I have a few things to add to my site as far as sites/designs go.  I’ll be getting to that today or tomorrow.  It’s been a few months since I last updated that stuff.  It’s all good though because prior to that I had gone a few YEARS between updates.  Complacency takes hold sometimes.  Time to practice some positive jing.

I hope to get my other blog posting back over here without the double-dipping.

It never fails though; IE takes your awesome layout and shifts it a few pixels here or there.  That’s being generous mind you.  I’ve had IE just plain not work right in some cases.  Well, there’s hope for the minor annoyances.  Just make a stylesheet that is for IE only!  Make it feel special, since it is… special… yeah.

Well how do you do that?  I will post the link because why rewrite/post everything this person has already done.  It goes into detail and I’ve used it with great success.  Once IE 8+ becomes more predominant maybe we won’t have to do this as much?  Maybe?

Enjoy!

How to create an IE-only stylesheet!

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

That quote refers to the TARDIS.  That blue box.  Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space, in case you didn’t know.  And, well, I didn’t borrow it actually, I stole it! No, kidding again.  The ‘Time Vortex’ background was something I threw together.  I couldn’t find a decent one in an image search.  It works well enough for me.  The theme overall is also more blue.

Sadly, the season ended last Saturday for us in the U.S.  The U.K. gets it 3 or 4 weeks earlier.  The finale was bang on.  I love that, the play on words.  Bang!  The Big Bang was the name of the episode.  I’m going to have a review of it soon.

Geronimo!

Yes, I’m a scienthusiast.

I guess it could be hyphenated  sci-enthusiast?  Maybe scien-thusiast?  Either way, I looked around Google briefly and it’s possible I thought of this before billions of other people?  Maybe it’s some horrible word that I shouldn’t use?  Nah, it’s great!  It describes me quite fittingly, I think.

So there, it’s my word.  It’s OK, you can borrow it.  I expect royalties though!

What to do with it?  Well, I think the world needs more enthusiasm for science.  Not to solve every lurking problem in our lives but to better understand how the world around us works.  Some mysteries shall remain so.  There are some exceedingly complex things in the Universe that aren’t really practical for everyone to know.  Unless it’s your job to know them, that is.

So, perhaps one of my goals in life is to help spread the word of science; Turn people on to how it all works, at a fundamental level.  It always goes back to a quote from Carl Sagan.  Roughly, we live in a world filled with technology.  So few people understand how it all works.  You don’t have to be a scientist to understand.  You simply have to open your mind to it.  When people learn how things actually work, it’s usually one of those “wow…” moments.

In saying that, remember, we can’t let go of reason for madness.  There was a time when people who studied the heavens feared retribution.  Good people were arrested, exiled or even killed for observing something knowable versus believing in something we couldn’t know.  It might seem insane to think that could happen again, but remember as a species, we’re very young.  There are a lot of good and honest people out there that speak for science.

Science is interesting because it changes based on observation.  In that sense, our view of the world has evolved, as our methods and tools have evolved.  The next few decades should prove to be very exciting in the realm of understanding.  How the forefathers of great thinkers should like to be alive today to have a glimpse at what we know.  How the great thinkers of our future might look back and realize how primitive our thinking was.  Each new generation stands on the shoulders of giants from the previous.

Life; space; time; the Cosmos; all encompassing and all waiting to be discovered and understood.  We are, in a way, how the Universe understands itself.

We, as the human race, must keep it going.  If we’re not to be scientists, we should at least be enthusiastic about science.

Enter: The Scienthusiast.

The link to the site is here.

Can’t wait until all modern browsers adopt this.  In the meantime, time to keep researching CSS3 for what I can use at work.

Without further delay, have a look here!

Straight from the site:

Lightbox is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It’s a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.

That’s all there is to it.  Simple set up.  A few instructions and you’re on your way to having some nice smooth lightbox image effects on your page.

Add drop shadows to text!

So lets give it a go here…

Cool! So, there ya have it!

Over at Dynamic Drive they have such a pop up. It’s called an interstitial content box. Fancy name eh? It’s easy to implement and easy to customize. I do find the settings for how often it pops up to be a little off. This might be due to where I’m having it pop up though.

Click here to pop into a new kind of pop up!

Description:

This is a Interstitial Box script that uses Ajax to fetch and display the contents of external pages on your server as an interstitial. As the content is being shown front and center on the page, a partially opaque “veil” appears behind it that covers the actual webpage, ensuring all eyes is on the interstitial. A robust frequency control system lets you control how often the interstitial box should appear so it doesn’t become intrusive. Whether you’re displaying an ad or an announcement, you can be sure people will notice it thanks to the Interstitial Box!

Eventually, one day, our destiny will lie somewhere in space. Perhaps another planetary body in this solar system or even another star system. That is, if we don’t blow ourselves up or suffer a cataclysmic set back.

The recent White House budget leaves me both concerned and yet I see an opportunity to be optimistic. I’ve been reading forums to get people’s takes on this. Mind you this is coming from people who work in the industry to plain people like myself. It is inevitable that politics gets head-firsted into the mix. I made that slang up. Nice eh? I guess there is no way around it but the degree of “This was Bush’s fault!”; “This was Griffin’s fault”; “Obama sux!” is just a little much.

I try my damnedest to take a middle road approach. I want science. I want exploration. I want a manned flight program (also termed HSF for Human Space Flight). At the moment we have it with Shuttle. In a few short months, it will be done and gone. What happens after that? We’re grounded, at least humans are.

Private companies are really getting into the mix of things which does excite me. Thing is, they’re a ways off from manned flight. It will happen, just not quite soon as we’d like.

Constellation is dead. I’m sad and yet I can understand this move. Some claim to have had the insight or ESP enough to know it was doomed from day one. I think having a pessimistic attitude isn’t very healthy. I don’t work in the industry, I follow it from a few rows back. I can say that my interest is important, not as a single entity but gathered with the combined interest of persons just like myself. Lack of public interest will kill a program deader than dead. Apollo anyone?

So, I thought about the cancellation of that program and realized, ok, maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems. I’m still icky feeling about not having the ability to put humans up but lets think this out. The downfall of Constellation was reaching back to the past to sort of re-use older technologies or at least model from them. What we need are newer technologies that are laced with our learnings of the past.

I think the biggest technological advance we need is in propulsion. Chemical rockets are dandy at getting heavy vehicles off the ground and into space but once in space you need something else. Something that’s less cumbersome, less prone to failure and has some oomph! These technologies should be researched to make Moon and Mars missions faster. Transit time to Mars is MONTHS. With new propulsion you could get it down to weeks; or so I’ve heard.

So, new technologies and private companies. I think I actually like the sound of that. Will they deliver? The talk is there, the walk is yet to come.

More notes on the budget are promised robotics and planetary missions. This is very exciting to me. Rovers are great tools for science! Just look at Spirit and Opportunity; they vastly outlived their planned mission time. If we had a mission going up every other month, I’d be stoked.

A final note about canceling the Moon program. Listen, we’ve been there before. Yes, actual people walked on the actual Moon. That program was initially a race; a race we would win. After that, you had a group of giddy scientists drooling over the prospect of getting some precious samples back. That came later and Apollo XVII was the final Moon-shot. We never spent more than a couple of days there. When we go back, we need to plan on STAYING for a length of time. Weeks, not days.

China wants to go there. Let them go, plant their flag and then come back. It’s a great thing for a country. I’d applaud them for it. As the saying goes “been there, done that”. It’s time we went a step ahead. That way when countries are landing and planting their flags, we can wave at them from our cozy Moon habitats. From that point we can build on and then eyeball Mars or even asteroids.

So, finally, it’s bittersweet for me. I wanted to see Constellation work but ultimately I want to see anything work. I’ll hold on the promise of some serious R&D and science missions. I’ll hold on to private companies keeping us in orbit too. It’s a big time shake up of things. Perhaps it was needed.

Obama says we need to get young people into science and math. I couldn’t agree more. If he truly means this then he needs to deliver on this budget. NASA has inspired generations of people. Let’s keep it that way.

If this flops as a dud and our space program is left floundering for years, I’ll be one mad space cadet. >:o