Roman Cortes constructed the above artwork, a feat which is unremarkable until you realize that he created the entire thing using HTML and CSS. Ned Batchelder has the (appropriately) jQuery-animated version of the construction to demonstrate just how flippin’ sweet the whole thing is.

I’m still dumbstruck by the sheer awesomeness of the feat. Wowsers.

(Picked up by way of John Gruber.)

“Nice find”/hat-tip goes to Aron.

While the code underlying the site is still going to be the Elbee theme I have been working on (forever!), you should notice a bunch of different visual tweaks to that code in the coming days and weeks. I’m by no means wedded to the black and white, high contrast look, but I felt that I needed to strip the site down to its essential visual “bones” and then add things back in, give myself a chance to figure out what works, what doesn’t, what needs to stay, what needs to go, etc.

So, thanks again for your patience and I’d love any feedback you might have on the subject.

I’ve been spending a good amount of time working on a side project with two other talented WordPress hackers, Stephane and Viper. The project, WPhone Admin plugin, is a WordPress plugin that aims to make administering your WP blog[s] from a mobile device, such as a PDA or cellphone, a quick and easy experience. iPhone and iPod Touch users will get an extra treat, as the interface is coded to look like a native mobile Apple application. (Our initial release announcement has a few more details.)

We’re really proud of the work we’ve put in, so head over and take a look at the site, then download a copy from the official download site.

• Open Source Food: exchange recipes, have your own rated by your fellow man and drool over the quick pictures of the mouth-watering dishes your fellow geeks have whipped up.
• Media Mythbusters: conservatives dedicated to collaboratively putting the lie to the Mainstream Media’s various spins and outright fabrications. Follow along on the MMM blog, too.
• InviteShare: Down at the moment, but if you’re sick of scrounging for invites to invite-only betas like Skitch, GrandCentral, Pownce, etc., fear no more. Head over to InviteShare and request some beta lovin’ from those on the inside who will, in turn, earn a reputation for their invite generosity. Nifty idea.

Click through, if you dare – there are some real gems, I assure you.

The format goes: [Machine] – [Browser], FYI.

Mac Pro – Safari

• Finding the right AJAX framework at Dr. Dobbs’. Original /. post here
• Blambot fonts – bestest free fonts around if you’re looking for a comic book/”graphic novel”-inspired look.
• Fight comment spammers with Project Honeypot’s http:BL. A simple PHP script and a WordPress plugin that allow for ease of use.
• Snapz Pro X wickedly cool screencap program for OS X. Not sure if it’s worth the $70 for most folks, though.
• The AAC-LA is vowing to fight the bloggers, diggers, etc. that released the HD-DVD keys. Big surprise there.
• The product list for the Apple Developer Connection. I may be going to WWDC in June. W00t!
• The Boy Mechanic: 200 Classic Things To Build. This book may well be worth checking out.
• Removing generic logins in OS X 10.4.9 over at AFP548. You don’t want to know.
• Fred! Thompson’s IMDB entry. Pull the lever for RADM Painter, if’n he announces.
• The Mac Pack – like MacHeist, only crappier.

Mac Pro – Opera

• Exguide’s WordPress themes – a couple of clean, good-looking WP themes.
• Gateworld’s guide to season 3 of Battlestar Galactica.
• The homepage of Wp-Cache 2. If you’re running a WordPress blog on a host that supports it, I would highly advise installing WP-Cache immediately – your readers and your server will thank you.
• OpenNMS homepage – this free “enterprise-grade” Network Monitoring System kicks butt and makes OpenView and Tivoli quake in their >$100,00 gold-plated boots.
• Availability Calendar WP plugin – I think I was originally going to try to help my brother’s father-in-law out making reservations for his condos in S.C. using this plugin.
• Dreamhost Trac installation guide. That plus Natmaster’s guide to installing Trac 0.10 got me squared-away enough to get my own Trac install upgraded from 0.9.6 to the latest version.
• Squiguard guides out the wazoo. I was looking into SG for some projects at work and had those links just sitting about, waiting to (never) be fully digested.
• Themes and Modules for the Drupal CMS. Useful for my upcoming site, The Knights of Old.
• A Rising Tide, my own fiddling with the open source Pligg “digg-alike” CMS suite. Pretty nice. Plus, how to add a header image to the default theme, a step I have regrettably not yet taken.
• Creating a self-signed SSL certificate. Useful for web junkies with access to their Apache root configurations.
• Stripe Generator 2.0 for all your web 2.0-y background goodness. Hit their blog for some extra fun.
• All Things Digital Walt Mossberg’s new tech site. WordPress-powered and pretty darn cool group blog.
• My own Scottish Slang Words series – I’ve been trying to get the In Series plugin working again w/WordPress 2.1 and that series was providing my best test cases.

Mac Pro – Firefox

• How to make a DVD iso out of RHEL4 CD isos – a useful, if niche, tip.
• 53 CSS techniques you couldn’t live without at Smashing Magazine – that pretty much says it all. See also SM’s free font cheatsheet, free fonts listings and CSS float theory. Honestly, you really should just bookmark Smashing Magazine and check it regularly or subscribe to their RSS feed.
• TVShows – a nice Torrent auto-downloader that keeps up with the latest episodes of your favorite shows.
• A CSS footer that just works. No idea why I never closed this one down.
• NGiNX – nifty little HTTP/S reverse proxy/server.
• Mixed metaphor movie titles that have provided some of the site taglines this blog has been running as of late.
• MarcoPolo – an adaptive “learning” location manager for Mac laptops.
• DHTML/CSS two level menu HOWTOs at HTML Dog, CSS Creator and GRC.
• Social commentary: Revenge of the Me Generation, 2 by Jeff Goldstein, America, Saving Muslim Women’s Lives by Fred Thompson, commentary on General Petraeus by Bill Frist, and not one, but two old media dinosaurs demonstrating their cluelessness in re: the big bad Internet.
• WIRED is keeping tabs on the ongoing AACS/digg saga>
• CIO.com makes a case for Macs in the enterprise environment.
• How to dynamically update DNS using DHCP requests on a Mac server, via AFP548.
• MoinMoin, a wiki engine written in Python. You could even use it to integrate your information systems.>/bizspeek<
• 100 Questions to ask your parents – good advice, make sure to take notes.
• How to back up your Mac to a Dreamhost account. ‘Nuff said.
• Calendar Server for OS X Leopard – a nice preview of what’s to come in Leopard Server.
• Twitter Tools – show your Tweets on your WordPress blog.
• AJAX made easy, CSS tabs for Prototype, Form field hints with CSS, Social color swatch development at Adobe, and How to make “sexy” buttons with CSS.
• The official Unreal Tournament 3 site goes live.

Phew. I feel better already – I just need to clear the other three machines!

*grin*

The mellow tones of my regular theme will return tomorrow.

I’ve had various and sundry people comment that the old default look/color scheme for my site was “too dark” so, in the interest of catering to the masses, I’ve done a bit of a turn-around, colorwise. Let me know what you think – the scheme still has some rough edges that I’m working on, but it’s pretty well tracking the development version of Elbee Elgee (the theme that Literal Barrage is currently running on).

So please, let me know what you think of the colors – what needs tweaking, what you like, what you don’t like, etc.

On the Elbee front, I’m quickly nearing a point where I feel like I could release it to the public. Beta 2 is approaching (yes, I know it says “4 months late” – that’s just about right…) and I think I’ll release it when I hit that landmark.

Next up, one of the absolute high points in Western action cinema, the car chase sequence from Bullitt:

From Web 0 to Web 2.0 in five minutes’ time:

Lastly, rock out to the oxymoronic “Heck No! (I’ll Never Listen To Techno)”: