Whimsical.nu

Welcome to a Whimsical Blog~

Hi, I'm Angela, a girl with a blog on five different psyches:
girl, geek, reader, writer, gamer
Choose your poison ♥

50 books a year

I haven’t posted in a while, mostly due to a lot of things I won’t be getting into here (the holidays are one of them, though). I’ve been slowly getting back into reading, although it’s rather slow going. Reason for this is that ever since college, a lot of other interests/activities took up my time, and I was around people who did not really read. Now, that’s even more difficult, given the fact that I work full-time, work on freelance projects, work on my hobbies-turned-responsibilities. And then I have to read. And, read what?

I have a couple of books on my currently-reading and to-read reading list, which I’m hoping to finish. I had the thought that it was probably high time to do something concrete about this, and what better time than now, just before new year? I’ve decided that I’m going to read 50 books next year — at least 30 of them new books. I will read 50 books. That’s roughly one book a week. I can finish one book a day (unless it’s very long and doesn’t grab me early enough) so this should be “easy”, even with full-time work. I initially thought of 100 a year, but I didn’t want to be too ambitious (especially because of work!), as this isn’t like movies which you can finish in two-three hours.

I already have a few which I know will be on that list. I’m still working with Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and like I mentioned in my journal, I have Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red as well. I’ve put some other books back on my to-buy list, like Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Mineko Iwasaki’s Geisha: A Life. I have a few books I was to revisit, like Noli me Tangere and Florante at Laura which were both required reading in high school, but ones I feel I should like reading in a non-academic setting. So, I already have a few books slotted for the 50, and I made a progress meter as well:

[pfmeter id=2 target=50 progress=1]

Still zero, obviously. ;) I’m excited! Anyone care to join me? (I’ll probably put a page up somewhere with my running list soon.)

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Tutorial: Uneven header and background

One thing I’ve come to realize when I design websites and implement layouts is that a big chunk of my enjoyment in the entire process stems from the challenge of actually implementing some seemingly tricky design. There have been times when the end result of a layout may be rather simple-looking, but I end up prouder of it than the usual because of what I did to implement said layout.

Final layout screenshot in GIF (which is why it's grainy) One recent example is the new skin I made for It’s a Soul Thing: the Taylor Hicks fanlisting. At first glance, it’s nothing very exciting or innovative, but what made the implementation interesting for me was the the following criteria/features of the layout that I wanted:

  • background image is uneven — it’s different for either side of the header image, but:
  • the layout has to be liquid and compatible for all screen resolutions equal to or greater than 800×600,
  • the layout mustn’t use tables to lay out the design of the site,
  • the menu must be text-based, no image maps, and
  • the site must be cross-browser compatible.

With all those in mind, I bring to you a mini article/tutorial of sorts on what I did to implement the layout.

Important note: I may talk in detail about how I implemented the layout here, but that doesn’t mean that anyone can use my layout for their own websites. Feel free to learn from my method, but don’t steal.

All images (or almost all) are thumbnails — click on them to enlarge.

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Book whoring?

This is a sponsored review. Not paid, but otherwise sponsored. It still doesn’t mean I’m prodded to praise.

Being one of those people who pretty much devours books, when I heard of BooksPrice.com, I was immediately interested. I’m always teetering between taking a risk and buying an “unproven” book (read: a book written by an author I haven’t previously read) and leaving it on the shelf, except if they’re marked down or otherwise inexpensive enough to gamble on. (I have a couple of used books I bought on my long reading list, hehe.) Also, living all the way here in the Philippines, I have to admit it can be a challenge to find the books that I want. It can take me anywhere up to a few years to complete a series, for example.

BooksPrice.com apparently gathers all prices of a certain book from different online shops and stores and finds you the most inexpensive one. I have to admit I was a little dubious at first at how best it could serve my needs, but I was pleasantly surprised — the price they give you can even include shipping options and even to your designated location (for me, I had to use the mostly catch-all “Asia”). You can even opt for used books. You can also put your selected books in a “cart” and have the system later on give you prices for buying everything from multiple stores, or everything from a single store. I was somewhat disappointed to find out you couldn’t customize a cartload of books’ shipping options when buying from multiple stores, so basically when it tells you that buying four books from multiple stores will cost you only $28, remember that it’s probably only shipping within the US. (Not a problem if you live there, of course.) The ability to also “import” an Amazon wishlist and have it compare prices for everything on a given wishlist can prove to be quite spiffy, although don’t expect to have it automatically enter your receiver’s shipping information when you go buy the book.

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