Tag Archives: epic fail

Thursday in the Zone

Irritating Moments in Childhood Gaming

Leave a comment

As a child of the 90s with a preference for Nintendo games, I was raised on the SNES, N64, and Gamecube, with occasional bouts on the Playstation 1 and even a Sega GameGear (handheld game system) for a brief time. So it’s little surprising to learn that many of my memorable childhood gaming moments come from that period of gaming, when it seemed every game side-scrolled, and controllers were physically attached to the console.

However, not all those memories are the most pleasant; some are annoying, some are frustrating, and some are downright laughable. Without further ado, here’s a short, audiovisual trip down “Argh! Not AGAIN!” Memory Lane. 😛

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

Tune the following video to about 1:25 and you’ll see why Baby Mario infuriated me (as well as many other gamers). With that insistent crying, Baby Mario could potentially qualify as a teen pregnancy deterrent. xD

I was primarily a “button-masher” on fighting games like Soul Calibur 2 for the Gamecube…which meant that the science of doing combos went over my head, completely. Oh, sure, I could press all the buttons in sequence, but it would be in slow motion. Occasionally I would get a lucky combo to trigger (unlike on Mortal Kombat, next video down), but more often than not I stuck to “A does this, B does that, and A and B together do this.”

I had the same problem on Mortal Kombat–I’m not sure I ever got a combo to trigger on that game, because I was always too slow. Either that, or the quarter-circle and half-circle Control Stick commands messed me up. (This is a beginner tutorial, but it illustrates most of the combos, and their difficulty.)

Just recently, I found out I never truly finished StarFox 64. Why? Because I quit trying to fly through all those silly arches on the Corneria level! (Tune the following video to 2:30 to see them in action.)

As an 11-year-old, I found it difficult to maneuver the ship on the first couple of passes, and when I advanced to the next level without flying through them, I figured “well, it was probably only a level decoration anyway.” Some level decoration, huh? LOL!

Bonus: Other Annoying Moments Not Captured on YouTube

  • Getting almost to the end of a MarioKart 64 race in 1st place, only to be hit by a Spiny Shell in the last curve
  • Getting all the way to the end of a stage and dying before you can save (any game)
  • Making a series of epic jumps onto tiny platforms, only to get to the last jump and miss it, falling all the way back to the bottom (Super Mario World)
  • Being left behind by the uncontrollable side-scrolling screen and dying (any side-scrolling game)
  • Trying to get through an area quickly (without getting into any Pokemon battles)–and of course, that’s the moment you run into EVERY SINGLE TRAINER in the area. (any Pokemon game)
  • Making Diddy Kong do a super-awesome chain of cartwheels…straight off a cliff edge. (Donkey Kong Country)

What are your most irritating gaming moments from childhood? Tell me in the comments, and share the LOL!

Monday in the HTMLab

The Dumbest Thing I Have EVER Done in Webdesign

Leave a comment

I’ve been prone to a few boneheaded design/development decisions since I began teaching myself HTML in the fall of 2003. We all have those moments, as webdesigners and as human beings–we all have huge foul-ups that we look back on later and laugh.

But this one, as you’ll see, takes the cake for “dumbest design ever;” it was July 2005, a scant year and a half after I had begun webdesign, and I attempted something I’d never done before (and haven’t done since).

The Infamous “Pink Layout”


This was my fourth layout for my domain, WithinMyWorld.org. Yes, yes, I know, you’re probably recoiling from your screen in horror right now. xD

Why might I consider this the “dumbest” design choice I’ve ever made? There are actually a few reasons:

  1. This layout used a color I absolutely abhor. I have hated pink, especially this Barbie shade, since I was a little girl, and I think my hatred for the color bled into the layout.
  2. I put in several images on this layout, but they were used in strange places (even underneath the content), which ultimately distracted user attention from the important bits of the site and made content difficult to read.
  3. I flung the navigation far to the left in this layout, as if it was in “Time-Out” or something. Users ended up having to hunt for the navigation instead of easily being able to click around my site.
  4. The largest text on the screen (specifically, “Within My World” and “Navigation”) used Scriptina, which is a gorgeous font. Unfortunately, I made it very difficult to read, especially the way I have it formatted with drop shadows and the like. Combined with the images and eye-searing color choices, the layout became just too “much.”

Basically, I went overboard with this layout in every way–I tried to stretch my designing wings and ended up about knocking the nest out of the tree, it seems. xD

How Can We Learn from This?

Acknowledging a foul-up is the first step to learning from it. Now that I’ve used this as a negative example, how can we learn better design from this?

Choose colors carefully.

When trying to choose a thematic color for your site, make sure the color fits your site and doesn’t detract from your content. In my case, the pink of this layout was not only an unfavorite color, but was also an overpowering color, taking away the attention that my content deserved.

It also didn’t fit the purpose of my site–this color belongs more on a fashion and beauty site/blog, or a breast-cancer awareness site. Color does more than just sit on a page; it symbolizes your content in ways you may not even be aware of. Making the most of those color associations can help your users categorize and enjoy your site more.

Use layout images to highlight content.

In this layout, I put images everywhere but where they needed to be. Nothing draws the user’s eye to the content–instead, your eye roams all over the place, not finding anywhere to really settle.

Instead, place detailed, eye-catching images within your content to further explain it, or place a few symbolic images in your header to make your site’s purpose clear without being distracting.

Put navigation in a highly-visible spot.

Don’t do what I did and push your site navigation out to the middle of nowhere. Navigation, like content, needs to be readily available so that users can actually USE your site. I kinda forgot about that when I was designing this page, and my site suffered as a result.

Ensure that your fonts are readable (even the decorative ones).

Beautiful fonts are awesome, but only when wisely used and formatted. Like I described earlier, Scriptina looks lovely, but I didn’t format it and use it to the best of its potential. What could have been graceful and light ended up chunky and almost illegible in parts.

When you’re choosing fonts for your site, whether it’s part of a decorative header or part of your page’s font selection, make sure your users can read them and that they won’t detract from the words those fonts are printing on screen. Those fonts are meant to communicate, not just look pretty!

Tuesday on the Soapbox

The Reigning Queen of Mondegreens: My Misheard Lyrics

Leave a comment

Despite my love of literature and music, and despite my aptitude for both subjects, I am laughably terrible at deciphering verbal words, whether spoken or sung. Mumbled speech or not looking directly at a person’s lips while they are speaking leads to hilarious misunderstandings. And, as you’ll see in the following blog post, trying to decipher sung lyrics from a song can result in awesomely bad mondegreens.

Definition of a Mondegreen

From Dictionary.com:

mondegreen: a word or phrase resulting from a misinterpretation of a word or phrase that has been heard. (Origin: 1954; coined by Sylvia Wright, U.S. writer, from the line “laid him on the green,” interpreted as “Lady Mondegreen,” in a Scottish ballad.)

Some Examples


Song: “Shotgun” – Jr. Walker and the All-Stars; tune video to about 0:25

Actual Lyric The Lyric I Heard
“Shoot ‘im ‘fore he run now” “Shoot up Orville Redenbacher”

Upon hearing this song for the first time as a 10-year-old, I turned to my dad and asked, in this horrified voice, “Why do they wanna kill the popcorn man?!” LOL


Song: “Mickey” – Toni Basil; tune video to about 1:45

Actual Lyric The Lyric I Heard
“I’ll take it like a man” “I’m kinky like a man”

…My lyric makes sense, doesn’t it? Kinda…sorta? 😛


Song: “Hungry Eyes” – Eric Carmen; tune video to about 1:00

Actual Lyric The Lyric I Heard
“Hungry eyes” “Come three eyes”

Okay, okay, in my defense, I was 3 when I first heard the song… xD


Song: “Devil with the Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly” – Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels; tune video to about 2:05

Actual Lyric The Lyric I Heard
“See Miss Molly rockin’ in the house of delight” “See Miss Molly rockin’ in the house with good light”

And this is why you enunciate your words when you sing! Otherwise, people can hear all sorts of strangeness. 😛


Song: “Jesus Loves Me” – traditional Christian children’s hymn; tune video to about 0:34

Actual Lyric The Lyric I Heard
“They are weak but He is strong” “They are weak but He is JOAN!”

I never heard my Nannie laugh so hard as when I sung my version of “Jesus Loves Me” on the way home from Sunday school one morning. I think there’s a rather incriminating tape of this lying around the house somewhere… xD


Song: “You Sexy Thing” – Hot Chocolate; tune video to about 0:18

Actual Lyric The Lyric I Heard
“Where ya from, you sexy thing?” “What is wrong, you sexy thing?”

Until about two weeks ago, I thought my hearing of the lyric was correct. My boyfriend, whose ears seem to be incredibly accurate lyric-picker-uppers, corrected me. 😛


Song: “You Really Got Me” – The Kinks; tune video to about 0:33

Actual Lyric The Lyric I Heard
“You really got me!” “You really got mad!”

I went around singing this as a little kid, completely oblivious to my mishearing, till all the adults in the room busted out in big ole laughs. 😛

BONUS: Mondegreens from Mom and Dad

Apparently, I get this “talent” for mishearing lyrics honestly. Here are some of the mondegreens Mom and Dad have come up with over the years:


Song: “Five O’Clock World” – The Vogues; tune video to about 0:20

Actual Lyric The Lyric Mom Heard
“It’s a five o’clock world when the whistle blows” “It’s a five o’clock world and the wind’s so cold”


Song: “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction)” – The Rolling Stones; tune video to 0:10

Actual Lyric The Lyric Dad Heard
“I can’t get no girl reaction” “I can’t get no gut reaction”


Song: “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” – The Beatles; tune video to about 1:00

Actual Lyric The Lyric Mom Heard
“I can’t hide” “I get hives”


Song: “Dance to the Music” – Sly and the Family Stone; tune video to about 1:05

Actual Lyric The Lyric Mom Heard
“I’m gonna add some bottom” “I’ve got a handsome bottom”


Song: “Black Water” – The Doobie Brothers; start video at beginning

Actual Lyric The Lyric Dad Heard
“I built me a raft and she’s ready for floatin'” “I built me a refuge, she’s ready for clover”
Saturday with the Spark

The Lost Song (A True Story)

Leave a comment

In January of 2011, I had written a wistful, prayerful contemporary Christian song, titled “Adrift,” and performed it for my church. They enjoyed it, and I loved singing it because it was a way to worship. Once I had performed the song, however, I moved on to composing newer songs and working on other projects. Little did I know that it would be the last time I would perform the song as it existed then.

Sickness, Difficulties, and Losses

A few months later, I began to fall ill repeatedly, suffering strange new headaches that lasted up to 3 days and were not treatable with any medicines. My will to create, my will to write and sing and play, were thus taken from me, since I sometimes suffered up to 10 headaches a month like this. Soon, weeks went by in which I was never without burning, crushing head pain, whether I was sleeping or awake.

It felt, as spring blossomed into summer and summer faded into fall, that I was living 25% of my life. I went to bed feeling like I had been run over by an 18-wheeler, and woke up feeling like I’d been run over by a school bus. And the constant pain, which got worse if I tried to sleep it off and never truly went away, about drove me nuts. During this time, I also lost the use of my laptop for a little while (due to someone else’s carelessness), and that added stress didn’t help my health much. My mental creativity stunted, my physical energy sapped, and my creativity-producing machine gone–it felt as if I were getting slapped around by life.

Finally, during a routine visit to the dentist in October 2011, we discovered that my wisdom teeth were severely infected and had to be removed. The subsequent oral surgery in early November not only pulled the sources of infection from my jaw, but also seemingly got rid of those burning, never-ending headaches. At last, I could live my life again! I thought everything would be back to normal concerning my creativity, so I could get back to doing what I loved–writing and polishing my prose, poetry, and music.

Not so, as I found out. A mere month after my surgery, my poor injured laptop’s hard drive died, and the data on it was completely irrecoverable. All the work I had done since June 2010 was lost–including the lovely song I had written and performed almost a year previous. All I could remember, because of my grave illness and all the stress, was the title. No lyrics, no melody…no nothing. I mourned it along with the rest of my lost works, knowing that with my forgetfulness, I would likely never remember it.

A Little Scrap of Unexpected Song

I was horribly sad over this, but at least I could comfort myself with a large fraction of my work, which I could still build off of. Slowly, I began to amass more works, though they were nothing like what I had lost, I knew that.

In the middle of all this personal, creative rebuilding, my boyfriend and I had gone to the movies to watch The Avengers when it came out, and I was reminded of how much I had liked some of the other Marvel movies that had come out before, especially Thor, which had come out in March 2011, during the first stages of my terrible headache/wisdom tooth infection.

I ended up borrowing the movie from my boyfriend’s family, then buying a copy of my own, since it had quickly become a favorite of mine. (And, as is my wont when I really enjoy a film, I had already watched it several times back-to-back-to-back. xD)

But it was during one of my many repeat plays, as I watched the scene in Thor where Loki discovers he is not truly Odin’s son, that a little scrap of song started playing in my head. Occasionally this happens to me, where a character or a mood will inspire a new song within my head–it’s a great way to get new ideas. And, since I had composed very little during my illness, I was understandably stoked.

“COOL, I finally got an idea for a new song,” I thought, watching the evocative, sad scene play out as the plaintive, new little melody curled around my brain cells. The melody ached, expressing such wistful sorrow that it nearly brought me to tears. And then…something in the tune jarred memory awake. “Waitaminnit…” I thought, analyzing the short little melody. “That tune–oh, my God, that’s ‘Adrift!’ That’s my lost song!!”

Rebuilding The Lost Song

You never saw a chick pause a movie and run down the stairs to get to her piano keyboard so fast. In minutes, it felt like, I had reconstructed not only the chorus melody, which was the first bit I had remembered, but I had also gotten back the melodies for the verses and the bridge. Not only that, but some lyrics were coming back, too, albeit slowly and in pieces.

A couple of frenzied rebuilding hours passed, and I was able to get back 90% of the original song, with new lyrics put into the places I simply could not remember. I was overwhelmed with the creative urge–after all, my lost song had come back after I had feared I would never, ever remember it all.

Though I am still a little sad for the bits of lyrics I can’t remember, the new lyrics seem to fit even better than the old ones, at least in my estimation. This gives me hope that perhaps all of my lost works, all the little stories, poems, and beginnings of songs, might one day come back better than ever, too, after being cast “adrift” in the void of memory.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

If You Can’t Park It, Don’t Buy It!

Leave a comment

More and more, I’ve seen people driving cars, SUVs and trucks like the following:


Source
Source

(Okay, okay, maybe that second pic is a little exaggerated. But to me, a driver of a very small car, these bigger vehicles kinda do look like monster trucks on the road. 😛 )

Most of the time, I coexist with these bigger cars on the road pretty well; in fact, I admire the people who seem to be able to wiggle through traffic in these tanklike creations. But what gets me about big cars and trucks is that the people who drive them…don’t seem to be able to park them very well.

Exhibits A through D:


Source
Source

Source
Source

Though I didn’t take any of these pictures, I’ve seen examples of these kinds of parking everywhere I go. It’s almost as if the people who park larger cars/trucks in this way want others to notice them so badly that they have to take up all this room in the parking lot (or in fire lanes…or wherever they decide to stop their vehicle…LOL). Not only is this annoying for others who might have been able to park there otherwise, but it also comes off as selfish and insensitive.

Solution: Parking Test/Parking Classes

But wait! This is not just the regular “whine about bad parking” blog post. I actually have a solution!

My idea for solving the parking issue: before you leave the dealership with a new car, you should be given a parking test as part of the test drive, just like your driver’s license test. Dealerships have tons of parking spaces, after all, and you’re going to be test-driving the car anyway to make sure you can handle it on the road. Why not just make sure you’re buying something you can park effectively? Driving a new car is always weird because you’re not used to the size, and that definitely goes for parking, too…it would be worth a shot!

And, if your chosen car proves to be harder to drive than you thought, perhaps “parking classes” could be offered by private instructors or even the DMV. Driver’s ed fades fast in the memory, after all–who remembers how to parallel park, right? (That’s why a lot of cars now come with “Park Assist” technology and stuff like that…LOL)

…Okay, okay, the above advice is a little tongue-in-cheek, I admit…but think about it. Couldn’t we all benefit from a parking class sometimes, especially in those lots where the spaces are about THIS MUCH too small to just whoop in there willy-nilly? I know I could, even with an itty-bitty car like mine. Maybe if we all brushed up on our parking the way we brush up on our driving for license tests, we wouldn’t have all these parking fails that so frustrate us.

…But then again, that just might put the fail-picture websites out of business entirely. xD

Tuesday on the Soapbox

You’re Talking to the Champion of Getting Lost

2 Comments

Yeah, I’m a bit infamous for losing my way, especially when trying to find my way to a place for the first time without knowing what any of the landmarks look like. Street names and numbers are excellent pieces of information on paper, but if I can’t connect those numbers and names to what a physical place looks like, I might just drive up and down the street a few times trying to find the next turnoff.

Before Google Street View existed, there were several epic-fail jaunts I found myself on…let me tell you of them.

Whoops, I Was Supposed to Go West

One Saturday evening a couple of years ago, my boyfriend and I were leaving from the comics and collectibles shop about 40 miles from home, in Gastonia, NC. We went and got something to eat in the downtown area, and from there, I reckoned that we should turn left out of the parking lot onto Franklin Boulevard to get back home.

…But about 45 minutes after turning left, we were driving on into the darkness, and none of the street signs looked familiar. I’d come this way many times, but never this late at night. In desperation, I finally called Dad (our resident navigator); the nearest street sign told me that I was on Highway 74 heading east from Gastonia.

“East?!” Dad spluttered over the phone when I told him this. “Good Lord, honey, you’re halfway to Belmont by now!” Belmont, as you might have gathered by now, is in the total opposite direction of home. We had spent 45 minutes going the wrong dang way, and I, in my bullheaded sense that I knew where I was going, had kept us going past all the unfamiliar scenery as darkness fell.

We easily got turned around and started going west, quickly reaching the outskirts of Gastonia again, and soon we were back in familiar territory. (My boyfriend got to do a well-deserved “I told you so” after this–he had been the one to sound the first warning that something wasn’t right about our route home. I know to listen to him now, as well as to listen to my own doubts and intuitions!)

Can You Tell Me How to Get–How to Get to This Address?

While I was still in college in Greensboro, NC, I had made Internet contact with a really nice guy who went to Furman University down in South Carolina, and we wanted to start dating. Since my home is a hop, skip, and jump from the SC state line, it seemed a simple thing to schedule our first date for a time when I would be home from college for the weekend.

So, on a Friday afternoon, after I had already made the 2 1/2-hour drive back from college to home, I was heading down I-85 South to Greenville, SC, confident that I had correct directions and knew all the twists and turns I needed to take to get to the Furman campus. I took all the exits off the main highways that I needed to, got into the correct lanes, and all of that…except that the college campus was nowhere to be found.

A frantic 1 1/2-hour search for Furman University ensued, as I drove tensely through the thickest portions of inner Greenville, tears working their way out of my eyes as minutes passed with no familiar street names. Somewhere–I wasn’t sure where–I had made a terrible mistake, even though I knew I had taken all the roads I was supposed to according to the directions I’d gotten from Mapquest. Instead of ending up at the college campus, I was lost in suburbia.

I pulled a couple of epic U-turns in this search, pulling onto a deserted four-lane residential road long enough to whoop around in the middle of the street, and even turning around in a business parking lot without even pausing to make it a 3-point turn. (I love my little car’s turning radius. <3) At this point, I had been lost for over an hour, and I was increasingly frightened--even Daddy couldn't tell me where I was, and I was a single girl alone in a strange city. Not to mention that my cell phone signal kept going in and out, making me miss worried calls from my would-be date, who was getting quite concerned by this time. At some point, I finally pulled over into a parking lot in front of a rather dilapidated strip mall, and I went into a barber shop, which happened to be the only business still open at this time of night. After a moment's hesitation, I walked in, realizing how vulnerable I was as I did so--I was a lone female in what didn't look like the best part of town, with darkness falling. Fear bit at me as I opened the door...would I find any help from the five older gentlemen seated inside? But it seemed God had directed me to just the right barbershop. The fatherly owner of the shop, after hearing my tearful explanation of the problem (along the lines of "Can somebody tell me where Furman University is?!"), was able to tell me that the road I was looking for had actually changed names halfway through Greenville, and it was now known as Poinsett Highway out this far. And, as he put it, "Darlin', you ain't too far off from Furman now--you only lack 'bout a mile!" The others agreed, and sought to put my mind at ease. I probably looked a mess, with mascara running down my face, my nose all red from crying, and my eyes all puffed out, but they were sympathetic, and I was grateful for it. They pointed me to continue down the road I had been on, and I saw as I left the building that indeed the road name was Poinsett Highway. (Never been so relieved to see a street sign in my life. LOL) Within a few minutes after getting back in my car and onto the road, I did indeed find the exit that led into Furman University. (My date was standing outside the dorm, and looked so relieved to see me pull up that I think he about fell over. And our date went well, even if it did start two hours later than anticipated. xD)

Random Left Turn of Fail

My boyfriend and I had taken a trip up to Lake Lure, NC, to have a picnic out in the beautiful countryside surrounding the lake. It had been a favorite family destination as a child, and I wanted to share that with my awesome wub. Though the day was a little grayer and chillier than we expected, we still had good food and good conversation outside under the shade of one of the picnic shelters nearby.

When it came time to head back toward home, I threaded my way back through the route around the lake, and made a left at the intersection we had come into the area on, starting our trip back home. Or so I thought.

About 10 minutes later, we started seeing signs for Asheville, NC, as well as Bat Cave, NC (a real town, I promise!). “Uh-oh,” I said, passing the third of such signs. “I think we might be going the wrong way…”

“Why?” my boyfriend asked.

“‘Cause, um…we’re headed toward Asheville instead of away from it,” I said, sheepishly. “Wish I’d realized this about 5 minutes ago…”

By this time, though, my boyfriend was well aware that I could find a way out of the mess as easily as I found my way into it, and he shrugged. “Well, we’ll just find a place to turn around, and we’ll be good to go–you haven’t made any other turns, so we’ll probably just have to go back to that one intersection we remembered from before,” he said.

But finding a place to turn around on curving mountain roads proved much more difficult. I kept looking for gas stations or parking lots or ANYTHING that I could just whoop into and whoop back around…but the mountainside sloped sharply down away on our left side, and only houses were on the right. Asheville crept closer the farther we looked, and we were gathering quite a crowd of drivers behind us since we were going slowly along the curves.

Finally, we sighted, on the side of the road, a blue-graveled parking lot of sorts, barely even wide enough for one car to park perpendicular to the old building it lay in front of. I darted into it, sighing with relief–and then saw the sheer impossibility of using it to turn around. There was no room to back up and change direction; if I tried to do a 3-point turn, I’d take out a wall of the old building to our right. And yet, the road was narrow. If I tried to do a U-turn, I could end up hitting the guard rail. Not to mention that there was traffic flying from both directions.

After a minute or so of sitting there, the road cleared, and I told my boyfriend, “Hang on.” Then, from a dead stop, I turned the wheel as left as it would go, and slowly, sloooowly, crept onto the road, barely even using any gas. My little car eased gently across the near lane, then slid into the far lane (which became the “right lane” to us), never even so much as grazing the guard rail or dipping its tire off the road. (Have I said how much I love my little car’s turning radius? :D)

I have to give my wub some credit here–he didn’t even flinch as we got close to the other side of the road, though his hand stayed clenched around the armrest. LOL! At last, we were finally pointed in the right direction, and we got back to the fateful intersection, this time making the turn back toward home rather than more unknown territory. (Road signs are wonderful things. Just sayin’.)

Summary

I have been incredibly lucky not to have any major fails (or accidents/dangerous situations) than these–mainly, these stories remind me to pay attention to road signs, double/triple-check my route, and ask for directions if I have to. But they’re also funny stories to tell on myself, because book smarts do not always equal road smarts. 😛

Monday in the HTMLab

10 Newbie Design Mistakes

1 Comment

We’ve all done it, at one point or another. Out of ignorance or out of a need to hurry up and get a page published, questionable design choices slip out onto the Internet.

Most of what I’m going to reference in this article is stuff I’ve done knowingly and willingly, either because I didn’t know any better or because I thought it “looked cool.” (Animated GIFs…oh, so very cool. *cough cough cough*) In either case, I didn’t research my design choices well enough; I should have been going to other people’s websites to see what they were doing, or at least reading web design articles to find out best practices.

To best show off these problematic design choices, I decided to combine them all in a terrific cacophony of web design. I call it…the “Really Bad Page.”. Click the link, and try not to wail with despair.

The Bad Page’s Features

“Times New Roman” font style

Times New Roman, especially in this web 2.0 age, is very “default” and uninteresting on a webpage, since it is the default font when no font is specified in a CSS style. This makes the website look uncared for and un-updated.

All centered text

Centered text does not always “balance out” how your text looks. In this case and in many others I’ve seen across the internet, centered text is just hard to read and looks awkward on the page.

Thick borders around your tables

I used to love how thick-bordered tables looked on a page…but then again, that was back in 2001. 😛 The bordered table might be okay for true tabular data, but not for random information; it now just looks junky.

Animated GIFs (especially for an “Email Me” link)

Animated anything on a page these days tends to make your page look too young and kiddy. It can really de-professionalize a look. (If that ain’t a word yet, I’m making it one, because it works. 😛 )

No padding/margins in your divs

See how the table runs right up against the links? This is caused by no padding or margins used in the divs. Everything within the div expands out as far as it can go, and when there’s no padding there, it just makes your content look messy and harder to read.

Narrow left-aligned layout

Most users are used to seeing wide center-aligned layouts nowadays–itty-bitty left-aligned layouts are a visual shock, and may not display well on larger-resolution monitors (i.e., they will look too small).

Too much white used in the background

I’ve been guilty of this from time to time, but using white as a background color can look too “empty” if there’s not a lot of content on the page, like my sample page.

Using low-quality images (especially JPGs)

A JPG, or any image, that’s of this low quality looks unprofessional and makes it hard to tell what the picture’s subject even is. See other examples of low-quality JPGs on SixRevisions, Ransen.com, and PanoHelp.com.

Too-wordy link descriptions

Who wants to click on a link that takes several lines to describe? When you have a lot of words in your link text, it makes it look very messy and unkempt.

2-dimensional and square design

A website isn’t printed on paper, but this design looks like it could be printed out very easily. There’s very little visual interest at all, and no deviation from the invisible straight-sided square/rectangle box.

Next Week: Turning the Look from Newbie to Pro

Next week, we’ll be looking at 10 ways to make your page look professional. Never be tormented by centered Times New Roman text again! 😛

Tuesday on the Soapbox

The Random Language I Speak

Leave a comment

Made-up words seem to run in our family. From my grandfather’s description of a car accident as “kaloom-bam-boom” to my parents’ word for the bits of sock fabric that always get left on the carpet (“sock doobies”), I guess I get the “creative words” gene honest. English is more fun when you can invent words, I believe. 🙂

Nevertheless, it always surprises people when one of my made-up words pops out of my mouth during a conversation. And I’m usually embarrassed by it at first–somehow, I fear I’ll get sent to the loony bin for some of the random stuff I come up with! But we always end up laughing about it.

Therefore, I will be brave and share some of the random language I speak, so that you, too, may LOL. 🙂

Made-Up Words and Family Slang

From My Dad’s Side

  • “kaloom-bam-boom” – a huge accident or fail of some sort (doesn’t have to be car-related).
  • “scooter-pootin'” – moving around continuously
  • “buke” (“bu” pronounced like “boo”) – to have an accidental bowel movement
  • “buuck” (not a typo) – to gag, especially over nasty-tasting food
  • “lamm” – to strike repeatedly and forcefully. “He’s just lammin’ that nail, ain’t he?”
  • “Big Ike” – overconfident person
  • “floof” – to suddenly fall flat on someone or on an object
  • “sherp” – to knock one’s feet out from under him (imitating the sound of such an action)
  • “sugarpoot”/”sugars**t” – an affectionate pet name for a child (why? I have no idea)
  • “asslin’ around” – wasting time, procrastinating (very descriptive 😛 )
  • “rhino”/”rhinoceros” – a big butt (like mine, lols)
  • “june around” – try to get a lot of things done as quick as possible
  • “tooters” – feet
  • “blomp” – to walk with slow and heavy steps
  • “braish broom” – yard-cleaning broom made of twigs, also used for the occasional whooping
  • “mazoozalum” – Grandma Daisy’s pronunciation of “mausoleum”
  • “klunk-plink-plink” – Nannie’s opinion of some pianists’ choppy playing styles
  • “pipe-stem legs” – very thin legs

From My Immediate Family

  • “moosh” – to kill or maim an insect; to massage.
  • “goopie” – a tiny, gross object, usually on the floor (bit of chewed food, unidentifiable sticky stuff, etc.)
  • “nidgy” – itty-bitty raveled thread (pill) on clothing
  • “fuzzbunny” – small ball of lint, usually ends up everywhere

My Own Made-Up Words from Childhood

  • “wootburgers” – strictly better than just a side of wootsauce.
  • “cubbyhouse” – a kid-size plastic or wood playhouse.
  • “giggling” – my kidlike pronunciation of “wiggling”, for whatever reason
  • “steamin’ alligator” – somebody who’s doing stuff just to tick me off
  • “beat-buttin'” – a particularly harsh (and usually deserved) whoopin’

Jim-ese

Since my great-uncle Jim was deaf and read lips, he often tried to speak the words he read others saying; he also made unintentionally hilarious commentary on how others spoke, as well.

  • “lotha” – translation of “nothing.” But “lotha” became synonymous with even less than nothing in our family. If you have nothing, you have zero, but if you have “lotha,” you don’t even have zero, if that makes any sense. LOL
  • “blellup” – believed to mean something like “hogwash”. Might have been Jim’s translation for “bulls**t”, but we’re not sure.
  • “jhi-jhi-jhi-jhi-jhu!” – only said to a baby, in “baby talk” voice. Like “goochy-goochy-goo.”
  • “rihbun” – pronunciation of my name.
  • “Jhalopy” – pronunciation of the city name “Shelby.”
  • “Gaffaley” – pronunciation of the city name “Gaffney.”
  • “Boola Sha-prings” – pronunciation of the town name “Boiling Springs.”
  • “mih-mih-mih!” – (said very quickly) brusque or angry talking.
  • “bipbipbipbipbip” – fast talking, a cigarette bobbing up and down in between someone’s lips as they talk, or never-ending talking.
  • “Bih…bih…bih!” – slow and deliberate talking (usually describing Grandma Daisy with a lip full of snuff)

Does Your Family Have Any Funny Made-Up Language?

We can’t be the only ones! LOL! If this post reminds you of some of the funny language in your own family, tell me about it in the comments.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

“Unna-med” and Other Laughable Anecdotes from My Life

Leave a comment

Academically, I’m considered a pretty smart girl. I’m a Phi Beta Kappa, was active in many academic honor societies, and generally got high grades in all my coursework (both in public school and in college). But, despite all this education and all these book smarts, I’m also quite capable of saying (and doing) dumb things, as are we all. Sometimes, there ain’t a drop of sense in my head, as the following anecdotes will show, rather plainly:

Hanging Up a Towel to Dry

One day during the summer I was 10, I had gone up to my uncle and aunt’s house about a half-mile away to swim in their backyard pool with my cousins. We had a great day swimming, and by the time I walked back to my house, my beach towel was completely sodden. I hung the beach towel on the bathroom doorknob when I got in, and promptly forgot about it as I took care of rinsing out my bathing suit and getting a shower to get all the chlorinated water out of my hair.

A few hours later, Mom came downstairs and was incensed to find that I’d left the beach towel hanging up to drip slightly-sandy water all over the bathroom floor. “What were you thinking?” she asked, showing me the dirty towel and the yucky bathroom floor. “You should have put the towel straight into the washer if it was dirty!”

“But Mom,” I argued back, “I had to hang it up to let it dry before I could wash it!”

…It made sense in my head… V_V

The “Shortcut”

A few years ago, I was attending college on a campus full of one-way streets. I had heard a lot of my friends complaining about them, saying that the path to one of the more centrally-located dorms was a particularly large pain in the posterior.

“Well, I never have any problems getting to that dorm,” I replied one time. “I found a shortcut.”

There was indeed a street that wrapped back around the dorm in question, and was easy to get to from the side of campus that we always approached from. All you had to do was turn left when you got past the cafeteria building and looped up toward the infirmary, and you could get to the back of the dorm really easily.

I had been going that way for as long as I could remember. Thus, I was shocked when a campus police cart pulled up behind me one day, its lights and horn going, as I was leaving campus for the weekend (since it was not only a shortcut to the dorm, but to the main road out of campus). I pulled to one side of the road and rolled down my window, expecting him to say I had a burned-out taillight or something.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he approached the window.

“I’m heading out of campus,” I said, gesturing forward as I spoke.

“Didn’t you see the signs?” he asked, and he pointed across the street, to a “Wrong Way” sign facing in my direction. Apparently, I had disregarded that one…just like I’d disregarded the four other “Wrong Way” signs I had already passed. My shortcut, it appeared, was indeed handy–but it was illegal.

(And don’t worry about my “record”–the campus police officer let me go, after I explained myself, with a laugh and a warning not to do it again!) XD

And now for the piece de resistance…

Hey Guys, Come Check This Weird Name Out!

When I was in 9th grade, I was taking Physical Science, and the teacher had a map and chart up of history-making hurricanes displayed on the wall near his desk. Having always been fascinated by the study of weather, I came in early one day and busied myself studying all the hurricanes listed on the map–where they hit, what time of year, how strong they were, etc.

One hurricane in particular caught my eye–it had struck southern Texas in 1899, and was named “Unna-med” (I mentally pronounced it “Oo-nah-mehd”). “WOW!” I thought. “That must have been a really active hurricane season–they got all the way to the U’s in the alphabet!”

Then I wondered what the name “Oo-nah-mehd” meant. “Wonder if it’s based on an ancient Aztec or Mayan word?” I mused. “It’s a really unusual name for a hurricane, but being that it hit so close to northern Mexico, they might have gone with an international name rather than an Americanized name.”

My head buzzed with this all day. I came home and told Mom and Dad about my discovery, and they were curious as well. I told them that I was going to school tomorrow to show the other kids what I’d learned and maybe ask my teacher about it. (Remember, kids, this was in 1999 before the Internets was the phenomenon that it is today. My family didn’t even HAVE internet at home yet, so I couldn’t go home and look it up–if I could have, I could have saved myself a fail. XD)

Anyhow, I got to school the next day and excitedly told all my friends about the crazily-named hurricane I’d found. They wanted to see the map, and I told them to come with me to my science classroom so I could show them. We were all pumped.

I tore up the stairs to the second-floor science classroom, put my stuff down at the desk, and went over to the map, easily finding the aforementioned storm name. I looked…and there it was. “Unnamed.”

“Where’s the cool storm name?” one of my friends asked, as she ran into the room after me.

All I could do was stand there and laugh, nervously. “Um…yeah, you’re not going to believe this, but…I totally misread the name,” I said, sheepishly.

“Wait, huh?” my other friend asked. Then she looked at the map, and where my finger was pointing.

“Unnamed?” she asked, furrowing her brow. “But you said it was…”

“Oo-nah-mehd,” I finished, and we all burst into giggles. Yes, that’s right, I had just figured out an exotic new pronunciation for the word “unnamed.” Fail complete, facepalm in progress. XD

And Yes…All These Stories Are True

Embarrassingly true. I think God’s “common sense” jar was empty the day I came through. XD But I have to be honest about myself (both my awesome moments and my laughable fails). Sometimes, it pays to remember we’re all human, and laugh about it. ^_^