Not much of an update but for ease I dropped the blog portion of the IRL. Now my blog resides at just http://mardena.com. Of course the old IRL works as well. If you what to reach my web portfolio it is now at http://mardena.com/design.html. That is all for now.
No Comments »Archive for the ‘Web Interface’ Category
Site update!
Thursday, January 27th, 2011Why no new posts…?
Thursday, September 30th, 2010I apologize for the lack of new posts recently. There have been a few things going on this summer that have prevented me from having the time to create them.
First off there has been lots of things to finish around the house, patios, flower beds, grass, gardens , super fence, and completion of older projects like the master bath, deck. Recently there has been somewhat a bit of a rush to finish these things since my wife is due with babies in January. Yes, babies! We saw a little more than expected when we went for her first ultra sound. So finishing projects before these two bundles of joy show their faces has been a bit of a priority to me, this Blog however has dropped a few notches on the priority list.
I have also been planning a few long needed upgrades to the site, like linking it with my main site Mardena.com and dropping the blog. at the front of the URL. I’m thinking the main page, posts should be in brief format and I’ll have categories to pick from off the main page rather than tiny links in the side bar. Also hopefully a whole new look, with more pictures and HD home video.
When will this actually happen? Who knows! It seems my priorities are changing a lot lately and we’ll see where this blog falls in as my home projects are coming to a close.
The good side is I have plenty of projects to blog about when I do get around to it, the bad news is I don’t know when I’ll actually get around to it.
2 Comments »Walt’s Warning!
Thursday, April 29th, 2010What the heck happened to me last night?
Who is this guy?
How does he know my name??
What does he want from me??
What is the deal with my fonts?
Monday, April 26th, 2010Okay so when I first implemented these custom fonts on my site I thought they looked good, now They seem to look like crap. I don’t know if it is the monitor I am looking at but I seem to be left with pixelated crap that looks like these:

Now to compare how monitors render this font image here is the true type:
This crap!
and
This crap!
What is going on here? I suspect that it might have something to do with monitor resolution, but I’m not sure. Let me know is you have a Mac if this font looks okay or not? My theory is that is has something to do with Microsoft’s ClearType. I’ll look into this further but really if these font’s look as bad as they do on this monitor I’ll have to replace them with something that works better. I see why designers use JPGs for headings and other decorative fonts.
** UPDATE **
So apparently it is monitors are displaying these fonts differently. I have tried numerous scenarios (different windows editions, different browsers and browser editions… ) and it seems that it is the monitor is making my font’s look cheep. So if the first and second set of fonts look identical you have purchased a cheap monitor. However if the second set of fonts look considerably better, congratulations on a good monitor purchase.
On a side note, over the summer I will be changing the look and feel of this site and I probably won’t be using custom fonts like I did here. Also I’ll try to implement some flash to make my site flashy-er.
No Comments »Suggestions please
Thursday, February 4th, 2010I’m playing with the layout of this site, and was hoping for some suggestions.
So far I have widened the whole site. I have wide screen monitors everywhere I use the internet, so I need to know if this fits your normal browser window, it fits mine no problem. I also enlarged the font which should help readability.
I was thinking of also:
- added a horizontal menu
- changing the header up (possibly adding graphics)
- changing the sidebar (don’t know what though)
- dropping the ‘blog.’ an integrating the blog with mardena.com a little more seamlessly. This way you’d only have to type http:///mardena.com instead of blog.mardena.com or does that really matter?
UPDATE:
OMG! I forgot to add pictures to the last two posts! I’ll add them right away!!!
CSS3
Friday, January 22nd, 2010Okay so I’m playing with some of these new features that css3 has to offer. Unfortunately most of them aren’t supported by Internet Explorer and definitely none of them are supported by Explorer 6 (which we happen to use at my work). So for you Firefox and Safari users this should work out fine.
So far I have implemented the border-radius feature and am going to try the @face-font, so you should start to see some changes occurring soon. (but not if you use IE)
The border radius is still in development if you want to use them they are browser specific at the moment:
* -moz-border-radius-topleft / -webkit-border-top-left-radius
* -moz-border-radius-topright / -webkit-border-top-right-radius
* -moz-border-radius-bottomleft / -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius
* -moz-border-radius-bottomright / -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius
For the custom fonts (which actually worked in IE6) use:
font-family: ’3dumb’;
src: url(‘font/3Dumb.eot’);
src: local(’3Dumb’), local(’3dumb’), url(‘font/3Dumb.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
}
Where the url(‘font/3Dumb.ttf’) is the directory on your server where the font is uploaded. You can find free fonts at Font Squirrel
I’ll be sure to add more as I implement them.
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