Well, I’m standing here at 11:45pm slowly stirring some tasty custard I’m making to pour onto a slice of steamed homemade date pudding. A while ago the wonderful Margaret Atwood was on the radio (talking about an influential editor who died recently – can’t recall the name), which is bliss for me since I love hearing her talk about anything. Absolutely anything. I just love her voice, tone, and turns of phrase. There’s a cold wind blowing outside…
Why am I doing all this? Well, it’s really cold outside for a start (yeah, I know) so I need some warm comfort food, but mostly I’m treating myself after a long night of writing php scripts and css code, remembering stuff I learned two years ago, with the aim of rebuilding the old look for the blog. I’m really tired of the clunky default style I’ve had installed for a while since last week’s problems, and so I’ve gone and put up what I’ve done so far even though it is not done. The basic look should be back, but fonts, styling on non-front pages, the footer, the look of embedded images, and so forth, will all be a bit odd for a while. I hope to get to the rest of it in a night or two.
I don’t know how things look in IE, especially versions IE6 and older. I’ll try to do what I can if it is really terrible (let me know) but I cannot promise perfection. Things should look ok in Firefox and Safari. There’s some annoyance with sidebar that I can’t get right, and so it may vanish if your browser screen is set too small. Sorry.
Do let me know by comments and/or email if you see things that are really quite badly broken…
-cvj
Drat! Stopped stirring for a little while there while typing and now I’ve got lumps…!
Funny that…. (Science novice I am) I thought that Asymptotia was a twist on the Greek root word for ‘Symposium’ which means …
A conference at which a particular topic is discussed by various speakers ; also… A collection of opinions about a subject…
Here I thought you were being clever…when actually you are just smart… I should have known.
Still a funny coincidence none the less.
You are still clever in my book.
Enjoying the archives!
Aha! Great…!
-cvj
Aha. just needed to clear the cache. I had been on the site during the rebuild and ff had cached it.
looks great now.
e.
Sorry, the post not the comment.
Just for reference Strange Phenomena
I guess it’s me. I’m running FF 2.0.0.11 on an emac running Mac OS X 10.4.10.
I am not sure why it does not appear correctly. but it seems I’m a minority of one so it’s likely my problem.
e.
I am using Firefox and it looks fine.
I can sympathize with this adventure to restore. While constructing another site for an organization, it somehow it got messed up too.
I now copy the language for each page link and keep it in safe place in case it happens again. Updating, every once in a while using “view page source” by right clicking mouse. Copy, and then paste in word document.
This is a nice way to see how some people are using html and css for displays.
All the best to you Clifford.
Using Firefox 2.0.0.6 on MacoS X etc. It looks pretty much the same as the former (pre-attack), with some minor textual and font differences. Running just fine! Thanks for all your efforts.
firefox view is “different” than before the attack. IE7 looks pretty much the same as it did before. hope that helps. everything is visible in both however just very different look/feel.
e.
No… I would say that it was *really good*. I deliberately designed a look that is not busy and in-your-face and trying to grab your attention all the time. So the fact that you were immediately comfortable and re-immersed in the reading of the posts is, in my opinion, a good sign that I’ve succeeded. Thanks!
-cvj
My random observation of the day: is it really bad if I read all the way to the end of your post and thought “wait, it changed back?!?” only at the last sentence or so? And then scrolled back to the top to realize I completely missed that?
H-okay, time for bed.
Hi,
Confused by that. What do you mean, exactly? What does not work for you? Looks fine so far for me on Firefox 2.0.0.11. Is it not rendering properly? (Not counting the cosmetics on some font choices, doing some other magic with the sidebar, and the broken footer code…)
Cheers,
-cvj
I am using firefox and the format does not appear to be fixed. It is ok on IE7 at work. just fyi.
e.
Hi Supernova,
In future, if a comment of yours ever get gobbled by the spam checker engine, send me an email and I can wrestle with it and grab it from its jaws. It is doing its best trying to protect us from the junk and gets a bit enthusiastic sometimes.
-cvj
Hi Pedant,
You said that “Asymptopia” is:
I say:
Really? I’d say that’s in the ear of the observer. This English ear (well, both of my English ears) would prefer it the way I have it. I would say that Asymptotia is far more “natural” since it is a direct extension of existing words: Asymptote, and its derivative Asymptotic. I know of no word “Asymptope”. (Perhaps we use it to denote a mathematical construct that becomes a polytope at infinity 😀 )
Wasn’t aware of Nambu’s essay. My Asymptotia and his Asymptopia are perhaps towns in the same county. Definitely not the same places though.
Cheers!
-cvj
Hooray! 🙂
Your getting the ‘Asymptotia’ look back on track reminded me of the debate that your blog’s name provoked. When you started up there was some suggestion that ‘Asymptopia’ might have been a better ‘brand name’, principally on the grounds that it was in some way more mellifluous and consonant to the English ear. By chance I have been reading Nambu’s 1985 survey ‘Directions of Particle Physics’, in which ‘Asymptopia’ is identified as a wonderland in which string theory and other products of the ‘Dirac mode’ of research might be tested on the Planck scale. Not that I’m suggesting a change – if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
Testing… the old blog kept flagging my comments as spam. Let’s see if the renewed version likes me any better.
I’m on IE7–required for work–and it’s okay. I don’t have IE6 on any computers now. It works out well because my kids use Firefox and I use IE7, so we have different home pages.
Good to see the old style back! Perhaps when things settle down a bit and you have a moment to spare(!) you could do a post on steamed date pudding. Sounds delicious.