WordPress and yet more procrastination
May. 22nd, 2005 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirLowell House, on the Feast of Ste. Rita of Cascia
To people who create WordPress themes,
Your CSS are a mess. Full of redundancies and unnecessary overrides. I understand that themes are often developed by editing other themes, but these stylesheets are ridiculous. I'm amazed the browser can even read them. One of these days, I'll muster up the courage to clean up your horrible code.
With exasperation, &c.
Some explanation: the server that's been hosting my reading log has inexplicably gone down, and there's no word of explanation. I managed to retrieve most of my former entries via Google cache (I love that feature, by the way), but since the server shows no sign of going up again in the near future, I decided to move the log onto my own domain. So I spent all afternoon on Saturday, after the physics final, installing and setting up WordPress. I'm pleased with the layout despite the exasperation above, and I even successfully installed a hack that allows me to put up my current reading list. (I used All Consuming before, but the service has changed and is no longer quite so blog-oriented. Besides, the Amazon Media Management hack I installed works perfectly fine and suits my purposes (which is to keep track of all the books I read).
I'm rather pleased with the layout, which is minimalist but elegant (or so I think), and I learned quite a bit about PHP in the process. This time around, I'll back up everything so that if trois-royaumes.com ever goes down, I won't face this situation again.
Today, after getting back from the library, I transferred most of my book entries over, but the reviews for The Jane Austen Book Club and The Wee Free Men are missing. I also looked through my All Consuming list and wrote up a text file of the books I've read this past year (starting from May 2004). The total is 39, not counting rereads, and most of them were read last summer. Isn't that pathetic? What's happened to me? College, of course, but also the Internet. I think next year I'm going to follow my roommate's example and try to replace Internet procrastination with novel-reading procrastination. Reading all sorts of bad books from the YA section used to be the main mode of wasting time in high school. >_>
Yes, I suck at studying. >_> It's going to be a long night with Lodish...
Yours &c.
Post-script: I always get kind of exasperated when I get excited at seeing a Korean artist up on an music rotation site only to find that it's a song from their Japanese album. >_< Jang Nara's releasing albums in Mandarin too. I mean, not that I'm not proud of the Korean Wave and all that, but I do occasionally want music in a language that I can understand, you know. It's all BoA's fault for starting the trend. According to a freshman in my Korean class, who has an uncanny knowledge of the Korean music industry, some production companies advise new groups to give themselves hanja-based names (like DBSK) so it's easier to translate to overseas markets. Bleh.
Post-post-script: Which reminds me,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aetherangelette's opened up a K-pop mp3 rotation LJ at angelyrique. Mostly R&B and ballads for now, but maybe she'll post up more techno and alternative, for variety's sake later. ^_^
To people who create WordPress themes,
Your CSS are a mess. Full of redundancies and unnecessary overrides. I understand that themes are often developed by editing other themes, but these stylesheets are ridiculous. I'm amazed the browser can even read them. One of these days, I'll muster up the courage to clean up your horrible code.
With exasperation, &c.
Some explanation: the server that's been hosting my reading log has inexplicably gone down, and there's no word of explanation. I managed to retrieve most of my former entries via Google cache (I love that feature, by the way), but since the server shows no sign of going up again in the near future, I decided to move the log onto my own domain. So I spent all afternoon on Saturday, after the physics final, installing and setting up WordPress. I'm pleased with the layout despite the exasperation above, and I even successfully installed a hack that allows me to put up my current reading list. (I used All Consuming before, but the service has changed and is no longer quite so blog-oriented. Besides, the Amazon Media Management hack I installed works perfectly fine and suits my purposes (which is to keep track of all the books I read).
I'm rather pleased with the layout, which is minimalist but elegant (or so I think), and I learned quite a bit about PHP in the process. This time around, I'll back up everything so that if trois-royaumes.com ever goes down, I won't face this situation again.
Today, after getting back from the library, I transferred most of my book entries over, but the reviews for The Jane Austen Book Club and The Wee Free Men are missing. I also looked through my All Consuming list and wrote up a text file of the books I've read this past year (starting from May 2004). The total is 39, not counting rereads, and most of them were read last summer. Isn't that pathetic? What's happened to me? College, of course, but also the Internet. I think next year I'm going to follow my roommate's example and try to replace Internet procrastination with novel-reading procrastination. Reading all sorts of bad books from the YA section used to be the main mode of wasting time in high school. >_>
Yes, I suck at studying. >_> It's going to be a long night with Lodish...
Yours &c.
Post-script: I always get kind of exasperated when I get excited at seeing a Korean artist up on an music rotation site only to find that it's a song from their Japanese album. >_< Jang Nara's releasing albums in Mandarin too. I mean, not that I'm not proud of the Korean Wave and all that, but I do occasionally want music in a language that I can understand, you know. It's all BoA's fault for starting the trend. According to a freshman in my Korean class, who has an uncanny knowledge of the Korean music industry, some production companies advise new groups to give themselves hanja-based names (like DBSK) so it's easier to translate to overseas markets. Bleh.
Post-post-script: Which reminds me,
aetherangelette's opened up a K-pop mp3 rotation LJ at angelyrique. Mostly R&B and ballads for now, but maybe she'll post up more techno and alternative, for variety's sake later. ^_^
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 03:59 am (UTC)" 'Where is your body?'
'In the reservoir!'
'In the reservoir? Oh no!'
'Yes! With your body in the Diamond of Protection!'"
Help?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 11:54 pm (UTC)Hm, for fantasy, have you read Discworld? (I know you've read Gaiman, but I don't remember if you've read Pratchett or not.) Those are excellent satires and gets better with each new book. I would also recommend the Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brusth, which I'm reading now--the writing is a bit, hm, blunt, but it's actually quite well planned, and he's very subtly clever with his use of narrative devices. The Riddle-Master of Hed and its sequels by Patricia A. McKillip remain one of my favorite fantasy series ever as well. Oh, and if you haven't already, you must read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It's huge, and some people say it gets a little slow in the middle, but I enjoyed it all the way through, and the breadth of that work is mind-boggling. Actually, if you read nothing else out of what I've recommended, at least read Jonathan Strange. It's so worth it. ^_^
As for non-fantasy...well, if you want good writing, I'll definitely have to say A.S. Byatt. I started off with Possession, but her short story collections blew me away completely. I'm not as fond of the Frederica Potter books but they still manage to be brilliant. I also really enjoyed The Last Samurai (has nothing to do with the movie) by Helen DeWitt, which I've reread twice. Oh, and Dorothy L. Sayers is my latest favorite mystery writer: the first of her Lord Peter Wimsey novels is Whose Body?, which I read last summer and adored.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 11:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-24 03:47 am (UTC)And yes, I love Terry Pratchett to death! The Flushing library, however, seems to have run out of Discworld books... for shame!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 04:01 am (UTC)Good luck studying, by the way! You're really smart, so you should be able to get through it
unlike me.(Oh, I found a site where I could read Hikago without downloading it! So you can take the downloads off your webspace now. I have most of them downloaded though. Now to read them all... *glomps*)
Take care Tari! :D
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 11:41 pm (UTC)Heh, thanks for the compliment, but the ratio of studying accomplished to studying needed is kind of abominably low at the moment...>_>;;
I hope you enjoy reading the manga! Thanks for letting me know. ^_______^
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 07:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 11:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-24 05:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-24 05:43 pm (UTC)I'm finding the new features annoying though, and there's no longer a field for what page you're on, which was why I liked the service in the first place. I pretty much used it to keep track of the books I finished and where I was in the books I was still reading.