This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
I suppose that it had something to do with my new iPhone. That Apple minimalism got to me. Actually it may have begun earlier this year when I spent more than 200 bucks on a pair of Prada glasses. On a cost-per-wear basis, that's not too bad, but that was the first time I spent a lot of extra money just because something looked stylish. My old Japanese glasses cracked right across the bridge of my nose, and I couldn't fix them with duct tape. Are you beginning to see a trend here? A life-long nerd suddenly craves high style. Not that I can or will change my whole life. The Prada glasses and the iPhone are merely tokenistic. I still love my rust-colored fleece jacket which I bought on sale at REI when the color became very unfashionable. My girlfriend hates it but it's an old friend.
Anyhow, I finally decided that I didn't like the design of the Coffeeblog any more. I kept adding more and more tsatskes, links, and badges. Suddenly it began to look very PC. By that I don't mean "politically correct." I mean PC, as in Apple's Mac vs. PC ads, pitting a stylish looking hip yuppie or preppy hipster, or whatever he is, representing the world of Apple, against a paradigm nerd, representing the PC. For some reason, the abbreviation PC for "personal computer" usually excludes any Apple product, which is much too hip and much too stylish to be a mere computer, however personal.
And so I embarked on my latest journey: could I redesign the Coffeeblog website to do honor to my Prada glasses and my iPhone? As it happened, I was tipped off about a new piece of software which enables the user (a Mac user, of course) to make changes in the CSS stylesheet of any website to see the results, without changing the actual site on the Internet. I suddenly found myself changing the background color of the Coffeeblog, which was incredibly easy, actually merely changing one six-digit number in the stylesheet, I'm still not sure I like the blue backgroumd that you are now seeing, but I think I will make the changes incrementally. Ars longa, vita brevis.
Yes, I realize that most of you out there may not have heard of CSS or stylesheets, and I owe you an explanation. A stylesheet is a set of coded instructions that tell a web browser how to display pieces of a web page, including text, backgrounds and images. For great examples of this see the CSS Zen Garden website, which is now growing a little long in the tooth. Click the links to see all the radically different designs. The text is the same on every page, though displayed with different fonts, sizes and positions. The images and backgrounds are different. The SS in "CSS" stands for "stylesheets." The "C" stands for "cascading," Why cascading? Don't ask.
Every page now has Seesmic/Disqus video commenting. Scroll to the bottom to see or post video comments. There are also Haloscan comments at the end of each separate blogpost article. To read a text-only version of Jonathan's Coffeeblog on your iPhone or other mobile phone, click here. Or to see the graphics with less text, click here.
