Ne’er has that particular Homerism been more appropriate than at this moment.
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.)
Make It Easy For The Spiders To Crawl What You Provide
Words I never thought I’d see used together: “Web standards”, “coding”, “hip hop beat”, “rap”. And yet, we have this:
“Nice find”/hat-tip goes to Aron.
Apologies For The Virtual Mess
Regular readers will no doubt have noticed that this site is undergoing some visual changes. I had grown tired of the old look and thus am undertaking a bit of a rehabbing. There are all sorts of nits to fix (the archives page doesn’t work correctly, for instance) and I felt that I needed some inspiration.
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.
About That Super-Secret Project…
The full reason for sporadic updates here at Literal Barrage can finally be revealed:
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.
The Next Generation Of Social Networking Sites
FaceSpace and MyBook are out, these badboys are in. I’ve stumbled across a few “social networking” sites over the past few days that are definitely worth a look or two from you, my loyal reader[s]:
- 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.
Super Link Fighter II: Ultra Hyper Mega Championship Tab Dump Edition
My browsers on each and every machine I have access to have been collecting open tabs like some hideously geeky HTTP-fueled version of Garbage Pail Kids/M.U.S.C.L.E. figurines/Pogs/[insert some other non-Pokemon hackneyed pop cultural reference here] and so, in order to unburden myself fully, I offer the following compendium of links. Consider it some sort of bizarre Internet confessional, wherein you, my loyal readers, bear witness to my hideously packrat-ish collection of links aggregated over too long a time.
Click through, if you dare – there are some real gems, I assure you.
The format goes: [Machine] – [Browser], FYI.
Continue reading “Super Link Fighter II: Ultra Hyper Mega Championship Tab Dump Edition”
Naked Time!
Do not adjust your vertical nor your horizontal — I’m participating in CSS Naked Day ’07 as a way of “showing off” the X/HTML behind my long-delayed theme. It’s a way of promoting good markup (I think I come pretty close there) and of just plain gettin’ nekkid in public.
*grin*
The mellow tones of my regular theme will return tomorrow.
Up From Humble Beginnings
It’s hard to believe, but Google, the current King of the Internet[s], sprang up from humble beginnings at Stanford back in 1998. Want proof? Here are the pictures that capture the ragtag nature of the first revision of the Little Search Engine That Could And Eventually Did.
Palette Swap!
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.
Required Daily Viewing
First off, a love song, sung by geeks, gone horribly, horribly awry:
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)”: