I’ve been making several books lately, two copies of Treasure Island and one 260-page journal. I’m experimenting with different bindings and styles, trying to find what works best and is durable. Some of the things I’ve learned so far are:
- PVA glue is great for quick work, but I shouldn’t use it to set bookboard covers—it dries too fast.
- Hollow-back spines save wear and tear on the outer spine material, be it leather or cloth.
- I should pay attention more and not reverse my covers by putting the inside part on the back of the outside and vice versa.
- Bookbinding is something I really enjoy doing.
I’ll add some pictures soon.
The community Messiah choir is starting up again. First practice is tonight at 7pm. I’ll be heading there after work. Here’s to writing off at least one evening every week and several saturdays for the next three months.
I just ran across Nice Critic, an easy, anonymous way to send a short message to someone.
Some of the funnier messages are:
- Please refrain from slapping people’s buttocks.
- Not sharing your candy jar makes you look somewhat unsociable.
- Please consider wearing a more updated tie.
- It seems like your thong is showing.
- Your shirt/blouse seems to be a little tight.
Funny, they don’t seem to have a Your shirt/blouse could be a little tighter…
Spotted on an eBay auction page:
How many vintage items? ALL OF TEHM!!11oneone
I played Stump the Boss today. He usually tries this on me, so I thought I’d get even. He asked for the square footage of a certain area in our building, so I pulled up the plans and found that it was 1066 square feet. When he asked for the answer, I told him the battle of Hastings. He asked “what kind of answer is that?” to which I replied, “ten sixty-six.”
I just ran across this how-to article on writing your own filesystem. I had no idea it was this easy. Requires Linux.
There are two obstacles in making WordPress, even the most current version, XHTML Strict compliant. Today I discovered the second one, when you use the relatively new Gallery feature.
To fix this problem, you need to eliminate an inserted style tag from the wp-includes/media.php file. The chunk looks like this (mine is found on line 426:
<style type='text/css'>
.gallery {
margin: auto;
}
.gallery-item {
float: left;
margin-top: 10px;
text-align: center;
width: {$itemwidth}%; }
.gallery img {
border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
}
.gallery-caption {
margin-left: 0;
}
</style>
Copy this to your theme’s style.css stylesheet, replacing the call to $itemwidth with width: auto;. Delete the offending code from media.php.
Every time you upgrade, you’ll have to repeat this process. That is, until the WordPress developers make their code XHTML Strict compliant, which may never happen.
The second obstacle to a nice, XHTML Strict weblog is the link code. Get a copy of my strict_links.txt widget, rename it, and add it to your widgets directory. Use it instead of the normal links widget.
From Microsoft’s Partner Program today:
On August 27, 2008, Microsoft released Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 in English, German, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese. We will release Beta 2 in an additional 21 languages* within a month. Because you’re actively engaged in developing and maintaining websites, Microsoft wants to make you aware of a display issue related to Internet Explorer 8. Upon initial release, browsing in default Internet Explorer 8 Standards mode may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended. To enable existing content to display as expected, Microsoft is providing a compatibility tag that you can add to sites that might be affected. This tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to display site content as if it were in Internet Explorer 7. This option helps ensure that existing content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8 without requiring any additional code changes.
A compatibility tag for IE 7? Wow, what a great idea.
How about sticking to published Internet standards, instead? Biznatches.
I just heard about my old pal Laura (from her parents), she had a baby girl last night. Eight pounds and 20 inches long, sounds real healthy!
Congratulations!
Last night I worked on a blank journal text block for bookbinding. I think I got it worked out to where I have a nice title page, a page for listing memorable events with their page number, and nice light gray lines. I’m thinking about creating a non-lined version too.
The biggest holdup right now is my plough blade. Without it (and a plough) I don’t have the ability to cut the text block square. Now this isn’t necessary, and books I’ve made in the past weren’t ploughed, but it makes it look nicer. I can’t wait for my tools to get here!
This is one of my favorites I took on vacation:
Beware of Trains
This past weekend I went through fixing up vacation pictures that we went through last week. Out of the 2400-odd pictures I took on this vacation (yes, I take a lot of pictures, I know), we ended up with 571 album quality pictures. Thankfully, I had a 50 picture credit on my online photo center account, so at least a few of them are going to be free.
You can see these pictures in somewhat lower quality on my Picasa Gallery
Tonight’s drink is the
Nectarine Orange Coconut Lime smoothie
1 whole nectarine, pitted and quartered
1/2 cup Cream of Coconut
1 tablespoon sweetened lime juice
1 11oz can of mandarin oranges in light syrup
1 tablespoon orange juice concentrate
15-20 ice cubes
Blend all ingredients and serve immediately. Makes 2 huge smoothies or 4 smaller ones.
To take my mind off how bad this week has been, I sat down and started putting together Treasure Island. I stitched all the signatures together and now it’s sitting on my table awaiting pasting and shaping of the spine. I’ll post some pictures when I get around to feeling like it.
Two days ago, I wouldn’t have believed I could have a more difficult day at work. Somehow I managed to experience one…the very next day! I had a terrible day right after a really bad day, which doesn’t make me very happy.
We had a bunch of people over last night, too. When I got home, I stomped around for a while, then went to my bedroom, turned off the light, and just laid there in the gloomy silence. I felt a lot better after about an hour or so.
When people started arriving, I no longer felt like caving their heads in with the nearest blunt instrument.