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.”

• Fix those Aluminium Keyboard woes - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
  Fixes the problems with the new Apple keyboards and the Dashboard and Exposé keys.
  (tags: mac osx apple keyboard hardware howto fix)
• app4mac.com
  App for geotagging your photos.
  (tags: mac software osx freeware photography geography totry)

• How Apple Keyboards Lost a Logo and Windows PCs Gained One
  Bit of a history on Apple and keyboards.
  (tags: keyboard apple)
• Image:Apple iieb.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Picture of an Apple IIe. Note the Apple keys.
  (tags: apple keyboard appleiie)
• Apple_III_Keyboard_s1.jpg (JPEG Image, 700×411 pixels)
  Picture of the Apple III. Note the Apple keys.
  (tags: apple keyboard appleiii)
• a2_plusclose.jpg (JPEG Image, 771×473 pixels)
  Picture of the Apple II+. Note the lack of any Apple keys.
  (tags: apple keyboard appleii)
• Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories: Swedish Campground
  Brief history of the Command (⌘) key on Apple keyboards.
  (tags: apple mac history keyboard gui)
• Profile: Mac Plus
  Profile of the Mac Plus.
  (tags: apple mac macplus)
• Save the Open Apple key (or should we?) - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
  I, for one, am glad it’s gone. I never had one on the Apple II+ or Mac Plus I grew up on, so I’ve always felt that Open Apple symbol was for wusses. Do you think maybe that’s why the Apple III didn’t sell so well?
  (tags: apple mac keyboard)

As I mentioned last time, the fan on my ATI X800 XT is wearing out, causing all kinds of lovely “derka derka” noises in my otherwise quiet G5. Thank the gods for my MacBook, which has allowed me to keep the times I power up the G5 to a minimum until I can get a suitable replacement fan. As I also mentioned, I ordered a Zalman replacement fan, a VF900-Cu to be exact, which came a few days after my initial post. I went through the whole rigmarole of pulling out the X800 card, swearing upon dropping the screw in the case, disassembling the old fan, cleaning the old goop off, attaching the fancy new thermal heatsinks, applying the new grease, and attaching the new fan, only to find that the handy dandy thumb screws Zalman provides on the underside of the card to tighten everything together, stick out like sore thumbs (pun intended… this is where you laugh), and because of Apple’s custom engineering and intent to waste no space, there’s no room to fit the card back in the only provided AGP slot *and* have those thumb screws on there keeping everything in place (and have the proper power provided, because Apple engineered those out of sight, too), so now I’m back to my jalopy fan (now catch your breath and marvel at how long that sentence was).

So I packed the Zalman back up, and because I’m the wuss I am, have made no attempt to return it back. Who knows? Maybe it’ll come in handy in the years to come. And that’s where things have been for the last few weeks. I’ve just been living off my MacBook, without any of my iTunes being available nor being able to play any video games.

That is, until about an hour ago. After searching high and low, looking for someplace that’ll ship an Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 5 to Canada (or within Canada), finding mostly shitty mom and pop online stores that couldn’t ship themselves out of a paper bag, made even harder by the fact that it seems to be discontinued, I ended turning to eBay. To some of you that might have seemed to be an obvious next step, but I have a strange dislike for eBay, thinking of it more as an exhausting all my other options, snakes on a plane, last resort kind of thing.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, in spite of all the countless fake eBay spam messages I’ve received over the years, my account was still alive and well, patiently awaiting the one day when I would once again return to buy Battle Beasts, Lego®, and D&D™ action figures. To put things in perspective, my current profile rating is a 12, collected during a flurry of activity between April 25th and July 17th, 1999. Yes, 1999. This is pre-Y2K stuff here, people.

But, alas, this evening’s visit was unfortunately not to purchase any assortment of molded plastic chunks of tomfoolery, but to find a replacement fan for my graphics card. And find one I did… in the UK.

We’ll see what happens *this* time.

Oh, and the Kensington mouse is working well. Haven’t really had a whole lot of time to use it, though, seeing as it’s to be used with my G5.