Redesign: heavy lifting done

I think that most of the work on the redesign is done. As you can see, the site now sports a new logo, new fonts, a different design, streamlined navigation, some new pages, and a bunch of other goodies.

So what’s left to do? There are always a few things. I think there may be some weirdnesses on IE Win that I need to fix. I need to fix a few graphics here and there.

But the biggest thing, ironically, is that I’ll have to repeat the rendering exercises that I did over the last two weeks all over again, so that all the static pages pick up the new design. Sigh.

Redesign, Phase 1

It’s time. I’m pulling the trigger on the site redesign. Doing it incrementally isn’t really possible, but I’m rolling out the first phase separately anyway: doing away with the news item department icons on each post. Their time is up.

New iPod, old iPod

A reader, Hartley Odwak, found my iPod Surgery photo album and reported that he found the same problem with his unit. He wrote:

My ipod charges, but neither of my macs will recognize it. I am certain that it is the port; hence why i dismantled mine!

What I see where my Firewire port attached to the logic board are (1) four larger connections at each corner of the port, all of which are loose (are these supposed to be soldered to the board?) and (2) Six very thin pins running parallel, and down from the port, conecting the port to the circuit board. Some of these are loose.

Should I make sure all 10 connections are soldered tight to the board? The thin ones may be too hard for me to solder, as I have never worked on such tiny connections, and as such may take it to a shop to have them do it.

His solution, which I would recommend to anyone over my experience, was to take the unit to a local independent Mac shop to get the soldering repairs done. It cost about $40 and the unit works again (unlike mine), so well worth the $.

Some notes on my new 10GB iPod to round out the story:

  • The backlight is very cool.
  • The solid state, no moving parts controls took virtually no time to get used to. I like the solid state wheel a lot better than the original moving one.
  • I did have to get used to the new button placement; having everything around the wheel was a little easier, I think.
  • One gripe: the new unit doesn’t work with the old remote control, so I’ll have to buy a new one.

Overall a slick little unit.

Longer than 4 hours 50 minutes? Oh my aching keister

A thread on Plastic collects pointers to news about Peter Jackson’s Return of the King, including a tip about the running length of the extended cut: “the DVD version of Return of the King will be longer than 4 hours and 50 minutes.”

Say what? I already had to split my viewing of the extended versions of the previous films over several nights. Looks like I’ll have to have a long weekend to actually watch the last one in a single sitting.

Catching up

We got in last night around 10 pm; Joy and Jefferson are ecstatic to be home. The trip was mostly uneventful, with two exceptions. Note: Dogs can be made to go to the bathroom in airport stalls, but not on their pee pads (no matter how hard you try), so put rubber gloves in your list of doggie carry-on supplies. Now dogs and Lisa are asleep on the sofa in our living room and I’m catching up.

I’ve been reading news feeds over the holiday, but didn’t get much of a chance to post anything about what was going on outside our own vacation. So here goes:

Back in the land of Mad Cows

It’s weird to be back in Washington State, knowing that there may be a sponge-brained mad cow lurking in my grocer’s freezer. Guess I’m crossing the Sunny Dene Ranch off my list of places to visit in Yakima.

Scary to read this article in the New York Times speculating on the probability of additional undiscovered mad cows. And funny to hear that the infected cow has been traced to a Canadian herd. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be the same “blame Canada” phenomenon that sought to put the blame for the August blackout on our Northern neighbors’ shoulders.