All posts by Robin

I'm a woman in my early thirties living in North Carolina, USA, and I have a lot of varied interests; I love creative writing, music composition, web design, surfing the Internet, thinking out loud, and gaming. And yes, my glasses are crooked. :)
Wednesday in the Word

Encourage and Empower Others in Faith

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encourageempower
Proverbs 11:30
The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise.

This verse is from a larger part of Proverbs which describes the spiritual makeup of a righteous person, and it reminds us that when we are living in God’s will, our works will encourage others and help us grow spiritually as well. And, when we help others grow in knowledge and wisdom according to the Word of God, we are wiser for having done so. Just as when you help somebody else study in school, and end up learning the material better for having taught it, you become stronger in your faith as you guide a new person in discovering theirs.

One important point to remember: it is not our works that make us righteous in God’s sight, nor is any Christian somehow “more righteous” than any other. We are saved only by Christ’s great sacrifice for us, and the way we show gratitude for that is to adhere as closely as possible to what God has asked of us. When we start focusing on all the good we think we’re doing, and how awesome we are, then we’re forgetting that God is the source of any goodness and righteousness, not our actions. Pride turns righteousness upside-down, so subtly that sometimes we don’t even recognize it. Let’s not rot the tree of life with our own pride!

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Texting and Driving

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textinganddriving

About texting and driving: Who do you need to talk to so badly that you’re willing to risk your life to do it?

I say this because I know people who text and drive all the time, and I’ve even tried it myself. But having tried it–and almost causing a couple of accidents because of it–I don’t understand why people continue to do it. I definitely understand that the conversation is important, and it’s REALLY tempting to try to carry on a text conversation as soon as you receive a message, but personally, I’d rather not have a half-finished text message as my last act on Earth.

The REAL Dangers of Texting and Driving: Distracted Driving

This infographic from TextingAndDrivingSafety shows how dangerous this is. When you text, you’ve spent at least 5 seconds not looking at the road, which means you’re covering a lot of ground while not even looking where you’re going. This causes over a million crashes every year, as this Google search will show you.

Anybody, even the most skilled driver, becomes an erratic driver when their attention is focused elsewhere. You can just tell when there’s a distracted driver ahead of you–they weave between their lane lines (and sometimes cross them), they are either driving way too slow or way too fast for the speed limit, and they either brake randomly or tailgate like crazy. Texting/distracted drivers scare the heck out of me, and for good reason. Thus, I don’t want to scare other drivers with my behavior.

How to Safely Read (NOT ANSWER) A Text While Driving

ONLY in emergency situations, if you are waiting for a text to tell you which hospital to go to, or where you need to be ASAP, here is a procedure I have followed:

  1. Make sure there are few to no other cars around (i.e., you’re not on a major highway)
  2. Make sure you are on a straightaway and there are no curves or lack of road shoulders ahead
  3. Hold the phone up on top of the steering wheel with one hand, so you can glance quickly down at the message and then glance back up. You should spend 4 of every 5 seconds looking at the road ahead.

Notice that I did not say “answer the text”, but “read the text.” If you need to ANSWER the text, pull over onto the side of the road or into a well-lit parking lot to do so, because this is not something you should attempt while the car is moving. (Trust me, I consider myself a master of multitasking, and yet when I tried to text I felt like I was completely out of control of the car. I couldn’t put the phone away fast enough.)

The Moral:

Don’t type a text while the car is moving–keep yourself AND others safe on the road!

Monday in the HTMLab

Liquid Layouts vs. Ice Layouts

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liquidvsice

Even though most of the Web today has gone to using liquid layouts (also known as “responsive design”), the fixed width “ice” layout style is still quite popular. Today, I’ll demonstrate both layout styles, as well as give advice on which style is best for your website.

Liquid Layout/Responsive Design

Click for Liquid Layout Interactive Example in New Window

Pro: Expands and contracts to fit browser width

Whatever size your user’s screen is, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, or laptop/desktop, the liquid layout style will stretch or compress to fit it. You don’t end up with acres of space to either side of the layout, and you don’t end up having to scroll side to side to see all the content on a tiny screen.

Con: Distributes content unevenly and haphazardly

If your reader has a really wide screen, they’ll be jerking your head back and forth to read the long, extended one line of content going clear across the layout. You also might have large blocks of white space between layout elements, giving the design a chaotic look.

Ice Layout

Click for Ice Layout Interactive Example in New Window

Pro: Allows for perfectly-spaced designs

No need to worry about whether your content will be interrupted by huge blocks of uncontrollable white space! Ice layouts give you the ability to perfectly control where things will be placed, whether it’s images, lists, forms, content boxes, or anything else.

Con: Requires side-scrolling or zooming for smaller screens

If your user is viewing your site with a tablet, for instance, and you’ve created a beautiful desktop design, an ice layout will require a lot of zooming in and out to read the content. It’s annoying and time-consuming, and most users simply won’t bother.

Which Kind Should I Use?

Use Liquid Layout If Your Site Is…

  • Based on visual media
  • Meant for mobile users primarily
  • Not dependent on big layout graphics

Use Ice Layout If Your Site Is…

  • Based on text
  • Meant for laptop/desktop users primarily
  • Dependent on big layout graphics

Summary

Though liquid layouts seem to have won the day for now, you can most certainly still use ice layouts in this age of responsive design. You just have to know when to use fixed-width and when to use a variable-width style!

Saturday with the Spark

Novel Therapy

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noveltherapy
I never thought I’d be a novelist, ever. And yet here I am, producing original characters and inventing extended plotlines!

Why I Never Considered Noveling: Impatience

I was supremely impatient as a child and teenager; my brain balked at the idea of writing about a character or set of characters for a long time. Not to mention that I was notoriously horrible at picking names for my characters, anyway. Something in me at that age rebelled against the whole process, even though I enjoyed telling stories and I enjoyed the art of writing creatively. But I stayed within the world of writing largely short fanfiction, because I felt as though I had to keep my characters contained in a pre-approved box to make them workable. Writing a completely self-produced novel, or even longer fiction at all, I reasoned, would feel more like work or a school assignment than a pastime.

I continued with this self-philosophy well into graduate school, because I struggled to write enough pages for my professors’ long paper assignments. While I enjoyed creative writing, I decidedly did not like long academic writing. Sometimes I felt that I’d said enough about my perspective on a piece of literature in just 4 paragraphs, and I didn’t need to beleaguer the point; yet, my assignment said that the paper must be 10 pages long. That goal, of a set number of pages I had to produce, was locked around my neck time and again, like a yoke. “See,” I told myself, “this is why I don’t bother with writing a novel. I won’t like the process, and it’ll be too long and too hard for me to focus on and be happy with.”

The Sharp Mindset Shift

I had not counted, however, on my teaching career disintegrating into flaming ashes under my feet. I had to utterly quit the teaching degree program and return home, not because of any family emergency, but because I had begun to suffer severe depression and even suicidal thoughts. If I had thought writing a novel would feel like a prison, teaching had felt like a lightless dungeon.

So, while I sat at home recovering, I began to poke around with a story I had crafted about two years before for an online role-play. I had written a bit of backstory for the character (about 30 pages), but after my teaching classes got started, I hadn’t returned to it (though I had wanted to). I had all but forgotten about it…and then, there it was, sitting in a writing folder on my computer. Now, I had nothing else to distract me from it, so I turned to this little slice of backstory…and I began to write again.

Hope from Within My Own Pages

As the character’s backstory spun from my fingers into the keyboard, I began to take heart from the sparkles of hope appearing within the story. The heartbreak of my teaching career was still a fresh wound in my back, in my side, but in this story, which was so open, bright, and sweet, there was light to be found. My own story, one I never thought would ever be, was beginning to pull me from the mire.

As 2009 ended, I had a story of about 50,000 words; now it’s well over 100,000 words and still going. I’m writing on my own terms–not by a schedule, and not holding myself to a word count or a page count, and I think that’s what helps me keep on writing. It’s something of my own design, something I can find solace in. (Plus, if I make it feel too much like work, that feeling will come out in my writing and make the novel very hard to read!)

Your Writing Can Be Therapy for You, Too!

I’ve found that the act of creating (whether it’s writing, music, or another art form) is soothing and joyful, returning me to a better state of mind. If you find yourself in need of a “reset button” for your mind, try writing; you might just surprise yourself with what you create. Who knows, you might have your own novel buried in your head waiting to be discovered!

Friday around the Web

Contact Number Posters, Solipskier, Octopi Shirt, and Cl1p.net

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contactnumbers
Funny “Contact Number” Posters
Seen those posters with contact information available to rip off from the bottom? Here is a selection of funny posters of that type and more!

Solipskier
With a click and drag of your mouse, you create a ski slope for a little guy to traverse, a la the LineRider games, except with much more detailed graphics. Great challenge, too!

Octopi T-Shirt (Funny)
Octopi. But it’s not what you think! (Click to see what I mean!)

Cl1p.net
Copy and paste anything, with your own generated URL. No login or signup required, and the data is destroyed after it’s read, so it’s secure!

Thursday in the Zone

Boomshine

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This relaxing and yet mentally stimulating game is based on chain reactions–you try to set down your beginning dot in a place where it will ripple out and catch the most dots in its ripples. It is deceptively easy at first, with its soft piano accompaniment and simple goals. Just wait ’til level 12. 😀

Basic Gameplay


Level 2: The goal is to get 2 dots. Your goal number of dots is always in the bottom left part of the screen; there are currently 10 floating around in this level, hence the words “from 10”. For each level, you click a spot on the screen; the mouse cursor in this shot is the clearish dot with the pale halo around it.

Once you click, a white dot will expand out from where you clicked for a few seconds, and any dot that comes close enough to touch the white dot will expand out as well, showing that it’s been activated.


Here, I clicked close enough to 2 dots to get my goal, and then a third knocked into the first two I got, making my total score “3 of 2”–basically, I got more than the requirement. This is normal.

When you have reached the goal for the level, the screen turns a paler shade of blue-green, and then closes out; thus, the reason for the screen color change in the screenshots.

The chain reaction continues until either the goal for the level is reached, or the last activated dot shrinks away into nothingness.

You have infinite tries at the game, but if you can do it in as few rounds as possible (minimum 12 rounds), you’ll have a better score at the end.

Strategy

Boomshine is a patience game more than anything. I’ve found it requires a sense of timing and observation–you observe where the dots on the screen are bouncing around, and try to time your click to when the most dots possible will be intersecting with the dot you are about to place.

Do not feel compelled to click within the first five seconds–there is no time penalty! You’ll actually waste more time if you keep clicking and not getting enough dots every time you try. Waiting for just the right time and place to put down your dot will help you achieve your goal faster, especially in the harder, later levels.

Have fun–this is a great “don’t worry, be happy” game, with great music and a fun, simple interface!

Play the Game: Boomshine

Wednesday in the Word

Help All, Not Just Some

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helpallnotsome
Romans 12:13
13 Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Paul doesn’t mince words–he tells us, in his straightforward manner, that we need to be concerned with the welfare of other believers. But the second part of the verse expands that concept into practicing hospitality, which is a much wider-reaching act.

Hospitality is not just reserved for those who are “good enough” Christians or “close enough” to your family. It’s also for those who don’t know God, those who have turned away from God, and those who believe He doesn’t even exist. We are called by God to show His grace and mercy to every person–not just tell about that grace and do nothing.

My NIV translation notes that “the Christian has a social responsibility” to help others, because showing God’s forgiveness and mercy is a wonderful witness. For a believer to receive help from their church family after storm damage is an astounding blessing, for instance. But for someone who doesn’t know God–or doesn’t care to know Him–that act of help could be the one thing that changes their minds about Christians and our faith.

Paul tells us to share with other believers in need as part of expressing our Christian love for them, as Christ expressed His love for us. But Christ also reached out to those whom the disciples would not listen to, whom the disciples tried to turn away–He ate with tax collectors, touched lepers, and spoke kindly to those accused of crimes, all to show that God still loved them. We need to do the same, if we call ourselves Christians.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Bathroom Epiphanies

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bathroomepiphanies

Time on the toilet isn’t just for aimless contemplation over constipation!

Sorry, I just had to use that line. XD

Well, if I can get over my giggles long enough to write this post, I’ll share with you some of the accomplishments I’ve achieved while, uh, occupied with other matters. You wouldn’t believe how some quiet time (relatively speaking) can help you solve problems in other areas of your life!

The Infamous “Layout Fix”

One afternoon, I was having a terrible problem with spacing in one of my web designs; a divided layer in my layout insisted on ending up at the bottom of the layout rather than up with its friends and neighbors closer to the top. As invariably happens when I’m struggling with a problem, my frustration level soared, which sent me to the restroom within minutes. (I swear, as long as I do web design, I will never need Dulcolax, ever. LOL)

As I sat there, reading randomly in a magazine I was keeping in the bathroom for such purposes, it hit me (not literally): had I remembered to set the padding to 0px for that particular divided layer? Being rather new to the concept of CSS padding as I was, I wasn’t used to taking that into consideration. My frustration level began to settle, as did my stomach–I had hope of fixing the issue.

Once I was finished, I headed straight back to the computer and checked, and nope, I hadn’t set the padding. The default padding for divided layers is 2px, and that 2px was JUST enough to throw off my design. I typed in “padding: 0px;”, and watched my layout fix itself, with joy.

Inspired by Necessity: A New Recipe

I was busy in the kitchen in my apartment up near college one evening, trying to figure out something to cook for dinner that wasn’t ramen noodles or a microwave meal again. I didn’t want to chance screwing up my meal by burning something (as I am so wont to do), but I wanted something “comfort-food-y,” something yummy and warm, because it was so darned cold outside that it made my insides cramp just thinking about driving out in it. Not to mention that my poor tummy had been upset most of the day, anyway.

Well, as you might have guessed, I ended up in a position to sit and think for a while. This time, I was without a magazine (horror of horrors!), and so all I could do was think…and I ended up thinking about recipes for comfort food. (Strange place to be thinking about food, I know, but there I was!) Eventually I found myself thinking about what Mom used to fix when I was little and had an upset tummy, and a memory of a wonderful chicken-flavored casserole came to mind. Mind you, I didn’t remember what all was in it, specifically, but I remembered the creamy yumminess of what tasted like cream of chicken soup, mixed with some kind of stuffing crumbs and white meat chicken, all baked and comfortingly warm.

Once I was finished, I called home and asked, “What was that awesome casserole you used to fix when I was home sick from school, Mom?” She fetched the recipe and read it off to me over the phone, and with new motivation I braved the bitter weather long enough to get the ingredients. About an hour later, I was enjoying warm memories and tummy comfort.

The Super Epic Final Exam-Finishing Visit

I was one of the unfortunate students who caught the stomach bug going around the dorm room one fall semester, and wouldn’t you know it, I had a huge final paper in one of my English classes to do and turn in the next day. How much had I done on it? Umm…yeah, let’s just say they don’t call me “The Procrastinator” for nothing.

So, I was sitting in front of my laptop, alternating between typing, backspacing, checking Facebook, and groaning…and then, I realized that just verbally expressing my discomfort was not going to work anymore. Speed was necessary–but so was my final paper, which I was currently very stuck on. Thinking quickly, I grabbed up my laptop and headed toward relief.

Without my ethernet cable connection (this was 2004, so wireless internet in the dorms was still a thing of the future), I was utterly without Internet, but the session still proved to be very, uh, fruitful; I suddenly remembered I had some additional points to make in my final paper, which I had forgotten in the throes of the last cramp. It almost seemed as if my current situation helped unbind my brain, and I found myself with a lot more to type about the pieces of literature I was studying. I took all the time I needed (both meanings intended), and ended up finishing the final paper entirely. More astonishing than writing it in the bathroom was the fact that I was actually DONE with a final paper more than an hour before it was due!

The Moral of the Story

Time spent thinking is never wasted, no matter where it happens! ROFL!

Monday in the HTMLab

The (Necessary?) Evil: the Pop-Up

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thenecessaryevilpopup
Most of us think of pop-ups the same way we think of bugs–annoying or dangerous little pests, the vehicles for drive-by downloads of spyware or viruses, or the tools of the most callous ad-using web designers. Pop-ups, above all, block a user’s experience of an individual website, and thus they can be unnecessary and irritating interruptions.

But pop-ups, as bad a reputation as they have, CAN be used for good purposes. While the fad of using pop-ups as a layout option may be passe, there is still a legitimate call for the miniaturized window in web design, as we’ll talk about below.

Bad Pop-Ups

The usual breed of pop-ups are used in web design for ads, inconvenient surveys, or even unscrupulous downloads (whether you’re aware of them or not). These pop-ups:

  • Look like cheap ads (various bright colors, huge, primary-colored text, animated GIFs, etc)
  • Appear at inconvenient browsing times
  • Appear without warning when a link is clicked

Good Pop-Ups

What I term “good pop-ups” can contain content that doesn’t necessitate a full webpage, such as a feedback or contact form, a listing of affiliates or joined sites, comment or guestbook forms, etc. Good pop-ups:

  • Contain small amounts of easy-to-scan text or photo content
  • Match your site’s layout style and color scheme, if possible
  • Appear after sufficient warning (i.e., “link opens in new window” or “pop-up will appear”)

Other Important Notes about Pop-Ups

Firstly, you don’t want to overuse pop-ups in your layout. A good rule of thumb, I’ve found, is to use no more than two instances of pop-ups in an entire site, maybe using one as an announcement platform and one as a form for contacting or subscribing.

Secondly, pop-ups should not cover the whole screen. Since you can direct the size and positioning of pop-ups, make sure you are placing an appropriately-sized pop-up where it will not be obtrusive to the rest of your design and content. You want your user to see it, of course, but there’s nothing a user hates worse than having to deal with an unexpected stumbling block in reading a site’s content.

Thirdly, do not make your design hinge on your pop-up. Since many users now have pop-up blockers and ad blockers in their browsers, make your content available both as a pop-up and as a regular page, so nobody misses out on your content.

Summary

Pop-ups have long been vilified on the Internet, but by using them smartly and carefully (and not depending on them too heavily), you can include them without annoying your users. Happy readers are returning readers!

Saturday with the Spark

Seeing and Feeling Music

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seeingandfeelingmusic
For almost all of my life that I can remember, music has not only been an auditory experience, but a visual and tactile experience, too. As a child, I thought everyone saw swirls of varying colors when they heard music, or felt the hairs all over their bodies raise up like a standing ovation when a particularly beautiful chord was struck. To my utter surprise, when I tried to describe this to other people, they had no idea what I was talking about…and a good deal of them probably thought I was a bit off my rocker.

The Reason for the Swirling Colors of Sound: Synesthesia

It was not until I joined Facebook in late 2005 and saw a group called “We See Sound, Taste Shapes, and Smell Colors” that I finally found out what was at the core of my strange and wonderful experiences when listening to music. Synesthesia is a very interesting brain condition in which synapses in two or three different senses “leak” into each other; when one sense is stimulated, it triggers a response in the other sense. For me, every time I hear music or sound, the stimulated synapses in my temporal lobes (located just above my ears) “leak” into my visual cortex (at the back of my head), producing a veil of colors across my vision in response to the sound. (I have begun to wonder if the temporal lobes also leak somewhat into my sense of touch as well, since I experience tingling and hair-lifting in response to exceptionally beautiful music.)

Being a sound-color synesthete (and possibly a sound-touch synesthete as well) means that my experience of the world around me is very different from other people’s experiences. Every sound generates a color; the honking of a particularly grating car horn registers as a vomit-green flash at the corners of my vision, for instance. My boyfriend’s voice is the color of the eastern sky at sunset, a lovely, muted medium blue. And every musical key has a color associated with it, seen in the diagram I made for the synesthesia Facebook group below:

My First Experience of Synesthesia

One of my first and most startling episodes with sound-color synesthesia happened when I was a little girl (probably about 3 or 4 years old), playing with my Barbies in the living room while my father played a piece called “Music Box Dancer” by Frank Mills (see following video):

I had requested this piece because I was then infatuated with becoming a ballerina, and I made one of my Barbies dance along with the song as Dad played the merry little tune in C major. As you see in my diagram of musical colors above, C is a warm golden-yellow, the color of late summer afternoons in the South, and I luxuriated in this familiar, kid-friendly key.

When the song came to an end, Dad started it over again, except this time, he transposed it up a half-step, to C-sharp major. As the first notes were struck, I dropped my Barbie doll to the floor, my hands, arms, and scalp tingling–the explosion of deep midnight-violet in my mind was absolutely breathtaking! C major had made the notes feel like the kicks and strokes of a swimmer in a warm and languid pool, but C-sharp major transformed them into tinkling silver crystals, sparkling against a background like that of a clear moonlit night. I could hear the difference because of my perfect pitch (which I did not know I had yet), and I could actually see the difference between the keys in my mind, too. (This began my deep love and appreciation for the key of C-sharp, whether major or minor–it is my favorite key to hear music in.)

Every time after that, when Dad sat down and played “Music Box Dancer,” usually in C major, I would come up and say, “Play it up, Daddy, play it up”–I wanted to hear it in C-sharp major again. He understood what I was asking for after the first couple of times I requested this, and this, he related years later, was when he first started to wonder if I had perfect pitch. (My experience of synesthesia and perfect pitch are so intertwined that I nearly have to talk about them in context with each other; I have written more about how chords appear as multiple colors blended together in my mind in this blog post.)

Synesthesia in Everyday Life

I’ve had similar experiences with music and sound all throughout my life, and it’s an everyday joy for me. Singing in choral festivals and concerts, with all those varying voices joined in harmonies, creates the sense of a hovering structure in mid-air, silvery-gold and delicate like a thinning soap bubble; the chords we create feel as if they reverberate along my nerves, and every hair applauds. Even the sound of a plane engine flying overhead, the Doppler effect making the pitch go down as it recedes from me, generates a swirl of black and deep green in my peripheral vision. I can say it’s truly fun to be a synesthete–it certainly makes the world much more interesting!