Layoutomatic: Instant Columnar CSS Layouts

http://www.inknoise.com/experimental/layoutomatic.php

Photos: Italy and Germany, May 2003

In May my cameras and I traveled to Italy and Germany. Here's a slideshow with eight photos pulled directly from iPhoto thanks to the fantastic BetterHTMLExport plugin for Movable Type written by that great benefactor of humanity, Simeon Leifer. I simply can't stand dinking around with creating Web-sized images and thumbnails; BetterHTMLExport does it for me right from iPhoto's Export dialog. Bless him.

All Your Entries Are Belong to Us, Part II

Must have been a Movable Type archive settings that gave me the dreaded White Screen of Death -- johnfulwider dot com with nothing in the center content pane. I wouldn't worry, but Rachael and George actually promised to look at my blog, thus bringing its audience to a staggering three people. (Hi Mom!)

Coming next: The photo slideshow I promised them.

All Your Entries Are Belong to Us

All my Movable Type entries have disappeared. They're still in the entries editor, and still available in the archive. They just won't display on the front page.

Three-Column Layout Finished

Many thanks to glish.com and my good friends Anne, Eric and Nate for helping me achieve a three-column layout using only CSS -- no tables.

I've only found problems so far with IE 5.2 for the Mac. If anyone can help diagnose what's up, please post a comment.

Still Struggling with CSS

I'm still struggling with CSS, as people viewing this page on browsers other than Safari and Mozilla will notice.

I really should make layout changes on a development server before taking them live. :-)

"I Sent in $77, and My Neighbors Got Sod!"

There's this horribly cheesy program on an over-the-air religious TV network here in Lincoln that should be called, "Pay for Prayer." You're supposed to send in money and a prayer request. Then they show the prayer "answers" with a headlines slideshow, like you see in movies when they show a plot development via a series of fictitious newspaper and magazine headlines.

Anyway, one lucky lady the other day squealed, "I sent in $77 and three days later, we got increased income of $750."

Tomorrow we're expecting one of our neighbors to show up on TV, overcome by emotion and yelling, "Praise the Lord! I sent in $77 and my neighbors got sod!"

Sorry, habitat-deprived flora and fauna from far and wide: Our yard, formerly a weed-infested candidate for EPA or Fish & Wildlife Service funding, now has sod.

(Kidding aside, prayer works. No deposit required.)

(Can somebody out there tell me the correct cinematography term for "headline slideshow?)

Three-Column Layout in Progress

I'm converting to a three-column layout based on the CSS "look ma, no tables!" tutorial at glish.com. I've modified the "3 Columns, the Holy Grail" design, but the results so far are a bit buggy.

My Yard, the Wildlife Habitat

The downpour continues here in lovely Nebraska, washing away my hopes of having something other than dirt, mud and weeds surrounding my house. I think I may just turn it into a wildlife habitat and live off of EPA or Fish and Wildlife Service grants.

So we bought this new-construction house two or three months ago and figured we'd save money by seeding the lawn instead of sodding. Wrong. The day after the contractor seeded, Mother Nature decided to oh-so-temporarily lift her three-year Nebraska water restriction with three days of drenching storms. We found the straw we'd laid over the yard blocks away at the entrance to our subdivision.

Months of waist-high weeds and disapproving stares from our neighbors later, we called the sod guys. No one returned our calls. We called again and got a nice guy from Nebraska Sod to come out on a Sunday. He reassured us all would be green and groovy Real Soon Now. Indeed, we arrived home from work Monday to find the yard had already been scraped of weeds and graded. Things are looking up, we thought.

The next day, horticultural history repeated itself. The weeds now have a second chance at life, the graded dirt is washing away, and the sod fields are too waterlogged for harvesting. We don't even bother thinking about how nice it would have been to have the sod in before the rain started, thus saving us the constant watering needed to establish a new lawn.

Ah, homeownership. When everything's measured in multiples of $1,000, living under the thumb of a loony landlord looks awfully appealing.

NPR, At Least, Mentions Alabama Tax Hike's Christian Motive

New blogger Gregg Easterbrook decries the national media's failure (tnr.com) to mention the Christian motive for Republican Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's big tax-hike proposal.

National Public Radio (npr.org) is mentioning the Christian motive, in what I judge an evenhanded manner. Heard it this morning on Morning Edition (npr.org) during my rain-soaked drive to work.

I'm deciding more and more NPR is the place to go for evenhanded news coverage, if you set aside Daniel Schorr's commentaries -- which are so reflexively, dogmatically and close-mindedly anti-right they're humorous. (That's not to take anything away from his reporting experience, which is voluminous, his firsthand knowledge of history, which is staggering, or his speaking talent -- which makes him a joy to hear. He's just wrong on the issues.)

Weblogs: There's a Lot Out There, But It's Not Academic

Back in April I wrote a literature review for my communications theory class in grad school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It took a pleasant little poke at my ego (a classmate requested a copy today to help him with his own research) to overcome my laziness so I could post it. Thanks to Movable Type's built-in Extended Entry field, I didn't have to hard-code a static HTML page to contain the huge honkin' 4,060-word monster (which, despite slash-and-burn editing, was still 60 words over spec).

I will have to find some way to put in the footnotes. Look for that in Version 2.0 of this post. By Version 1.2.1b I may have the section headings bolded or something. If you've got the same tolerance for punishment my professor had, you can follow the link below to read it.

Blogging from iPhoto

I can blog photos directly from my iPhoto library thanks to Eric Sigler's iPhoto2Weblog.

The first example is "Osteria Libation," below.

Osteria Libation

Serving up a three-liquid libation at a small osteria in Venice, Italy.
Canon EOS Rebel XS :: 50mm f1.8 :: Fujicolor Superia 400

This photo made it into Visual Prozac 5 (slamomaha.com; look for JavaScript slideshow link on the page), a juried show in Omaha. But it didn't sell, so I'm donating it to a benefit show for the Medusa Project (medusaproject.com).

I asked $130 for it, but a much, much better and cheaper photo didn't sell, either, so I don't feel so bad. The photo, depicting a pregnant belly with a cigar sticking out of the navel, was titled "Castro, Age Zero."

Constipated Christina

That's what all of Christina Aguilera's new music sounds like. Like she's grunting from constipation.

-- A colleague of mine, who shall remain nameless

Old johnfulwider dot com Content Coming Soon

There's a 15 or 20-step process for importing all the old posts from the Blogger-powered johnfulwider dot com, so you can bet you'll see that stuff pop up in these archives Real Soon Now. :-)

Switched to Movable Type from Blogger

I've switched to Movable Type from Blogger for several reasons:

* Blogger's full editor wouldn't load in Safari
* There's a cool iPhoto plugin that creates blog entries from photos you select
* I felt like CHMODing a whole bunch of .CGI files from the command line

Fly American

American is just so the way to go.

Not talking ways of life here, though the USA has got it mostly right. We're talking air travel, which we've found least intolerable on American Airlines.

Start with the legroom. There really is "More Room in Coach." Crossing and uncrossing the legs without rattling the lady in front really staves off the DVTs for the 6-foot-2 set. Competing in a crowded marketplace is all about distinguishing yourself from the other guys, and American should give no ground -- or inches -- on this one.

Add gate announcements. Living in a podunk town smack in the middle of Flyover Country, to which the first flight of the day is oftwen also the last, we live in pathological fear of missed connections. We've nearly perfected a military-grade system for assessing unfamiliar airports at a glance and proceeding at breakneck speed from Terminal A to Terminal ZZ. But all that stress just fades away when the captain tells you well ahead of time where you'll be landing, where all the connecting gates are, and on which page of "our award-winning American Way magazine" can be found a map of the terminal.

Finish with some pretty snazzy adjustable headrests. Our Boeing MD-80's leather headrests raised and lowered to accomodate both Green Giant and Sprout and -- get this -- had folding sides to cradle your head while sleeping. Thus obviating the need to look like a hyper-atomic-ultra-dork using the SkyRest (TM) Travel Pillow to catch your Zs. (By the way, the guy in the promotional photo isn't sleeping -- he's passed out from lack of oxygen after blowing up that huge honkin' thing.)

And You Thought TSA Screeners Were Humorless

Here's the new day job for stand-up comics: airport security screener.

"Take your time, take your time," our Transportation Security Administration baggage engineer fast-talked, Eddie Murphy style, as we lurched toward him with hobbled foot and a badly balanced bag. "I'll wait for you."

"Does your bag contain any medication you may require on this flight?" he inquires.

No.

"Do you have any photographic film, used or unused, in there?"

No.
Dramatic pause.

"Guess what! You have not completed this process," he announces with a flourish. "You may now take a left, proceed to the middle escalator, and rise one floor to Airside F. Have a very nice flight."

Now that guy's worth my money.

Want to Fly Happy? Get Bored

Boredom is the secret to in-flight happiness.

A recent not-even-half-full flight from Tampa to Dallas featured an attendant roaming the aisles offering soft blankets, fresh cups of ice and personalized trash pickup for each passenger (including the woman one seat forward noshing on sweet-smelling barbeque ribs). We'll take more flights like this one. Sure, after-7 flights mean risking an unwanted overnight stay if you miss your last-departure-tonight connection. But a smilingly unharried flight attendant -- plus the chance to escape the talkative armrest-stealer in 22D -- makes air travel positively tolerable.