10

I’ve been listening to podcasts for a little over a year, ever since I started walking so much, deciding this rather arbitrarily, the way I do: I don’t like listening to music while I walk. I tried the requisite podcasts devoted to Doctor Who, old, new and everything in between. They made me want to jump out of my skin or dart into traffic, believe it or not. As much as I love and adore that wonderful fool show, I hated the podcasts with a definite and inexplicable strength that I’m at a loss to understand, especially because of how much I love the program. Okay, so perhaps I only sampled a couple of them, but that was enough. Seriously. That’s when I delved into history podcasts. I tried this one, I tried that one, and none of them really did much for me. That all changed when I happened onto The History of Rome. I’m fairly certain I’ve announced my love of this podcast at strange cousin susan at least once or twice in the last few months. That love has not diminished one iota.

Rome

When we were just getting acquainted with each other, I was overwhelmed by THOR. There were a dozens and dozens of podcasts and for a girl who’s never had any use for anything even hinting at Roman history (with the exception of its connection to London), I wasn’t sure if things would work out. Honestly. Fast forward to now and I’m all caught up and find myself waiting impatiently for new episodes. Podcaster Mike Duncan is up to episode no. 104, Here Comes the Sun and if I’d synced Isolde to my computer and updated the podcasts before I left last night, I would have had this one to listen to on my walk.

D’yall remember when my one absolute dream was to get to London at least once in my lifetime? Well, I’ve been there twice now (I still can’t believe that, to be honest) and since that goal’s been met and quite smartly, my next goal is Rome. I’m hoping to get there sometime in the next couple of years. And it’s a big thank you to Mike Duncan for that.

Queen Theodora

But if the old adage is traditionally stated as, “All roads lead to Rome,” you’ve got to know I’ll have my own spin on it and I do. Not only this: Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam, but also Byzantium, Normandy, and even ancient Gaul. THOR led me to discover Twelve Byzantine Rulers and The Norman Centuries, both the work of Lars Brownworth. It was iffy at the beginning for both, but it wasn’t long before I was as hooked on TBR and TNC. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem TBR is being updated any longer and episodes of TNC are few and far between. Imagine my delight when I noticed a new episode of TNC was available for download. I couldn’t get a walk started fast enough!

Naturally, because even I can’t listen to audiobooks all the time (regardless of the narrator) and because I managed to burn through all of these podcasts with barely the blink of an eye (well, except for the backlog of THOR, as mentioned), I started searching out other similar podcasts. I couldn’t find anything historical at the

Bayeaux Tapestry

iTunes store that grabbed me until I somehow happened upon Librivox, a site dedicated to the “acoustical liberation of books in the public domain.” I like works that are in the public domain. They’re free, they’re quirky, and there are some real gems. So…to start off, I downloaded a multi-part recording of Edward Gibbon’s The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, which has proven a bit dry for my taste. At the same time, I downloaded Francois Guizot’s Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, which has me all hot and bothered about ancient French history these days.

What it comes down to is this: forty years of my life have been spent with tunnel vision when it comes to history: all I ever wanted to read about was England and her history*. It’s kind of limiting, of course I realize that, and one can only read about the wives of Henry VIII so many times before one throws one’s hands in the air and declares, “Enough already!” I don’t profess to be a student of

Gallia Transalpina

history in any proper understanding of the phrase – I’ve no real aptitude for keeping any of the events and dates and people straight, but perhaps after I’ve listened to all the podcasts mentioned here as many times as I’ve watched any number of Doctor Who serials or read certain books over the years, I’ll be able to remember a fraction of a fraction of all I’ve heard.

And in even simpler terms, what it really means is this is the list of podcast places I want to visit:

Italy (Rome, Venice, Pompeii)

France (Paris, Renne-le-Chateau, Versailles, the Langue Doc)

Turkey (for the Hagia Sofia)

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

In addition to these places, I have also listed Scotland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, and Egypt, with very specific areas within these countries. Other countries in general include Greece, Israel, and Russia. I mention these places to my mum and she just looks at me like she’s not sure she actually gave birth to me. “Mickey Glitter, I don’t know where you’ve got this travel bug from. I’ve never wanted to travel anywhere and your da, he only traveled for business to Asia and South America, though he did dream of going to Israel one day. Me? If I’m going to travel anywhere, it’s to Hawaii.”

It seems I am alone with this travel bug, as my mum calls it, for even the sister doesn’t have it in the least.

* Bear in mind, I have inherited an interest in the history of the European theatre of World War II from my pop, so that sort of lessens the strength of my tunnel vision, I think.

: digital, history, me, myself, and i
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Comic Con t-shirt poll: open until July 23rd!

2
18 Jul 10

Okay, folks…the time is drawing nigh. Have your last say in what I’ll wear to Comic Con!

: digital, me, myself, and i

Comic Con Sartorial Poll

4
11 Jul 10

I’ll be posting this at least a couple more times before Comic Con. Don’t worry if you’ve already voted; I don’t mind. God knows I’ve done at least three times already.

: digital, me, myself, and i

It’s all you, Firefox

0
2 Jul 10

The issues I’ve been having with my computer freezing up over the past few days? Well, I’ve deduced that it is indeed an issue with Firefox because suddenly I’ve been having the same problems at the fracktory. So I’ve reverted back to Safari for the time being, at least at home. I’m not overly fond of the big S, but if it’s a decision between a clunky interface and a browser that freezes up when you look at it funny, I’m going for clunky love.

: digital

A letter to iPhoto

5
29 Jun 10

Dear iPhoto:

Are you not smart enough to realize those 26 frickin’ pictures HAVE ALREADY BEEN IMPORTED? I mean, honestly, you ask if I want to import from my iPhone each and every time I connect said device to my iBook and it doesn’t make much sense, does it? Do you not have an option somewhere in your preference settings to turn that off? If you do, you’ve hidden it well because I can’t find it.

I’m not that fond of you, anyway, but this makes that already almost non-existent fondness even more non-existent and then it disappears altogether when it takes you for-fucking-ever to react to my command to quit. For-fucking-ever in this case is like five fucking minutes, but seriously.

Mickey Glitter

: digital

Theme tweaks continue

2
26 Jun 10

You’ll notice (or perhaps not) a few changes round the place, just some small improvements, really, except for the type. The font changes are courtesy of Typekit, a site I found last night by way of Matt Mullenweg’s recent blog post about his new summer design. I can’t say I like the new look of the blog at all because I don’t. But I did stick around long enough to see his mention of Typekit. I headed over to the site, signed up for a trial account (a fairly good number of available fonts for no money and two per site domain; naturally, if you sign up for various levels of paid accounts, more fonts are available for a single domain and more are unlocked) and voila! Here’s strange cousin susan with a couple of cool looking fonts. The header font is called Tandelle and the content font is called Apolline STD. That sounds like it was named for a nether-region itch named for an Olympian god, doesn’t it?

Typekit’s easy to implement. Just paste a couple of lines of code between <head> and </head> and you’re good to go. Go back to Typekit, peruse the fonts and when you find one you like, add it to your typekit (clever, no?). Then all you need do is determine what tags, classes, or ids the font will impact. The two fonts I’ve chosen look good and work well together, so it’s good the free account is only permitted to have two fonts in use at a given time. I rather think I’d go a bit mad and have far too many fonts in play at one time if not for that limit.

Typekit toolbox
This is your Typekit toolbox. Simple and to the point, no?

I’m still thinking about changing the colors, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Perhaps a slightly more retro shade of orange would be the way to go…perhaps a slightly more retro shade of any of the colors the theme offers. I learned the hard way that to actually have other colors and incorporate them into the theme options screen is a bit more involved than you might think. It involved renaming the original files (so I didn’t lose them) and then altering the colors and retaining the files’ original names in order for everything to work properly. It was a bit convoluted and more than a bit of a pain in the ass, but in the end, it was the only way I could get the files to work.

But all that’s for another time. For now, welcome Tandelle and Apolline STD!

: digital

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