miles

Oh dear oh dear, that’s like a 9 year old being reminded of being a 5 year old… slightly embarrassing…. how could I have lived with only 5 columns…. I’m so much more columned now. 😉

Those were primitive times, for sure.

thanks!

Thanks to all for the comments. The only one I actively take issue with is the complaint about 800 pixel width monitors. My utilization stats (on several sites) show that’s under 5% of the market. I think we can all stop designing for 15″ monitors running at 800 pixel width. 1000 pixels (or about 995 if you allow for a scroll bar), really is what you can build to in my opinion.

Basically this blog is a stream of life, stream of consciousness exercise. It began many years ago with the pictorial autobio on the right, and evolved into a documentation of other aspects of life experience…. so I agree that “you are not more important than what you are writing about”, except for the problem that what I’m writing about is myself, and the process of documenting one’s own life.

I agree that subject is of minimal interest to most people, and I have no problem with that. A small minority of people, mostly people who are trying to figure out how to do something similar, consistently over the years have written me to say they like my effort.

Another thing my blog is about is “inter-textuality”…. the relationship between multiple texts and representational images, placed in columns here. I’m personally interested in the way in which life experience is translated into multiple streams of text and images, and in the way when you read across horizontally you can make connections between those different streams.

Obviously, in one sense, that’s of interest only to me…. but since I am interested in how OTHER people do that kind of thing, I assume that someone out there will enjoy seeing how I try to do it.

As for the density and readability, I hear y’all. I’ll play with text size and color to try to get something more readable. Maybe I’ll shift the blog column to the far right, newspaper style. The complaint about unreadability is completely legitimate. On the one hand it is not intended to be easily readable. I want it to be a dense inter-text…. on the other hand, 95% of my viewers are probably gonna say… no thanks, not interested. So it is good to hear these reactions and to have that suspicion confirmed. I’m not sure I want to be easily readable… but I do want to be decodable, which is a somewhat different goal.

I’ll have to think about whether density and intertextuality are the point… or a barrier, and whether there is a way to get both, or whether they are opposed by their very nature.

I think someone mentioned newspapers as a model, and of course my ideal for a good read is the New York Times… lots of choices, lots of density. But even they have more white space than I do.

——

vkaryl says it IS readable, but not informative… actually I think the predominant complaint is that is not readable, but surely it is highly informative about it’s narcissistic subject… my stream of consciousness and consumption of culture.

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Oh, and I did figure out how to make an entire div clickable using java script: Insert in the <a> tag

onclick="window.location="yourlink.html'; return false"

and then in the containing div class in the style sheet insert

display: block;
and
cursor: pointer;

Thanks again for all the comments.

Miles
[sig moderated]

That’s exactly what I’d like to do. Thanks very much. I’ll give it a try, and post back here when it works.

Thank you! (and I’ll bet your explanation will be valued by lots of people.)

Well, a week or so later, I’ve hacked something together, but it has a long way to go! http://www.documentedlife.com

Don’t look at the archives… they are still completely ugly. This is a not ready for prime time development project for now.

Yes, I’m going with absolute positioning for now. I like to nail stuff down so I know where to find it.

Hey, I found a half answer at the Wiki…
http://wiki.ww.wp.xz.cn/GeneralFaqs#x32.
SoI get the general picture…. WordPress is b2 on steroids, and without the bad MT attitude.
But does it ever date Gallery 1.4x?
Expansions, illuminations, ruminations and variations on the themes above still appreciated.