Back in Black and White

I haven't written so much as a line on this blog for a few weeks, partially because little has come up that I wanted to write about and partially because when I did think of something I was too busy or too tired. Today I'm pushing myself to get restarted and post more often. And so, without further ado...

The Oscars

I can't really comment on any of the winners because we haven't seen the movies yet. All the same I'm really glad that Morgan Freeman got one for best supporting actor - he's an exceptionally good actor and does a great job in everything he's in. I'm not especially interested in seeing Million Dollar Baby because I'm not a fan of boxing. Actually I think boxing is a dumb "sport" - I have no interest in seeing a couple of grown men (or grown women, I suppose, since that's what MDB is about) give each other brain damage, even if it is just a movie.

I do want to see The Aviator, though. I guess it's because I'm into the history of science and technology, and that kind of thing, and in any case Howard Hughes was an intriguing character.

I was a bit surprised about some "missing" nominations, though. How come Hellboy didn't get put up for a make-up award? Why was The Chronicles of Riddick skipped on the special effects and costume design nominations?

CSS and RSS

We finally got around to picking up a book about CSS the other day, so now both Kate and I can learn up a bit and do some stuff to make these blog pages a bit more unique. Maybe I can also fix a couple of annoying problems - the way the top of the header graphic is getting overlaid by the "Blogger" bar, for instance, and also the way the original graphic comes up and then my new one loads and overwrites it.

Also I've been learning a bit about how RSS works, which is pretty cool. RSS is an idea whose time has come. Specifically, its time came last Friday when I couldn't get to work because a tanker-trailer fell over on LBJ and closed the road for most of the day. Now I have an RSS reader installed at work and I've set it up to check for traffic reports every five minutes. Now, if anything happens that's going to cause me a problem getting home I have a chance of finding out about it before I hit the road. Doesn't help on the way out, of course, but it's still an improvement.

Now all I need to know is whether BlogSpot has a way of creating an RSS feed from my posts. That way all of my readers (Kate) will be able to see that I've put up a new post within minutes of it going live. All she'll need to do is have an RSS reader up and running 24/7 to make sure she doesn't miss out... :)

[Update... setting up the feed is actually already done - all you need is the link, which I've added to the About box, top right. Cool!]