During my visit to Boston this past weekend, where I hung out with David Sherman, I contracted some sort of flu-like illness. Since my return, I have been spending my days lying in bed and watching movies. In doing so, I've lost around 10 pounds, returning to a weight I haven't measured since high school. Let's hope I'll be ready for tomorrow.
I'm looking out my window now and there's a haze from all of the rain that is falling. I don't particularly enjoy the rain, but I don't dread it either. The emotion I feel is perhaps best described as wonderment. After a long, hot summer, it's such an unusual sight to see rain falling so relentlessly. I'm just thankful that I'm indoors right now.
That's odd, I don't remember including any divs with clear:both style specifications, and yet they appear in the code for my blog entries! It hasn't been an issue until I used a layout in which I had a floating element right next to my blog content. "Yikes!" I said. "How do I make a fix for something where I have decreased control over my own code??"
After a few Google searches, I came across this solution--the use of !important. Basically, using my external stylesheet to overrule Blogger's unnecessary and very odd CSS injection. No gaps for me, not today!
I'm currently working on a new layout for my website, a bit more simplistic than this crazy paint-themed one. I was working on implementing CSS sprites for my links and ran into a problem. For some reason, I wasn't able to change the background-position on my anchor tags when I referenced them using a class. For example:
.listButton {
background-image: url('someimage.gif');
background-position: 0 0;
display: block;
}
.listButton:hover {
background-image: url('someimage.gif');
background-position: 0 -34px;
display: block;
}didn't work. But this:
#listButton {
background-image: url('someimage.gif');
background-position: 0 0;
display: block;
}
#listButton:hover {
background-image: url('someimage.gif');
background-position: 0 -34px;
display: block;
}does work! Interesting...
My new goal: practice guitar a little everyday. Yesterday I started to learn how to play Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1 ... it was a little difficult at first, but I am taking it in pieces and I think I have the main part down. It helps that it is played very slowly.
In my efforts to create a Google Talk web interface using the Smack API, I've run into an as-of-yet unsolvable issue. The MessageListener class, which implements the PacketListener interface from Smack, does not seem to receive the event which calls processPacket. Strangely enough, this only occurs when trying to use the MessageListener class through a Data Control. It works fine from command line. Sigh!
I just learned the chords for This Ruined Puzzle by Dashboard Confessional. I never appreciated the song that much until tonight. "But what if the pages stay pressed, the chapter's unfinished, the story's too dull to unfold? Does he ever get the girl?"
Also, I've been working on implementing a chat client for Google Talk, that will eventually be used for Oracle Beehive. I'm doing it using a library called Smack, which can be used with any XMPP chat service.
I've decided that I should document the technical pursuits on which I embark in the event that I should need to revisit them in the future. I'll start with navigation parameters with portletized ADF applications.
I have been trying to figure out how to define navigation parameters when using a portletized ADF application and incorporating it into a WebCenter application. The documentation was hard to find, and the link is here in case anyone is interested. I am using WebCenter 11g, but I believe the details are roughly the same as 10g.
The main thing I was having trouble with was finding out where exactly to define these navigation parameters. It turns out, once you portletize your ADF app, you should define these parameters in the oracle-portlet.xml file that is generated. Position of the inserted <navigation-parameters> node also matters for some reason, at least in JDeveloper. It should be inserted right after the <portlet-name> node, or else JDev throws a "node is unexpected" error.
I finally played the piano in 300 today. God I love the piano! I played the three Yann Tiersen pieces I still have memorized. It was soothing, except when I messed up a couple times. I could have stayed there all day.
I just spent the last ten minutes looking for my current favorite of the three, but I can't find it, not even on Amazon's mp3 samples of the Amelie soundtrack! Why?? However, all this searching has made me want to watch Amelie again.
Today I had dinner with my cousin Stephanie who I haven't seen in years (and her boyfriend and her boyfriend's roommate). It was really nice catching up with her. Tomorrow I get to catch up with Serena, who's in San Francisco for about a week.
In an effort to figure out when exactly cousin Stephanie and I first met (the one and only time), I scoured the archives of my blog, looking for a specific entry that I wrote where I mentioned her. (We met during the summer of 2003) In the process, I rediscovered some humorous entries. The one that stuck out was one that recounted a phone conversation with my Grandma. It caused me to think about her. Here it is:
Conversation with my grandma: [translated from Cantonese]
Me: Hello?
Gma: He--Hello??
Me: Hi, Grandma!
Gma: Ah. What time is it right now?
Me: 5:08
Gma: 5 what?? 8:00??
Me: 5:08
Gma: 5:08?? I thought it was around 8:00!! How come the sun is still up?
Me: Because it's summertime.
Gma: Oh... it's summertime... I thought my clock stopped.
Me: No... it's 5:08.
Gma: It's not 8:00?
Me: No.
Gma: It's not 7:00?
Me: No.
Gma: So right now it's about 5:07?
Me: Yes.
Gma: Oh... okay. Bye.
Me: Bye.
An event as infrequent as the Perseid meteor shower, Gordon goes to the gym! (For the first time in over six months, I might add) But he's still got it. Those weights just can't compete. Now he's smelly, and he probably needs to eat some protein. Everyone knows what that means -- it's time for some Fruit & Nut Medley, courtesy of Kirkland Signature brand.
Sometimes I do things in secret. I do so not with the end goal of hiding my actions, but because I fear that others are all too eager to share with me their opinions about my actions, which will influence how I experience things. I want to develop my own opinions after which I am more than willing to discuss these things. One example: reading a book. I don't want people telling me it is good or bad before I have had a chance to decide for myself. Even if I consciously try to block out their opinions, there are limits to what the human mind can accomplish.