Greetings chilluns — I have made a couple of new CSS themes for your enjoyment. You will note at the bottom of each page a “theme” selector. Currently, you most likely are viewing the default white/grey/blue theme. May I suggest trying the “tornado” or “old skool” theme? Some of you may recognize the “old skool” theme as the old-old-old theme of thelocust.org.

Wanna see what it really looked like back in the day? Check out thelocust.org, circa February 2001, via the Wayback Machine.

I got some mail (of the electronic persuasion) from yet another Brit with some silly problem with my instantRSS project, so I did a little work, and fixed it up. Voila! New version 1.3, now validates with CSS validating thingies: http://feeds.archive.org/validator/ and http://rss.scripting.com/.

Two new galleries up today! Thunder Over Louisville 2004 and some photos I took of the kitties wearing beads.

Brand new, just for you. I have been working on this redesign for longer than I care to mention (most of that time being me fiddling with the portfolio section.

The new design is intended to be very clean, and very easy to redesign, as it is completely controlled via CSS. Long explanation short, Cascading Style Sheets are a way to “style” HTML from a central point, and you can control a LOT of stuff, including font size, line spacing, block positioning, colors, overlapping, nerd nerd, nerd nerd nerd, nerd. In any case, to give you an idea of the “power of CSS”, I suggest you take a look at CSS Zen Garden, which is a showcase of a single HTML page, but with different style sheets submitted by different people. Each stylesheet radically redesigns the HTML, but keeps the content the same.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the new design, and let me know what you think!

Week before last, Geoff mentioned that the local Amateur Radio league (ARTS) was holding a testing session the following Friday at the local Red Cross. He figured I was a quick study, and let me borrow his somewhat-dated copy of Now You’re Talking: All You Need to Get Your First Ham Radio License, and I went about studying for my Technician license (the first rung of the ladder).

The old-timers will tell you (quite rightly) that the new HAM licensing is far easier than it was in the olden-days. Now, the entire question pool for the 35 question test is open to the public, and to you only have to pass a single 5 words-per-minute Morse code test. Youth wasted on the young! Well, I took many an online practice test, and even started learning CW (HAM shorthand for Morse code).

Friday (Good Friday) rolled around, and I took the Technician class exam at the Red Cross and passed! Geoff suggested I attempt the General class exam and the Morse Code while I was there, since I paid my $10. I missed 16 our of 35 on the General exam (not bad, considering I had only taken one practice exam for the General class license). Then I decided to attempt the 5 WPM Morse code test. The play you 5 minutes of a Morse code QSO (HAM-speak for a conversation), and you have to transcribe a least a solid minute. Oh lordy, that was tough. It was quite the embarassment, but at least I know more now about my enemy than before. Woo-hoo.

So that was Friday. They told me I’d have my callsign by Monday (today), and that it would be posted on the FCC’s website. Well, Monday is here, and who says the government is slow! I am now the proud owner of the call KI4EZO.

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be studying for my Morse code, General and Extra class licenses.