As if anyone cared, but I’ve changed the daily random email address link so that the address itself isn’t shown. This should keep the column width reasonable for that side of the page and allow me more flexibility when the time comes to merge the design changes I’m working on into the main site.

The biggest problem I’m facing right now is that of layout. I have some elements that would best be served up in a wider place than is available in one of the two bordering columns, but I’m not sure where else to put them.

One idea might be display the first entry, then use the space right underneath for some “extras,” and follow with the remaining X number of entries. This places me right in the path of the other big problem I’m facing: I need to learn how to select and format items from the journal database without using the original Monaural Jerk functions.

I know how to get at the raw data. What’s lacking is my ability to choose specific items dynamically and to format them for display. The next round of experiments I conduct on the test page will probably be along these lines.

After months and years of wanting and waiting and whining, I finally busted out and bought a DVD player for the home-entertainment rack. It’s the Toshiba SD-2800, their budget-priced component deck. So far it’s been a reliable, beautiful piece of hardware.

We also picked up the DVD titles Chicken Run, the Princess Bride special edition, the Shrek special edition and for the one anime title I was able to grab I chose the Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz special edition. Lots of great viewing yummy goodness, folks! It almost offsets the fact that I spent my weekend oblivious to the world.

Aw, who am I kidding? I’m thrilled to finally have a “real live” DVD player. Crowding around the computer screen is not the way to enjoy a movie experience, folks, take it from me.

If you need proof that I’m serious about restructuring this journal system, take a peek at this page. It’s kind of mangled, and will always be in various states of “mangled-ness” while I experiment with stylesheets and the removal of table code.

I’ve created test includes, a test stylesheet and the test document so I can use the database content of this site without breaking the main page itself. As I find tricks that can be migrated back to the main page, I will do so. (Actually I already have; witness the newly-grey search widget.)

I’m having a lot of fun with this, and learning a tremendous amount. If all goes well, greyduck.net will be a fabulously cool website some day.

In a frenzy of reading source code, I reconfigured this site to use an external stylesheet. This will allow me to experiment with a variety of different stylesheet tricks to achieve various effects.

The idea that I can exercise more control over the elements on this page is just too attractive to let go of. I will make it work, and it’ll look damned cool.

When I was building this website, I tried to come up with better channel definitions than I had used on the old Zero site. In terms of Media Reviews, the only viable category was Books, so that was carried over while the other Media channels were dropped.

This time around I’ve added TV and Games, and the next time I actually see a movie in the theater you can be sure I’ll add a Movies category. In the meantime, feel free to peruse the one existing entry under Games: Links LS 1999.