RETRO POST #02: Personal Blog Colophon
From my personal blog (before Archinect)
Authored 2004-04-21 thru 2004-04-25

** 01/13/05 NOTE: These posts are an accumulation of colophon items while working on setting up my personal blog (investigations & customizations). Though they are not entirely architectural, they do provide a look into the pre-archinect enthusiasm I had for blogging.

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In the end...
Authored on 04/21/04 @ 04:02:05 AM

Was that a bird chirping? Sun coming up? I've tweaked the colors of this blog for 2 hours now. Essentially, I have used a Pantone to RGB color scheme that directly corresponds to colors found on my body: black (pupils), white (eyeball), blue (cornea), brown (hair), tan (skin), and pink (lips). The kids and I used my new Pantone Color Guide last week to match our body colors with eachother. Surprisingly, I have a bit of yellow around my pupil and they do not. Nicole's eyes are a bit greener than ours, which are more of a cool blue/gray.

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First Movable Type Customization Session
Authored on 04/23/04 @ 00:01:40 AM

Convert to PHP: changed code to php so I can explore photoblogs and other dynamic web pages.

Categories Display: changed front page to display list of categories with number of posts. Took a while to find -- enjoy the link, if you are setting up MT for the first time.

Along the same lines, Elise Bauer's "Learning MovableType" blog is amazing in its simplicity. From www.elise.com/mt... "Tips and tricks and helpful things I've learned while using the Movable Type web publishing system."

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Photoblogs
Authored on 04/24/04 @ 00:04:35 AM

I'm so enamored with PhotoBlogs.org that I can not decide on a style/template to use or to create one from scratch. The PixelCharmer website has great site organization: about, resume, portfolio, photos, field notes (journal). Of note is the way she organizes not only by topic/category but by process, too. In my case, process could be analysis, concept, ideation, selection, synthesis OR 1D, 2D, 3D, CAD, NET, ARCH, TEACH. Essentially, I'd like to organize my work around these "layers" of organization.

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CSS Centering & Menu Mods
Authored on 04/24/04 @ 02:52:51 AM

Reconfigured the page by centering the DIV elements with a wrapper after the BODY tag. This makes for a much cleaner presentation with a fixed-width of 750 pixels. Also, I added a background image (skin.gif) keeping with the "body color" theme; each pixel represents a pore.

Updated the menus to look consistant; they always have a link back to HOME & all caps. Next project is to explore photoblogs and maybe break the site up into separate blogs (about, resume, portfolio, photos, journal). Also, I want to create an alternate color scheme for printing and add it to the calendar column with a hot swapable pull-down. I should probably exchange the brown and faded light blue colors to lighten up the page.

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Style Changer
Authored on 04/25/04 @ 03:54:33 AM

Added a PHP Style Changer as planned and created screen.css and print.css for starters. Had to use $MTBlogURL to locate the CSS file.