For the Love of the Game

My good friend Chris introduced me to Hattrick.org a few weeks ago. It's a system that allows you to act as a virtual Football (the European version, not the American Gridiron version) Club owner, trading players, hiring/firing coaches, building up your arena, managing supporters and more.

There are over 150,000 people playing from around the world, and the detail in the game is pretty impressive. It's free to play and it usually takes about a week to get your team set up for you after you sign up.

After first regarding it with some degree of skepticism, I decided to give it a try.

I'm hooked. So hooked, in fact, that I spent most of my free time today creating logos, pictures and a web site for this fictional team: the Cawdor Kings.

Okay... back to work.

No More Tables - Part II

I have received some feedback, thanks to those who took the time to write me. If you see something odd, or you'd like to make a comment on the new look, please let me know (click on the Contact Me link to the left).

Based on the scotch-tape and bailing wire version of my CSS site (v0.5 beta) Here are some things I have noticed:

• IE 5.5 and IE 6 render the page a little differently, but it looks essentially the same.


• Netscape 4.x renders the page as text only with zero layout.


• The page looks okay in Netscape 7, but it still needs work.


• The current releast of Opera (7.11) is a buggy piece of software that desperately needs 7.2.


• Opera 6.06, however, renders the page most beautifully with a few exceptions on the right menu area.


• Mozilla 1.4 looks pretty good with the biggest problem being margins on the left.


• No reports from Safari users.

I hope to have some time to fix it up a little today.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be on vacation for 2 weeks so, this CSS update will have to wait.

No More Tables

I decided to redeploy my site entirely in CSS2 today and set to the task with help from the following:

• Dan Shafer - He has made the first 4 chapters of his book HTML Utopia - Designing Without Tables Using CSS available online. I downloaded the PDF, read through it and got started.


• Eric Costello - proprietor of Glish.com. Much of the CSS is borrowed from his site. Specifically, the CSS Layout Techniques section.


• Dave Tanchak - A colleague who designed an instructional site sans tables. Okay, so he didn't actually help me... professional competitiveness led me to it.

Features of this new design:

• No more tables determining layout. Everything is done with CSS2.


• The new layout is a Fixed-Fluid-Fixed version. The menus on the left and right are fixed sizes, with the middle section, containing the main body of content, is resizable.


• I added a random Googlism to the page in the upper right corner. Reload for more examples.

What I am planning to do next:

• Fix any problems that arise in this version (I'm calling it v0.5 Beta right now)


• Improve the design. This was just a quick slap-together.


• Extend this new design beyond the home page.


• Allow the user to select the style sheet that is in use. I'll need to create 2 or 3 different styles.


• Allow the user to select the font and font size that is displayed.


• Set a cookie for the above two items so that users don't lose the setting they selected.


• Create a "Print Version" style sheet.

There may be problems with the site not functioning as expected, or at all in certain browsers. If you find anything strange, please let me know!

Thank you. That is all.

New Hardware

I just got one of these in my mouth. The procedure involved needles, scalpel-like things, stuff being ground, shaved, sliced and mutilated, there was smoke, enamel flying every which way....but I survived.

Barely.

Riding in Style

Last week, I discovered a place in Vancouver that will rent a Segway to anyone with a credit card and enough balance to stand up.

I went last Saturday at around noon, just as things were starting to get busy. Within a few minutes of my arrival, 5 people showed up.

The training is quite basic, consisting of a 15 minute video on the "Things Not To Do", and about 10 minutes of learning to stop, start, go forward & backward and how to turn.

Learning to ride is easy, with the only difficult part actually getting on and off for the first time. Because you use your balance to move the Segway forward or back, sometimes it can skitter toward you a little as you try to get on. The key is to keep the handlebars in exactly the same position as you get on.

Once you have that simple skill down, you're pretty much set to go.

There's a few photos of me zipping around the Seawall if you're interested. And I already realize I look kinda silly, but I was like a kid on Christmas.