I’ve been reading all this evangelism about Cascading Style Sheets online, and seeing examples of how interesting things can be done with it, and tutorials and utilities to make it easier. And based on all this, I can only come to one of two conclusions: 1) I’m stupid, or 2) it’s all a pack of filthy, dirty lies.

Since the first is obviously crazy talk, I’ve got to wonder why all these people are lying to me so bad? They keep going on about how tables are evil and it’s possible to do anything you want with CSS, but every attempt I make fails miserably. Even when I copy and paste the code directly from a working page. It’s starting to give me an inferiority complex.

So I’m going back to using tables. It’s easier, and it’s a lot more calming than my ranting about how “float” doesn’t, and “position: absolute” makes things explode, to people who just have to nod and wonder why the hell I’m getting so upset about a mark-up language.

I still say, though, that it’s the most insidiously sadistic thing ever created by man. You can tell that CSS was designed by and for anal-retentive, compulsive people. People with the mindset that every pixel and every color has to be absolutely perfect, even if it means writing pages of mark-up to get it perfect. And what better way to drive people with that mindset insane? By taking the standard and implementing it differently, in subtle but important and sometimes unpredictable ways, in every single browser. It’s ingenious, really.

Okay, so after two days of being a virtual shut-in, I finally got the website up and looking like ass. Why all this CSS stuff gotta be so hard? There’s still plenty that looks crappy and some stuff that just plain doesn’t work, so this’ll probably still be a work-in-progress for a while. But I’ve got to go outside and see the sunlight, and then get back to writing my anti-technology manifesto.

Being unemployed is a hoot.

Well, I’ve finally given up. Instead of working with my homegrown attempt at a blogging system (which would’ve been awesome if I’d just kept working at it), I’ve decided to go with WordPress to do the website. It’s a really impressive set-up — incredibly simple to install, more full-featured than any of the commercial packages I’ve seen, it’s free, and it looks to be extremely customizable.

Plus, it lets people add comments! I’ll see if I can set-up convenient macros for “quit yer bitchin’” and “geez, you like to hear yourself talk.”

Of course, it bugs me that I can’t write a half-assed version of what is already written and better than I would’ve been able to do. Just the principle of it; what kind of programmer am I, anyway? But maybe it’ll give me the time to do any one of the ten thousand other projects I had planned to finish if I only had the time.

Still nothing new up on the site, obviously, as most of the links are still inoperable. It’s going to be awesome once it’s all working. But I did add a webpage for the best dog who ever lived, so check it out. I’ll be adding more pictures as I find them and/or get them from home.

This is my new website. It’s going to have pictures from vacations, stuff I’ve written about movies, any useful software I manage to write, and whatever else I can think of. It’s mainly intended as an outlet so I don’t go on lengthy tirades on message boards, but if there’s an audience for it, all the better. Notice how the pictures change when you move the mouse over them; that alone is worth the trip!