Krazy Korners examples for download

Krazy Korners is a CSS method for creating rounded and bordered boxes without images. Currently there are at least a couple of methods to create rounded boxes: Stu's method, which styles <b> tags to produce the effect, and the Nifty Corners method, or some variant thereof, which utilizes efficient Javascript to insert the tags on the fly. Both are good methods, and I've been playing around with them for a while.

The other day I made up a couple of very simple templates using the Krazy Korners method and am making them available for download here. I've also put one example online for people to look at. These are not for CSS experts but for beginners or those with moderate knowledge who are looking for ideas. If you use them please at least link back to Stu's site, though a link back to Ethereal Code or The Empty Head would be nice too.

rumble ~ THE micro fiction e-zine

The newest issue of rumble is now online.

Little known fact of history: Abraham Lincoln fighting a duel? via metafilter. Here's one that I somehow missed: Stu Nicholl's very clever 100% Background forces your web page background image to resize as your page does. Many possiblities here, though you might want to use it on a div instead of your whole page.

Oh Boy. I just tried the new Yahoo Mail Beta and it's horrible. How to get it? Just switch your general preference to something like YahooUK and go back to your mailbox. You'll be asked if you'd like to try it. Go ahead. You'll find out that it's not only slow but full of huge ads that that clog your browser and make you feel like you're using SnailMail again. p.s. It's UGLY too.

My verdict? IT STINKS.

The Mystery of Enoch Root

People who have waded through, or devoured, as the case may be, the ponderous Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson may, like yours truly, have noticed a number of loose ends and unanswered questions after finishing the final volume. Many of them have to do with the mysterious character Enoch Root, whose first appearance was in the novel Cryptonomicon.

Many of the questions revolve around the exact nature of the character. Is he human? Is he immortal? Is he some sort of angelic being? And why, why, why are we not given the answers to these questions after reading approximately 2500+ pages!!! After a spur-of-the-moment web search I discovered this page and this page and finally this page, all three of which provide some food for thought but no definitive answers, the revealing of which is left to the author—should he decide to write future novels involving this frustratingly intriquing character.

For those of you who don't know, The Baroque Cycle is an ingenius look at the birth of modern science, as well as modern monetary and political systems, and is set in the late 1600's and early 1700's. The three volumes are written as novels, but can be better classified as one stupendously huge, rambling novel involving many real historical characters, including Sir Isaac Newton and Wilhelm Leibniz. And yes, I AM re-reading the trilogy.

The Perfect Internet

What are YOU doing here?

So the perfect internet, as I imagine it, when in the still watches of the night I hear, or think I hear, the Rats of Death scrabbling underneath my bed and swapping sections of yesterdays New York Times...

Anyway.

ONE: Anytime you are interacting with someone online there should be a link you can click that will tell you all about this person: everything stupid or thoughtless, or wise they have ever written online, links to their websites, a dorky picture of them in high school, the number of sexual partners they have betrayed or abandoned in empty railroad yards at midnight, etc. This will VIRTUALLY ELIMINATE the endless posturing and ego-puffing we wade through, which is just kind of sad anyway.

TWO: Web space would be FREE! and doled out by a quasi-governmental agency which the real government would BE FORBIDDEN to interfere with for ever and ever, much in the way it's forbidden to interfere with ENRON. Bandwidth is cheap. Let's get it together, people.

THREE: When someone says something really stupid or evil or hurtful online, asshole-detecting robots index it and rank it, and put a link to it on a website similar to del.icio.us so everyone can ridicule them and shake their virtual fingers at them, and swamp their message boards with comments indicating, in one way or the other, what a lot of growing up they have to do, and how they shouldn't be allowed to have sex with anyone for a long time, on account of how they don't seem to really understand anything important about LOVE.

FOUR: Lonely or misunderstood people who get online late at night, and have no friends, should get invitations from sympathy-robots directing them to message boards where they will fussed over and generally made to feel better about things, if that is humanely possible.

FIVE: Everyone should be made to feel important, somehow, someway, at least once, even if they haven't done or said or created anything worth mentioning, just because it's a good thing to do.

There's probably a lot more, but I'm multi-tasking right now and my neurons are rather scattered.

The Tank Man

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/

I watched the program. The Chinese government is very evil, and has killed millions of its own citizens. The most heart-breaking part of the program occured when the famous picture of Tank Man confronting the tank was shown to a few students from Beijing University and none of them could identify the picture. I mean, can you freaking BELIEVE that? Very sad.