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Now you see them, now you don’t

Or vice versa. I’m talking of the banner image and the whitish page background. Both images, both defined in the stylesheet. Only not to the satisfaction of internet explorer.

So I fiddled and succeeded in making them disappear in firefox too. I’ve fiddled again. They’ve reappeared in firefox. Any sign of them in internet explorer? or is it still all-over grey with a blue topping?

Secondspawn was finally well enough to go back to school today… but firstspawn was off. It’s a serial infirmary here. Who will be next, me or Maizy? She at least has heterosis in her favour, unlike the blasted “oriental breed” Cat who is no doubt suffering from inbreeding depression and will soon require a therapist of his own. Unfortunately Maizy’s lack lack of opposable thumbs (and various other qualities) will not, I fear, make the best of nurses should I succumb to the dreaded lurgy. I knew it was a mistake getting a dog. I knew I should have got a dolphin.

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Photo-etching course

oil can

Above are the vital accoutrements of the etching press snugly attached to its inside leg.

I didn’t get to make a plate today, the first of the three Saturdays of the course, but learnt a great deal about preparing images in Photoshop for the etching process. Fascinating. I’m (badly) self-taught on Photoshop Elements. It was a real education seeing the full programme used by a professional.

Most interesting about the overall process is the conjunction of ancient and modern. The computer high-techery brought together with such centuries-old pieces of equipment as powdered resin and feathers.

In the course of this week I’m going to prepare a couple of images on the computer here at home in the hopes that I’ll be able to make a plate and a decent print next time.

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links for 2007-11-09

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Frizzy photography

There is an additional variable to be taken into account if one takes pictures and has unruly hair. Not only is the direction of the light important, so is that of the wind.

frizzy hair, following wind

Those bits above are the particularly self-willed sections which, despite the locks being firmly brushed and fettered, insist on their freedom. With a brisk following wind such as there was this morning my already deteriorating sight is further obscured by a frizzy filter.

Not only sight. The “finger in front of the lens” problem easily encountered when using a small camera is compounded by the “entire picture obscured by hair” effect. On one side of the frame the grotesque balloon of a giant out-of-focus digit complete with disturbing close-up of its nail, on the other side a smear of some sort of striated material like bleached washed-up seaweed.

Luckily my lens is as proud and phallic as a trumpet so only the very longest wayward clumps make their way into the edges of pictures nowadays, unless I set out to capture them. And, I confess, I have sometimes used photoshop to remove the evidence.

The sky was profoundly, glintingly, infinitely blue this morning. The sun was low but strong.

sunlit whippet

The dogs enjoyed their walk.

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Improving, I hope

The blog template is now too wide because I made it that way. I have a wide screen and don’t have to look at it on a normal monitor. Also, and actually primarily, because I seem to insist on posting pictures that are 600 pixels across. If I wasn’t so greedy and went down to 500 pixels then the right hand side wouldn’t fall off the edge of a normal screen.

The new banner is taken from a photograph looking up at the Tate Modern at all the people inside looking out and down. Caged by culture? Audience or exhibit? or, as the original picture had it, “The World as a Stage”. These ambiguities and reflexivities appeal.

The tweaks, and sorting out the colours, have taken all day. Whilst up to my elbows in php (no, I have no idea what that even stands for) I did discover an RSS feed for all comments which is something I find very useful on other people’s blogs. So I’ve implemented it here. Down the bottom on the right of the sidebar under “Meta”.

Secondspawn is still at home feeling seedy and looks set to be off school again tomorrow. Nothing too serious though. There is an outbreak of measles at his school due, I presume, to parents believing all the utterly ridiculous, unfounded and highly irresponsible scare stories about the MMR vaccine in the media. Luckily bothspawn were promptly injected at all appropriate moments so secondspawn merely has a cold rather than a life-threatening disease which, if it didn’t kill him, could leave him deaf, blind or brain-damaged. Ooh, was that a little rant that slipped out there? I do apologise.

Cat is eating like a horse. No knitting has been accomplished.

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Bleugh

I hate this. Not sure how long it will last. Anyway, signed up for google ads the other week. Forgot about it. Then finally got a mail saying my account had been set up. Then the next day a nagging mail saying the all-powerful google had noticed I hadn’t actually got any ads up yet.

Sigh.

So here they are. Complete with an ad-ready template. Which I’m too tired to continue fiddling with tonight. I’ve already messed it up more than enough.

I’m not allowed, in the terms of the agreement thingy, to have an advert telling people to click on the advertising links. So I won’t. I’m not allowed to click on them myself because every click on an ad link generates some indeterminate (tiny) amount of revenue. So clicking on them myself would be like having a licence to print money. Which I don’t.

I suppose I shall have to stop having full posts in rss feeds in order to try to encourage the handful of people who read this blog to come to the site and exercise their mouse button finger.

Does this mean I shall have to start trying to write posts which are actually interesting? and contain huge numbers of carefully chosen phrases designed for maximum ad placement and click-through?

So far I appear to be championing the purchase of “Cat Vomiting” for those thinking of buying such a thing. The amusement provided by such suggestions will, I am sure, pall extremely quickly.