Lebanon

July 26, 2006 · Filed Under Thoughts, World News · 1 Comment

I feel sorry for this area and its inhabitants. It sounded as if it had just about got over the last episode of violence. Things were picking up, getting back to normal.

Many years ago, I can’t recall exactly when, but I may still have been at school at the time, I remember seeing some news footage of the troubles in Lebanon. One image has stuck in my mind to this day. What I saw was this fighter blasting away over the top of a wall. Nothing strange you may utter. Well there was. It was the way this guy was blasting away. He was not aiming at anything, in fact he was not using the sights on the assault rifle he was brandishing, but what got me most was that he seemed to be having a pretty damned good time. He was enjoying himself, like he was involved in some kiddie cowboys and Indians game. The fact that he was possibly hitting innocents never even seemed to cross his mind.

From this incident I concluded that while man gets a kick out of shooting and war the world will have no peace. Shooting as an act is fun, many men and some women know this. I know it too because I used to spend a lot of time shooting. I also know that it is quite easy to detach yourself from the killing aspect because you feel satisfied with having hit a target. Only your target, if it was living, no longer exists. Luckily not everyone of us is capable of such detachment, however more than enough of us are. This means that conflicts will continue, at least until we find something much less violent which gives us the same kick.

Pontification over. Until the next time.

Share:

Tags:

CSS

July 26, 2006 · Filed Under Technology and Gadgets · Comment

Do you know what CSS stands for? Possibly, but if you don’t it stands for ‘cascading style sheets’. What are these things? Well, they are a set of rules, almost like program code which you can use to style web sites - things like making characters bigger or changing the colour behind some area of text, right up to an including building entire web pages, thus avoiding the dreaded ‘tables’. Don’t worry, anyone who knows a wee bit about the non-wooden variety of tables to which I am referring, but these tables are a bit like the tables you can build in Word and suchlike, only these are used for dividing web pages into a series of boxes into which you can pop images, text and other things.

Unfortunately my intermittent bouts of web design have not really allowed me to get a hang of CSS for much other than fairly basic stuff, even though I have two very good books on the subject. I also have a rather neat style-sheet editing program which I invested in some time back. It’s called, appropriately enough ‘Style Master‘. I’ve only just started to see its real potential, and it does help simplify the task of creating style sheets and keeping track of all the little, and often interrelated, rules which you need to set up, or in my case, edit. I would recommend Style Master to anyone who wants to learn CSS and their support is excellent.

I have tried building entire pages with CSS, but have always had problems getting them to work in different browsers. The problem seems to be that you need to use a number of so-called hacks to keep all of the browsers happyish most of the time. Not being a full time web designer I just don’t have the time to get and keep myself familiar with all these hacks and modifications. This is a shame because this technology, as it is known, is very powerful, and as any real web designer worth his salt will tell you, is the way web content is going to be shown to us all in the future.

I can see the day when web design will become modular but very flexible and browser compatibility problems will have become a relic from the dim and distant past. Shame I don’t live in the hazy and obscure future really.

Share:

Tags: .css, internet, style sheets, web, web design

The weather blew its top.

July 26, 2006 · Filed Under Italy, Milan · Comment

The heat gets to everyone and everything, or so it would seem. Even the weather had had enough and decided to let a few sparks fly over sizzling Milan. The sparks came in the form of the usual, here, spectacular lightening show accompanied by the deep bass drums of resounding thunderclaps. We had rain too. It lashed down for about an hour and the result was most welcoming.

I’ve just returned from one of my almost nightly ambles around my area and it was great to be out. The rain has cooled the roads and the buildings, and it cooled me too.

Our appartment is just unbearably hot and we are mulling over the idea of putting air conditioning in, despite worries about our little one’s potentially adverse reaction to the cool drafts of air.

I’m not sleeping at the moment (none of us seems to be getting much shuteye), or at least I don’t think so. I get up (I’d like to say ‘wake up’, but seeing as I don’t sleep, I can’t, technically wake up….) in the morning feeling lousy. Neither heading for bed early nor hitting the sack at 1 to 2 in the morning seems to make any difference. It’s oppressive. And also rather strange after having seen the same city under a think carpet of snow at the start of the year. An odd contrast.

At the weekend I shall be heading for the cool of the country with the little one and I’m looking forward to it. My other half, bless her soul, has to continue working until the end of next week. Hers is the only company in her street that seems to have any work on. She works for an antiques dealer, by the way, but her boss, a great chap, is addicted to his work and whereas all the other antiques dealers have drifted off on holiday, this chap would keep going all August if had his way. There always seems to be plenty to do.

I’m thinking of going out for another wander, to make the most of the cool while it lasts, which won’t be too long, the roads are already just about dry with only a few puddles managing to hang on in there.

It’s hot in the city.

Share: