February 5, 2004

After a week of reading oodles and oodles of journal articles (I swear, I've got a cardboard box for each class I'm taking right now, filled with papers.), I've once again managed to decide to try my hand at another site redesign. I make myself sad, really. Anyhow, you can see the new new design here. And seriously, I need some feedback as to how bad some of these are.

January 29, 2004

Well, as usual, boredom occurs when reading gobs of scientific journal articles. I've already started to redesign the site. Yes, two days after uploading this first version, I've already created another. Unlike this current version, my new idea/design is written with XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets and through that, is layed out entirely without tables. I personally think it's pretty snazzy. I still need to work out some of the bugs though. IE does some weird stuff to the box format (woo Microsoft), so I have to hunt down some workarounds. BUT! It is a start, and of that I am happy.

In my Muscle Biology class today, I (along with two other students) had to give "formal PowerPoint" presentations of journal articles. My paper was horribly dull, revolving around kinetic studies of calcium ion release and mathmatical models (note: anything with math = not my thang), but still, being me, I decided to at least present it in a decent fashion, despite my non-caring status on the paper. So I changed the background of the slides, and fancied up the slides, and had arrows pointing to appropriate spots on diagrams, etc etc. The other presentations? Standard PowerPoint set up: white background, Times New Roman font, point size 26. Through the whole thing. No arrows. No added grahpics to ease understanding. Just the title "Figure (insert random number here) and a pasted image. woooooooooo (I'm twirling my finger in excitement). Which makes me wonder - am I really weird about presentation, or do I just know that little bit more about using PowerPoint than the other students? I can understand some computer illiteracy, but jebus. I just don't know.

I stopped at Lexington Market today and grabbed some fruit and, sadly, some Berger cookies. I say sadly because they're highly addictive and must be horribly bad for you. They're these lovely sugary wafer cookies covered in a crazy fudgie frosting that's about 1/4" thick on the cookie. To be honest, I only know that its a sugar cookie under that fudge because I looked it up. I went into a sugar coma shortly after the consumption of one cookie. And I have 11 more, thanks to the dozen discount. Sigh. I guess I'll just be forced to eat them. Such a shame really. My poor ass.

Speaking of ass, did anyone else catch Nicole Kidman's hairdo at the Golden Globes? (if not, here's a picture)I mean HOLY CRAP! Did she just step out of a Jane Fonda workout video? What's with that stretchy yellow thing? I feel like getting Physical with Olivia Newton-John. Either that or loudly screaming "POODLE HEAD!" Celebrities. Don't they have fashion consultants to prevent this sort of mishap? This looks like something I'd see in Parma.

January 25, 2004

Sweet baby Jebus. I think I may finally have decided on something.
Due to my highly Type A, perfectionista-like attitude towards things, I've spent the last 4 months or so fiddling with the site design and images and color pallates and on and on. To tell the truth, I'm not quite sure I'm really thrilled with this one either, but at least I am (for the moment) rather satisfied with the outcome. However, give me two weeks and I'll have changed my mind again. Ah, but so it goes.

The last bit of crud left to do is installing MovableType as my CMS, but after failing four times, I have decided that either I'm a) missing some fabulous instruction, b) a Unix retard, c) have no idea what I'm doing and am attempting to just fake my way through the installation, or d) consuming a super-sized value meal of the above three options. I'm trying not to take my failure too much to heart - the swearing helps to alleviate some of the pain. With that said, if anyone actually knows how to install MovableType, let me know. I'll probably pee my pants with gratitude.

Regardless, I do have this up and (pseudo)running before this semester gets into full swing. Lucky for you, now that this is going, I'm going to bitch constantly about classes, paper-writing, and general lab malaise. I can hear you cheering "woo fun!" in the background. Good for you. Be positive.