Jeremiah Hoyet

As I’m just playing around with my blog design, I’m actually learning a little bit about CSS2. One particular bit that I have never seen or used before are “attribute selectors”. Attribute selectors simple select a piece of code to be modified base on certain attributes.

For example, I was attempting to remove the “view more photos” link from the Flickr feed located in my side panel on my blog. I had tried several different approaches to this problem, but came up empty handed because the images and links all lack a CLASS or ID definition. That was, until I stumbled across a page on the W3C website defining certain selectors, their functions, and uses.

In order to finally remove the link, I used an Attribute selector like so:

#flickr_badge_wrapper a[href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerhoyet/"] {
display:none;
}

As you can see, I modified the <a> tag that included the attribute href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerhoyet”, which successfully removed the link.

Neat huh?

I did a bit of a number on the CSS of the K2-Lite theme provided here on WordPress.com. I made the header image quickly in Photoshop using a few freely available fonts from DaFont.com and a few other techniques.

I’m trying to incorperate as many of my social web feeds into the sidebar as I can without making the appearance of the blog suffer. The Flickr feed looks a bit. . . out of place at the moment, but once I dive into that widget’s CSS, I should have a clean looking Flickr feed and I should be able to replace the “Flickr” text automatically placed above the widget with the official Flickr logo, as I have done with the Twitter and Last.fm feeds.

I’m nearing the age of 19. Last year in December I graduated early from a high school in Florida, and nearly a year later I still have not even applied for college. I keep putting it off, thinking “Oh, I’ll do that next week.” or “I need a little more time to decide what courses I want to take,”. Well boys and girls, my time is nearly up. At the end of November I will have missed the dead line for application at the local community college and I still haven’t decided what I want to do.

I’ve always known that I will end up in some form of computer-related career, but I couldn’t put my finger on which exact science I wanted to focus my studies around. I’m a huge fan of computer hardware, I have built many computers and spent thousands of dollars tinkering and tweaking. On the other hand, I’ve always loved web development. I’m no good with Photoshop, but give me notepad, a couple of hours, and I’ll have you a basic XHTML/CSS standard web page. So, which end do I choose?

I’m thinking web development. It’s a great line of work to get into, with lots of jobs out there for people with the required skill. Of course, I’d need some updating and some fine tuning to my current short-list of skills, but that is what school is for right?

So, in thinking I might want to become a web developer someday in the next 5 years, I decided to start a little side-project. “This Is Web” will be my web dev blog. I have a long learning process to go through, and I think having a place to showcase my progress will give me a since that I’m making it towards my goal.

It’s still in the early stages of work, but I should have it up and running by the end of October. I think my first step will be getting some more intimate knowledge of CSS under my belt. I know the language, but I’m very rusty and haven’t really garnered the proper techniques to call my knowledge “mastery”.