19 December 2006

only partially founded fears

I had been toying with the idea of switching entirely over to Beta Blogger. I had messed around with the click-drag design before, and I just wasn't fond of the "fixed" elements on the page--the boring banner, for one thing. Also, the click-drag method is very archaic and giving me flashbacks of the ever awkward Geocities.

But I really liked the expandable/collapsible archives in the side-bar, and I couldn't get that with the older template. So this morning, with much trepidation, I saved my original template and made the switch. And after doing some web-searching for hacks and code, I've finally managed to make my journal look (sort of) the way it originally was--only with the excellent archiving.

The header was a bit more of a finagle, and I was on the right track in my touch-and-go trial-and-error editing, but I became impatient with myself and found some excellent directions for tweaking the code in another blog.

I still haven't got the widths of the post section and the side bar where I want them, but they're close enough to satisfy me for now.

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When I was shuffling through some papers in one of my desk drawers yesterday, I finally located my invitation to the BU Holiday Party "Evergreen Dream." One of my coworkers has been urging me to come along since last week; and I had wanted to say that I would, but I thought that I had accidentally thrown the postcard in the bin. Actually, this coworker suggested that I had accidentally tossed it away, but I thought that was rather out of character for me. I never throw anything away, and my desk stands as a monument to this fact--or, at any rate, the clutter piled a foot high on a back corner of my desk should be evidence enough.

So I'll be going the party after work for food and beverages. I'm looking forward to shameless noshing ... and to not having to make my own dinner tonight.

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Torchwood's "Out of Time" was, as predicted, finished downloading when I arrived home last night. It has to be one of the funnier, and also one of the sadder, episodes to date. I think my favourite segment is when Ianto takes the time-travelers shopping. He's in the middle of explaining the magic of the automatically opening door when one of the ladies exclaims, "Bananas!" in sheer delight. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, bananas completely out-rank the technological advances of mankind.

I totally approve of the plot and character development with the Gwen/Rhys relationship. They just can't stay together, in my opinion--not when Gwen can never tell him anything. Judging by the sneak-peek, next Sunday's episode looks like it's going to up that drama quotient.

My only grudge against this episode was that the writers didn't really let us find out anything new about Captain Jack Harkness. Jack was sitting in a carbon monoxide-filled automobile, and he couldn't share anything about himself with a man who's about to die? I don't know if it's due to something truly complex about the character, or if the writers just don't know what they want his entire back story to be yet. Either way, it was kind of frustrating. He's such a lonely character, and his expression was downright heart-breaking as John Ellis was dying.

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