actuality.log

I haven’t written (or done) anything site related in a while, so here’s me filling that quota.

I just realised the other day that nearly 80% of my traffic still comes from Windows users and nearly all those readers arrive on various flavours of Internet Explorer (IE). Furthermore, since I hadn’t been on Windows or seen my journal in IE for a long time, I only recently realised that things look very different there from how they do on my Mac. And when I say “different,” I mean “unsightly,” which is not acceptable.

When I first “designed” this layout, I remember making sure that things looked reasonably similar across different platforms. I guess it’s just that over the years, the numerous tweaks I’ve been making to the interface have added up to significantly different appearances on different platforms. That being the case, I think now is as good a time as any other for a reset. Toward this end, I’ve started working on a new style that looks remarkably similar to the current one, but has two main goals. One, to simplify and streamline the back-end code. Two, to make things look and feel consistent across major browsers and platforms. (Sorry, my three fucking Opera users.)

The test page linked-to above serves to prototype and showcase the design. I’m trying to start with a clean slate by using CSS from the YUI Library from Yahoo. I’ll let you know how that works out. For now, notice how things look quite similar on two disparate environments: Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP and Safari 3 on Mac OS X Leopard. I’m also maintaining a more detailed design status table covering different browsers and platforms.

At the end of this exercise, things should not be too different from what you’ve come to know and love. But over the course of the next few weeks, things might appear randomly broken as I move changes live into the journal. If you experience this, don’t panic. Go out, take a walk and by the time you get back, I should have things sorted out. If I seem to have missed something, do let me know!

hlea. I’m having difficulty focusing on the live band.

I’m pointing this out only because it hasn’t happened before: I’m writing this entry drunk. It’s about four in the wee morn and I just hobbled back home. I had a fun evening out—one that began with a viewing of the latest comic book-turned motion picture extravaganza, “Watchmen.” Overall, I really liked it and thought the copious shots of naked male bums and proud glowey penises were well done.

My silence has belied it, but I’ve been doing a lot more adult-y things with my life lately. I’ve been entertaining guests at home, hanging-out later at bars and inviting people over afterwards. It’s like for the first time in my life, I’m not embarrassed about how I live it. And that’s made me comfortable with the notion of sharing it.

It’s not like anything has fundamentally changed, it’s just that life has become more fun to navigate after moving here. With everything being so laid back, I have all the time in the world to focus on whatever catches my fancy. Without guilt.

Of course, with all that leisure time and substance-induced inhibition reduction, my mind often tends to revert to its core state. And rather than explicitly spell out to you what I mean by that for the 400^th time, I leave you with the following metaphor.

Most of the buses and trains in this city have an approximately equal number of seats that face forward and back. I’ve been keeping some notes over this past couple of weeks, and guess what? Given a choice, 98% of the people choose a forward-facing seat from which they can see where the bus is going.

I always pick a seat that faces backwards.