RSSMay 2006 Archives
May 25, 2006
Déjà Vu
While randomly surfing the internet last night, I came across a "blog" of sorts, written by someone who lived in my dorm during undergrad. Actually, it was more of a personal site since blogs were still in their infancy and web publishing required some knowledge of HTML (I had a personal site myself, but won't share the URL because its embarassing). The reason I found her diary so creepy was because it described an entire world of relationships that only existed on the periphery of my own little universe. Reading her account is strangely disorienting since I can clearly recall the same events and people, but from an entirely different perspective.
Posted by eerie at 08:02 PM
| Comments (9)
| TrackBack
Filed Under:
Personal
May 23, 2006
Botox, Cosmetic Procedures, 1984
A stupid title, but rather fitting for the series of non-sequiturs I am about to jot down.
I am amused at how "normal" botulism injections have become. A few years back, magazines were pooh-poohing the idea...until the botox people started paying them big bucks. Collagen lips, acid peels, liposuction, all part of the "lifestyle" now. I even discovered an entire magazine dedicated to plastic surgery at my salon, complete with disgusting photos of mottled and bruised post-surgery faces.
Continue reading "Botox, Cosmetic Procedures, 1984"
Posted by eerie at 10:24 PM
| Comments (36)
| TrackBack
Filed Under:
Personal
May 18, 2006
Vacation Plans
I don't take enough time off, so my vacation days tend to build up until I'm forced to use them. Yesterday, the HR lady told me I had five weeks banked and needed to use at least two before December 31. Since then, I've been contemplating a long, quiet trip somewhere far away, one that doesn't involve taking classes or doing touristy things.
I even considered a beach house in Goa until I realized I was ripping off The Bourne Supremacy. Not that it's a bad idea, but a beach house anywhere might work just as well. I simply lack the imagination to come up with more interesting options. That is, of course, where my blog peanut gallery comes in. Suggestions are welcome.
Posted by eerie at 10:08 PM
| Comments (27)
| TrackBack
Filed Under:
Personal
May 14, 2006
Revenge of the Book Club
Thankfully, the dinner has been postponed, leaving me with extra time to finish (or vainly attempt to finish) the assigned book. Interestingly, the dimwitted teamaker seems to have a bit of a murderous streak. Perhaps she will in fact kill all the annoyingly emotional women with a strong dose of poisoned tea, just as DrDoug predicted. Ah, one can only hope.
[Read this entry for background]
Posted by eerie at 07:13 PM
| Comments (5)
| TrackBack
Filed Under:
Random Notes
May 08, 2006
I am brilliant, yet stupid
After 3 hours of coding and debugging (well, mostly debugging and cursing), I finally fixed the "Categories" flyout menu on the 'Aqoul main site. As Dubaiwalla pointed out earlier, the original flyout was longer than the screen and prevented users from clicking on the lowest menu options. This occured because the subcategories (e.g. Levant, Gulf, North Africa) were rendering as top-level categories. A known bug, but I was hell-bent on launching over the weekend and didn't feel like fixing it.
The imperfect flyout menu started annoying me this evening, so I decided to muck around with the code instead of reading about the Tea Sisterhood. It turned out to be far more complicated than I expected, in large part due to MovableType making things "easier" by consolidating multiple functions into a single tag. Unfortunately, the pre-packaged functions were totally wrong for my purposes and I had to write them out in long form using more cumbersome tags.
The reason I am brilliant is because the code is now "blog-agnostic" and will automatically render the correct flyout menu for each sub-blog, without any extra work. For example, if you run a search from my blog and hover over the Categories flyout on the search results page, it will show my categories, not Aqoul's.
Well I think it's brilliant. Especially after all that goddamn work.
However, the book deadline is fast approaching and I'm not even half done. Ergo, I am stupid for wasting so much time on the flyout menu.
Posted by eerie at 11:03 PM
| Comments (4)
| TrackBack
Filed Under:
Personal
,
Site News
The Girls Club
As explained in a previous entry, I'm attending a "book club" dinner very soon. It's part of my colleague's ongoing project to make me more social, as she is completely baffled by my lack of interest in socializing, despite my obvious charm, intelligence, assertiveness, blah blah.
By her logic, if people like me and find me interesting, I should in turn enjoy spending time with them. Or perhaps only ugly, boring misfits spend time reading non-fiction and mucking about on the internet. Misanthropy has apparently never crossed her mind, but she has clued into the fact that I relate better to males. Thus, the only solution is to coerce me into joining an all-female book club full of women I've never met.
A night out with "the girls" could end up being fun, who knows. However, there is one small problem: I can't finish the assigned book, no matter how hard I try.
Continue reading "The Girls Club"
Posted by eerie at 12:59 AM
| Comments (18)
| TrackBack
Filed Under:
Personal
May 05, 2006
'Aqoul Redesign - Mockup (Updated)
Working on a mockup of the new front page, available here. Input is welcome.
I know some of you are going to start whining about the new fonts, but it's still early. Plenty of time to lobby for your preferences.
Update: I've uploaded a test page to the server.
Update 2: I've applied the new design to 'Aqoul. Sub-blogs will follow at some point in the future.
Posted by eerie at 08:20 PM
| Comments (26)
| TrackBack
Filed Under:
Site News
May 02, 2006
Ripping off an ancient tradition
While there is little need for a "New Month Open Discussion" on my personal blog, feel free to introduce yourselves, ask questions or whine about trivialities.
The real purpose of this entry is to solicit input on a potential redesign of the 'Aqoul main page. My general intention is to give readers a glimpse of the entire 'Aqoul site by displaying the latest blog entries from 'Aqoul, Lounsbury (and perhaps even eerie), Aggregator headlines and the most recent title from Books & Media. The front page would also be much wider to accomodate extra content, ads, etc.
Not entirely sure how I'll pull this off (XML comes to mind) but that is largely irrelevant at this point. What I would like is some feedback on the idea, suggestions for improvement, that sort of thing.
Posted by eerie at 07:23 PM
| Comments (29)
| TrackBack
Filed Under:
Site News
