Fun with Dreamweaver



I just took a two-day introductory course on Dreamweaver MX 2004, and I think I'm in love. I played with a demo version last summer and used it to create the Stardate 7600 minisite, but the only thing I did then that expanded my knowledge at all was using it to create a jump menu. Thanks to the course, I finally have some useful knowledge about templates, cascading style sheets, and forms. I don't know whether the Well fully supports javascript in its user pages, but if it does, I may modernize the old Complete Starfleet Library a little bit. I'm not ready to do anything database-related in the foreseeable future, but a fresher look with a couple new features might be worth trying.



Damn the United Way



At work there was a fundraising book sale today. The idea is to donate some old books and let your co-workers buy them. So I picked up a few books and a used CD (Bonavista by Kim Stockwood). The books:



Frederick Marryat: The Settlers in Canada

Frances Brooke: The History of Emily Montague

P.G. Wodehouse: Leave It to Psmith

Joseph Wood Krutch, ed.: Eighteenth-Century English Drama

Georgette Heyer: Arabella

Sandra Hochman and Sybil Wong: Satellite Spies

Robert Louis Stevenson: Selected Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson

Paul McAuley: The Secret of Life



... all for a grand total of C$6.50. The Marryat in particular is a neat little item, a small hardcover of roughly the same dimensions as a mass market paperback, published in Germany in 1908. There's an introduction in German but the book itself, a short novel about, obviously, settlers in Canada at the end of the 18th century, is in English. I've been thinking of tracking down one or two of his nautical adventure novels. This isn't nautical in nature, and apparently it was aimed at a younger readership, but it may still be fun.



The History of Emily Montague has been called the first novel written in North America. Brooke, who was English, lived in Quebec for a few years and set the book, an epistolary novel, there. So I've got a couple of literary perspectives on early Canada.



Heyer and Wodehouse are popular with the crowd in the books conference on the Well. I've read a couple books by each. Other popular books there: Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels and Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. Life is much better with those books than without them. Maybe I should be avoiding places where people suggest good books to read. It isn't as if I don't have enough unread books already...



(Now playing: Alpinestars, "You Rescue," B.A.S.I.C.)