Say Something...

Before I get onto my high horse today, I'd like to welcome you all to the new somewhat improved Say Something layout. I've been running this two bit gig for a few months now and while I liked the previous layout, I always thought it could be made easier to read my dubious excuse for content, especially considering how much I tend to crap on and on once I get going.

So I jumped onto the web to look for a new template. I wanted a wider main body to make the paragraphs less congested. I was also after a floating banner with some fancy drop shadows that screams Web 2.0 with enough customisation to keep the same overall colour scheme. Unfortunately such a wish is too much to ask, especially if you do not possess a back to front understanding of HTML like me. Last Wednesday was largely consumed by me trying to work out what all those lines of text did. Help sites were referenced and elements were tinkered with, and in the end I managed to come up with the image below.


Overall I was reasonably pleased with this outcome, though I could not for the life of me figure out how to change the colour of the background outside my own body and sidebar. The fishy header came from a shot I had taken on holiday in China some time ago. Fish do wonderful things when presented with a bag filled with grain. They can do all sorts of tricks that would lead you to disown every other pet you had ever owned. I'm serious.

In the end I got fed up with all the fiddling and prodding around required and went back to a template fully supported by Blogger. It kind of stinks that there are only a handful to choose from the in built menu, but for now I have settled for a stretchier version of my old layout which probably only took them five minutes to alter four lines of coding. No rabid fish frenzy here, maybe someday though, maybe someday...

And with that 'little' introduction, I suddenly find myself with half a post done and dusted. Well, goodnight folks and have a safe trip home! Waffling on has never been easier when presented with a keyboard. The extent of this has never been so pronounced, as I discovered to my dismay when I managed to hit the 1000 character limit for wall posts on Facebook while trying to explain the merits of sound systems to Darren on his Wall.

For those of you untouched by the all corrupting clutches of Facebook, a Wall is used when people who you see every single day wish to communicate with you and can't be arsed walking up to you and carry out a proper conversation. This is made particularly worse if both parties involved happen to be in the same computer lab. Double your sadness rating for the win if you are sitting right next to said person.

I suppose my tendency to overwrite comes from all those essays I wrote back at high school. After all, a minimum of 800 - 1000 words is an awful lot to produce in an hour and sentences are dragged on and on, fleshed out with the highest level of detail possible. When a sentence goes on for more than four lines, you know you're probably in a bit of trouble. Reading over one's lines again often lets you pinpoint the moment your paragraph lost all sense, but that's nothing a few punctuation marks can't fix most of the time...

And so this curse of wordiness carries on into real life with reports, assignments and unfortunately birthday cards. I'm not sure how I can run out space when all I have to say is "Happy Birthday, don't screw it up", but I can find a way. Running out of space doesn't help when you have handwriting as large as mine and halfway through writing War and Peace, you're suddenly forced to reduce your well wishing into the corner of someone else's greetings.

I think that's all from me for now. If you're looking for someone to ghost write your autobiography or some sort of instruction manual, you know where to find me. It can't be that hard, I mean Strauchanie even has one out now...