Is it Saturday already? Time usually crawls with me, but this week seems to have gone by unusually quickly -- likely because I spent the majority of it lost in php and graphics and photos and whatnot. As I noted in the Scary-Crayon blog, I've recently decided to start using WordPress to manage the index and content pages as well -- but seeing as how I hadn't originally planned to use it to that effect and had placed it elsewhere in the site hierarchy, making that adjustment is has required some major internal structural changes. After literally sitting at the computer from 8AM to 11PM-ish on Thursday, though, I seem to have almost worked out all of the kinks there... but now, of course, I actually have to add all of the blurbs that I've written to introduce the articles since 2004 into the WP database. I've written hundreds of those things! So that may take a while, or maybe not since I'm so bloody obsessive. And even when I finish that, I'll have to tweak the layout and make some new changes in order to introduce them, as I've decided to create new categories for the game reviews and short stories (etc.) that had previously been lumped in with the miscellaneous pieces. Fun times.

So in addition to the changes to the SC blog and php code that these updates demand (which, I should note, also moved me to make some minor changes over here as well), I've also been fooling with lots of graphics stuff and text techniques in preparation for the minor layout changes. This morning, I found myself fiddling around with the Dalek at right to create a text-wrapping effect. It seems to work well in IE7 and Firefox (I have no idea how it looks in IE6 or other browsers, though), but it is problematic in that it's far too involved for its own good. I mean, I spend a lot of time doing image work on articles as it is, but somehow it seems a bit over the top to take the time to measure out and slice an image into 19 individual components (yep!) for something that hopefully takes a backseat to the text wrapping around it anyway. It might be cooler if Scary-Crayon had fewer pages and were less ostensibly text-centric -- and I'll probably do something like this on the "about" page that I design for the site and maybe even incorporate it into future tweaks to the blog -- but I can't see taking the time to do it on a regular basis. I'm almost certain that there are programs out there that can do this, but I'm not too confident about their quality because Paint Shop Pro also has a feature to do it and it's absolute rubbish. I had better luck copying and pasting selections snapped to a grid and going from there. There's a way to replicate the effect without slicing an image by using sandbag divs -- this article was actually what inspired me to attempt to do it via the image slicing method -- but using fixed image backgrounds and modifying external css rules is really impractical for individual articles. Ah well.

Okay, that is all for now. Thanks for reading, even if that didn't make a whole lot of sense to you! I will probably continue fooling with this for the next few hours before taking a break to actually work on a new SC comic/article/whatever. Ja! 🙂

In addition to A Crayon Haiku #28 -- which really must be seen to be believed -- the main and content pages are now active in their table-free CSS and PHP form, and the same goes for all articles starting now. It's kinda sad to see the tables go -- I've had a ten year love affair with those special little tags -- but ah well, times change. Besides, it's not like anyone'll be able to tell the difference! I've also set up a little redirect thing, so visitors to the old blog should automatically end up here now. (If that's you, welcome!) And that's about all I've got for now. Ja!

That it is, along with a new piece -- Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #36. Poor guy. 🙁

In other news, CSS and PHP are awesome! I've moved well past the "hey, this is useful!" phase and have entered the world of "holy shit, look what I can do!", in which one plays around with the code to achieve nifty results simply because one can. Take a look at the following mockups: print-css.php, dphell-css.php, and main3-css.php. Now I haven't replaced the articles to fit the appropriate pages or done anything with the bottom area yet -- that's the easy part -- but look at the header and the page titles. Pretty standard, right? But here's the kicker -- with the exception of one or two variables specified at the top of each document, these three files are exactly the same. They all call upon a header -- the same header -- that's filled with fun PHP that basically says, "If this variable equals 'Main' (thus marking it as the main page), print the 'What is... ???' text and don't hotlink the title graphic." And for each of the archive links, the PHP says, "If this variable equals 'Print' (and this is the Print link), don't output the link HTML." And since all of the linking and image rollover stuff is defined via the CSS, that results in the graphic text remaining highlighted. Even the document titles are controlled in this way! So I feel pretty accomplished right now -- PHP is pretty sweet stuff and though I'm doing relatively simple stuff (includes, if/else statements, etc.) I think I'm getting the hang of it. Expect me to be using more of it on SC in the near future. 😈

Hope you didn't find that to be too boring, minna-san! Ja!

Not technically a Scary-Crayon update, but since we're talking SC design stuff, I've marked it as such. Read on if that sort of thing interests you! (more...)

New short "comic" for the masses -- a little something I like to call Cereal Noir. Hope you enjoy it! Especially since I'm considering doing more pieces along these lines in the future. I also wrote a lengthy blurb in the Site Talk box on the main and content pages, for those of you with really good eyesight who don't mind squinting at the tiny text. And, of course, Wesoteric has been linked over there now. 😀 (more...)