Seventeen Pencils

Posted on Wednesday, 8th July 2009 by Stephen

I’ve recently begun to favor slightly different ways of layout out a main navigation div in CSS. I had been using padding on my a tags, and padding on a span tag inside them. However, line-height seems to be a viable method of achieving the same effect with less code. It generally seems IE-safe too, although you have to be a bit verbose for the poor thing.

If you do use a span inside your a (for additional background images and such), you’ll need to either re-declare the same line-height on it, or display it as a block-level element, either one of which is easier than trying to divide up your padding correctly around your text. But in some cases, using the block-level option may cause IE’s box model to freak out, rendering your a/li elements block-level as well. If so, float the span. This, however, may hide the background of the span, in which case either height or zoom must be added to the parent a/li tags.

After writing this out, it sure doesn’t look easier, but at least my code is pretty… thanks to Nate Hanna for (non-monetary) tips!

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Posted on Saturday, 4th July 2009 by Stephen

I followed Derek Webb’s little scavenger hunt all the way to Nashville last night with my buddy Christopher Plemmons, and I was severely disappointed. Sure his new songs were great, but I already knew that. I wanted him to do something! Like… play some music?? He didn’t even stick around for me to meet him. It rather seemed like a waste of 12 hours of driving, but maybe it wasn’t. Nashville was still a pretty cool place to visit, and I pulled my first all-nighter to boot. Amazing.

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Posted on Friday, 26th June 2009 by Stephen

I’m trying to write an upbeat love song. It’s not going so well! I think the idea I had for it was good, but I always seem to end up with a cynical undercurrent. That’s not the worst thing ever, but it kind of ruins the mood if you pick up on it. So I’m trying to make the lyrics just cheesy enough that some people will understand what I’m really saying, but most people will still be able to enjoy it as a lighthearted love song. The EP I release this fall will probably include it, so you can judge how well I did when you hear it. It’s called Mary Kate.

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Posted on Monday, 22nd June 2009 by Stephen

So far this summer, which has been about a month and a half, Weezer has been my main musical input. The first time I heard them was on the Buddy Holly music video included with Windows 95. Obviously I was confused – what a great idea for a music video though! Spike Jonze is cool, yo. I think what really sets Weezer apart from similar bands is the clean, almost timid vocals (and the lyrics that correspond with them) set against the gritty guitars. Pinkerton was especially revealing, almost awkwardly so. Rivers’ attitude towards being a rockstar is often disarming – what is there to dislike? That’s why I was a little disappointed with the Red Album – they lyrics had mostly lost their distinctive honesty and self-deprecation, and seemed more pop-ish. I’ve really been inspired by Weezer though, and I’ve been trying to integrate more honesty into my own lyrics, with mixed results. It’s hard to tell people what’s really in your heart! I sometimes hope they’ll think I’m joking…

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Posted on Sunday, 21st June 2009 by Stephen

And this is why it’s thrilling: I get to write about all the stuff I think about all the time! That is good news indeed. The other thrill-type aspect is that this site has had the fastest development time of any I have worked on up to this point. Of course, I didn’t have a picky client to deal with, just cool, calm, collected me. More importantly though, I’m using WordPress. I’ve just become a huge fan! After trying many free cms’s (Joomla is GROSS, Textpattern is overly complicated, ExpressionEngine has a lame core version…), WordPress was the clear winner. I plan on using it for many of my illustrious clients. I made my own theme for this site, which I fondly named Grayson. I’ll be expanding on it as the occasion arises.

So that’s it! I’m going to be a blogger. Every cool person needs to blog.

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