*themapper

A buddy and I went hunting over the holiday season and picked up a moose. It was a small 5-year old male. We each ended up with 200 lbs, or somewhat less than 90 kg, of moose meat, plus all the bones. This is a welcome addition to my freezer - we have been eating moose regularly since then. I made some of it into jerky - dried strips of moose meat - after marinating it for a few days. This has turned out to be some of the best jerky I have ever made.



I've just uploaded a new pen & ink drawing. It's my first in about 15 years. I am re-discovering a love of technical pens. I have to admit, however, since it has been such a long time for me, I have forgotten much of what I learned, and will need to re-learn it. On the other hand, I don't seem to have any bad habits ingrained either, so perhaps I can start afresh?

I am greatly encouraged. Now to go on to the next one (and finish the last ones!).

Hey, folks. Unexpectedly, I find myself in the middle of two very different programming jobs.


I have a small-ish contract (wish they'd pay my two month's owing!!) to do an urban interface fire hazard assessment. I've done the interface walk around the community, assessing all the houses with potential to be affected by a runaway wildfire. And now I am deep into some Visual Basic programming for the code behind an Access database to hold all that data.

The actual database itself, the bit that holds the data, is ready, has been so for ages. But it's the human interface bits, the GUI, that requires the most thought and research. And so I find myself digging around inside "Access Hacks", an excellent reference book, btw, for morsels of code that will give my app just that extra bit of zing my clients are looking for. Here's a small clip of the *pages and pages* of code I'm fiddling with:

Private Sub CommentPg4_Enter()
Dim text_length As Integer
text_length = Len(Me.CommentPg4)
Me.CommentPg4.SelStart = text_length
End Sub

Private Sub Ctl08ChimneyBranchesOver_Enter()
active_control_enter
End Sub

Well, it actually IS fun, in a twisted kinda way, to get this code right.



I'm also working on trying to set up our very own home & professional website, using 1 primary and a couple secondary CSS templates. It's actually much easier than I remembered it to be... working from an existing template makes text edits and colour changes that much simpler. Here's a snippet of the code I'm using for the "global.css" template. I've got quite a few mods to make several specialty css templates for special pages...

#MenuHold {
float: right;
overflow: auto;
width: 220px;
}

I've discovered I really *really* like CSS. Why didn't I discover it earlier?

de nada. I am discovering it now, and having a lot of fun playing with it. When I am ready to upload it all, I'll drop the URL here.

All for now, folks. Thanks for stopping by.

Russ

Oh the shame of it. I really, really had the best of intentions to comment on all those great deviations you've been submitting. But I could never catch up. Seeing the count go over 100 decided me, and so I deleted them all. Sorry folks. I'll work at commenting in a more timely fashion, promise.

In other news, I've finally completed a new sonnet. It's trivial, but maybe it will help me break out of the "working all the time, no time to play" routine. It's called, Sonnet for Endless Flight. I still have outstanding sonnets promised for *ironhenry , as well as 2 works for kiribans for ~Zoingishly and ~ArinaQuartz . I will get there. I still plan to commish something nice from ~hernameisrio . Punk fairy or elf in Victoria's Secret, I think.

This is cool!



Hi again.

Over the years, I have struggled with a variety of web design problems. Not because I find it hard; in fact, I kinda like web designing in a masochistic way. No, I find I have only so much time available to learn new things. I love learning new things, but it took me a long time to get as good as I am a GIS mapping. I cannot afford to spend the same kind of time getting good at web design.

Which brings me to this new look for my journal. I am extremely happy with how it turns out. For very little new energy, I have a new look. Borrowed, it is true, but then again, so what? I am good at what I do. `Lilyas is good at what she does.

This funky journal looks best in Firefox. I have not tested Netscape or other browsers, so if any of you out there see problems such as garbled graphics or cropped pics whilst looking at this journal, please let me know. I'll either find a way to fix it or move to a new template that does not create problems.

In discussion with the template's creator, Lilyas, I came to realize that my old reliable Internet Explorer (IE) might not be as useful these days as I used to find it. You see, years ago, all the really neat functions were being produced by IE, and other browses had to catch up. I left olders version of Netscape and Opera in favour of IE because of a perceived lack in those browsers that IE had already solved.

Well, I've tested IE against Firefox today and I am convinced it is time I changed my browsers. I've installed Firefox and will only keep IE around in case there is something only IE will do. Windows Updates comes to mind.

I'd be really interested in hearing from any of you, what your preferences are in browsers, and if any of you see odd or cropped graphics with this template. I look forward to hearing from you.

All my best,
Russell

ps: I will try to use some of Lilyas' other titles soon. This basic posting only scratches the surface of what is possible.

This is my first attempt at tarting up my Journal's appearance



I've always had a fascination for CSS programming. And I've always intended to try make use of DA's ability to show off artistic talented with my own CSS-enhanced Journal. I've never had the time to learn enough CSS to really do it, however.

So I did a search on DA for CSS Templates, and whaddya know? I found lots and lots of really intersting stuff. Some of it appealed to the ancient gamer in me. Some of it appealed to the incipient parent in me. Some of it I enjoyed just because it's weird. And some were just so beautiful I wanted to use them all.

This is a test of one of those 'most beautiful' templates I found. The artist is Lilyas. Her credit can be found at the bottom of this journal entry. For now, I am testing to see if I can make it work. It's possible I'll have to do several rounds of test and revise, so bear with me. If any of you out there have suggestions of your own for me, by all means comment. I've a little CSS experience, but not much. If you prefer not to comment, you can note me instead.

All for now. Let's see if this thing really works.


Hmmm... Well, it looks really good in preview. Part of the artwork at top seems cropped at its bottom, however. Not sure if this an artifact of Preview or if it really does truncate it. I'll go for a full publish and see if that makes any difference.