Tag: prose

Okay, this time my ‘Current Theme’ is The Journalist v1.9 by Lucian E. Marin (via Design > Themes). I’ve opted for the original two column instead of one column and kept the ‘pale red’ background color, along with the distracting background image of reddish swirls, flowers and leaves set to a ‘fixed’ position. Two scrollbars were placed for the ‘content’ (floating on the left) and ‘sidebar’ (floating on the right). I know these two are distracting as well but I wanted the scrolling for the ‘content’ independent from the ‘sidebar’. Plus, the look is shortened and no scrolling up and down is needed except for when reading. I like how the elements in shown for both ‘page’ and/ ‘post’ entries: author, time/date stamp, category and tag. The ‘leave a comment’, however, seems out of place underneath the post title. Let’s hope this theme is a keeper.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Well, I’m still using the ‘Quentin’ theme for free here at WordPress.COM. Another scrollbar was added to my paid CSS stylesheet for the bottom bar (or ‘menu’) section. This is how I envisioned the look of my weblog site: a static look of the text containing my blogs above with the widgets containing researching tools and photos below. I didn’t like the idea of using the ‘main’ scrollbar of the internet browser. I like mine short and sweet (pun intended).

Only a portion of the post (or page) is seen. But for the more curious and patient readers who want to read the rest of the text there is always the scrollbars for the ‘content’ and ‘menu’ section. To spice up the look of my weblog site, I’ve changed the background color of the ‘body’ from the original ‘maroon-brown’ to ‘light cream’ and the ‘content’ from ‘light cream’ color to ‘pale weak read’. Then the clipart of red scrolls and flowers (that I originally used for the ‘DePo Masthead’ theme) is set to float right. I’ve added a solid border of 3 pixels in ‘maroon-brown’ for the ‘body’ to give the look of a frame.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Okay, I couldn’t help myself and went back to the ‘Quentin’ theme for free here at WordPress.COM. I tried to get used to the new ‘DePo Masthead’ theme and added the nice ‘reddish background of swirls and flowers but missed the big fonts and all the other features from this current theme of rustic browns. So once again, I’ve made more adjustments to the width and set that to 750 pixels. The auto feature stretched the words within the ‘contents’ too wide. I couldn’t figure out why there was this yellow line hanging out to the right of the ‘rap’ section and found the answer could be remedied by setting the float from ‘left’ to ‘right’. In addition, I’ve decided to add more text from my ‘blogroll’ and photos for the DB books and products, which includes the working links back to his weblog site. I’m being a booger and don’t know how many times I’ve switched themes just to make everything appear perfect. I do hope this one will last for awhile.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

I’ve discovered a few minutes ago that when the internet browser is minimized, the humongous ‘Blog Title’ comes downward and the ‘menu’ (or top/navigation) bar and becomes two lines. This also happened when I set the screen resolution to 800 by 600 pixels. I’ve figured out how to make this booger work by setting the ‘color’ to match the background color, which happens to be ‘pale weak red’; since the ‘original’ font colors of the ‘DePo Mast’ theme happens to be reddish. It’s too bad there is no ‘color options’ to choose and I got too lazy to make the color changes.

Earlier, I was trying to find a nice background with a ‘fixed’ scroll. So I went through the cliparts via my word document, pasted the images into the paint program, renamed and saved the images to my local files, uploaded the .jpg images into my WordPress.COM ‘Media Library’, pulled up the ‘jpg’ links, pasted the link into my upgraded CSS stylesheet and tested each images one by one by pressing the ‘Preview’ button. It turns out that any background image distracts from reading my words, mostly regurgitated from others and spun around as my rants, which are my opinions only. Fools!

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Yippie! I’m happy again. I’ve made the new ‘DePo Masthead’ theme work for me! First, I edited almost all the ‘width’ to ‘auto’ and that solved my screen resolution problem for the more myopic readers. Second, I did a double digit code of ’22’ to make the humongous masthead disappear. As a result, my ‘menu’ (or top/navigation) bar sits nicely above the ‘Blog Title’ — Flynn’s Blogs. The ‘Tagline’ — ‘A personal weblog site on alternative topics.’ — could be viewed with a ‘mouse over’ the ‘Blog Title’. I suppose the ‘Support’ team got my ticket about the bugs because I noticed that my topbar, which was originally in alphabetical order, now matches my ‘page order’.

When I fill out my ‘Support’ ticket for WordPress.com issues, I try to make sure that I’m as detailed as possible. This is because my former employer was a monster, or number one company worldwide, and they require someone to fill out the HelpDesk or Remedy tickets properly, promptly and very precisely. You may do more research by locating my Flickr.com account. In one of the pictures, there are two chemtrails located above two towers, which was where I used to work. Oh, and the ‘crybaby’ was my boss. So if anyone from the Latino community of the Bay Area knows someone with this ‘Native’ label, I’m that trouble-maker, not that I’m but a former blessing in disguise, really.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Meh! I’m trying the new ‘DePo Masthead’ theme by Derek Powazek/Noel Jackson. I think this is the theme I had in mind whereby the ‘content’ (or page) portion to the blogging material is smack dap in the middle of the screen to give the appearance of a nice book. Unfortunately, it works for a screen resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels instead of the 800 by 600 pixels because their ‘default’ body width is 1000px and not my preferred 750 pixels. It does not automatically adjust for that smaller resolution.

I believe the reason why it’s called a ‘masthead’ is because the ‘Blog Title’ — Flynn’s Blogs — is so big that I made it disappear way above and out of view by editing the ‘margin’. The colors are a basic white background with red as the rest of the color. I may change this color later on. But for the meantime, it takes awhile to get used to the layout.

The fonts are mostly ‘Arial’ and that’s normal enough. I do notice lots of reference to the number ’33’ within the ‘original’ codes of the CSS stylesheet by the designers. And for some fun, I’ve incorporated the number ’33’ into the codes for my ‘margins’, ‘letter spacing’, ‘font size’ and ‘width’. So y’all know about the ‘fellow brothers’ that I’ve been mentioning in my blogs. Y’all are catching on to the scheme of things now, eh.

Anyway, the main reason why I like this new theme is because there are three widgets located at the bottom. I am able to organize my ‘archives’ in the middle sidebar with two ‘text widgets’ on the left and right sidebar. I could even press the ‘F11’ function button located at the top of a standard keyboard and still not see the ‘bottom widgets’.

This is neat and simple and serves my current purpose. But if I could only find the code and edit that to reduce the width of the ‘sidebar’, ‘footer’, ‘content’ and ‘menu’ section to 750 pixel for screen resolutions with 800 by 600 pixels, I’d be a happy camper. I’m clicking on my favorite forum sites and I see their websites automatically adjusts to fit the smaller screen resolutions.

Oh, I just found out that the ‘display’ doesn’t do well when I ‘change zoom level’ of my internet browser. The ‘menu’ doesn’t stay static for higher zooms as I place the ‘mouse over’ these selections. I’m not happy again! I will have to find a compromise for the overall width. I like how the top portion of the page stands out like reading a magazine, though.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Meh! This time I’m trying the three-column theme ‘Andreas09’ by Andreas Viklund. It set it in purple color, centered both the header and sitename and reduced the width for 750px with overflow of hidden. My weblog site is best viewed at a screen resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels. For the more myopic readers and depending on the internet browser, zooming would help make for large fonts. I like this one better because it shows my blogroll list to the right and the DB stuff to the left. The center looks somewhat like a book. Please take a gander if y’all want to feast on that which is nice and tidy for once. I think I’ll redo the categories and tags section and maybe add more ‘static’ pages to ‘force’ to the look of a mini-forum.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Y’all know what? I swear my ideal weblog site will never be achieved. After looking at some (self) hosting sites via WordPress.ORG, I’m staying here with WordPress.COM for free (except the 15 credits for the paid CSS upgrade and another 15 credits paid for one domain name).

Anyway, I made myself a compromise and stuck with the ‘DayDream’ theme and made the ‘Books signed by DB’ work as a ‘text widget’, which is now among the other ‘widgets’ in the sidebar (or rather bottom-bar) of large enough fonts for people with ‘clicking-randomly-on-weblinks’ sickness.

The one column theme works well for my purpose of keeping the ‘content (or ‘page’) section towards the top of my weblog site with the help of the ‘div style’ code for vertical scrollbar. This means the each post (or page) entry will be fixed at a width of 500 pixels by a height of 350 pixels. I determined that the width of 450 pixels was not wide enough.

I also narrowed down the height of the navigation (or top bar) to 25 pixels from 50 pixels because there are now seven (7) ‘Main’ (or parent) pages. The reduction of ‘main pages’ was made possible with four ‘static’ pages lumped under the ‘Site map’, which I renamed as ‘About site’; even though the permanent link is labeled as ‘content’ (without the letter ‘s’ like in ‘Table of Contents’).

The logic for the ‘page order’ of these seven remaining items was based on that nice Christian publication. Because I’m too lazy to go downstairs to get the booklet, I had to visually ‘flip’ through the pages as if I were reading the contents during morning mass, everyday for over a year of being unemployed thanks to TPTB!!!

As a result, the order of my ‘static’ pages are as follows:

• Home > Pages (which really should be ‘Contents) > About site > Book > Recent post

Beside the two pages — ‘About me’ and ‘Content’ — being left as ‘static pages’, I’ve changed the colors for the ‘header’ and ‘navigation’ to reddish. I then set the ‘Colour Schemes’ to ‘Blue’ via the Design > Day Dream Options under the Dashboard. This is the ‘default’ setting and whatever colors were entered in the paid CSS stylesheet will be picked up instead of the ‘Blue’ color.

I’m finished because it’s almost 02:00AM (Pacific Time). I’ll have to force myself to be satisfied with this theme for the meantime and stop changing the layout. It’s getting ridiculous to become preoccupied with a weblog site; while I twiddle my thumbs and wait for practically nothing.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Okay, I really need to learn self-hosting. I’m back again to the ‘Quentin’ theme because it’s cooler on my eyes and there are ‘Permanent Links’ not only to the ‘posts’ but also to each of my static ‘pages’. For the two ‘main pages of my weblog site — the ‘Home’ page and the ‘Site map’ page, I’ve tweaked the ‘div style’ code to the vertical scrollbar to a longer height of 450 pixels. The rest of the ‘pages’ remain at a height of 350 pixels for the vertical scrollbar.

I cannot make up my mind because I’m never satisfied until I get the elements in their proper place. But because I’m not technically knowledgeable in PHP and SQL, I’m still here at WordPress.com and not at WordPress.org. I wanted my page to be the height of at least the height of a computer screen (to avoid using the main scrollbar of the internet browser) But since this is not practical in a business world, I’ve decided that my ‘Blog pages’ show at most is 2 posts’ (via Settings > Reading of the Dashboard). So this means one post stacks up nicely on top of the other at 350 pixels.

I know there will be more modifications. In the meantime, I’ll think of what else to add to the sidebar. I do hope ‘Google’ doesn’t pick up the images without permission. But that cannot be avoided. Also, I’ve been testing the screen resolution between 800 by 600 pixels and 1024 by 768 pixels. The images of the two main webpages barely show up with smallest resolution. The next largest screen resolution accommodates both my main webpages and the ‘text widgets’ to the ‘Signed books by DB’.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

After learning how to use the ‘div style’ code for making vertical scrolls to my post (or page) entries, I’ve selected another theme. This time it’s ‘Almost Spring’ by Becca Wei. The color sheme is green and orange. It works well with a screen resolution of 800 by 600 pixels but better with 1024 x 768 pixels. Although the lower resolution is better on my eyes, the next screen resolution works better with WordPress.com. No wonder I kept using the bottom scroll!

Anyway, there are only two compromises when selecting my newest theme. The ‘Previous entries’ or the ‘Next entries’ selections are located out of view at the bottom of the entries for the screen resolution of 800 by 600 pixels. And when the ‘meta’ information located underneath the title of the post gets too long, it moves another line. This makes the appearance of the blog jump lower by one line.

I’ll keep not only the screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixel but this newest theme because it has some color, along with the preferred time/date stamp to each of my entries. As a result, I’ve removed redundant widgets and kept only four: search, text (for the main menu), stats and spam. I wonder if I should update all my blog entries with this new vertical scrolls code.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

First, thanks to ‘dark ones’ of TPTB, I’ve nothing else to do except perfect my weblog site, which hardly gets anymore visits nowadays. After attending daily mass at our local church and blogging at WordPress.com for over one year, I finally got my web pages in their proper order.

I modeled my ‘pages’ after this Christian publication. I liked the layout so much that in two days I figured out what the missing ‘page’ was: a cover sheet for my ‘web-book’! Originally, I had placed the elements of a typical book under the parent page of ‘Home’ but felt something wasn’t right.

I already had a ‘web-book’ page but didn’t know what to do with that one and had deleted the page last week. Now that the ‘web-book’ page is located at the end of my ‘Main Pages’, the Manage > Pages section is cleaner and more logical.

Without the < !– nextcode — > code, I would not have been able to consolidate the many individual pages of my ‘web-book’ from over five dozen to twenty-four published pages. They are located under three ‘matters’: two fronts, one body and two backs.

These ‘pages’ are supposed to be static and outside the normal blogging activity. Although I came across responses from some forum members of WordPress.com about not liking static pages (like my front, ‘Home’ page of Dante’s illustration), I like the option. The rests are ‘posts,’ which still contain my rants unfortunately.

Second, I felt something else wasn’t right with my pages. Yesterday, I had re-created the ‘About’ page to describe this weblog site. But this was not a satisfactory decision. Because my ego is strong, I really wanted to ‘About’ page to describe me, Fluffy von der Flynn.

I decided to move the ‘author’ data from the ‘Body-matter’ section to the ‘About’ page, which is similar to the ‘FAQ’ page of questions and answers, and then finally created a ‘Profile’ page, which contains a descriptive list view of moi.

Third, after already creating a longer page describing this weblog site from the ‘About’ page, I decided to paste that data onto the ‘Site map’ page instead. This page is for those readers who click my weblink on the only one referrer, a dedicated blogger.

Fourth, I had to re-do the non-updating weblinks contained in the static ‘pages’ all over again after moving the ‘web-book’ pages away from the original location of the ‘Home’ page, which now stands alone.

I think I’m finished messing around with the static, non-updating ‘pages’ of my weblog site after re-creating four vital pages: ‘web-book’, ‘profile’, ‘about’ and ‘site-map’. For those interested in cycling through the logical process of reading my ‘web-book’ (which is by clicking the ‘Next‘ link), below is the series so far:

Home > Pages > Book > Front stuff > Front matter > Body matter > Back matter > Back stuff > Site map (repeats to Home)

Home page: This static, front page shows a photo of a couple looking at point of light surrounded by angels. This was inspired by a more colorful version on one website by ‘Madam Mews’, by the way.

Pages: The numbered list is exactly the way it appears under my Dashboard > Manage > Page section. I’ve discovered the convenience of that vertical line (located above the ‘Enter’ key of my keyboard) to separate weblinks within one line. This page really should be entitled ‘Contents’, which has a letter ‘s’ at the end, unlike my ‘Site map’ page which doesn’t.

Book: As with some of my other pages, this time I used a clipart image of a smiling, brown-colored books from Microsoft via the word document program. A thought about this page came to my mind while attending this morning’s mass.

Stuff/Matters: There are lots of articles to read. I get too wordy sometimes. So if y’all have the patience to take a gander, that’s fine with me. Only the ‘Back matter’ is pending.

Site map: It really should belong to an ‘Index’ page and not a ‘Content’ page but I didn’t bother letting the one and only referrer know because I reckon he’s too busy. By clicking on the two angel image, this takes the readers to the ‘Home’ page.

Note: There is always the weblinks located somewhere on the bottom navigation bar of each page. By placing the cursor over each weblink, a description is provided.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.