Rain, Rain, Rain, but the Lights Are On

December 29, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So I left LA for a few weeks and missed crazy record amounts of rainfall. You really need to see these pictures of a flooded 110 (linked from blogging.la). Reading stories of 4.3 inches of rain downtown (over 24 hours) I'm amazed that the power in my apartment hasn't been touched. How do I know this if I'm sitting in Michigan right now? Well, the server you're reading this off of is sitting in my living room. That means that our power, phone, and DSL have survived untouched through the downpours.

My old apartment would lose power every now and again just for the fun of it. It's nice to know that's different now.

The One-Day Look

December 29, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So the look I bragged about in my last post lasted less than a day. Luckily I made that screenshot, 'cause that's the last you'll be seeing of it here. I give credit for all the good ideas in this new new design to Max (otherwise known as Rev. Fun). I kept pestering him with design questions last night, and woke up this morning to find a mockup of what he thought my site should look like. His was much better than mine, which is probably why he gets paid for this sort of thing and I don't.

You'll notice that the expand/collapse that reappeared yesterday is gone. In it's place on posts that have a body you'll find a Read More link below. That'll expand the post body in-place... — Continue Reading...

Taking Advantage of that CSS

December 28, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Firefox screenshot After spending a few hours tonight hacking on them, I've just put up some new CSS for the blog. Like any good work it consists of elements lifted from here and there. The little frame elements in the top-left and bottom-right are loosely adapted from a rounded corner guide here, and the little calendars are lifted from mezzoblue (though in fairness I'm not presenting quite the same). The goal was to de-clutter and reduce the number of colors I'm using. I don't think it's perfect (or even close), but it's a start.

Now, those of you using Internet Explorer are sitting there saying "what frame elements?" and "what calendars?" That's why I gave you the little screenshot to click on and see what you're missing. There's no excuse not to be running a browser from Mozilla these days. You deserve a better browser than IE.

That said, the calendars should work in IE and I'm not sure why they don't. I need to look into that more.

new features

December 28, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So a slew of "new" features should be coming on right now. I'm testing as I copy things from the dev setup to live, so if something doesn't work in the next half hour or so that won't really surprise me. So what's "new" (and why the quotes?):

  • Comment support is back.
  • The expand/collapse navigation is back.
  • "This Date" is back.

As you can see, I say "new" 'cause I had all these before. But they're all genuinely new to eThreads2.

one last caltrans bit

December 26, 2004 by Eric Richardson

This quote comes from an article in the NY Times:

But in our security-obsessed age, the [Caltrans] building's spirit of openness makes it exceptional. Its vast "urban lobby" is carved through its core, sucking surrounding street life inside.

What?

If you wanted to suck street life inside the "lobby", you'd have punched a hole through to Los Angeles St. and the New Otani. As it is I don't even feel like I should be mounting the front steps. As is habit in LA, the plaza doesn't have anywhere to sit. It's concrete, with metal. That sort of an environment doesn't really suck many people in.

Hopefully the public eatery that's supposed to go in will change some of that.