Sometimes I wonder why I bother pretending to know what I’m doing. Case in point: Did you know that the “Print” and “Send” links were totally and completely useless until about fifteen minutes ago? It took me five minutes to fix them both to my satisfaction.

To be accurate, it took me almost five minutes to fix the “Send” page. The “Print” page took almost no time at all. The “Send” page required me to make all of the code changes that I’ve done to the main “Journal” page in order for it to look at least remotely correct.

I suppose that website building involves a lot of trial and error. In my case, it seems to involve error and error. At least it’s working now, dammit.

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.

Because I can, and more importantly because I have a DVD player now, I decided to add a DVD review section. I already own a bunch of titles to review, it’s just going to be a matter of watching, taking notes and typing up a review for each of them.

Hey, it’s not like I have anything useful to do with my free time, you know. Or gods forbid I should have a social life. Pshaw!

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.