horseygurl88 needs one of these today:

Dear you, you would think

missing would feel so bad

it does not. Love, me

Your smiling picture,

reminds of happy rainstorms

as it flashes by.

I’ve been working on a specification for replaceable visual styles on a meta-website I’m working on. So far, I’ve realized some things:

• Nearly all websites have a title bar, smattering of “most important” links and copyright line.
• Most have some sort of side-bar navigation.
• Nearly all use the rest for replaceable text.

Therefore, it should be possible to make a drop-in style that works with the facility of something like a Winamp skin. Most websites can be shoehorned into that shape.

What I’m proposing is to mark the replaceable sections with amrita-style attributes: <title template:replace='pagetitle'> Example Text here </title>, and <div template:replace='content'> Body text goes here </div>. It’s not perfect, but allowing some clean separation between templating engine and dropped-in text is a big plus.

In a “themeball”, there would be several elements:

• index.html, the template for the pages in the site. For processability, it will have to be well-formed XML at least, and preferably valid XHTML.
• images/, a directory of images used in the design.
• *.css, the stylesheet files used in the design
• README, text instructions and/or notes
• Manifest, a formatted description of the theme metadata — author, design title, contact information and licensing terms.

All files should use paths relative to the root of the theme directory, unless normal processing says otherwise (CSS in subdirectories that @import other CSS files should use URLs relative to the base file).

One sticking point is path mapping — each engine using pre-built styles will have a variety of URL schemes, and may not be located at the root of the host. The engine will have to be aware of its own URLs, and generate URLs that map to the parts of the theme. As the templates are read through the engine, the internal paths will be remapped to point to the actual URLs of the design components. A trivial example is one of an engine that lets a user select from themes uploaded to /themes, one theme per directory, named according to the title. A theme called “123 Blue” would have a server URL /themes/123%20Blue, and the components relative to that. Themes could also be assigned GUIDs by the engine, so a URL for a style component might look like /{1234-123467-123446-123345}/style.css. Generated pages would transform the source template’s unqualified style.css into /themes/123%20Blue/style.css, and equivalently with images. By re-rooting an entire directory, the conceptual overhead is kept relatively low, and the processing simple for an XML-based parser.

P.S. No, just letting the user switch stylesheets is not enough. Shut up.

I am, in no particular order, stressed, excited, happy, querulous, puzzled, in love, lonely, shakey, weirded out, relieved, and otherwise, not sure.

The world is a terrible, tragic place this morning. I bet it’ll get better after I eat, though.

Jumping, both feet first, for no apparent reason, in stompy high-tops reminds me of anandabrat. I don’t think I’d be who I am without you. Thank you.

Current music: Counting Crows —Recovering the Satellites

Thanks to elliotpp for finding me a picture to study from for some of the shoulder position.

Talking with rising_dawn like today is good for my sanity.

My favorite memory of being alone is waiting for the bus, opposite that dark road, sitting under the streetlight at the bench, with a two-lane road running into the distance on either side, and seeing nobody. The bus won’t come for another thirty minutes — I missed the previous one, but I have nowhere to be, no schedule to keep. I have a song stuck in my head, and I spent ten minutes just dancing on the yellow line. I always associate pavement with busy streets, so the chance to just dance on it makes me laugh, and to dance like nobody’s watching is the best.

Smells are the root of all of my memories. I go to choose tea for tonight, and the smell of each is a thousand memories. Hibiscus makes me think of Robyn, the Lapsang of rainy nights so many times past. Ceylon of Carrie and of Jem. Sour cherry of Noam, and the cheap green tea of speeding over choppy sea with Vruba on the way to go to Seattle.

My best and worst memories all involve rain.

Tonight, walking through town, I step up to the road and see the salmon pink of the street light reflecting on wet pavement. Instantly, I am eighteen again, standing alone on the side of a wet roadside in an unfamiliar city, the same canvas bag hanging on my shoulder, and I look off into the dark distance, and I am not sure where I am going. I am sure I’m on the right road, but the night is blacker than most I have seen in my life, the heavy clouds obscuring the stars, and the trees obscuring any light but the one, cold streetlamp.

I was a scared, unsure boy at that moment, for the first time out on my own, together and then again suddenly apart from my first lovers, the wound so fresh it loosk as if it will never heal. The yellow line of the road stretches off in the distance, a lone pair of headlights stare at me from afar, and I trudge off in the direction I know is right, but unsure how far I have to walk. I pass shops, closed for the night, but the lights glowing dimly inside reminding those that pass of the daytime life that inhabits them. I am the only one passing at this time of night — owners and patrons alike are long since shut away in their houses. I may never see these shops by daylight. To me, they will always remain ethereal ghosts, reminding me that I was not a native to that place.

I realize that for my transportation back in time, I am now in this moment as the girl I always was. My life makes more sense now, I have a sense of belonging to my being, and I don’t feel as if I am watching myself from outside this time. Maybe tonight will be the more real memory, pushing out the events that happened years ago.

I cross the street, trying to shake the feeling of being new and alone, trying to regain the comfort that is walking home along the same path I always take. The new pavement, completely unworn, and the far too black road don’t help me feel any closer to here and now. I walk onward. My street, too, like that street long ago is black. No streetlights, no cars. I hear water running into new storm-drains, and this time I remember a Thanksgiving night nearly a half decade ago, bicycling home through heavy rain, watching traffic signals change from blue-green to red and back again as I ignore them — as everyone ignores them, being inside, and I, alone on the road with not a single living being watching me pass. I come home, and the house is still musty, hotter than the cool, damp air outside. Tonight, too, it’s musty — though this is the smell of cat kept indoors for days of rain, not the everpresent must of a damp climate.

1. A digital camera,
2. a decent skirt,
3. massive amounts of chocolate,a huge hoodie,
4. a better bow,
5. some Speedball C-5 pens.

Find, on any peer to peer file sharing network, any piece of music by Johannes Pachelbel that isn’t “Canon in D”. Find anything by Deep Blue Something that isn’t “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Find any classical suite properly attributed and complete. Double points if at an acceptable bitrate.