4 Fructidor CCXI (August 21, 2003)
Roll Me Under New Madrid
Don't ask me how I got there, but somehow I ended up at a site about antique electric clocks the other day.1 Either way, I couldn't help but notice a page labeled 'ebaY seller to English Glossary'2 and my curiousity got the best of me.
I read through the page and couldn't help but think "Hmmmm… This seems familiar." I mean, I've never even searched for, let alone bought an electric clock; yet somehow their was an air of familiarity to the list. Then it hit me, I'd seen some of this stuff before while browsing through various proprietary models of computers.3 The only thing was, some of the translations supplied made no sense if taken into consideration while browsing a computer listing. So I took it upon myself to create an ebay seller to English dictionary for people who were browsing for computers.
It's a continual work in progress4, but they're all based off of actual item description's I've seen with me pulling translations out of my arse interpreting the phrasing into everyday English. If I like the final result enough, I may even stick a permanent link into the sidebar.
So, without further ado I give you The ebay Seller to English Dictionary (Computer Buyer's Version)
1 I said I have no idea how I got there… Sheesh, just never give a guy a break.
2 I know that's hard to read but that's how the guy wrote it, not me.
3 Most notably Apple, Sun, and SGI. Occasionally NeXTs whenever I'm feeling particularly masochistic.
4 Which means you too can contribute! Just add your definition in the comments.
Nothing to contribute to the ebay list, but I do want to complement you on the snazzy transparent horse in the sidebar. I'd make it just a little darker, though. Or maybe even opaque, and then just push the text below it (not as snazzy, but might look better overall). Just a thought.
I think I may have tried that when I made up the image, but I'm not sure.
Right now I'm more concerned with making my scripts work properly in speedycgi so that they take advantage of the fact that it doesn't clear out global variables after each execution. I figure that if I store the data (pictures, quotes, list of all random links) in memory then it should cut down on disk access. Of course I'll have to kill the speedycgi backend whenever I make a change to one of those files, but it's a small price to pay. (Especially since they shouldn't be updating all that much anyways.)
Additionally, did you spot the pinstripes added to the gray boxes? There were a few background colour images, but those should hopefully be all fixed now.
Posted by g026r at 4 Fructidor CCXI 14:23 (2003/08/21)
I didn't see the pinstripes, but I do now. I've also noticed that they fade in from the left, which is pretty cool.
Issues, that should read 'background colour issues'.
That's what I like about those stripes though, they're fairly subtle. Unless you're looking for them they really just look like your screen is darker in that section.
How's that for the horse? I don't want to move the text all the off it, as that was the entire point of making it a background image.
The bits to each side of it look a little bear though. Now I need to come up with something to fit there.
Posted by g026r at 4 Fructidor CCXI 15:39 (2003/08/21)
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