Changelog

Get up early Saturday morning. Too early really. Read email, read weblogs, read Slashdot. Remember to pack (but forgetting towels again).

Stop for gas, then proceed to rendezvous point. Depart only 30 minutes behind schedule. Not bad!

Take I-40 to US-70 east. Arrive in downtown Beaufort, NC three hours later. Stop for lunch at Crowley’s (have the crab cake sandwich). Walk the waterfront. Watch the guy from the Rotary Club on the Segway.

Proceed to Maria’s, getting only slightly lost. Marvel at the traffic heading out of town.

Admire Maria’s wonderful new home while realizing she has much better decorating sense than you do. Head to the beach for a quick swim before dinner. Remember (too late) the traffic heading out of town.

Curse the sun clouds for obscuring the sun just as you arrive at the beach. Swim in spite of clouds. Realize you are swimming with the fishes. In fact, they nearly hit Michelle when jumping. Watch the Pelican eat the silly little fishes.

Return to Maria’s, noting that the sun has returned. Stupid sun.

Consider that Maria has enough food to feed a small army. Watch as Fabio grills the meat. Help by grilling the vegetables. Enjoy the sun, beer, food, and friends. Eat. Eat some more. Try the fish (called Goat’s Head).

Flee inside to escape stupid biting flies. Spend the evening talking about school, politics, computers, and weddings.

Crash in Maria’s study. Get up Sunday morning and enjoy nice weather with juice, fruit and muffins. Realize you should do this more often. Feel slightly jealous that Maria lives by the ocean. Remember that there is a hurricane coming. Remind self that Durham is nice and inland.

Drive home, listening to Clan of the Cave Bear. Wish author would get to the point. Drop off Mike at Duke, Erica and bags at home. Go to UNC for group meeting. Note all the Springsteen people.

The End

A few things that I’ve failed to mention…

Ashcroft

Spent last Saturday morning helping to hold the ACLU banner outside the Sheraton in RTP where Ashcroft was trying to sell the PATRIOT act (invitation only).

Back in School

Started grad school at UNC in the School of Information and Library Science (I’m in the MSIS program). Have already noted free time trending towards zero. Will advise.

1. DSL now works (8/6)
2. Gone to Colorado (8/9)
3. Back from Colorado (8/23)
4. Started school (8/25)
5. First days of classes (8/26)

Well, I called Earthlink to move my DSL three weeks and three days ago. Still no sign of a working connection. On a happier note, Erica and I installed a ceiling fan in our bedroom today. Only a few problems, none of which will I reveal at this time. It works great.

1. Go see Whale Rider
2. The DSL Fairy got lost or something. She should be here in 2 weeks or something. Or maybe never. Hard to tell.
3. Erica and I saw a truck driving down the road. One of those box trucks. I think someone did something wrong, since the roof of the truck was dragging behind the truck.
4. Sadly, the volunteer coding project I was working on isn’t going to work out. On the bright side, I learned a little ASPX/C#. But now I don’t really have anything going on till fall.

How is it that we keep finding more things to pack? Where do these things come from? I’ve never seen them before in my life.

Yet here they are.

Maybe that dimensional portal in the back of all drawers that swallows up little things easily lost opens into my apartment. Yeah…

Why hast thou forsaken me oh god(s) of rain?

Why hast thou brought forth thy bounty this weekend? Why not next weekend? I’m not supposed to go camping at the Outer Banks next weekend. Noooo… I’m supposed to go this weekend. But here I am, sitting at my computer instead of on the beach. Why? Because its raining.

So I beseech thee oh rain god(s), please stop the rain.

Let me go to the beach.

Please?

I’ll give you a cookie!

Damn.

“It’s cold and raining” they said.

My plane lands in San Jose. The temperature outside is about 70 degrees and the sun is shining.

My mom and her friend Sue were waiting at the baggage claim. We managed to find our way out of the San Jose Airport and went to lunch at the new Santana Row shops. Lunch was nice, but the shopping area looks a little too pre-fabricated. Afterwards we drove up to Redwood City and picked up my dad and grandmother. The four of us headed back to Los Gatos for dinner with friends.

There was a bright white H2 sitting in the driveway of my old house. For some reason that really irritated my mom. We met my aunt and uncle and a few old neighbors for pizza, which my friend Scott and I got to pick-up in the Porsche. Unfortunately, Los Gatos is a 25 MPH zone all the way to T-Birds pizza.

The Tequila! pizza was fantastic.

The River

My family owns a cabin (through my paternal grandmother) in Summer Home Park on the Russian River near Forestville, CA. The cabin must be opened and cleaned every year in preparation for summer visits. This was the first such cleaning weekend that I can remember attending.

I ended up stacking firewood and splitting kindling as we made our way through a stack of cedar and redwood shingles left over from a past renovation. By evening most of the past years detritus had been removed. People cleaned themselves up and assembled on the deck to talk and eat.

The Memorial

Last August my Uncle Jim passed away from a sudden heart attack. So on Sunday we gathered on the deck with pictures and stories to say goodbye. Jim loved the cabin.

It was good to see my cousins again, some of whom I haven’t seen in years. It’s weird to think that my cousins have families now; there were several new babies, and one more on the way.

Berkeley

Sunday night I was dropped off at a friend’s apartment in Berkeley. Dave and I went through Boy Scouts and high school together, and don’t get to see each other much now that we live on opposite sides of the country. He and his girlfriend led me off to dinner at Jupiter’s where I got to meet a few of his friends (and his roommate, with whom I’ve had many short conversations since Dave is never home). To put it mildly Jupiter’s (and nearly every restaurant I went to in Berkeley) puts anything here in Durham to shame. I recommend Cafe Intermezzo in particular.

Dave had to work the next two days, so I spent the afternoons reading and exploring Berkeley. I surprised an old friend of Erica’s and spent some time catching up with him on life as a Berkeley grad student. As it turns out he shares an office with another old high school friend on mine.

Berkeley is an interesting place. A big city that’s not that big, with a reputation for oddity it seems to savor. Apartments are hard to come by, and cost a fortune when found. The food and beer are both good, and surprisingly reasonable. A place I had a good time visiting (helped by wonderfully warm weather), but have no desire to live in.

Leaving

Tuesday night Dave and I drove down to Mountain View and had dinner with my family at my aunt’s house. A sizable number of ribs were vanquished as we talked, ate, and sneaked peeks at the TV to see what was happening on “24″.

I said goodbye to friends and family and spent the night at my aunt’s house. In the morning she dropped me at the San Jose airport and I checked in . The line at security wound its way through the airport but we were walked through quickly. I hate flying west coast to east coast. You leave in the morning and arrive at night; the day passes in the air as you try to entertain yourself on the plane.

Erica was waiting at the baggage claim with a big smile on her face.

The End

The site now has a Hivelogic inspired design. Except for minor adjustments (such as font sizes and comments), I’m forcing myself to leave it alone for at least a month.

Closing Shop

Since I mentioned Hivelogic, I think I should also mention that the site is no longer active. A short message bids farewell to the site’s readers and mentions a few places the author’s work will still be seen. Unfortunately, the site’s archives are also gone. This is a bit annoying, since many posts at the site were worth saving.

If anyone out there is wants to put a site behind you (as I did), then feel free to do so. But please leave the archives behind for posterity. Millions of Google addicts will thank you.

Well, I’ve been increasingly frustrated with anything and everything I’ve posted on this site. As a result, I’ve decided to close down this blog, and start a new one. These archives will stay where they are for the forseeable future.

update: Have resurrected the archives for the sake of posterity

For some reason CSS Tabs are a big topic of late. I recently spent some time with the issue when trying to redesign my old weblog. I never used the design, but came up with a nice solution (in my mind). I’m using the design on my home page at the moment (though its days are numbered). The end solution has a few quirks, but looks good in most modern browsers.

To begin we have all the previous attempts I studied:

• Mark Newhouse

  This didn’t quite work for me, but helped get me started

• Mark Pilgrim

  The tabs don’t line up very well in Epiphany on Linux, but I liked how he used CSS to decorate the “front” tab.

• Dean Burge

  This was the look I wanted to get

In addition, the following sites also tackle the problem:

• Meg Hourihan

  The example looks good, but uses <h2> for her tabs instead of a list.

• Richard Rutter

  Has a cool 3D effect, but the CSS is pretty complex as a result. Also has secondary navigation associated with each tab.

• Dan Cederholm

  The example looks really nice, but uses images.

• Joshua Kaufman

  Using Epiphany on Linux, the tabs don’t align with the baseline, spoiling the effect.

Webgraphics has most of these (and a few more) linked in one convenient place.

I’m rather fond of my own solution. The HTML and CSS are both quite simple. The HTML uses an unordered list inside a <div>.

 <div id="tabs">  <ul> <li id="t_home"><a href="http://foo.com/">Home</a></li> <li id="t_journal"><a href="http://foo.com/journal/">Journal</a></li> <li id="t_about"><a href="http://foo.com/about/">About</a></li> </ul>  </div> 

The CSS is a little more complicated, mostly to show the correct “front” tab depending on the current page. I use an id selector on the <body> element to identify the current page.

 <body id="home"> 

Next I display the list items inline, and remove all padding and margins.

 #tabs {     font-size: x-small;     border-bottom: 1px solid black;     padding-top: 20px; }  #tabs ul {    margin: 0;  padding: 0; }   #tabs ul li {   list-style: none;   display: inline; } 

To get the tab effect, I give each anchor a small border and pad the sides out a bit (optional).

 #tabs ul li a, #tabs ul li a:link, #tabs ul li a:visited {  border: 1px solid #000;     text-decoration: none;  padding: 0 10px;    margin: 0; } 

Finally, I give the current tab a white border on the bottom so it appears to be in front of the others. I use the id of the <body> element to determine which tab gets to in front. I borrowed this idea from Mark Pilgrim’s version.

 #home #tabs li#t_home a, #journal #tabs li#t_journal a, #bookmarks #tabs li#t_bookmarks a, #photos #tabs li#t_photos a, #about #tabs li#t_about a {     font-weight: bold;  border-bottom: 1px solid #fff;  background: #fff; } 

The result is pretty nice:

(above) The result in Internet Explorer 6 for Windows

(above) The result in Mozilla Firebird for Windows

(above) The result in Opera 7 for Windows

I’ve put up a simple example.

I’ve decided to start over. For some time now I’ve been growing irritated with anything and everything written in my weblog. So I’ve decided to toss it away (not really) and start something new. So welcome to geek fury (working title). I’ve changed the name to “Daily Log” just to be uncreative. My old weblog is still in its place, as are the archives. They will stay in their previous locations for the foreseeable future.

Features from the old site will appear in this space as I figure out Blosxom again.

How to make a warblog/weblog/news site:

• Pick a topic, theme, or point-of-view
• Selectively choose news items that conform to #1
• Deride and dismiss any information contrary to #1
• Link extensively to sites of similar bias to show support for #1
• Lather, rinse, repeat…

Why can’t we be unbiased? Is this human brain fundamentally incapable of such a thing? Does the act of ingesting information through our brains inherently change the substance of that information? Irrevocably coloring it with preconceptions?

I just get so tired of reading one-sided diatribes praising the true-believers and deriding the dissenters. Even the “big” news guys do it, though they’re more circumspect about it.

I’m tired of the chest pounding and the smug self-rightousness.

I love books! So needless to say, I think All Consuming is great fun. You can see the books I’m reading over there on the right. The site has a SOAP API as well, so more entertainment may be forthcoming.

Then again, I always say that and I never do anything about it.

Ok, the Christmas/New Years break has just about run its course, so back to NC Erica and I go (tomorrow morning).

I don’t think very many people really read this site… Most of the stuff I put on it isn’t really that interesting, but if you do… Hi :)

It was good to see all of my (and Erica’s) CO friends again, and I promise to post what few pictures I took when my computer has returned to the net. Back to packing.

Mark Pilgrim

What you have to understand about North Carolina weather is that it’s always ‘never like this’.

Still no power. Spending another evening surfing at Duke :) Erica and I are supposed to be leaving for CO tomorow morning… Trying to figure out what to do with all the food in the fridge.