Click thumbnail for more photos.

Earlier, Dylan’s interest in going had waned and he wanted to stay home and play trains. I was able to change his mind by telling him that there would be a steam-roller down there and that Kate would be driving it. That did the trick.

Kate had finished her stint as driver, but we did see 3′ x 5′ letterpress posters being created 2 at a time by a crew of volunteers, big linocuts, a couple of 4′ x 8′ sheets of plywood, and the steamroller for the actual pressing. Pretty ingenious. The posters were hung from the school balconies to dry and were auctioned off as a fundraiser. My favorite was the Godzilla/sushi poster created by a crew from Starbucks.

A Wayzgoose is a tradition in the letterpress printing world that dates back to the 17th century, when master printers would serve a feast to their apprentices in recognition of the impending shorter days of fall and winter which would require the difficult work of hand-setting type by candlelight. Goose was often served, along with whisky. Now shops had adopted the past time as a way to open their doors to the public and showcase the work that has been going on.
— Kate Fernandez

“In the vigour of his age he married Gargamelle, daughter to the King of the Parpaillons, a jolly pug, and well-mouthed wench. These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon ‘gainst one another, in so far, that at last she became great with child of a fair son, and went with him unto the eleventh month…”
—Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

It’s hard to get an idea of the vertical relief from lake to the looming summit above, but it’s nearly 4000′. What was even harder to believe is that this is a popular BASE jumping venue. On the way in we passed a group of about 6 or 7 jumpers packing out large packs and carrying helmets with cameras.

Just before dark we took the kids down to the west end of the lake to “the beach”. As we hiked the trail, we heard an alarming roar above the trees which scared the kids (or at least Dylan). Looking up, we just caught a glimpse of one parachute gliding east toward the meadows at the east end of the lake. We were pretty eager to witness this spectacle, but we had just missed it. Visions of bodies screaming, flying down that wall in a wingsuit pulling the chute 100 feet above the trees filled our heads as we gazed up the wall hoping for more jumpers. Alas, there were no more, and the evening settled down eventually as we watched a green heron land lakeside and bats consuming a feast of insects hatching from the water.

Marinate on this:

Baring Mountain BASE jump

I believe the song is called “The Super-Supper March” by John Hamblin, but this is unconfirmned.

Hungry, hungry I am hungry
Table, table here I come
I could eat a goose-moose burger
Fifteen pickles and a purple plum

I could eat three bowls of goulash
Half a pound of wuzzled wheat
I could eat a peck of poobers
Then I’d really get to work and eat

Oysters, noodles, strawberry stroodles
French fries, fish hash, one red beet
Lamb chops, wham chops
Huckleberry mish mash
Oh, the things that I could eat

Doughnuts, dump-a-lings
Blueberry bump-a-lings
Chocolate mush-mash, super sweet
Clam stew, ham stew,
Water melon wush wush
Oh, the stuff that I could eat

Deep dish rhubarb, upside-down cake
I could eat a frittered flum
Hungry, hungry, I am starving
Table, table, here I come

John Hamblin

According to Wikepedia, John Hamblin is an Australian children’s television presenter and actor, best known for his role as a presenter on Play School from 1970 to 1999. He’s co-authored a book within the last few years, and on the back cover, it reads: “Wherever he went, whatever he was doing… John had a talent for attracting quirky situations, questionable associates — and always beautiful women!”

So the context is a HTML marketing email we developed for a regular multi-product promotion. As you can see, the rendering in Outlook 2007 on a PC shows the default purple as the visited link color. This was not desired, nor was it described by either the CSS or the HTML.

Visited links showing in default colors (contrary to the css styles).

As you can see, the HTML directs that the font color—in any case—should be white.

<tr valign="middle">
  <td style="padding: 5px 10px;"><a class="link3DS" href="http://link"
  target="_blank" style="color:#ffffff;">Alaska Cruises</a></td>
</tr>

The CSS says the same thing. The class on the above link is “link3DS” which as you can see below also directs the color to be white. (The entire body-embedded email style sheet here for reasons that will be explained later).

<body bgcolor="#1a2639" style="margin:0; padding:0;">
<style type="text/css">
<!--
img {display: block;}
a.orangeLink:link {color: #e6bc50; text-decoration: underline;}
a.orangeLink:visited {color: #969696; text-decoration: underline;}
a.orangeLink:hover {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.grayLink:link {color: #bdbcbc; text-decoration: underline;}
a.grayLink:visited {color: #969696; text-decoration: underline;}
a.grayLink:hover {color: #e6bc50; text-decoration: none;}
a.navLink:link {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.navLink:visited {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.navLink:hover {color: #1d3666; text-decoration: underline;}
a.link3DS:link {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.link3DS:visited {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.link3DS:hover {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline;}
a.SO_link:link {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.SO_link:visited {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.SO_link:hover {color: #a43232; text-decoration: underline;}
-->
</style>

After banging heads on walls, my workmate, Kurt, noticed that if you put the long-deprecated VLINK attribute in the email’s body tag, the visited link would now display the desired color. “But why haven’t we had this problem in the past?” I queried. VLINK could not (will not!) be the solution!

Then I recalled that in designing this email, which embraced an entirely new template, I had stripped down the style sheet according to what was now relevant. In doing so, I had also stripped out the default pseudo-class styles as all the links in the new template were triggered be classes. So I popped these default styles back into this email, we tested it, and sure enough BINGO!, the visited links now rendered in their desired fashion.

So to the above style sheet, these default pseudo-class stylings were added to our anchor links:

a:link {color : #1d3666; text-decoration : underline;}
a:visited {color : #1d3666; text-decoration : underline;}
a:hover {color : #a43232; text-decoration : none;}

The moral of the story? Don’t forget to assign default pseudo-class styles to your anchor tag! Why? I haven’t the slightest idea. Perhaps some jocko working on the Outlook project at Microsoft can share some…well I won’t call it wisdom, but at least an explanation where none seems possible.

bastille-day-at-the-corson-building from Mike Prevette on Vimeo.

The Adventure Company that put on this event looks pretty cool, and they are right here in town! …Must investigate.

Thanks Meeghan!

This may be my favorite car ever…

David Crow's Red Stilletto

It must be noted that the Dutch were lucky as hell on their first goal in that it was scored (off the head) of a Brazilian defender. Nonetheless, the second Oranje goal was superb, a double header off a corner with the second being a beautiful finisher past the goalie.

Note: post title peeled from a Fall album entitled, “I Am Kurious Oranj“