This is the very first business I’ve ever run. The experience has deepened my already abiding respect for entrepreneurs small and large. It ain’t easy. Not everyone has the intestinal fortitude to attempt to create something from nothing, if I may say so. It takes a great leap of faith – and I’m grateful to all the members of the Hot Air team who took that leap with me. – Michelle Malkin
I had a very productive weekend. I got a lot of yard work done. Weeding, mowing, marked out a new garden, and hauled in three truckloads of mulch. Oh, and my wife and I dug up and I moved a little rock that’s been in our way. (For reference, that’s a two foot level on top.) This new location will put it in the new garden, so it’s gone from lawn obstacle to garden ornament.
Here’s a picture of one of my favorite plants, Hen and Chicks, growing on one of my rock walls.
This edition of the Monday Open House is now open for business.
Random bits:
BittBox has a very large set of Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes. I’ve been playing with them, they’re very slick.
I stumbled onto the Design-Feed | Feed List this morning. An aggregate of 281 design related RSS feeds. A very nice selection for a designer looking for something to read.
I’ve seen details about this, and I thought I should write about Professor Liviu Librescu of Virginia Tech, and his valiant actions, but I just can’t find the words. Here’s what others are saying.
Holocaust survivor saved students’ lives
Argghhh! The Home Of Two Of Jonah’s Military Guys..
I see there *was* at least one sheepdog at Virginia Tech yesterday.. Instructive who it was, too.
for a Holocaust survivor to voluntarily give up his own life on Holocaust Remembrance Day to save the lives of others, during the worst spree shooting in American history, is deeply poignant.
Update:
Fred Thompson on National Review Online
When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.
In light of yesterday’s events at Virginia Tech, a reader named Ed reminded me of a post I wrote last September called To carry, or not to. I thought his comment of “Wow, how Ironic is this in late April of 2007???” was particularly appropriate. Last September Virginia Tech was reeling from the rampage of William Morva. Students wanted the campus ban on legal concealed carry revoked. They didn’t want anything others didn’t have, they just wanted holders of concealed carry permits to be able to carry on campus. I doubt this would have made much difference on yesterday’s events, but it makes you think. Has removing all legal firearms from our society made criminals with firearms more dangerous?
I’m sure Ed would agree that the reason this push to legalize concealed carry in our Universities was stopped was particularly ironic.
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.” – Roanoke.com
Update: Michelle Malkin’s Wanted: A culture of self-defense says it better than I can.
Other Posts:
Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – Update
More on Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – The big question
Guns and Virginia Tech
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Rightlinx, Faultline USA, Adam’s Blog, Maggie’s Notebook, basil’s blog, Pirate’s Cove, Leaning Straight Up, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Students bitterly complained that there were no public-address announcements on campus after the first burst of gunfire. Many said the first word they received from the university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage — around the time the gunman struck again – Star Tribune
What happened during the two hours between the first shooting incident, and the second? Why was notification of people on campus so slow? Why didn’t they use more proactive means to notify faculty, staff, and students?
I’m still waiting to see if I’ve lost any friends… So far, no news is in fact good news.
Other Posts:
Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – Update
More on Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – The big question
Guns and Virginia Tech
At least 32 dead in Virginia shooting rampage | Reuters
BLACKSBURG, Virginia (Reuters) – At least 32 people were killed and more than two dozen wounded at Virginia Tech university on Monday in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history, media said.
32 people. 32 people I probably passed on the way to work every morning. It’s tragic in a way that’s too personal to describe. I’ve driven past those buildings on an almost daily basis for the last 2 and a half years. I don’t know if I’ll recognize any of the lost when the names are released, but I already feel like I do. They were my neighbors, the people I saw in the store, the people I passed on the street… I feel like I’ve lost friends, and I don’t even know who they are.
Update: 33 lives lost.
Other Posts:
Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – Update
More on Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – The big question
Guns and Virginia Tech
Police are reporting that there are at least twenty fatalities and twenty eight injured from this morning’s shooting at Virginia Tech. I’ll continue to post more as I find out what’s going on.
Other Posts:
Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – Update
More on Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – The big question
Guns and Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech, and various news agencies are reporting an ongoing shooting incident on the Virginia tech campus. CNN is reporting: “One reportedly dead in Virginia Tech shooting – CNN.com.
Other local sources are reporting as many as four people shot, and I’m trying to follow up on that. I wonder if this will turn out to be related to bomb threats that were reported last week.
Other sources reporting:
Update: I just talked to another source who says “the suspect may have been contained.” The went on to say that 20-30 people may be injured.
Update: Some sources on campus are reporting that there are multiple gunmen. The news about having a gunman contained hasbeen verified from another source. I don’t know how reliable these sources are, but they’re saying the same thing.
Update: There still appears to be one or possibly two gunman on campus, and one gunman is in custody. I’ve again that 20-30 people may be injured. That’s the third time I’ve heard those numbers used.
Other Posts:
Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – Update
More on Virginia Tech Shooting
Virginia Tech Shooting – The big question
Guns and Virginia Tech
Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, third world county, stikNstein… has no mercy, DragonLady’s World, Pirate’s Cove, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, and Conservative Thoughts, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Monday again. The weekend flew by as usual, though I managed to slip in a little remodeling work when nobody was looking. At this rate my kitchen should be done in 5-10 years. My lawn mowing was canceled because of snow again, I’ll need a machete if it gets much longer.
What’s everyone else been up to this weekend. Any good posts you’d like to share? Yours, or something you read that you liked? The Monday edition of Open House is now under way.
I’ve been fascinated by the different ways that people get the effect of rounded corners in web design. Recently I found two methods that i hadn’t seen before, and i thought I’d share them.
Spiffy Corners – Purely CSS Rounded Corners
Spiffy Corners is a simple way to generate the CSS and HTML you need to create anti-aliased corners without using images or javascript.
Here’s a quick number on how to produce a box with rounded corners using only one image
I’ve been playing around with some widgets for WordPress, but so far I’m not using any. Interesting, but not worth the increased clutter or load time. Some of them are actually quite clever, but they don’t do anything I actually need done. I love gadgets, so these sorts of things I just find fascinating.
If found a couple of posts this morning that I thought were quite good. No particular order or theme.
Enough of my random thoughts, here is the Thursday edition of Open house.
Roger Johansson has a great rant for web professionals over at 456 Berea Street. It’s interesting to see that a designer working in Sweden is getting exactly the same excuses I am.
I particularly like the Statistics section. I’ve dealt with this particular excuse several times in resent months. Excuse: We only worry about IE, because all of our audience uses it. Blatantly obvious answer: Nobody uses any other browser on your site because other browsers don’t work on your site! Fix your site, your statistics will change.
I was going to mow my lawn this weekend because it really needs it, but it snowed. I don’t remember having those two activities in conflict before. What a strange weekend.
Not much to say this morning, so without further interruption, here is the Monday edition of open house.
I got an e-mail from Russell Lee Klika over the weekend. His Gallery #2 is now ready to view on his site. Worth a look. If you aren’t familiar with his work, you can view some that I’ve posted, or visit his site for more. I recommend both.
Trackposted to Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Stageleft, stikNstein… has no mercy, Big Dog’s Weblog, Walls of the City, DragonLady’s World, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, and Hollywood Gossip, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
I posted recently that I’d be picking up the pace on blogging in the near future… Then immediately fell on my face this week. Typical. I will be trying to write more, though I’m not sure if that’s a promise, or a threat.
Jan from CascadeExposures sent me a great photo blog to take a look at. Shorpy | The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog has some great old pictures. It’s well worth your time.
With that said, it’s time for the Thursday edition of Open house.
Perri Nelson has very kindly given me the Thinking Blogger Award. This is a meme award. Each person given the award in turn tags five bloggers that make them think.
I easily came up with four, and I couldn’t decide on a fifth. There are a number of good competitors for the spot, but I couldn’t make up my mind, so after a lot of thought, here are four bloggers that I think deserve the Thinking Blogger Award.
A regular reader, I’ll let her identify herself if she chooses, asked me a question about background images. Since I’ve received similar questions before, I thought this would be a good forum for answering them. Here is a short list of background questions that I’ve received. I’ve taken he liberty of rewording them so that they are more generally applicable.
Do you make your own backgrounds?
Yes, I do all of my own backgrounds. I do all my own image work for the most part. I’m a perfectionist, and rarely satisfied with using someone else’s work. It’s not so much that I dislike the quality of work of other designers, but that their vision of a design isn’t the same as mine. By doing my own image work, I can create an image for exactly the purpose I want, rather than adjusting the design to match the image I have.
How do you make backgrounds?
Background images come in two general types, repeating and non-repeating. Repeating images are used a lot more often than people think. It can be a great way to reduce load time. Take my sidebar image for example. Every theme I’ve put together for this site in recent memory has used a repeating image to define the sidebar. One of the things to take into account with a blog design is it’s fluid nature, you never know how long the page is going to be. By using an image that repeats vertically allows me to compensate for that. The sidebar image’s repeating nature allows it to fit regardless of page length, and it loads in a fraction of the time of a longer image.
How do I make a repeating background image? Some image by their nature can repeat. For instance a solid black box could be repeated both vertically or horizontally to make a black line, or repeated both directions in order to change the background color of whole containing element. More complex repeats like the saddle texture I like to use on the left side of this site take software like PhotoShop. I first carefully select the area I wish to repeat. Don’t underestimate this step, because the smaller area you can select, the faster your page will load when you use it. Then I use a PhotoShop filter called Offset. It’s listed under the Other menu at the bottom of the Filter pull-down menu. This allows you to shift the image so that it wraps. For instance when you offset upward, the top of the image wraps around and comes up from the bottom. This doesn’t fix the seam caused by repeating an image, but it allows you to do it manually. Just make sure to offset your image in the direction it’s going to be repeated. This is where choosing your section carefully helps out. If you’ve chosen to repeat an area that has similar colors and textures, fixing the seam takes only the slightest use of a couple of key PhotoShop tools. A little Healing Brush or Clone Stamp, and the area disappears. Other image editing software can do the same work, I just happen to use PhotoShop.
How do I make a non-repeating background image? Creating background images that don’t repeat isn’t technically difficult, but it can be frustrating. What I’ve seen to be the most important question is where is it going to be placed, and in what context? As an example, let’s consider header images. If you have a fixed width site, the header width is determined by the page width. If your page width is 760 pixels, the header image you’re using either needs to be 760 pixels wide, or look appropriate in that context. Personally I prefer fluid width blog designs. This makes the header image a little more tricky since the header size isn’t constant. Any header image I use must look appropriate at any reasonable page width. I’ve recently used two different solutions. My current solution is to use four smaller images which blend into the background color that I’ve assigned my header. This allows the background to stretch or shrink, without showing image edges because the header background color fills in between them. My previous fluid blog theme used repeating texture to fill the space and the header image had a transparency to allow it to blend into the repeating pattern. These two factors gave the impression of one seamless header image, but loaded much faster.
So, how do I actually create a non-repeating background image? The key to background images in general, and non-repeating ones specifically is mostly about context. It has to fit with the rest of the page. If you’re using a fixed width page, it has to fit the space. If you’re using a fluid width page, it has to look good at various sizes or be placed in a portion of the page that doesn’t stretch. For the actual image work I use PhotoShop as I’ve mentioned before, but any image editing software could be used. The actual techniques vary dramatically. Your can fade to a background color or fade to transparency. You can extend the image to fit into a predefined space. You can adjust color or make any of thousands of other adjustments. Your techniques will be defined by the type and nature of the image needed.
A few words of warning. Always consider load time. Big images take a long time to load. Image formats that allow for transparency tend to have noticeably larger file sizes than JPEG files with similar images. So, given the choice, fading to a background color and saving as a JPEG will give you a smaller file than using transparency and saving as a GIF or PNG.
Can you just take a picture and make it repeat with code?
Of course, however using some form of image editing software and modifying the image to better suit your purpose is always a good idea. Just because you can repeat an image doesn’t mean you should.
Some backgrounds are very subtle, almost invisible, how is that done?
Subtle fades and transparencies can be done in most image editing software. Using the GIF or PNG formats, you can give a image actual transparency, letting it fade into the background of your choice. A better choice though would be to fade the image into the background color or your choice while still in the image editing software. Then you can save as a JPEG which will save you on load time. While this doesn’t allow for transparency, it give the effect of transparency, which in this context, is the same thing.
Can you use more than one background?
No… and yes. While it isn’t possible to give an HTML element two backgrounds, it is possible to make it look like you did. The trick is to use concentric DIV elements, each with their own background. This can give the visual effect of two backgrounds, or of one background larger than either individual image. As I described above, you can use one repeating element to fill the space, and one non-repeating element for visual interest. It’s a great technique, and I use it frequently.
None of the techniques I’ve described here is the perfect solution, but used together, they’ll help you find the technique that’s perfect for you.
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Rightlinx, A Blog For All, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, The Right Nation, Pirate’s Cove, Stuck On Stupid, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, , Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
I’ve almost gotten this new theme worked out. I can’t seem to get the load time under a minute on dial-up, but I’ve got a couple of extra pictures on the front page right now. Even with the extra pictures, it’s loading in 62 seconds on 52k dial-up. Good enough for now.
Open House time again. Comments and trackbacks are open. As usual, comments and trackbacks are open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.
Russell Klika is making some waves with his photography, as I knew he would. The first photo of his that I posted has won an award.
His photo was the winner of the Portrait Personality division of the Visual Information Awards Program.
The Visual Information Awards Program is designed to recognize, reward, and promote excellence among military photographers, videographers, journalists and graphic artists for their achievements in furthering the objectives of military photography, videography, and graphic arts as a command information and documentation media within the military.
His winning photo and those of the other winners are available at Defense Information School website. Since I like his photo best, I’ve posted it again here.
The competitions are open to enlisted active duty, reserve, and National Guard personnel of all the armed services, including the Coast Guard, holding the occupational specialty code (MOS, NEC, or AFSC) of graphic illustrator, photographer, journalist, photojournalist, videographer, mass communicator or equivalent.
All materials were produced between 1 Jan 06 and 31 Dec 06.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, A Blog For All, Wake Up America, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, LaTogaStrappata, third world county, Allie Is Wired, The World According to Carl, Overtaken by Events, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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