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Happy Valentine’s day! It’s currently 62 freaking degrees outside. In Iowa. In the middle of February. The record high is 63. I really wish I’d thought to check the weather before I walked outside this afternoon with my heavy black wool coat zipped up to my chin. Luckily, by the time I go outside again, it should be cool enough to require my coat. It looks like we’re expecting snow by Thursday, too. And the projected high on Saturday? 5. Five degrees Fahrenheit. God bless Iowa. How could I ever leave the Midwest?

Tonight I’ve work until 5pm, class until 6:30, and then I rush home to clean the house and prepare dinner in time for Dana’s arrival around 9pm (she works this evening). We’re not doing anything too special: dinner, probably a movie, and cuddling assuming she isn’t snoring too loud during the film. We decided just last night that we weren’t going to spend the evening doing homework as we originally planned, that we should take the evening off to enjoy one another’s company. As such, I only got around five hours sleep last night to make up a bit of homework time. I’ll be getting up pretty early Wednesday, as well. I have a meeting from 10-noon, and then a meeting at noon with my major professor. I’ve a bit left I want to get done before my meeting with him. I’ve made substantial progress this week, I think, but I always worry it isn’t enough.

Dana and I are both pretty stressed these days. We don’t get a chance to see each other as often as we’d like, and even when we do get a chance to see one another, my mind is usually still elsewhere. My creative component is starting to show up in my dreams. Should make for a fun eight or so more weeks.

It’s 63 now.

Be sure to check my miniblog for a link to Ze Frank’s take on the subject of Valentine’s day (or right-click the link in this sentence to download it). It’s still my favorite Valentine’s day video, even if it is a year old.

When it comes right down to it, I am a fan of navigation. I like organizing websites and designing navigation bars. I read about information architecture in my spare time. My thesis work is thick with IA-type issues. So when a friend (Quinn) recently pointed me towards Stephen Clark’s Mini Slide Navigation, I was impressed, intrigued, and above all, inspired. I decided to see if I could improve upon this fantastic idea.

Click here (or on the sample image above) to see the results of that inspiration. I’m calling my creation Smart Mini Tabs, with “smart” being the key word in that title. See, good navigation should always serve two purposes: it should tell you where you can go, and it should tell you where you are. It’s easy to develop a navbar to do the former, while the latter takes some doing. Smart Mini Tabs accomplish the latter by recognizing where the user is located in the grand scheme of things, and making that location obvious. This is accomplished in the JavaScript by:

1. Comparing the browser’s location with the href tags located in the navigation anchors,
2. Marking that anchor with a “current” class, and
3. Returning the tab to that anchor when the user isn’t using the navigation.

As such, the sliding tab not only serves as an indication of which link the user is currently mousing over, it also acts as a visual breadcrumb, marking their location in site’s hierarchy. In other words, the tabs are both attractive and functional.

The Smart Mini Tabs are also smart in that they allow for variable tab sizes. No longer must each tab be a fixed width. As the tab slides from one location to the next, it also changes size to match that of the link to which it is moving. This means that not only can you create variable width tabs (”home” and “design portfolio” needn’t take up the same space), but that Smart Mini Tabs are also friendlier when the user changes text sizes.

Smart Mini Tabs are known to work in Firefox 1.5, IE6, and Safari. If you know them to work/fail in other browsers, please let me know. Tweaking must inevitably ensue, and updates will be noted on the Smart Mini Tabs Testbed page. If you have any comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Comment away!

I’ve been eyeball deep in creative component work all this week. I met with my major professor on Wednesday, and the meeting went pretty much exactly as I expected: I told him what I’d done since we met last, and when I finished, he waited expectantly for the rest of it. When nothing else came, he politely suggested that perhaps I should pick up the pace a bit. And if you knew my major professor, you would know that to be a polite rephrasing of his actual statements. :) That’s part of why I picked the guy, though: he’ll give me the straight stuff, kick my ass into gear, and offer no apologies for doing so. Sometimes, that’s what I need.

So that also pretty much summarizes my week. I’ve read a lot. I’ve taken a lot of notes. I’ve also designed some, and probably coded more than I should. In fact, the fruits of one of those coding exercises will be described in my next blog post, to arrive sometime later tonight, probably.

I slept in this morning, which felt fantastic. I got to bed shortly after 2am, and woke up around 11:30am. I needed it. For the past six days, I’d consistently gotten less than six hours sleep every night. That’s okay for a night or two, sure, but when I’m trying to be intelligent and productive, there’s a point at which increased time awake sees diminishing returns on productivity. I have no idea why I always fall back on economics to understand my sleep habits. :)

Last night was a hell of a lot of fun, though. I let myself quit working around 7pm and headed to Dana’s, from whence we headed to Steph’s for a small get-together involving a tiny bit of drinking, a moderate amount of snacking, and a whole lot of game playing. Dana and I played Cranium and Taboo with Steph (whom Dana knows really well and I just think is cool), Chris, Luke (both of whom I’d met once before and also think are cool), Lee, and Chelsea (whom I’d never met, but… yeah. Cool). I hadn’t laughed that hard in a really, really long time. Afterwards, Dana and I curled up on the couch and watched Evolution (which I’d never seen)… or rather, I watched Evolution while she slept. :) It’s been our pattern of late when we watch movies. I’m just much more of a night owl than Dana.

And today I’m back to work. Or at least I will be soon. You’ll hear from me again shortly, I think, but the post will be technical in nature. Basically, I figured out a cool, useful, and nice-looking navigation system that I wanna share with the web world. Adieu, all-you!

First, in reference to comments of post past: Ha! You’re so funny I forgot to post! ;) I haven’t posted for a bit because I usually do my blogging at work (bad, I know) but I’ve been really productive at work this last week. I was at the tail end of a big project that I really just wanted to get done, so I powered through ‘er. Well, am powering through, I guess. I should finish it today.

Before I go any further, I think I should mention I changed the look of the top navigation: it now lets you know what section you’re in. I was reading Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think! last night before bed and had gotten to the part about good navigation… as such, I couldn’t go to sleep until I fixed my site (second night up until 3am in a row). :) It was a really small change: I wrote a tiny (less than 300 bytes!) JavaScript to do most the work and made a few lines worth of changes to my CSS. Unfortunately, I’m still pretty much rubbish with JavaScript and that alone took over half an hour (a good portion of that was paring down the bloat). At least it works, and I have it now, so I’ll be able to use it elsewhere because I wrote it with portability in mind (grab here if you’re curious).

In new news, I got my new monitor. :) I went with a 19″ widescreen LCD. It was one of the cheapest of the larger monitors Best Buy had at $299, but I actually preferred its picture slightly to some of the more expensive ones they had. Course, I just had to shell out another $20 at Best Buy last night to buy a DVI cable, as the monitor only came with the traditional type of monitor cable (which is analog instead of digital), and the refresh was making my eyes ache. I went with the widescreen because my laptop has a widescreen display, so I figured I might as well be consistent. Still, it’s tough going from a 1600×1200 resolution to a 1440×900 one (which, according to my calculations (shaddup Eric, thank you) is only around 2/3 of the space I had before. Ah well. 1600×1200 or better on an LCD would have cost me a very pretty penny.

In cool and non-nerdy news, I caught a bat on Monday. Bat as in a furry flying creature of the night. Caught as in with my own little handses (whilst wearing gloves). It turns out they’re pretty easy to catch when they’re not moving. The basic story is, I was leaving Dana’s apartment when I saw something brown laying in front of their apartment building’s door (on the inside). I nudged it with my toe and it spread out its wings, which was a pretty good indicator of its batness. It pulled itself across the floor for a few inches and came to a stop again. I decided it must be injured, so I let it be and opened the door to go. At that point, it took off in the air, came back at me, and ran into the glass beside the door. Then it did it again. And again. Sonar my ass.; I’m sticking with what I got. At that point, I took pity on it, cause I realized if I left it around someone would probably kill it. So I put on my gloves, walked over to where it’d given up on escape, and grabbed it. The bat gave a mighty screech and dug its teeth into my thumb, instantly making me happy about the gloves idea. I took it outside and tossed it onto the air, where it flew away happily, presumably out to find more glass to headbutt. I took a picture of the bat… I’ll try to remember to post it later.

In less cool news, someone broke into my car yesterday. I guess “broke in” is probably the wrong term, because it was unlocked. My car is always unlocked. I come from a small town where everyone knew everyone, and I grew up thinking a locked door was rude. I’ve always felt that if I trust people enough to leave things unlocked, they’ll honor that trust by not being a dick. In general, this has been true: in the seven years I’ve been in Ames, this is only the second time I’ve had a problem. Still, it’s very annoying and disheartening to know my trust has been violated.

Luckily, despite the unlocked doors, I have the best anti-theft device around: I own nothing of value. Anonymous Thief emptied my glove box onto the passenger seat, dumped out my ash tray, and left the center console open (and possibly rifled through my trunk… hard to say, as it was already messy), but as far as I can tell, nothing is really missing. I could be wrong still, I guess (it was dark and I was in a hurry), but I really don’t keep anything of value in the car. A.T. left the change in the center console, left my registration tag (which I’ve forgotten to stick on my license plate (which was arguably the only thing of value in the car)) in the glove box, and left my camping gear (yah!) in the trunk. Maybe they were looking for something specific. Luckily, I only own things in general.

My car is currently locked. Stupid humanity.

Actually, I don’t have carpet in my apartment. I guess I’m not cool like Strongbad. But, in my opinion, hardwood floors are cooler looking than carpeted floors. And they don’t show dirt as easily. And when they ~do~ get dirty, it’s pretty easy to sweep. Or, alternatively, spray the floor with everclear and light that puppy UP.

Carpet is not the point of this post. The real point is to say that, about half an hour ago and without much fanfare, my 21″ friend, Mr. ViewSonic, passed away while I was IMing Quinn. He consumed himself from the outside in. At first, he flickered a few times, and I noticed that about 1/4″ was missing from all the sides. It wasn’t black or anything, it was just that the middle of the screen had become slightly larger, pushing the outsides off the screen. He flickered a few more times, eating a little more. Then he went into some pretty serious death throes, eating a bit more of the screen each time. A minute later I had maybe a 320×320 window. The last thing I saw was Quinn netScreaming at me in all caps to buy a new monitor. The letters were four inches tall and shimmering. It was like the computer gods were berating me from above. Through their vehicle, Quinn.

It looks like I’ll be making a trip to Best Buy tomorrow for a new monitor. I’m thinking 19″ LCD. The resolution won’t be quite as nice as what I’m used to at home, but it should be big enough I could still feel comfortable designing on it.

Anyway, it is Friday night and I am currently sitting in front of my laptop blogging. This has to stop. Not that I have any plans. Dana’s out on one of her Lady’s Night adventures, and my previous plans (pool with Katie) were obliterated by a surprise attack in Katiland by a rabble of migraines. Or maybe just one. I’m not sure how that works. I also ran into oldFriend Riana today, and she invited me out, but I don’t know if I’ll take her up on her offer because a) It’d be her and a group of people I don’t know, and b) I haven’t heard from her yet tonight. According to my blog, I haven’t hung out with Riana for two years, four months, and twenty-nine days. See… this is why I write this stuff down, people.