Past Diatribes

Another St. Paddy's come and gone. . . . I've revised the format of my Past Diatribes section this month and reading what I did, St. Pat's 98, sure doesn't seem a year ago. Last year we were out in Leixlip checking out where Ray's house was going to be. This year, we spent at a housewarming in the newly-inhabited gaff. It was a good night.

I mentioned renovations there, of my Past Diatribes page. I've reformatted for a much more reader-friendly presentation, and thrown in some JavaScript for the enjoyment of those of ye who have Netscape or IE4 and beyond. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. Another section that was much in need of a facelift and some updating was the section all about Dublin. You will be happy to note the red is gone, the content is expanded, and several relevant (and recommended) sources on Dublin Info are linked.

Check it out, and I ask you to pay specific attention to the background and the buttons. I've learned how to make them myself, and this project is my first opportunity to show them off.

Creating graphics like these is easy enough, if you have the right tools. My first ".gif" took ages to make, and looks like... well....

After that, it came to my attention that with my Lotus Word Pro 97's ability to (1) draw pictures, and (2) save documents as .html files, I could use this word processor to create me some images. Now, as this isn't the job the yoke was designed for, results were not great. Check out this self portrait I was able to make:

and this dude barfing:

Moving on to more sophisticated graphics tools, I've discovered Microsoft Photoshop Version 3.0. The buttons for different topics (), and for identifying the site in general () were drawn in MS Paintbrush, the accessory built into most every computer around today. These were saved as bitmaps (.bmp), and then reopened in Photoshop were they could be cropped, resized, and saved in Internet-friendly .jpg and .gif formats. More impressive are the effects and enhancements that Photoshop can perform to make the images interesting. They can be sharpened, softened, brightened, darkened; they can be transformed to look like a drawing, like a watercolor, like stained glass, or a rubber stamp.

As well, texture can be added to make any of these look like they are on paper or canvas or burlap or brick. (This texturing effect made the brick backgrounds a snap.)

It's fairly easy to do, it's fun, and I think it makes my pages look far better. I encourage you to play around a bit, and let me know how you get on.

Peace.