Kimler Adventure Pages (http://randsco.com)

There are 110 days till the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, but the Olympic torch is on it's way to our little town of Cedar, British Columbia. Learn about the 2010 Olympic torch, the Canadian national torch run and more. If you can, come down and help celebrate the event with live entertainment, free hot-dogs and Halloween treats. (Olympic torch run map included)

2010 Olympic Torch Run: Click to follow the Olympic Torch on its 45,000-kilometer trek across Canada (longest national Olympic Torch run ever).

Olympic Torch Arrives in Cedar on Oct 31st

There's 110 days to go before the start of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, but the Olympic torch was lit, in Greece, on Thursday.

The torch run has begun. It's currently on a 7-day circuit through Greece. After that, it will be handed off to Vancouver 2010 officials and flown to Canada, where it will begin a 45,000-kilometer, 106-day trek across Canada.

The Olympic flame will be passing through our little hamlet of Cedar, British Columbia on Day 2 of its 106-day journey ... coming through town on Halloween (Oct 31st).

For more on the torch, maps & the Cedar celebration ... read on ...

More on the 2010 Olympic Torch Run

Rachel loves scrapbooking and recently made a "100 Things I Love" page, partly using Photoshop. I carried on with Photoshop and made a pure digital version. Also included is a photoshop tutorial for the "text-masking" typographic technique.

Scrapbook Page via Photoshop

100 Things I Love: Rachel used Photoshop to make the text "one hundred" out of all 100 things that she loves. It's a blend of digital and hardcopy scrapbooking, which turned out nicely.

Rachel has been scrapbooking for a few years and she has improved her skills remarkably. Each 12-inch by 12-inch page she does now is a work of art. Most of her pages are vignettes of the moments of family life and - one day - I will photograph and put them in an online gallery - to share and inspire others with their own scrapbooking projects.

In contrast, I scrapbook online, with this blog. (I'm more about the words than the pictures ... but I try!)

Rachel's latest effort is shown here, a page dedicated to the "100 Things I Love". The page is a blend of digital scrapbooking and paper scrapbooking. It's Rachel's first foray into the digital scrapbooking realm.

I found an online Photoshop tutorial that explained how to make text from words, which Rachel then used to make her own "100". I think it turned out really well and thought others might like to learn about the technique. (Of course, because I'm the "computer dude" in the family, I took Rachel's final "100" and put my own spin on a purely digital page, which you can see by reading on) ...

Photoshop Scrapbooking Technique

Rachel reviews "Infidel", by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ayaan was raised in a traditional Muslim home in Africa, she experienced an intellectual awakening in Europe and now critical of Islam, living under armed guard. In 2005, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

(Non-Fiction)Review of "Infidel"
An Autobiography by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Infidel: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of "The Caged Virgin," tells her unusual life story. From a traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya ... to her intellectual awakening and activism in the Netherlands, and her current life under armed guard in the West.

When I finished the last page of Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I closed the cover and commented on what a powerful book it was. Others have described the Hirsi Ali's autobiography as remarkable, amazing, or a a brave, inspiring and beautifully written memoir. All such acclamations are warranted as Hirsi Ali uses clear and descriptive language to tell the story of how she became one of Time magazines 2005 one-hundred “most influential people in the world today.”

Born in 1969, Hirsi Ali was born a traditional Muslim girl. She was raised in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya, where her family held steadfast to the doctrines of the Quran. Like the 6000 young girls that undergo female genital excision everyday, Hirsi Ali was forced to submit to excision in order keep her pure, as well as other cultural practices requiring her to take a secondary and subservient role in life, simply because she was female.

Click the link below to continue reading my review of "Infidel".

More on "Infidel", by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I recently published an article about cross-browser font embedding, using the @font-face CSS selector. It turns out that the code I put forth causes a 404 look-up in Internet Explorer. A reader has suggested some superior code, which I put to the test

Paul Irish Sets My Morning Schedule

Geeky @font-face Newz: It's a thumbs up for Paul's "Bulletproof @font-face Syntax"! (Do geeks really look like this?)

Funny how a single comment can change the direction of my day!

Paul proposes two concepts - new to me - in his recent article, "Bulletproof Font Face Implementation":

• Internet Explorer tries and fails to download the TTF file (with 2-selector syntax) even though the 2nd @font-face selector includes a "format" declaration.
• He proposes a single @font-face selector, which satisfies all browsers (obviating the need for two selectors), searches the local computer for the font first and eliminates the Internet Explorer "file not found" problem.

Okay ... this is techie, geeky cool and - for sure - not everyone is going to want to read about this, so here is where you should get off the geek train (if you haven't already).

If you're all aboard, heading for geekdom and want to be cool, then read on brave web-font enthusiasts ...

I'm a Geek, I want More

There's a spiffy-looking CSS Technique that's been getting a lot of play in the web-design and web-development social circles lately. Unfortunately, it's not a CSS technique and even as a JavaScript technique, it's crap! Did you spot it?

"Innovative CSS Technique" Making Rounds is NOT a CSS Technique

Even as a JavaScript Technique, it's Crap

This article, authored by Emanuele Feronato, has been getting some attention within the web-design and development social network recently. I've seen it Tweeted, FaceBook'd, Blogged, Digg'd and included in various "Totally Amazing CSS Techniques" lists.

On his website, Emanuele bills himself as an "Italian Geek & Programmer". Unfortunately, his article demonstrates he knows very little about web-standards, W3C validation, pure-CSS, graceful degradation, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility or white-hat SEO. He says his LightBox-like effect is "100% CSS-based" and that it's made "only with CSS - no JavaScript needed".

No JavaScript needed? What a pile of hooey!

The article is the most popular article on his blog, sporting over 252 comments and it's currently being shot across the design social circuit like it was the newest communications satellite. While some of the commentary points out the shortcomings, most (who don't know better) are lapping up this code - using it on commercial sites and passing it on.

At first blush, the technique seems very cool, but it's not code we would use and you shouldn't either. In a nutshell, out-of-the box it's crap. (Are you a web-developer, designer or programmer? Can you spot the problems?")

To learn more about why this code is crap (and to get an improved version) ... carry on ...

Turning Crapola into Shinola