÷0

Yes, it’s true, I’ve already begun another new CD, and this one even has vocals! (Hence the smiley-esque title.) The album is called ÷0 (Division by Zero) and I’ve posted one of the three so-far-complete tracks today, called “Saturday Night Pizza.” Check it out!

New photos posted…

On Saturday we took the kids to Hyland Lake Park Reserve in Bloomington. New photos are now up! Click the Offspring link up in the nav bar to check them out!

Print (or save) that photo!

It’s come to my attention that printing from the new Gallery tool on the Offspring page is not as easy as it could be. Paying for Shutterfly prints is an option, of course, but you can also print the images right from the site or save them to your hard drive. Here are some instructions…

1. Click on the picture you want to print, so it appears by itself on the page in the larger size.

picture-1.png2. In the gray area above the picture, on the right side, you’ll see the date, owner, and size information. There’s a menu that allows you to pick other sizes to view, and the “full size” appears below that as an orange link (see picture). Click the orange link next to “full size.”

3. The page will reload displaying the full-size picture, which will most likely be too big to fit in your browser window.

4. To print the picture, you’ll want to open it up in a window by itself. Do this by right-clicking (on a Mac, hold the Ctrl key down and then click) on the picture, and in the menu that appears, choose “View image” or “Open image in new window” something similar. (The exact wording varies depending on your web browser.)

5. Now you can print the photo by choosing “Print” from the browser’s “File” menu (or by clicking the print button, if your browser has one).

6. If you want to save the picture, do everything up through step 4, but instead of choosing “View image” from the menu, choose “Save target as…” or “Save image to disk” or something to that effect.

Incremental increases in intuitiveness

Hopefully (yes, I know that’s not a word, but hopefully William F. Buckley isn’t reading this), this site has now become slightly easier to use, thanks to my super-cool new translucent navigation bar. I’m taking the transparent PNG thing to the next level here, stacking transparencies on top of one another, and the overall effect is very cool, I think: the nav bar is shaded, but you can still see the photo through it all. Actually, the individual text links on the nav bar are separate transparent PNGs, in the top layer. (OK, technically they’re not CSS layers, but whatever.) Then the nav bar itself is part of the next layer down, which includes all of the shading and the logo that are overlaid upon the actual photo, which is at the bottom. This way, I can easily swap in new photos without having to redesign anything else. The photos just need to be cropped to the right dimensions. (Of course, it’s been ages since I’ve taken a new “34” photo. But maybe now I’ll get back into that project. I really want to take a picture of the signs at the end of the offramp from eastbound 494 onto County 34, because they’ve got “End MN 100” and “Begin Cty 34” side-by-side. And I’ve been a fan of 100 since I was about 5 [for some reason… but at any rate, this parenthetical has gone on far too long now].)

I’ve also added in an “Offspring” link which, if you’re logged in and have been granted access, will take you to the new Gallery2-based photo library. But since I don’t want just any old stranger/psycho looking at pictures of my kids, I’ve added the log-in requirement. Like I mentioned in my last post, if I know you, feel free to register for an account, and then let me know and I’ll set you up with access to the gallery.