Milestones...

Taking a look at this LiveJournal, it's easy to see that I often get my head down into my work and fail to notice the passing of events in the world in general. Then again, when you're on the other side of the world, your focus is of necessity a little skewed.

Arnold Denker, the last of a breed of chess masters that flourished in the early part of the 20th century, died the first week in January, at the age of 90 (and FWIW, Denker held the title of grandmaster). I didn't know him well, but in the early '80s I corresponded with him often enough in my capacity as editor of the Florida Chess News (yes, I know, a major media outlet) to get an idea of the man behind the words. I would have liked to have known him better, but we lived at opposite ends of Florida's Atlantic coast.

Over the years since leaving Florida, I've seen Denker's name mentioned here and there in the Chess Life magazine that I get by dint of being a Life Member of the US Chess Federation (one of my better investments, made when I was in high school). He always seemed to be doing something in several places at once, which not only defined his physical energy and involvement, but also the way he played at the chessboard.

In other news, I have been hoarding several trays of 3-1/2 inch floppy disks for several years. In fact, back when I had an office above the Liberty Theater on Main Street downtown, I actually cataloged the contents of the disks, which I numbered, with the idea of finding what I might need by searching the catalog file.

That approach worked several times over the years, but I don't recall using it since moving back to Colorado from Texas. Furthermore, late last year, I became aware that neither my laptop nor my desktop have a suitable drive any more, which has pushed the 3-1/2 inch floppy into the same oblivion occupied by its larger, and less well armored 5-1/4 inch and 8 inch siblings.

From time to time, I entertained the idea of going through the files and then scrubbing the floppies so I could resell them. As anyone who might have tried something of the kind knows, that's a time-consuming process.

Now, there is a philosophy that says: "If you haven't used something for x years, you can safely throw it out." Intellectually, I grok the point. Viscerally, I shudder.

So, I came to a compromise: I'd simply go through the disks (using a USB floppy drive I'd bought for the VAIO, which I need when I am on the road, because the 3-1/2 inch floppy is far from dead Out There™), save anything of interest and then throw out the disk!

Among the stuff I've salvaged so far are some glossary files I thought I had lost forever, an ancient (but good) copy of SuperMorse (in case I feel like pursuing my General ham ticket), and a disk of the first translations I ever did for the space program.

And guess what... the first one was dated just a little over 10 years ago (11 Feb 1994)! (And man, does it read like it was done by an amateur, or what?)

I'm trying to get the stove down here in the basement to light up. In a little bit, it won't really matter, as I'll go upstairs and hit the sack. The place is looking better and better.

Cheers...

Holy redesign, Batman!

Don't ask how it started. Maybe I noticed  a page summary on someone else's LJ, and that got me interested enough to look further. After all, quoting Bogie in The Maltese Falcon, "I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble. "

My LJ had been displayed with the aid of some home-rolled HTML that I incorporated into the pre-S2 LJ customization system, I guess, several years ago. Back in the day, I thought it was pretty slick.

Tonight, after a light dinner and under the influence of a Pilsner Urquell, I dove into the arcana of S2 and, based on the "Component" style and the pioneering (from my perspective) work done by ninjamonkeyspy, the result of my effort can be found here.

An excellent piece of advice from ninjamonkeyspy was the following, regarding what to do once you switch to S2, select a layout, and click the Edit Customizations button:

I recommend going to the customization wizard and checking the box to override every option (but don't change anything you don't want changed). This way, when you click on "Edit" next to your user layer from the Your Styles page, you can see all the simple codes that customize the look of your style.

One of the things you end up with is a list of all the color codes on the screen. Frankly, I find it really hard to figure out which color code goes where, so rather than (paraphrasing Kaspar Gutman) "sitting here, shedding tears, and calling HTML names," I came up with the idea of pasting screen shots of the default screen (with a set of ugh-GLY! colors) and a screen whose color scheme I liked into Photoshop Elements 2.0 and then using the eyedropper and the Color Picker to figure out the codes for various screen colors, which made editing the user layer a lot easier and allowed me to arrive at the colors I wanted without much fuss.

I also developed a theme layer on the basis of source from ninjamonkeyspy and some additional code from kunzite1, although after looking through the code and making a few tweaks, I think I've made parts of it my own. The crucial part about a theme layer, though, is that anything you code in it doesn't take effect until you go to the Your Styles page and modify the theme of the appropriate style.

And if nothing I've said means anything to you, well... we'll always have Paris.

(I think I'm having a Humphrey Bogart flashback!)

Cheers...