Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

The Star Trek pages are now sort of up as a test of the content template: http://dolari.net/test/startrek

This is an old template I've had designed for a while. Section Navigation on the left, site navigation on the right, content in the center with a banner up top and disclaimers on the bottom. I think it works.

It seemed a little monochrome having everything in flat turquoise, though (my previous versions had nice see-through background gradients that wouldn't work in a dynamically changing table), which is why I decided on adding backgrounds to the pages. I tried a V'Ger blue background, but that made it MORE boring. Using the wormhole from TMP with it's red really made the blue pop.

The links to the Star Trek pages work, but take you to broken sites, so don't click those.

What do you think?

More feedback, more fixes. Even MORE feedback may make for even more fixes, so please feel free to critique.

Off the bat, I'm making these pages for Desktop Viewing, Mobile Viewing is secondary. I hate to do that, but I'm just not that good at putting sites together that can dynamically change. I'm cheating that by allowing the tables themselves to dynamically resize themselves. It works, although it's not ideal.

First up: http://dolari.net/test

I've upped the font size on the text to make it more readable. I'd forgotten that the reaosn I used small sizes was for labelling images, which I'm doing with alt-text and tooltips, and was using it for main text. I did, however, make the "small print" very small.

Text colors and are now gold on the main page, instead of grey/black for stuff that isn't done yet. I'm hoping the [Soon] labels and that the text links don't light up are enough to signal that those pages do not yet exist. The Poop Orange for Alexandria is now dark green. Here's the thing about those colors. Each section of my website is based on a color. That color? Chun Li's outfits in SSF2T. I'm out of colors. So for Voices of Authority and Alexandria, I tried some Street Fighter Alpha colors. But a bunch of those are ALSO the same as her SSF2T colors. Im thinking of duplicating the color schemes, just making them 50% darker at this point for any new section.

There is now a background to the page, jsut to break up the monotony of the black. I actually had this as my Livejournal background, but for some reason, it would stop working after a few weeks.

Making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Thanks to some feedback and my own I HATE HOW THE TEXT LOOKSness, I've made a few changes to the proposed main landing page. Let me know if it works for you. That Supposed-To-Be-Orange-But-Its-Poop-Brown is NOT working for me.

http://dolari.net/test.

Hey y'all. Website is getting a bif update in January and a clean-up. Here's a quick shot of what the front page would look like.

I'm going for a much cleaner look to the site, but keeping the color schemes I've had since Day One. It's a little Windows 8, but I still think it looks okay-ish. It also should be dynamic and resize to the size you want it be within some limitations both small and big.

I checked it out with my phone and while it works great in a horizontal alignment, the vertical alignement is not the best.

1) Does this work for you technically? Image wise? Nothing cut off, broken, scrambled? (The links are all broken, so please don't worry about that)

2) Does it work for you aesthetically? Does it LOOK nice?

http://dolari.net/test

Does anyone else see a hand?

ANYONE ELSE?!?!?!

The Jenn's Grocery List Challenge: Create ONE dish that uses every ingredient on the list in the amounts listed. Including the wire fasteners and gas.

GO!

Recipe Review:

Wild Rice Soup: While I messed this up by not cooking the rice before I added it, it did cook in the soup and soften up nicely. This came out GREAT and I would totally do it again. The soup is nice and creamy, and the wild rice (wether it was how I made it or nice) give a nice chewy bite. Absolutely would make again. :)

Fettucine with Cream Sauce: Eh, it's good. The cream sauce is very thin, but tasty, and oddly contains no cream (cottage cheese and ricotta only). If I could thicken up the sauce it'd be fantastic, but otherwise, pretty decent. Good, would make again.

Mushrooms Italiano: I freaking messed that up big, and therefore it is disqualified from reviewing. Note to self: CAREFULLY read the recipe instead of skimming it for what you need to cook.

Nanos (Sponge Bread): This bread came out so much better than I thought it would. A good chewy, yet very slightly crunchy crust, the crumb is fairly dence but tasty and the cheese gives it a salt so that you don't even need butter on it. Cheddar Cheese may not be Roman, but it works in this bread.

Looking like next week won't get over freezing very often. TIME FOR THE YETO'S SUPREME SOUP.

This Week's Meals (3/3): Some Kind of Stir Fry Thing.

I literally didn't have pan big enough for everything, realized this was a recipe for stuffed mushrooms not sliced mushrooms and it all went sideways.

But it is now a nice, if thick, mushroom vegetable stir fry. Now I have 2.5 pounds of mushrooms to figure out what to do with.

I may have miscalculated the portion size for these meals.

Snowcake.

This Week's Meals BONUS: Nanos (Sponge Bread)

So, that Roman cookbook I have that I have no real faith in anymore? I don't put a lot of faith in the recipes anymore, but what it IS is a list of foods that I can look up online to try.

It has a recipe for Nanos, which is a cheese bread. Sounds good, but, again, no faith in the recipe (Especially as it calls for cheddar cheese, which we've previously determined is...not right). But I didn't see any other recipes for Nanos anywhere online. I found just one entry that mentioned it was a cheese bread, but no recipe. Just an entry of that it was a bread. I decided to go with the book's recipe. It actually has two different recipes, so I decided to try the first and it wasn't bad!

The crust with the cheese has got a nice bite to it, neither too crunchy, but not soft. The crumb is good, and the cheese layers give a nice taste to the bread. My only complaint was that I forgot the only bread pan I had was from IKEA, who make theirs super long and thin. So my loaf looks really long and really flat.

Also, I finally finished that bag of shredded cheddar cheese. I don't know if there was something wrong with it, but my goodness, it was the smelliest cheddar I've ever had. It was pungent.

This Week's Meals (2/3): Wild Rice Soup.

Big ole dumb me forgot to cook the rice first, so I put the soup on low heat and just let it simmer hoping to rice would soften. It did, but not much.

#thisweeksmeals

This Week's Meals (1/3): Fettuccini with Cream Sauce. Oddly, no cream in the cream sauce.

#thisweeksmeals

Ate the first MRE for the (apparently pictorial) write up. Now if you'll excuse me...I gotta go lie down. ::urp::

So, this tape has The Rock hosting Saturday Night Live.

Man hasn't aged a day

Today's "War of the Worlds" is the final episode, The Obelisk. Actually I'm really surprised at how far this show as come. From one that was obviously not taking itself seriously, goofy as hell, and not being able to determine if it's comedy, drama or horror, it goes into Season 2 as a straight up Cyberpunk Sci-Fi Drama. It's tone become super serious, and the writing goes through the roof.

I know they were cancelled early, but they did have enough lead time to actually make a last episode, which ends very hopefully, and with a tenuous peace between humans and aliens, and does it well.

I'm sad it ended, but I think the rough first season really hurt the great second season.

Now, what should I put in its place? The previous shows in this slot were the 1978 Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Space: 1999, and now War of the Worlds. What do you think? Should I go more Cyberpunk with Max Headroom? Or maybe a bit of wierd with Space Precinct? Any other suggestions?

Tonight's ST:TNG is "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2."

FINALLY, Season 4. I personally think Season 4 if TNG is its best. It's got a nice, if unintendtion, arc about family runing through the first quarter or so of the season, and has most of my favorite episodes.

It's here I thought TNG became was finally able to stand on its own feet.

I haven't deep cleaned the house since my parents were here. The price of a clean house is eternal vigilance and an aching back.