From Last to FIrst on a List of the Worst

Friday November 7, 2008

Warm autumn greetings! The topic for tonight are lists of art and creation that are the worst in their category. We're talking real bottom of the barrel sludge here so be sure to hold your nose as you wade in. I personally think it's harder to agree on the best examples then it is to name the worst. The first stop on our tour of the truly terrible is Web Pages that Suck. The intent of Web Pages that Suck is to help people improve their own web designs by showing examples of sites that,well, suck. Aside from sites that are only slightly ugly or hard to use there are a few standouts that are so bad they defy description. If movies are your thing then Wikipedia has complied a categorized list of what are possibly the worst movies of all times. Fate has been kind to me as that I haven't seen most of the stinkers on the list, but there are a few notable turkeys that I had the misfortune of catching. While album art has suffered with the demise of the 12” LP record, there is a site that lists the 100 worst album covers ever. It's a great site, the comments were funny enough to make the do a spit-take. The next site of interest is a list of the 25 worst sitcoms ever. TV situation comedy has always been one of my favorite types of programming, but the worst list reminded me of how many really bad shows have been produced. That's my list of the best lists of the worst. Check them out!

The picture of the week was created using Corel Draw.
Click on the image for a full-sized view

The loops of the week are some spacious synthesizer pads.

The DVD/Movie of the week was Still Crazy. You need to have been in a band to appreciate some of the jokes but it's funny enough for just about anyone.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

Styling and smiling with CSS

Friday October 10, 2008

Salutations! It's Friday night and once more I'm back with the usual mix of tech and creativity. The topic for tonight is web design and the focus will be on CSS (cascading style sheets). CSS were designed to add greater style control and to HTML web pages. Style is the colors, spacing, and fonts used in a web page, and CSS is all about controlling style. With style control you can create a web document that is far less generic and more artistic. I've been learning CSS and have embarked on a rewrite of my personal web site using style sheets. You can directly embed CSS style tags in an HTML document or you can link to an external file that contains all your CSS styles. With CSS you can design a web page with greater precision than is possible with plain HTML code. Everything works fairly well though I've found a few minor problems with Internet Explorer that don't occur when using Mozilla Firefox. Your mileage may vary based on which browser you use. You can learn more about CSS at the CSS Site. If you're looking to move beyond the basic functionality of HTML give CSS a try.

The picture of the week was created using Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view

The loops of the week are some rhythmic synthesizer parts.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

What's new NVU?

Friday July 18, 2008

Good evening and welcome back! It another humid Friday night here and the topic of the moment is web design. This week I took a bit of time to revisit NVU and complete the rewrite of my web page. NVU is a very nice open-source, WYSIWYG HTML editor. It's suitable for beginning to advanced web designers and I gave it lots of bonus points for being user friendly and easy. Those qualities made it possible for me to devote time to creating appealing graphics and to think more about the design rather than wrestling with the raw HTML tags. I went for a rather spartan, no-frills design this time out with a few visual accents. Special care was taken with regard to colors, to make the text more legible and to give each section a unified look. If you're looking to put together a web page quickly, I can recommend NVU without hesitation. You can check out my newly revised page from the links over on the right hand side of this blog or by clicking above. What I'd like to do next is to further refine my page using CSS and PHP. Stay tuned for more updates and changes as I grow and try to grow my web presence with me.

The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view

The loops of the week are some systematic bass parts.

The PC game of the week was Future Pinball again.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

Friday October 19, 2007

Greetings and welcome back! It's another warm Friday night in the midst of autumn and I've finally found the time time make another post. The topic for this week is web design. I'm going to try to update my aging web site to better reflect my current interests. I don't have any sophisticated tools for development, and my budget is nil, so I'm going to make use of free or open source software. There are a number of decent applications available, but I've settled on a program called NVU to create my new page. NVU is an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor that scores bonus points for simplicity. Right now the I'm at the road-map and rough draft phase of the project, but I'll post further information as it progresses.

The book of the moment is Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The PC game of the week is Dungeon Siege, an oldie but goody. DS is one of my favorite fantasy games.

The other distraction of the week was Sudoku.

And that's about it for this week. I'll be back in roughly a week with more good stuff to share.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.

Bye for now!