Skyline Honey-Locust
Tulsa time capsule - In 1957, folks in Tulsa, Oklahoma put together a time capsule to be opened 50 years later. That works out to 9 days from now that it will be opened. Thing is, they took an entire, brand new gold 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe and stuck it underground. Will the car be rusted? Will it have survived? We will find out soon. Oh, and here’s the best part:
As part of the “Tulsarama!” festivities, citizens of Tulsa were asked to guess what the population of Tulsa would be in the year 2007. The guesses were then recorded on microfilm and sealed in a steel container buried with the car. When the car and artifacts are excavated, the person whose guess is closest to Tulsa’s 2007 population is to be awarded the Belvedere.
As promised: an addendum to my realignment notes—the revised comment ranking system. Nils mentioned that the challenge of earning new comment ranks was good and necessary. So, I have (very nearly) maintained the difficulty in getting ranks. There are still iron crosses at 1000 and colored iron crosses at 5000 comments. However, Dan argued (and I originally noted) that 125 commenting thresholds were rather widespread markers of achievement. So, I have changed things a bit. Now, vertical bars next to a commenter’s name represent the number of comments they have left, and therefore their rank. Each vertical bar represents 100 comments and every time the tumbledryer leaves 10 comments, their vertical bar increases in height. After 100 comments, a new vertical bar grows up next to the previous one.
This mechanism gives the user feedback on a more regular basis with regards to their progress in commenting rank. So, as you progress through tumbledry’s ranks at a slightly faster rate (every 100 instead of 125 comments), you are better able to gauge your progress and proximity to the next level of achievement. Oh, and I’m going to brainstorm the best images to represent this stepwise progression through ranking—I could return to the old irons, but split them into pies, the size of the pie increasing as progress was made. We’ll see.
Note: To view the changes made to tumbledry, you may need to do a hard refresh. To summarize that link, it’s Ctrl+Shift+R in Firefox, Ctrl+F5 in Internet Explorer, and Command+Shift+R on Macs.
As I cryptically mentioned a couple of posts back, there was a realignment going on at tumbledry. Not a redesign, oh no. Those are rather a bit more costly. Anyhow, the seeds for this evolution in design were planted back in April. You see, I sometimes diddle in photoshop as a way of getting my creative side out (and as a homework break). So, I put together a horizontal grid with a vertical grid and started plunking tumbledry elements in. Thus, this is a realignment in both the vertical and the horizontal sense. Vertically, I have finally found my rhythm, with an 18px baseline. Notice how the horizontal pieces of text (it works best on the front page, I’ve been lazier elsewhere) line up nicely, even with the gaps between images, etc. (This trick is slightly broken on Internet Explorer. Curse you, Internet Explorer.) Oh, and you’ll find the line lengths are quite short. So, you only have to read about 10 words per line. This has been shown (by a few studies) to maximize comprehension. Here’s the idea: the human eye has an arc through which it moves (comfortably). This allows you, at a set distance, to comfortably scan a certain horizontal distance without moving your head. Having to move your head back and forth requires considerably more brain work, and slows down reading comprehension. Restricting the width of the line keeps your eye within its comfortable arc, minimizing head movement and maximizing comprehension. So I think/hope this evolution will serve us well.
Horizontally, the column width upon which tumbledry is based has been shortened up to 120px. Eight of these columns results in a 960px wide layout, which is pretty standard (it comfortably fits on most monitors). Plus, I really like the proportions that this 120px thing provides. I especially like the front page split: 50/25/25%.
Oh, and a final thing. Links are now chronologically interpolated between journal posts. So, you’ll get more of a stream-of-consciousness feel on the front page. I think the links were getting abandoned at the bottom of the page before… now, we can all share in link excitement. As usual, questions and bugs in the comments!
Testing out RAW shooting on the camera.
Just tossed this online to test something.
You know how here at tumbledry you earn a comment bullet after 125 comments? Is that starting to seem like an excessive number to everyone? Yes, me, too. I think I have found a better way to do this. I’ll code it up in the next week (or so) as I have time. Finding a job is rather a bit lot much higher on the list. I’d revise that sentence, but I thought it was funny. Your mileage may vary.
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