Lotto Start

11:49.54 - Sunday 15th February 2004   (Link to This Entry)

O-kay. I've made a start on the new Lotto site, with a redesign that I'm happy with. The Photoshop mockup has been chopped and made into a single page just to ensure I can get the thing to scale properly and work in the big four browsers, and it seems to work perfectly, although there was some table padding fun with Netscape that I had to sort out, as usual. I've come to the conclusion that only IE allows TD elements to inherit Styles from the parent TR - whether that's a recognised W3C thing or not.

Next step I think is to make a start on the admin area and get the databases ported across. I'm thinking of a single script approach here but I've currently no idea how to read data from a Data Source Name in PHP. MyQSL? Piece of cake. DSN? Not a clue. I am bereft of clues. I am DSN-Clueless.

Generally speaking I don't resort to Photoshop mockups for admin areas as they're usually held together with some tricky CSS mayhem, but I am inclined to think about it this time, simply because I am thinking of selling the site at a later date. This ties in nicely, as well, with rewriting the site in PHP/MySQL rather than ASP/Dbase because it's more popular and portable, being free and that. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do for a hobby if I do sell the site, but it'll mean my Wednesday and Saturday nights will be freed up a tad.

The USB Lights are taking over!

12:45.55 - Sunday 15th February 2004   (Link to This Entry)

Not only are they mounting up on ebay but just lately I seem to find more of them every time I open up a box. I'm sure the damned things are breeding somewhere y'know.

Valentine Thingummybob

13:29.33 - Sunday 15th February 2004   (Link to This Entry)

Forgot to mention - yesterday, in case it passed you by, was Valentine's Day. In an attempt to do something special, I raided M's craft bag for interesting bits of card and paper and actually made a card this year, rather than buy one.

First off I knocked up a heart shape in flash, then copied it and overlapped the two. I made a border around the overlap so that the hearts became two seperate shapes, removed the excess lines and imported it into Photoshop where I added the word 'Valentine', sized it up to fit on a card and printed the whole lot out.

Next stage was to cut out the two shapes. The first attempt revealed that the border on the overlap was too narrow, and it tore. I redid it with a thicker border and cut them out perfectly the second time, using a craft knife on a bed of paper, rather than a board, to guard against slipping.

So now I have two shaped holes in a piece of card that says 'Valentine' on it. I folded it in two for the basic 'card' shape, and cut a piece of dark red Mulberry paper - a weird grainy, strandy kind of thin, light paper - and cut it roughly 1cm smaller than the card all round. After Prit-Stick'ing it in, I realised the two heart-shapes I'd cut out would look great on the inside of the card, so that's where they went.

And finally, a couple of soppy lines on a creme piece of paper inside the card - again in 'Better Off 1', and my name plus kissy kissy in proper ink. Tha card looks great and M loved it, plus she's going to make them next year to sell. The best bit is the two hearts on the front - the light passes through the Mulberry paper and gives the effect of two glowing red hearts - pretty damned good.

Gawd, I'm such a wuss :)