Category: Administrative

Shrub.com Article for January

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January’s article, Gender Bending in Utena: the movie, is just what the title makes it sound to be: a look at the way the movie handles gender.

Note: Happy new year everyone! This is a journal article from a class on Japanese fiction that I took last Spring. If I was a good person, I’d revise and expand it (some of it’s a bit disjointed, ’cause I waited to the last minute to write it), but I’m not, so y’all have to deal with it it as-is. This article contains spoilers for those who haven’t seen the movie.

The first glimpse of Utena is of a woman in man’s clothing – and in more than just the literal sense; she has short hair, wears pants instead of the typical girl’s uniform, speaks in male language, and for all intents and purposes “passes” as a boy until her (gasp!) breasts are revealed in her first duel. But Utena’s gender bending does not end there; indeed, as her typical outfit implies, it extends to her role of Prince (both her self-assumed identity and later when she becomes engaged to Anthy, the Rose Bride), and later her transformation into a car (henceforth known as the Utenamobile).

Divs to make tables obsolete? Hardly.

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First things first:

  1. Is everything working for everyone? No weird spacing issues, two content spaces running into each other, etc?
  2. Would you prefer the permalink pages to have more space by not having the right link bar there?
  3. Please give me suggestions on how the comments should formatted. I’m not really happy with the way they are right now.
  4. Don’t be shy in speaking up about any other issues you have with the design; I may not take your suggestion but then again, I just might.

I have to say, creating a WP theme has given me a new insight into divs. And a renewed love for my tabular design style.

You see, I got into webdesign right around the time when NetObjects was a hot program. Not that I used it, mind. Horror of horrors, I went from hand coding to using FrontPage. I know, I was young and lazy. But my mom’s partner was writing the new version of the NetObjects manual, and he was the one who had taught me code, so I was infulenced by his design style. In other words, tables were my method of control; through them I made sure the content was exactly where I wanted it, how I wanted it.

When I got back into hand coding and learned to use CSS, you can imagine my inner control-freak’s glee. Tables + CSS positioning = wickedly cool overlapping content. Look at this theme. Or Shrub’s main one. Tables are what makes my designs go round. So, as you can imagine, working off of strictly div-based themes as templates threw me for a loop. I procrastinated for months, having a few false starts that never worked out. And then the lovely Monkey over at Sudden Nothing showed me the design she was working on (it’s coming out quite welll; I can’t wait until she unveils it) and wham I got the design bug.

A night in Photoshop, a day in temporary-page development, and a few more in porting it to WP code (real content doesn’t exactly measure up the same as the fake placeholders) and I had my theme up and, mostly, running. “Divs are great!” I was thinking to myself. “Best used with tables, not instead of them, though.” Oh, if only I had known how prophetic my thought had been.

I go to bed, wake up and fix a commenting issue, and then am greeted with no less than 3 people (Buffy e-mailed me) telling me that my carefully coded right navigation bar was overlapping the content in IE!* I was annoyed, but not too much so because I didn’t want the div to be outside the main content box anyway, and my one attempt to put them inside of it brought on a nasty disaster in the form of my width constraints not working. I also noticed that half the time the padding on my left bar would work just fine and the other half it would screw up and be ugly. Divs can do many things, but provide adequate spacing for complex designs is not one of them.

So, fast forward to today. I get home, take a shower, then roll up my sleeves to fix the problem. Having had lots of experience with table spacing, it didn’t take me all that long to get the design working like it was supposed to. Tables have saved the day yet again.

I don’t think I’m going to give up my tabular design for a div one; it’s just not practical for the crazy stuff I like to do with my layouts. Still, this experience has given me a new appreciation for divs and what they can be used for. They’ll be making a comeback in future designs, but within the confines of tables, that’s for sure.

* A perfect example of why I hate IE. By not using W3C standards it makes coding for multiple browser compatibility a nightmare. Microsoft, please die. Or, better, yet, stop letting IE suck so bad. Also, people who use IE: get Firefox it r0x0rz browser b0x0rz.

Oops…

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In a fit of house-cleaning I deleted my theme and had to restore from an older backup ’cause I’m not at home right now. I’ll probably have things back to normal on Monday night.

PS: I decided that now was a good time to work on my new design. So things are going to look funky for a while. If I get tired before things are workable, I’ll set it back to the old version of the layout, otherwise I’ll keep it up for the night. Either way, things won’t be finalized until tomorrow evening (when I get home).

PS the 2nd: Looks like I’m keeping the new look for the night. Feel free to give constructive feedback, as it’s in a stage where I might actually change something. Also, is anyone else noticing that the spacing on the left bar keeps changing? I’m not sure if I see it because I’m tired, or if there’s something wonky with my code…

PS the Next Day: Ops, should have checked the comment function before going to bed. I knew the authorization code was going to bite me in the ass somehow. Why, oh, why was I such an idiot to delete the newest version of the old Shrub theme?

Imma try to get it installed before I have to go. I think it’ll be a quick fix, especially since I left a comment about some irregularities that tripped me up last time…

PS the Next Minute: Fixed! People should be able to comment now. Sorry ’bout that.

Shrub.com Article for November

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November’s article, Silent Treatment is a short story and commentary on popular culture, the entertainment industry, and women’s place in all this.

Wanted immediately:

Hot [must be hot!] woman [must be female!] between 5’3″ and 5’10” [must not be taller than 5’10”!] to play a role in upcoming police drama on a major network. Character is in coma – at no point will she ever awaken from her deep slumber. Other characters (men) will interact with her, but she will generally be non-responsive. Scenes may sometimes involve physical interactions, but generally she will be non-responsive during such interactions. When responsive, other characters will keep her in check by telling her to stop being a bitch and that if they wanted to hear a lecture, they would’ve gone to college.
Call 582-284-2949. Ask for Cindy.

Blogging Break

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First off, I’d like to apologize to phillyjay, who I left in the middle of a conversation. I didn’t mean to do it, but some personal stuff crashed on me and I decided it was best to stay away from blogging altogether for a while.

Even though I’m posting this I’m still on break because I want to get some stuff out of the way first. I’m running on a deadline for some things and so I need to focus on finishing those. It’s looking like I’ll be back sometime in November.

Wish me luck with everything! ><

Efficient Recently Commented Posts

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I’m sure y’all will notice, but we have a new feature here on the Shrub blog: recently commented posts. Unlike the typical version, this one actually does it in an efficient manner that an uptight person like me can respect. It’s a bit ugly right now, but if I ever get a new layout to work I’ll be sure to properly incorporate it.

Shout out to Michael Moore for giving me license to use his awesome code. He is truly a programmer among programmers.

Shrub.com Article for October

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October’s article, Fantasy Women, discusses the “chicks in chainmail” stereotype found in many fantasy based media.

While in the midst of writing my Girls and Game Ads series, I found myself going off on a tangent on the depiction of women in the fantasy genre and how it helped lead to the rise of the “girl power” paradigm we find deeply enmeshed in current Western pop-culture. While the whole “chicks in chainmail” deal was already being challenged by fresh authors and ideas by the time I got into fantasy, it remains an important part of the genre’s history. It is this idea that I will be addressing in this article.

Note on Commenting

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Due to an unprecedented amount of comment spam, this blog now has a human authentication plugin. We have done some preliminary testing of the plugin and it seems to work (although if you enter the incorrect code you have to hit the “back” button and do it again). For the next few times you comment, we recommend that you backup your copy before posting in case of unforseen problems.

If you encounter any issues while using this new feature, please e-mail the administrator via the contact form on the main Shrub.com site.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.