"An ill-favoured thing"
Wanted - a Gmail account!
Tuesday, 29th, June 2004 20.47 PM
With all this interest and publicity about Gmail - I'd be very interested to receive an invite. *Is* it worth the hype and fuss? I'd really like to find out. This is a public hint!
MAH
Site make-over
Friday, 10th, January 2003 21.00 PM
Not much has happened to this site since mid-November and it is time to bring it up to date. I have made few changes to the design; for example, it still uses fixed-pixel font sizes, but I have re-written the introduction on the home page.
I also intend to add details of the various outings and trips we made in the second half of 2002 and on into 2003. This may take a while to do, so please be patient.
MAH
Photo galleries
10, November, 2002 10:11 a.m.
Further work yesterday in setting up a gallery of photos for the Male Voice Choir trip to Mvurwi.
Recording these sort of activities seems to be the main function of my web site at present.
I have used MGI Photo Suite, which came with our digital camera, in an attempt to automate the process. Photo Suite will automatically produce the thumbnails, as well as the HTML required to display a gallery of thumbnails and the individual HTML files to display each of the full pictures.
However, helpful as this is, the problem is that the layouts are table-based and written in HTML 3.2 whereas I want this site to be XHTML 1.0 and CSS, without table-based layouts, at least where possible.
As a slight digression, it unfortunately isn't always easy to achieve this where you use third-party software; the Atomz search engine code on the front page means that I can no longer put the W3C validation logos on that page.
The layout of the thumbnails uses the idea in A List Apart article in which a Div is created for each picture and floated left. The flow of pictures is then broken where necessary in order to insert text and comments by using the following CSS attached to either p or h2 tags:
.break {clear: both;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
The work done on the Mvurwi site will hopefully allow me to create similar galleries for a number of theatrical productions during 2002.
MAH
Why the title?
Thursday, August 22, 2002 3:09 PM
The title of the blog comes from Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
"It is an ill-favoured thing, but it is mine own .."
If I’m going to quote somebody famous, then who better than Shakespeare?
Remember the song:
"Brush up your Shakespeare,
Start quoting him now!
Brush up your Shakespeare,
And the ladies you will wow …"
MAH
To blog or not to blog … that is the question
Thursday, August 22, 2002 2:56 PM
"Blogs" are a very recent concept to me, even though they have been around for several years. Some are most impressive: well-written by knowledgeable people while others are more trivial.
Imitation being the sincerest … etc., and having learned enough about web pages to actually create a blog (not that that knowledge is really necessary) it has occurred to me that perhaps I too should join the ranks of bloggers.
However, I still have nagging doubts about whether this is desirable.
For a start, isn't a published weblog horribly self-indulgent? A ghastly vanity site full of the ramblings and musings of the dull and self-centred? Who would be interested in one's thoughts and daily activities?
Generally, I think this view is valid, but it might not be the case - for example if one had some sort of special knowledge or indeed had something genuinely new or interesting to say. Or was simply a good writer.
There are other constraints, too:
The public nature of it, is a major problem - how can you publish frankly and not offend friends, relations, employees or clients? If one is tactful, circumspect and inoffensive, might not this sensitivity lead to blandness and triviality?.
The further consideration is that I live in Zimbabwe. This is not quite the same as life in a stable first world country. A very careful choice of subjects would be required and would involve, I suspect, leaving out the very things which most readers would find most interesting.
Having dithered around the subject since May or thereabouts, I think that there is scope for some cautious blogging. Let’s do it and see where it leads!
MAH
The first post
22 Aug 2002: 2 p.m.
Having experimented with both Blogger and pMachine, I really wonder, given the unambitious nature of this site and my uncertainties about having a blog at all, whether professional software is needed.
Isn't it a lot simpler just to type the text straight into HTML-kit and ftp up the file?
An obvious advantage is that you don't have to get to grips with someone else's program and its internal logic and flow.
And many of the facilities offered by these programs are overkill given my limited needs.
However, a counter argument is that even simple things like archives and the automatic posting with a date and time stamp is a bit more difficult to do.
Even more so for Comments, membership or XML/RSS feeds (whatever they are exactly).
Nevertheless, for the time being and until I sort out how to use pMachine's powerful facilities, my blog will be simple and homemade.
MAH