At least that’s what Ace Ventura would say if he was a blogger.

A few site updates to mention:

• I’ve converted the majority of the categories over to tags. At the bottom of every page is a tag cloud of the tags I’ve used here. Slowly, I’ll start tagging old posts.
• I’ve spruced up the comments a bit to give them just a bit more colour.
• And I now include Gravatars in the comments!

I’m dragging this blog kicking and screaming into the latter half of the Aughts…

Just a quick note to the readers.

I’ve been tweaking the stylesheet for the site over the last few days, making it a little more efficient and readable hopefully (i.e. making it more about the “C” than the “SS”). There’s a lot about CSS that still throws me for a loop sometimes. I seem to have a hard time with styling technologies in general (but that’s a different story).

I didn’t have too hard a time of it this go around, I think mainly because of the new Web Inspector in Apple’s web browser, Safari. DOM/HTML/CSS inspectors in web browsers is not a new idea, and Apple wasn’t the first to the table with the idea. In fact, their inspector has been around for a couple of years now, in various forms.

It wasn’t just the live-updating of the CSS that helped, but also how it shows the different style rules in play and how they’re being overruled by others, and lastly the ability to see the final computed style. It’s still a little clunky and could use some more features, but it’s definitely usable the way it is now.

If I didn’t find Firefox as a whole rather clunky on my G5 (but only on my G5, for whatever weird reason), I’d probably be using it with Firebug, which looks awesome. Actually, if I was back in the business of coding web pages to make a living, I’d definitely be using that.

Anyway, if you’re still reading this, you shouldn’t really notice too many changes. I’ve pretty much kept all the styles the same, I’ve just reorganized how they cascade in the stylesheet. The biggest change I just implemented, is switching the main font over to a series of various Lucida variants from Verdana (which I’ve used for years now, simply because it was different, and Tahoma looked too cramped). Only problem now is finding the right Lucida variant for the job, as only certain ones came pre-installed with certain OSs or applications at certain times, and some look like utter crap. But I’ve done my research, and I think I’ve chosen the best option that screws all people equally (maybe the Windows people slightly more than others).

I’ve also started using tags, so at least I now appear to be “with it.”

Sorry ’bout that folks! My net connection crapped out around 5:20 AM this morning. It was up briefly around 7:30 AM and 1:00 PM, but the server was making strange noises and was turned off until I could get home from work and give it a closer look. It’s back up and running as of 5:30 PM. The noise was just the fan on the graphics card. A few bursts of compressed air and everything is A-OK.

As the the cable modem, things have been OK since noon, but they’re still going to come by tomorrow aft to have a look anyway.

If you’re wondering why the site was down for a few hours yesterday evening, it was because the power went out around 6:45PM. Instead of doing something with my life having had my umbilical to the Internet severed, like going out into what some would call beautiful weather, I decided to take a nap. The power came back on a half hour later, but I didn’t until 9:45PM. Waking up to the incessant prattle of the Gilmore Girls is not a pleasant experience.

In an effort to personalize my site a little more (assuming that showing you all my school pictures from kindergarten on up wasn’t enough), I’ve added a couple more things to the side bar.

There’s a large “About Me” link right underneath the search bar to a permanent page that gives you a bit more information about myself (that I’m willing to share). I realized today that I didn’t have such a page on here, so there it is.

Also, under the “About Me” section further down the side bar, I’ve added links to my music collection as listed on last.fm (which I’m working on updating), and my list of board games from BoardGameGeek.com along with the other services I already have listed there. BoardGameGeek, btw, is a great website if you still love playing board games and want to find something new to play. It’s a huge industry! It’s not just about Candyland, Monopoly, and Clue. Remember this crappy blurry picture? That’s just a small example of some of the board games you can buy nowadays.