Kristina and I are waiting in line to get our tickets. Can’t wait to see all of the interesting art within these curved wals.

A trip to New York City isn’t complete without a trip to the top of the Empire State Building. Too bad the line to get to the top was an hour and a half long. Oh well, it was a beautiful crystal-clear day which made for a beautiful view.

After the 3rd graders were let out we went to Center City just to see what has changed since the last time I’ve been here which was November of 2006. This shot is of the southside of City Hall.

Kristina and I spent the day in Philly visiting a teacher friend’s 3rd grade class. We had a religion test, a spelling test, and we ended the day making art out of macaroni and glue. All I can say is I’m glad I’m not in the 3rd grade anymore.

Here’s something I don’t see every day on my walk to work. Apparently there is some sort of big movie shoot at the canal. Lots of big equipment, lights, and a few Arri film cameras. They hadn’t started yet as I walked by so lots of people were busy getting things together which is the opposite of what happens when the film starts rolling.

TEH I CAN HAZ CHEEZ BRGR BOOK IZ NOW 4 SAEL!

Translation (via txt2lol.com): The I Can Have Cheese Burger book is now available for purchase!

icanhascheezburger.com has taken the net by storm. Starting as a simple site to show off the cute, captioned, LOLcats the site has grown into firm part of popular culture. They opened a store at LOLmart.com and now they are even selling their own book. For a mere $8.00 at Amazon, a piece of LOLcat history can be yours. My co-worker Paulo even has a LOLcat of his own in the book.

Remember the ACME Corporation from those old Looney Toons cartoons? Well leave it up someone on the Internet with way too much time on their hands to catalog every occurrence of an ACME product in a cartoon, complete with screen grabs.

So the next time you need to know where an ACME Strait-Jacket Ejecting Bazooka was used or what an ACME Ultimatum Dispatcher looks like, you know where to turn to. And surprisingly it’s not a Wikipedia article.

Web developers like to rag on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer every chance they get due it’s sub-par support for HTML/CSS standards. But one thing Microsoft did get right was support for background-position-x and background-position-y. The background-position property lets you control the placement of the background image of an element. Background-position-x and background-position-y let you control the placement independently.

What are some practical uses of controlling the background position independently? Take a card game, for example. Instead of assigning a separate background image for each card you could make a single image that has all the cards in a grid (see below). To show every card you would only need 18 classes: 1 for the common card styles, 4 for the background position of each suit, and 13 for the background position of each value (Ace, two, three etc.)

The CSS for the image above would look like this…

.card {
height:78px;
width:52px;
display:block;
background-image:url(/foo/card-image.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}
/* Suites */
.clubs { background-position-y:0%; }
.diamonds { background-position-y:25%; }
.hearts { background-position-y:50%; }
.spades { background-position-y:75%; }
/* Values */
.ace { background-position-x:0%; }
.two { background-position-x:7.5%; }
.three { background-position-x:7.5%; }
.four { background-position-x:7.5%; }
.five { background-position-x:7.5%; }
/* etc. */

The HTML would be simple, elegant, and look like this:

<a class="card hearts five">Five of Hearts</a>
 
<a class="card spade jack">Jack of Spades</a>

Alas if only life were that simple. Currently only IE 5.0+ and Safari 1.2+ support background-position-x and background-position-y. Every other browser ignores the properties, defaulting to the upper left position.

Instead this is how the CSS code would look if you were writing it for support with all browsers…

/* clubs */ 
.ace-clubs { background-position:0% 0%; }
.two-clubs { background-position:7.5% 0%; }
.three-clubs { background-position:15% 0%; }
.four-clubs { background-position:22.5% 0%; }
.five-clubs { background-position:30% 0%; }
.six-clubs { background-position:37.5% 0%; }
.seven-clubs { background-position:45% 0%; }
.eight-clubs { background-position:52.5% 0%; }
.nine-clubs { background-position:60% 0%; }
.ten-clubs { background-position:67.5% 0%; }
.jack-clubs { background-position:75% 0%; }
.queen-clubs { background-position:82.5% 0%; }
.king-clubs { background-position:90% 0%; }
 
 
/* spades */ 
.ace-spades { background-position:0% 25%; }
.two-spades { background-position:7.5% 25%; }
.three-spades { background-position:15% 25%; }
.four-spades { background-position:22.5% 25%; }
.five-spades { background-position:30% 25%; }
.six-spades { background-position:37.5% 25%; }
.seven-spades { background-position:45% 25%; }
.eight-spades { background-position:52.5% 25%; }
.nine-spades { background-position:60% 25%; }
.ten-spades { background-position:67.5% 25%; }
.jack-spades { background-position:75% 25%; }
.queen-spades { background-position:82.5% 25%; }
.king-spades { background-position:90% 25%; }
 
 
/* hearts */ 
.ace-hearts { background-position:0% 50%; }
.two-hearts { background-position:7.5% 50%; }
.three-hearts { background-position:15% 50%; }
.four-hearts { background-position:22.5% 50%; }
.five-hearts { background-position:30% 50%; }
.six-hearts { background-position:37.5% 50%; }
.seven-hearts { background-position:45% 50%; }
.eight-hearts { background-position:52.5% 50%; }
.nine-hearts { background-position:60% 50%; }
.ten-hearts { background-position:67.5% 50%; }
.jack-hearts { background-position:75% 50%; }
.queen-hearts { background-position:82.5% 50%; }
.king-hearts { background-position:90% 50%; }
 
 
/* diamonds */ 
.ace-diamonds { background-position:0% 75%; }
.two-diamonds { background-position:7.5% 75%; }
.three-diamonds { background-position:15% 75%; }
.four-diamonds { background-position:22.5% 75%; }
.five-diamonds { background-position:30% 75%; }
.six-diamonds { background-position:37.5% 75%; }
.seven-diamonds { background-position:45% 75%; }
.eight-diamonds { background-position:52.5% 75%; }
.nine-diamonds { background-position:60% 75%; }
.ten-diamonds { background-position:67.5% 75%; }
.jack-diamonds { background-position:75% 75%; }
.queen-diamonds { background-position:82.5% 75%; }
.king-diamonds { background-position:90% 75%; }

That’s a class for each card or 52 for those following along at home. Bloat city.

So kudos to Microsoft for letting developers be flexible in at least one area. Now if all the other CSS properties were as flawless as this we would be in business.

As I was leaving for work this morning Puck jumped onto the bed and climbed onto Kristina who was still sleeping.

While out doing errands today Kristina and I stopped by Five and Below where I saw this mouse. The perfect mouse for surfing? I think not.