To a Good Life

Internet Explorer is to me as the Death Star was to the Rebellion. Except I’m evidently not Luke Skywalker, oh no. I’m Wedge.

Some journal entries back I complained about the exceedingly pesky Creeping Text Bug in Internet Explorer, causing text following a closed blockquote-tag with a 5px left border to shift about 10px to the left on my Tricia Helfer website. Some two hours of furious Googling, however, produced results, and I happily applied this solution to the site — a conditional Zoom Fix clause in between the head-tags of each page:

< !--[if IE]>
< style type="text/css">
p {
zoom: 1;}

blockquote {
zoom: 1;}
< /style>
< ![endif]-->

Unfortunately, it would seem it takes more than validated HTML and the most popular online search engine in the world to take down the Empire.

Earlier today, I began coding a new layout for my Milla Jovovich website, and all seemed to be going smoothly; following the application of some minor coding error fixes, my coding validated as XHTML 1.0 Strict and testing in both Safari and Firefox turned out a success, and it pleased me to know I had a working solution for the aforementioned Internet Explorer bug. I might’ve known IE 6 is more butt-fucked than that.

As soon as testing on IE6 began, I rammed head first into the most perplexing problem with my coding — images with “float: right;” defined would in fact not float right in Internet Explorer, as opposed to Firefox and Safari. Although the image itself would align itself to the right, text following the image would not wrap around it. After nearly three hours(!) of utterly fruitless testing (as well as Googling), you can hardly begin to imagine my discontent at that God forsaken browser.

Then my thoughts returned to the Creeping Text Bug Zoom Fix I had automatically applied to the new design — the only “real” variance in how the coding was to be interpreted by the aforementioned browsers. Remove it, and voilà! — images in IE float to the right again as normal. Erasing the conditional clause, however, naturally resurrected the original bug, and I was ultimately forced to admit my defeat and simply not define a single, left hand side border for my blockquote-tags.

Bill Gates, if I get hemorrhoids because of this, I will sue your unholy ass, and you can take that in writing.

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html, internet explorer, microsoft, star wars

Things I learned in July:

1. I don’t take unmixed booze well
2. 3/4 of my carefully Googled blog themes frak up in WordPress 2.6
3. Never trust your hard work in the hands of people you don’t really know

Allow me to elaborate on point number three, which I’m sure sounds juicy enough to tickle someone’s interest. Well, at least one of the two people that read this blog but never comment. Maybe there are more. It’s time to put on my Conan O’Brien poker face and find out.

In matters of business, my father has always been a very practical, levelheaded man. It is a shame this trait of his has evidently not passed on to me, something which I learned the hard way sometime around mid-July. Now, a fair warning to one and all: I know there are people who will not agree with this post. That’s fine. However, I would like to ask people to read it through in its entirety before pelting me with those infamous rancid tomatoes, though I am aware the length of this entry is quite dreadful. Even so, unless you’re in a coma and someone’s about to pull the plug on you, there will be plenty of time for pelting later.

Some will surely recall how I some time back announced three of my websites were looking for a new hosting provider. This was due to a considerable change in terms of hosting at my previous host, which I was not willing to comply with for a number of both practical as well as personal reasons, which I need not go into here. Thus, shortly after this change was announced and well before the assigned deadline for complying with the new rules, I raised my concerns regarding them (and appropriately so, mind you) and then informed my host that I’d be looking for alternative hosting for all my sites currently hosted there.

Here’s the catch, though: out of my three sites, I only owned the domains for one, while the other two were owned by my host. In the interest of retaining the at this point rather high Google ranking of my websites, I naturally offered to purchase these domains for whatever price. This request of mine, however, was refused, much to my surprise and disappointment. In fact, I was told I would only receive a two-week redirect to the new locations of my two sites “as a courtesy”, after which the domains would be put up for adoption, for anyone to grab and make their own. Needless to say, I was quite beside myself with frustration.

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personal

“The number you have dialed cannot be reached.”

There are three things I do when I begin to feel the effects of my idleness.

One: I’m finally bothered to locate my cell phone in an effort to reconcile with the 20 people who’ve tried to reach me 16,472 times in the past three weeks. Each.

Two: I start playing Final Ninja on Nitrome.com, and obsessively continue doing so for the next four hours. The cyber soldiers are making it awful hard for me to reach Level 8 Level 15 (since Aug 3).

Three: I go to OKCupid.com to do random user-posted tests. And yes, OKCupid is an online dating service. I’m not a member, though. I swear, I’m not! Um. No! I have Faramir.

Here’s a selection of test results (factual accuracy not guaranteed) from July 22 2008. I was bored. Still am, in fact. Can you tell?

The 4-Variable IQ Test:

Visual
You scored 5% interpersonal, 35% visual, 35% verbal and 25% mathematical

Your strongest type of intelligence is Visual. You thrive on spatial thinking, shapes, patterns, and form. You’re unlikely to be blind. You can probably think in 3D very easily. You are very likely to be attractive, based on only my most rudimentary anecdotal evidence. And you are likely to appreciate a good body in a lover.

Your specific scores follow. On any axis, a score above 25% means you use that kind of thinking more than average, and a score below 25% means you use it less. It says nothing about cognitive skills, just your interest.

The Are You a Psychopath? Test:

The Social Butterfly
You scored 55% empathic, 0% delusional, 51% sociable, and 30% law-abiding

You like people, a lot. You don’t really care much about the law, but it doesn’t much matter when you’re on such good terms with everyone around you. So long as you don’t get yourself into trouble you’ll probably remain quite popular. Oh, and you might be a drug dealer. You’re definitely not a psychopath.

The Where Should You Travel? Test:

Train through Europe
You scored 71% culture, 23% social, 45% activity, and 39% adventure

A train trip through Europe is a fantastic way to enrich yourself with many different cultures within a relatively short distance. The train service in Europe is out of this world and almost always on time. It doesn’t lump you together with a group since you prefer to be independent, yet it takes the scariness out of navigating around a new country in a rental car, trying to make sense of the map. The train system brings you from downtown to downtown and there are often hotels within a short walk of the station. You could decide which countries interest you the most and if you are eligible, buy a rail pass in advance to save a bundle of money. Arriving at a European train station is an architectureally beautiul way to introduce yourself to a new city and it sets the perfect scene for your new experience.

The Open Minded-ness Test:

Open Minded
You scored 65% Objectivity, 65% Tolerance, 79% Honesty, and 62% Enlightenment

You are moderately objective, very tolerant, and quite honest! You just need to be a little more introspective and work on improving that objectivity further!

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boredom, personal, self

Earlier today (to which Kate can testify), while coding a Tricia Helfer layout in Wordpress, I came close to ripping my pants off, putting them on fire and throwing them in through the front door of the nearest tech store selling Microsoft products as I couldn’t for the life (or death) of me figure out why text following a closed blockquote-tag with a CSS-styled left border and bottom padding kept shifting left in Internet Explorer. After roughly two hours of muttering some of the most imaginative profanities in three languages — oh yeah, and some testing, too — I was able to narrow down the list of possible guilty strips of CSS to… well, just one, actually: the 5px left border.

Daddy once taught me Google is your friend. From PositioningIsEverything.net:

The Creeping Text Bug
When triggered, the bug pushes the text in the inner element (but not the element itself) to the left an amount equal to twice the width of the left border. The outer divs in the first group have 1px borders; the second group have 10px borders (short red lines). Each group is in its own static div. Notice that with each repetition the error is added to the previous errors!

Once again, I applaud the lamebrains at Microsoft for their ridiculously cheap software design. Ironically, Internet Explorer is freeware. I’m not laughing, though.

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html, internet explorer, microsoft

Genius
noun (pl. geniuses)

1. exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability
2. a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in some particular respect
3. Coldplay; English alternative rock band

When I die, I’ll be sure to take them with me. And pack light.

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coldplay, music, personal

“Don’t drive like my brother.”
“Don’t drive like my brother!”
- Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers

As unlikely as it seemed to all involved, myself included, I am now the proud (and relieved) owner of a genuine driver’s license. Unfortunately for all involved, a license says absolutely zilch about driving skills, or as in my case, the lack of them. As much as I enjoy flagging around this as-of-yet rather pathetic-looking ticket (particularly because this means I will never ever ever have to drive through the Pasila two-lane traffic circle again so long as I live — four times have I driven through it, and four times have I done it wrong), they give these babies away much too easily. After all, they did give one to yours truly. My grandmother once told me she never got a driver’s license because she couldn’t trust in the driving skills of others. Only now do I know precisely what she meant by it — I trust in the driving skills of the general public about as much as I trust in those of my own (read: I don’t).

The clutch is something I continue to struggle with. Forgetting what gear I’m in and lifting the clutch too quickly are but a few of my many, many difficulties using it. On 15 of my 19 hour-long driving lessons has the (pitiful) engine of my (equally pitiful) age-old Ford Focus inadvertently choked and stalled, which speaks volumes of how uncomfortable I am using it (or, how comfortable I am not using it. No, actually, that makes no sense). In the words of my father, bless him, “anyone who doesn’t know how to drive a manual transmission car should not be allowed to even (be)hold car keys.” (Unsurprisingly, he owns a manual transmission Nissan Pathfinder, which, by the way, is bloody impossible to park anywhere.) Bitterly grinding my teeth, I have to agree.

Crossroads are a chapter of their own. A left-turn for me is about as easy as it would be for a passive-aggressive Goofy on speed (pun intended — and carefully thought of). I’d rather turn right, thank you very much, and yes, even if it means I can only go around the block. Where to stop and wait for your turn without blocking traffic, voilà la question. Of course, it would help if I actually followed instructions, but then I never was very good at listening. “Wa? Left? What do you mean, ‘left?’ Oh, you told me to go left? Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

Then there is, of course, the infamous gas pedal, with which I hear I am in too good an agreement. I’m in the habit of “forgetting” my foot on the aforementioned pedal, which is rather unfortunate when you’re meant to, well, slow down. I also have a tendency of (inadvertently, mind you) ignoring speed limit signs, and thus drive both in and out of town blissfully unaware of how many mph I’m past the allowed maximum. For this, however, I blame entirely my father, who generally seems to consider speed limits advisory recommendations. This strategy, as it turned out, did not gain much enthusiasm with my driving instructor.

The word on our infamous family driving skills has also traveled around (though evidently not far enough to reach the ears of my driving test supervisor). In fact, all of my friends declared long before I got my license they will under no circumstances submit themselves to my driving (in)abilities. Probably wisely so. It isn’t so much that I’m completely hopeless at driving as it is that I lack consistency. Apparently, relaxing behind the wheel makes me inexcusably and horribly sloppy, and I instinctively resort to relying on my “oh-I-can-squeeze-in-there”-principle (another strategy that was met with little enthusiasm from my driving instructor).

All this, however, has now been rendered more or less meaningless (well, not really), because I have passed my driving test, if only the second time around. (Ironically, based on my second results, I would personally not have granted myself a license, but hey, I’ll take anything. As they say in Finnish, “kaikki otetaan mitä annetaan.”) Now all I need is a car, preferably a 1976 Ford Gran Torino, or alternatively a CLS Coupé Mercedes-Benz; both too expensive for me to be allowed to drive, but damn awesome to show off, even if it’s just in the garage. I’d also like a black Pontiac “KITT” Trans-Am, but only if I can keep the headlights turned off while driving, because it looks cooler that way. Unfortunately, it’s illegal in Finland. What a waste.

PS. For the record, I have yet to actually crash a car, but I have hit a trash can, a mailbox and had two, three close calls with other cars, the fact of them not being actual crashes being no thanks to yours truly.

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cars, personal, self

As excited as I was about the release of WordPress 2.5, I had every intention of not upgrading the system on any of my sites until either a) the WordPress development team released their first bug and vulnerability patch (which, let’s face it, we all know will be released sooner or later), or b) people began reporting of their experiences using the new and improved(?) system. Of course, as Lady Fortune and I are evidently not on speaking terms, neither one happened. I guess if you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself.

As my test platform I decided to use the largest website I have, i.e. Milla Fan, where WordPress 2.5 is now in effect. I realize it isn’t well-advised to use an active website as your (crash) test dummy for something new, but I figured I would have to upgrade some time, so I might as well do it now and save myself from a later headache. Here are the observations of a first-time user.

Looking at the Dashboard, aside from the obvious visual improvement, the first thing I notice is that there’s a lot of unused space. Aside from the enormous white space between the content table and the right-hand scrollbar which could’ve been effectively taken advantage of, there is also a rather wasteful gap under the comment links in the “Recent Comments” box, which really takes up more space than it needs to, the same which goes for the “Incoming Links” box next to it. Although I’m generally all for spaciousness, even on my 1440×900 screen it does feel like a waste of space to have the box sizes fixed in this way; I realize the original idea was probably to achieve a sense of neatness to the Dashboard, but you really won’t be able to appreciate the thought until you scroll down and see more of the Dashboard contents, which kind of defeats the purpose. Personally, I think this could’ve been avoided by minimizing the “Right Now” box, which right now (no pun intended) takes up more space than it needs to.

Other than that, I’m quite liking the new Dashboard. It’ll take some getting used to, but once you get over the initial shock you soon realize much of what was the old Dashboard is still more or less in place. Setting aside the aforementioned space-issue, the “Right Now” box is in itself a nice addition to the Dashboard, because it allows you to quickly proceed to the most commonly used features of the system.

Moving on, another step backwards I find is that the familiar and consistently organized navigation of 2.3 and earlier versions has been scattered all over the top half of the screen. Now this, my friends, if anything, will take some getting used to, because plain common sense just doesn’t seem to cut it here. Why the “Dashboard” link has been separated from the other, main function links is beyond me, the same which goes for the “Settings”, “Plugins” et al. links now having a corner of their own. Because there really is no evident logic to the new navigational setup, it is a matter of learning the links and their respective places by heart, which is sure to push someone’s buttons, albeit not mine - I adjust easily.

It’s time to write a post, peeps. For starters, I have to say I’m a little disappointed they still haven’t added a visual editor disabler button anywhere on the Write page; it takes quite a stretch of imagination to come to the conclusion that the small “Visual Editor” tickbox is located in your user settings. Earlier, the visual editor was one of the few big reasons why I was hesitant to convert an entire site to WordPress, and it took me weeks of hair-pulling and a tip from a good friend (Maria, you are a goddess) to disable that abhorred thing which, in a permanent, Microsoft-esque fit of arrogance thought it knew HTML better than I. I realize the intention has been to allow each to choose their own, preferred way of posting and editing news on a multi-user WordPress managed newsblog, which is a sensible idea, but surely this approach allows a setting of this kind to be added to the Write as well as the User Settings-page without the settings change having a universal effect on the system?

Overall, however, the Write page is quite neat and clean cut, and I’m quite happy with the new media upload options (though uploading does not function too smoothly here on my journal). However, since the page has a two-column setup I once again have to return to my original point about unused space, which there really is a lot of in the second column, where e.g. the “Tags” and “Category” options could’ve been placed — as it is now I tend to forget assigning my post a category altogether. The earlier feature of draft post titles appearing above the post field is also now gone, much to my dismay, and has been replaced with a small “View Drafts” link under the title “Related” in the right-hand column, which once again requires either intense searching, memorizing or a very vivid imagination to find. Some will also surely find the positioning of the “Preview”, “Save” and “Publish” buttons rather confusing (I know I have - you don’t know how many times I’ve pressed “Save” or “Preview” instead of “Publish” and vice versa), though kudos to the dev team for adding a convenient “Edit Post” link to the Write page once you’ve posted your newly-written update. The permalink edit field under the post title is also an improvement to the earlier “Post Slug” method.

In terms of the Plugins, User- and other general settings I haven’t come across any major, non-facelift related modifications, at least not ones that have caught my attention. The Plugins-section does have a very nifty new feature which allows you to automatically upgrade outdated plugins — except I’ve yet to actually successfully use it.

Although I have in this post focused mostly on the disadvantages of 2.5, do not let the tone of my rather lengthy analysis lead you astray - WordPress 2.5, overall, is quite neat. A little patience is in order here - after all, the revamped system was only just released and even with the best of help, bugs and flaws will be overlooked. Just ask the Windows dev team, they ought to know. I would further like to point out that these observations are quite subjective, and very possibly reflect my needs rather than those of the general public. My advice is to upgrade whether you like the new system or not; the older your version becomes, the more scantily will people be willing to provide product support. Unsurprisingly, the good people at MS are once again a prime example of this.

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wordpress

I am appealing to the good and common sense of the producers of the upcoming two silver screen renditions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Hobbit, (for God’s sake!) not to hire Guillermo Del Toro as the director of either film. Well, I would appeal to them if they actually gave a toss about my opinion. Which, by the way, they don’t. You’d think they would — but they don’t.

Guillermo Del Toro cannot be allowed to direct the upcoming The Hobbit films. No, seriously, he can’t. Unfortunately, according to IMDb, this seems to be the reality. If there ever was a time for a “Bring Back Peter J” petition, it’s now. Actually, since it seems rather unlikely Jackson will be returning to direct another film in the Lord of the Rings area of things, it might be more worthwhile to start a “Say No to Del Toro” petition. This, of course, as long as the potential replacement isn’t one of the following: Kurt Wimmer, Uwe Boll, Sam Raimi (whom I hear was attached to the project at some point, much to my horror and dismay) — and, as much as I love the Star Wars film franchise, George Lucas. Sorry George, the new films just didn’t cut it.

Let’s get serious for a moment here, though. There are a lot of things one can say of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, but I doubt anyone who’s read the books with serious thought can deny the astonishing accuracy with which the production team translated the atmosphere of this classic tale on screen. The Fellowship of the Ring, my favorite of the three books as well as the films, is one of the most beautiful, touching and exciting films I’ve come across of late, and I think much of the achievement in the film lies in Jackson’s genius direction and Howard Shore’s equally exceptional score. (I could go on and state how this coming from someone who is disappointed by 88% of most modern-day films is saying a lot, but that would be corny of me.)

It is a fair argument to say that, in the case of the Lord of the Rings-films, one shouldn’t raise one part of the production above the other - the films were an extraordinarily successful team effort, and as they say, there’s no ‘I’ in team. That said, I am discussing Jackson’s contribution to the film trilogy here rather than that of the entire crew, with my my argument being that Jackson is an irreplaceable part of the film franchise. Irreplaceable I say! Guillermo Del Toro, on the other hand, is an irreplaceable part of — well, no film franchise, really, or (dare I say it) film, for that matter.

Yes, yes, I know of Pan’s Labyrinth, I’m sure it’s as great as they say it is and I’m sure Del Toro didn’t just “luck out” with that film (and no, contrary to habit I am not being sarcastic here, so please wait until I make a snide remark about Harry Potter before throwing pie at me), but honestly, though. Hellboy? Blade II (which I am ashamed to admit I own on DVD)? Hellboy II?!? New Line Cinema, you can’t be serious! I never thought I’d say this, but if this really is the shape of things to come, I might have to turn my back on future Lord of the Rings-related film productions.

Perhaps you think I’m being overly dramatic, but the Peter Jackson-directed films are very, very dear to me, and not least because they introduced me to the literary works of the exceptionally gifted J.R.R. Tolkien. I will not have my Lord of the Rings experience ruined by a second-rate prequel that will with 84% certainty miss the mark. Not to mention two prequels.

I don’t even know if the films would be called ‘prequels’. They would be prequels, though. Right? I mean, the Star Wars prequels were ‘prequels’, right? Ah, I give up.

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lord of the rings, personal, self, star wars

I intended to blog about the Oscars. I really did. And then a month passed.

It’s alright, though, because the WordPress team recently put up a sneak peek of the upcoming v. 2.5, which looks like a version I could marry. Well, to the extent that you can marry software. Which is… not so much, actually.

At any rate, for an audio-visual person like myself, the updated look is a tremendous improvement from the current blue admin theme, which is nice, but a touch bland for my liking. The orange-light blue combo is positively yummy. I’d lick the screen, but that might be weird.

The new write screen only displays the information that you’ll use most often. It displays the most common fields in a way that makes posting incredibly easy. Additional options are hidden away until you need them. The new Write screen anticipates the natural flow of the way you write, and is smart enough to remember the way you left it so that your preferred writing environment is always quickly available.

Personally, this has a bit of a fishy, Microsoft smell to it. In my experience, any software that tries to think on my behalf has me pulling my hair out in a fit of frustration after the first three minutes. (I say Microsoft, because any MS program has me pulling my hair out within the first 15 minutes for the very aforementioned reason. An hour later, and I’ll have to start plucking my eyebrows. Heck, even my mother - a hell-bent Windows-supporter, mind you - has resorted to surprisingly colorful language when using MS Word for, well, anything other than to do-notes.) On the other hand, they are sounding pretty smart about what they have planned, so I will - with a little hesitation, mind you - give them the benefit of the doubt (which is more than I can say for any new MS release).

My other hesitation regarding the new release concerns to what extent they will change the way WordPress presents and manages content. Back in the day, when the all-new Coppermine Photo Gallery 1.4 was released I thought I might have to seriously consider webdesign suicide as all my cpg 1.3 gallery layouts were essentially nuked to death in 1.4. On the other hand, back in the day, I could barely design at all, so maybe them layouts being knackered up by 1.4 was an improvement rather than a loss. I’d nevertheless rather not have it happen another time.

I’m still pretty geek-excited. I’m itching to install the 2.5 RC1, but I’ve never been very good at backing up my databases, and won’t start now.

Update: The good people at WordPress have now released RC2 alongside a screencast, which looks quite promising in my opinion. I am particularly loving the multi-upload feature; uploding 100 files one by one has been a real drag at many of my other websites.

Oh, and for the record, Katherine Heigl, Helen Mirren and Jennifer Garner were the best dressed at the Oscars = indisputable fact. And Jennifer Hudson needs to seriously stop parading her boobs to every event. We’ve seen them, thank you, and we know they’re big.

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celebrities, wordpress