*Sigh* I'll never get caught up

I have six or seven blogs I intend on doing. A hundred stories or more. And now, now my manager at work tells me it's okay for me to blog about using Python for web development, and to show the recursion technique I use for turning HTML into Python (instead of the other way)... I'm allowed to problog my code, so long as I don't give away any crown jewels. I have more stories to write, and my blog titles include "Peasant Girls," "Writing as a Spectator Sport," "Texas Polygamists," "The Abortion Artist," "Thinking About Jim Thinking about Rape," "Antitheism," and "Plot? What Plot?"

Oh, and part one of my presentation, DWIM: Do What I Mean HTML Templating Using Python.. But that'll be going on my yet another blog, ElfSternberg.com. Announcements forthcoming.

Damn, I owe y'all another chapter of Sterlings, don't I?

If you want to see what I've been doing this week, and why I've been so quiet, you can check out my latest polisite, Friends of Tina Orwall, (and that means another blog entry for the coding blog, "Using Wordpress as a CMS for Political Campaign Websites"). Omaha and I just finished it last night; now it's up to her press people to populate the page engine. I need to find a way to automate the Page Views exclusion system. What do you guys think of the design? It's pretty routine, but I think it balanced nicely.

Really, the art was the hardest part. I'm so in love with my Wacom pad it's unnatural.

If only I didn't have a life. Well, if tomorrow's weather is crappy, I'll spend it writing and cooking. If it's nice, I'll spend it riding my bike and falling further behind.

Reviewing the competition

I don't feel so bad now. Tina's website went live this afternoon at http://www.electtinaorwall.com, and Omaha showed me the other two candidate's websites: Vote Todd Gibson and Tan Cares. They're both Wordpress sites.

Tan's is obviously done by someone with a primitive sense of design; the way his picture is situated above the poorly photographed flag in his banner shows a very poor sense of layout, and I bet the dropshadows came with the original theme on which his is based. The contrast is bad on the right-hand nav bar and it looks like whoever did this wasn't quite comfortable enough with Wordpress to mangle the theme to his liking, as it still looks much more like a blog than a campaign website. The background, with the striped layout, is visually disorienting. And there are no permalinks! That's an official What The.. ? right there.

Todd Gibson's is also a bit messy. The artist put a lot of time into his banner (and what's that funny red bar by the kid's elbow there?) and the rollovers are kinda cute, but does he have to put the "Paid for..." notice at the very top? That's something that goes in the footer, dude. Font selection is routine. I love the Put paypal link here notice... go live before you were ready, Todd? I love all the thank-yous the designers felt obligated to put into the bottom.

Here's the impression I'm getting: I am not an experienced Wordpress hack. I barely speak PHP, and often had a translation guide on my knee while I worked on Tina Orwall's website. But I know my HTML and CSS, and I know what I wanted, and I and my very passionate wife knew exactly how much work we were going to give Tina: enough until the page looked right. Ordinary, pedestrian, yes, but without a clank or a clatter, and that's what we acheived.