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The Gimcrack Miscellany

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CSS Templates

Posted by The Gimcracker on April 19, 2007
Posted under gimcrackery

It’s always nice to avoid starting from scratch, in this case when making a website. There are lots of website templates out there that let you plug your content right in, but what if you actually want to do some of the style yourself? Here’s some templates that provide style structure without forcing you into a color scheme or font family.

This site even tells you if the template is unsupported by older browsers, and I believe all the templates are XHTML 1.0 compliant.

Wow, WoW’s still going strong

Posted by The Gimcracker on April 18, 2007
Posted under gaming

Yottoo, my Draenei warrior

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game as consistently as I’ve played WoW the past 16 months. There are only two games I’ve played that have rivaled WoW in /played time, and they are Heroes of Might & Magic III and Half Life 2/Counter-Strike: Source.

I’m sitting here with a 70 paladin with 23 days of /played time, as well as a myriad of 20+ alts including a 50 mage, 32 warlock, 23 hunter, 22 warrior - the list goes on and I didn’t feel like linking them all here. You’d think I’d be somewhat burnt out by now, especially with a full time job, my wife, friends, family, and web development on the side.

I am not.

Included in my current plans are to make my paladin a master of potions, get my mage into Outland, and have at least one of each class at or above 20 so I can decide who gets to be my lucky #3 toon.

I believe I’ve settled into a pretty good arrangement with WoW. I am able to play 5 hours a week at work (1 hour per day at lunch), around 3 hours each Monday night while my wife is in class, and various times during the weekend. This way, I’m never letting RL trump WoW, but I’m not disregarding my precious toons either.

I have no idea how much longer I will be playing WoW, but at this rate I do not foresee an end.

Orthodox Paradox I: Introduction

Posted by The Gimcracker on April 17, 2007
Posted under gimcrackery

Icon of Christ

I am an Orthodox Christian and have been my whole life. Most of my friends and family are as well. It would probably shake things up a bit if I suddenly switched to another denomination, let alone another parish. The trouble is, I have wanted to do that on a number of occasions, and that feeling has become more frequent of late.

There are a lot of reasons I am fed up with my church. There are the national church problems that have been bothering a lot of Orthodox laypersons lately. There are some personal issues I have with the Orthodox Church, specifically the one in America as I do not have a lot of experience with the Orthodox churches in/from other countries. Finally, there are a myriad of things that bother me about my specific parish.

We’ll focus on my parish, as it is the most pressing issue on my mind.

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Awesome show, despite venue (and opener)

Posted by The Gimcracker on April 6, 2007
Posted under music

Snow Patrol

I don’t go to concerts near as much as a certain friend of mine or a certain sister in law of mine. That being said, Snow Patrol is great live. I caught the show at the Aragon in Chicago with openers Silverun Pickups and Ok Go! If you get a chance to see SP live I would say definitely take advantage of it as they really perform their songs well. I’m not a big fan of the song Chasing Cars but I loved seeing them perform it.

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Make your own playlists

Posted by The Gimcracker on April 4, 2007
Posted under intarwebs, music

Finetune screenshot

You’ve probably been exposed to streaming radio sites such as Yahoo! Launchcast or Pandora Internet Radio. They’re cool sites and all, but some of them require more information than I want to give and constantly prod me to sign up for something. I’m not big on paying for music that I don’t get to keep.

I recently Stumbled Upon a site called Finetune and have been frolicking in custom playlist heaven ever since. I highly recommend you checking it out - you can even pull it into your MySpace page or include it right into your blog or personal website, just like I have done. That way everyone will know what you’re listening to, which is awesome because deep inside we are all really concerned with what music other people like… ok at least you can go to your own site and listen to music you like for free.

Check out the plug-in over there on the left.