Michelle is made of 100% concentrated pure awesome!
Well, the title about sums it up, doesn't it? Out in West Virginia, a cloud of concentrated, one-hundred-percent awesome has arrived on Earth and coalesced in the form of Random Michelle, who (much like Clark Kent) appears to be a mere human mortal but in point-of-fact is awesome. I'm sorry, I don't think I've made my point: are we clear that Michelle is awesome? Have I mentioned that?
Now, many of you already know this. You read Michelle's blog, you've gotten loot from her, you use her UCF icon. And you might be wondering, "Whence this outpouring of worshipfulness, Eric? Not that she doesn't deserve it (she is awesome), but why now?"
Do you see my duck?
If you see my duck, you see the reason Michelle is awesome. And if you don't see my duck... if you don't see my duck, I will probably start sobbing inconsolably, grieving for the cruelties of the world, or at least the cruelties of XML coding, which was clearly conceived by some degenerate worshiper of squelching amorphous dark gods on a Stygian shore in a dismal and forgotten age. Should the Ponape Scripture turn up abandoned on a table in some musty, oppressively dark library, the first page will surely begin with a "body" tag followed by lines of gibberish that, when put into a computer terminal in a dank basement on the Miskatonic University campus, allows a picture of somebody's cat to be properly displayed with a 5-pixel offset in Internet Explorer....
But my duck! See my duck! Michelle, thank you for my duck!
Those of you who followed the comments in my depressed rumination on totalitarian tactics in the Twin Cities might have noticed that Michelle offered to help me fix a problem I was having with the coding of the Genesis template by InfoCreek that I'm using for the current (and long-term) layout for Giant Midgets. So I took her up on it, and sent her an e-mail, and the XML code, and she generously took the time on her day off to look at it and send me back a possible solution--
"Possible"? No, verily--can you see my duck? If you can see my duck, you see that Michelle solved my problem with the same easy efficiency of Sherlock Holmes on the penultimate page of a Conan Doyle short story.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Michelle!
Now, the internet can be an unforgiving place: I can see the duck in Firefox (2.0.0.16) and Konqueror, but I'm not at home (I'm getting that airbag fixed in the VW) and can't check the page in IE right now. Nor do I use Opera or any of those other browsers. So, if you cannot see my duck, add a comment letting me know and let me know what browser/OS you use and exactly what you do see.
(And once again: thank you, Michelle! I'm burbling with happy right now!)
Now, many of you already know this. You read Michelle's blog, you've gotten loot from her, you use her UCF icon. And you might be wondering, "Whence this outpouring of worshipfulness, Eric? Not that she doesn't deserve it (she is awesome), but why now?"
Do you see my duck?
If you see my duck, you see the reason Michelle is awesome. And if you don't see my duck... if you don't see my duck, I will probably start sobbing inconsolably, grieving for the cruelties of the world, or at least the cruelties of XML coding, which was clearly conceived by some degenerate worshiper of squelching amorphous dark gods on a Stygian shore in a dismal and forgotten age. Should the Ponape Scripture turn up abandoned on a table in some musty, oppressively dark library, the first page will surely begin with a "body" tag followed by lines of gibberish that, when put into a computer terminal in a dank basement on the Miskatonic University campus, allows a picture of somebody's cat to be properly displayed with a 5-pixel offset in Internet Explorer....
But my duck! See my duck! Michelle, thank you for my duck!
Those of you who followed the comments in my depressed rumination on totalitarian tactics in the Twin Cities might have noticed that Michelle offered to help me fix a problem I was having with the coding of the Genesis template by InfoCreek that I'm using for the current (and long-term) layout for Giant Midgets. So I took her up on it, and sent her an e-mail, and the XML code, and she generously took the time on her day off to look at it and send me back a possible solution--
"Possible"? No, verily--can you see my duck? If you can see my duck, you see that Michelle solved my problem with the same easy efficiency of Sherlock Holmes on the penultimate page of a Conan Doyle short story.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Michelle!
Now, the internet can be an unforgiving place: I can see the duck in Firefox (2.0.0.16) and Konqueror, but I'm not at home (I'm getting that airbag fixed in the VW) and can't check the page in IE right now. Nor do I use Opera or any of those other browsers. So, if you cannot see my duck, add a comment letting me know and let me know what browser/OS you use and exactly what you do see.
(And once again: thank you, Michelle! I'm burbling with happy right now!)
Comments
It was nothing, really.
What would make me happy is if you actually had a better understanding of *why* things worked. :)
I mean, it looks good if you like ducks, that is to say uncooked ones obviously not prepared Peking style.
Oh, and I didn't test with Google Chrome yet :)
I'd assume the
error could be solved by changing it to
Speaking of lack of understanding: I don't know what the error in IE7 means, and would be happy to receive any education on that score. Thanks for checking it out, Lance.
Carnivore that I am, I love both kinds of duck. I usually do a duck for Thanksgiving--roasted in the oven with a covering of paprika, salt, pepper and sometimes garlic, stuffed with apples or sometimes pears. Heavenly. But they're also wonderful paddling around. The duck in this picture was actually engaged in evasive maneuvers in a small pond--there's a four year-old out of frame who was running from one side of the pond to the other, trying to be friendly (the ducks were understandably uninterested in a small child's concept of "making friends").
I'll see if I can figure out how to do the hyperlink thing.
I set up the picture with a link to the image in Picasa embedded in the XML itself. I.e., the page calls Picasa, it doesn't call a widget that calls Picasa--does that make sense? So is the IE7 error perhaps because something in IE7 is looking for a call that doesn't exist?
I ended up using Michelle's suggested replacement code as a total replacement for the existing header, since the first attempt at simply including it resulted in the original header appearing above the image (this was something I could have lived with, but it wasn't what I wanted; had I lived with it, obviously I would have just used the image sans title text). It may be that there was a section of "style" coding I should have deleted.
I still maintain that XML is a product of Cthulhoid cultists.
Like the new look of the site and the banner!
I typed the correct tag into my comment.
So of course you couldn't see it.
Try replacing <br> with <br />
and yes Michelle is totally made from teh awesome! (and maybe sometime can explain to me how i could put a pretty picture up on my blog too? If of course i ever decided what i want my "thing" to be)
But Kimby, why feel like you have to pick one? I have another banner ready for October, and by the end of October I'll have another replacement for a week or nine months, depending on when I get sick of it. Hopefully a nice fall or winter photo that is yet to be taken....
I'm pretty sure a sacrifice of doughnuts is going to be required as some point in this process...
And I agree, she is made of awesome.
Eric, I like the new look, very clean and readable - much more professional than the usual bloggerishness.
(from Solaris Mozilla version Ancient, anyhow. Will check from Mac Opera later tonight. ;) )