Russians smoke some good stuff

Just when you thought the gloom and doom forecasts for 2009 had bottomed out, WSJ released an article today (or rather yesterday because I’ve reverted back to my nocturnal ways) about Igor Panarin, a Russian professor who predicted a decade ago that the U.S. will reach a kind of self-destructive economic implosion in 2010 that will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the states. Anyway, I do love a crazy apocalyptic theory, and while this altogether sounds like a bad article from the Onion, included in it is a post-disintegration map of the new divided states.

Just my two cents here:

1. Seeing that Panarin is a former KGBer, why I am not surprised that the Russians can’t seem to stop fantasizing about our demise?
2. After the whole Palin experience, I really wouldn’t mind if we gave Alaska to Russia. Really.
3. Canada seems to win the lottery in this deal… Because, you know, Canada consuming the Midwest, a region that alone arguably has twice as many people, is totally realistic.
4. Have we completely forgotten about the Confederacy? Yes, the Northeast could possibly be absorbed into the EU, but they have nothing on the states below the Mason Dixon.
5. Idaho as part of the California Republic? Really now? We all know that the so-called Asian influence extends no further than a 50-mile radius from LA and SF. California was going to break off and float away anyway.
6. Texas has enough oil to be a booming economy on its own. How it would ever fall under foreign influence is beyond me.
7. Oh Russians.

The original Sara Lee

Made-from-scratch apple pie, circa 2007:

Won in the looks department, but the filling was cloyingly sweet. Overly-sweet pastries don’t fare too well with our household, so I went for a second try.

Made-from-scratch apple pie 2008 Christmas edition:

Pressed for time, I passed on the fancy crust crimps in favor of a new flakier crust recipe. I forgot to brush egg yolk over the top of the pie before I placed it in the oven, so it lacks the golden brown color of its predecessor. And okay so, it didn’t do so hot in the beauty contest… but it’s the inside that counts!

Brown sugar in lieu of white + more cinnamon + nutmeg + extra buttery crust = a delicious treat and one very happy family on Christmas Eve.

A new breed of rollover buttons

To sum up my grievances with using JavaScript to create dynamic rollover images in one word: preloading (or lack thereof). On a slow/degenerate/IE browser, when you hover over a rollover image for the first time, there’s a noticeable delay while you wait for the new swapped image to appear… which translates into seemingly long dude-where’s-my-image moments.

And if I haven’t emphasized enough how absolutely IN AWE I am over how powerful CSS can be, take a look at this technique I used to create my “popping” navigation tabs:

I don’t recall where I first saw this used or how long I spent blinking at the code before I finally realized what it was doing. Nonetheless, by a stroke of luck I’ve somehow tamed it to work its magic on my site. You see, the entire tabs image actually looks like this

Notice the longer tabs on the bottom row? So, instead of creating two separate images for the regular button and the rollover button, I created a single image with one version stacked on top of the other. Clearly, the visitor doesn’t view the entire image. In my CSS script, I defined the visible area to be only the top half (with the shorter tabs) of the image, and in the hover-state, I shift each corresponding block of the image up enough pixels to reveal the bottom image. Thus, the popped-up version of the tabs have already been loaded they were part of the same image, and you’re left with the fastest rollover you’ve ever laid your cursor on. This genius technique is called the “Pixy” rollover (after its developer). Please celebrate it, use it, and spread the gospel so I don’t run into any more of the aforementioned traumatizing moments. Thank you.

Look ma! No tables!

Welcome to my first Wordpress blog and my most-complex-to-date CSS-based site. I’ve finally ventured out of my comfort zone to end my failing romance with archaic HTML tables in favor of its sleeker counterpart. There’s still quite a lot of housekeeping to be done here, but I’ve been itching to launch it. So, steamrolling ahead, I hope you enjoy.