Can you spell cacophony?

NaNoWriMo is going great guns so far.

I’ve kept ahead of my plan (as far as daily writing targets are concerned) so far. Last night I had a great run based mostly on a dare to include the Melbourne Cup in my story and managed about 3,500 words, which has taken me over the 10,000 mark for the first time in three goes.

I’ve been having a back-and-forth word war with my writing buddy Kamu in Port Hedland who keeps pulling ahead and making me stay up far too late. The bonus to that is that now both of us are doing really well, like this:

Naggers please note, I still expect lots of email, texts, facebook messages and the like to keep me honest.

I’ve been enjoying WriMoRadio and the pep talks that have been coming. Today we got one from author Jonathan Stroud which included this inspirational line:

Alchemists tried for centuries to turn base metals into gold. Every time we sit down and put words on paper, we succeed where they failed. We’re conjuring something out of nothing.

See. We’re not wasting an entire month. We’re making gold out of base metals!

freely ye have received, freely give (Matthew 10:8 KJV)

For a number of years I have had an idea of setting up a web host for various free (free as in speech as well as free as in beer) Christian resources.

My thinking was influenced by the verse above. We have been given abilites, gifts and finances by God. I did (and still do) find it quite inappropriate the way Christian artists, ministers and organisations behave in much the same way as the world. My particular bugbear here is the copyright protection enforced on Bible translations. But the same things goes for music or original text… wouldn’t you be better off allowing copying and free use? What is the point of writing an amazing Praise and Worship song and then only allowing those fellowships that pay the appropriate licencing fees to even sing it?

But back to my point, it looks like someone actually did something instead of just having an idea.

The Believers Resource site is somewhat spartan at the moment, but I think it has heaps of potential. Like the site says, there is plenty of free stuff available on the net, but a lot of it is of less than ideal quality. A central repository for the good stuff is a great idea.

The site asks for suggestions, and here are a couple which I will be sending on:

1. Add links to other sites where they can’t or won’t allow hosting by Believers Resource. You will still have had a look at the product and approved it. People coming to Believers Resource can still use it. It just doesn’t get downloaded locally.
2. Add a software section. I’m thinking particularly of the Sword Project.
3. The English Standard Version bible has some a module available for the Sword Project for no charge as well as being able to be read online.
4. Perhaps add a “what’s new” section, or perhaps even add a blog-like section to allow news and comments.

[My Dad][1] (*hi, Geoffrey*) is involved with an organisation in Perth called [People Against Vandalism][2].

So when I saw [this articles on the ABC][3] I immediately thought of him.

Apparently, they have developed a technique by which they can detect paint fumes as the paint spray is being used. What they do after that I suppose is still up in the air, but it sounds like a useful idea. It sounds expensive, but so is cleaning up graffiti.

[1]: http://glpowerhouse.com
[2]: http://www.pavwa.com.au/
[3]: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/26/2346978.htm “New technology to sniff out graffiti threat”

I don’t post for a couple of months and [someone actually sees my stuff and posts about it][1]. I’m speechless.

[1]: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/07/23/virtualization-short-take-14/

I am currently running three sites.

Not being one to reinvent the wheel, I am running them all with WordPress, Sandbox and Unsleepable for Sandbox, a combination I find manageable and appealing.

Unfortunately, when everything is much the same, the same problems will appear as well! Check out the following screen shots of CastletownChemist.Com under firefox and IE7 for windows:

As you can see, while similar, they do not look the same. The net seems awash with bloggers having problems with IE (firstly IE6 and even now IE7) messing with their look-and-feel. My problem (the nav menu being below the title rather than next to it) seems to be minor in comparison to some.

I found two posts from last year that have addressed the problem (both were focussed on IE6, but the problem remains): Sam Devol’s “WordPress Troubleshooting: My blog looks horrible in IE!” and Nektros’ “7 step guide to fixing your WordPress sidebar in Internet (bloody) Explorer”.

Neither of these related directly to my setup, calling for an addition to header.php in the theme file. Because Sandbox then calls another function within header.php, I needed to dig a bit further.

Now please understand, I do not know php and I only know basic programming principles, but I can look at what others have done and try to steal their ideas.

This is what I did:

1. Create an iestyle.css file in the unsleepable directory (/wp-content/themes/sandbox/skins/unsleepable)
2. Found functions.php in /wp-content/themes/sandbox

3. Edited the function sandbox_stylesheets() by adding the following code under the existing stylesheet link:

   <!--[if IE]>
   <link rel=”stylesheet” href=”<?php echo get_template_directory_uri() . “/skins/$skin/iestyle.css” ?>” media=”screen” />
   <![endif]-->

In English, this checks if the browser is Internet Explorer, and if it is, calls another stylesheet (in the directory of the current skin) and uses it in addition to the regular stylesheet (and with priority over it).

I have done this and confirmed that it does in fact give styles to the page. Now I just need to go through Nektros’ article to see what I can actually do to the CSS to improve my problem.