Posts tagged ‘website’

I saw Ted Baillieu, new leader of Victoria’s liberal party, on the ABC news today. Really impressive fellow. I’ve never seen such dedication to sounding so completely neutral. Even John Howard shows more character than this political automaton. Perhaps he’ll loosen up over the next few months, perhaps he’ll develop some character, and perhaps he’ll answer a question about how he’s feeling, or what he thinks, with something other than “I don’t think the voters care about that, I think they care about our policies.”

Because, frankly, people do care what sort of person you are, they care about your personality, they care whether you’re willing to take shit from the Prime Minister.

And surely — though it occurs to me I’m probably wrong about all of this — surely they want to see you smile, and laugh, and act like a human.

In any case, on a different note — I can’t comment on rumours that I still haven’t gotten atypicalreview’s new layout working correctly on Internet Explorer. There’s certainly no point speculating as to whether there are still pages out there that are practically unreadable. And any insinuations that the comments only got anywhere vaguely near complete today are baseless attacks on my character. That is all.

The votes are in and ignored, the decision is final. Grapefruit(s) no longer, this website is now:

atypicalreview.com

An appropriate new design should eventuate within a week or two. Yes, I know that the site still says grapefruit in places but those little mentions should all be weeded out within a day or two (The main heading on every page counts as a “little mention” for those playing at home).

On an unrelated but important note, could someone get rid of that bald guy on Letterman? He’s not just garden-variety unfunny, he even tries to cut in and make noise when he’s not onscreen. I’m less inclined to laugh at Letterman himself when that nong is giggling loudly in an attempt to get his voice on TV a bit longer.

Thought on Grapefruit’s new name continues apace, for the primary reason that if I’m to have any overlap at all where both urls work, it had better start soon. And I am glad to be able to tell you that we have made progress. The first world in the new name is almost certainly “atypical”. It’s an attractive word partly because it’s rarely used but mostly because it comes with a built-in double entendre.

Now, on to word number two.

• “atypicalreview” — very nice, very relevant, maybe just a shade dull? But probably the frontrunner.
• “atypicalworld” — a bit more abstract, but unfortunately there have been a lot of websites that end in “world” and I’m reluctant to join their ranks.
• “atypicaltime” — more abstract, maybe a bit awkward though.
• “atypicalx” — x’s are cool. Ahem.
• “atypicalshoe” — or any other random short word. If there was something that fitted in and sounded quite funny, it wouldn’t strictly have to be relevant.

Hopefully we’ll have decided on something by the end of the week. If people want to suggest things they’re only too welcome. Watch out for ‘conflated word syndrome’. I only just realised today that this Radiohead website isn’t A Tease Web, it’s At Ease Web.

Not that we won’t accept others, but a meeting was held and a short list drawn up. If everyone could nominate their favourites (and add new ones if you insist, oe provide variations on these themes) that’d be awesome. Yes, I’m aware that there’s probably only five people likely to respond. We’re having a poll anyhow. In no particular order (and with a brand new entry which I just thought of):

1. Opinion Pirates
   opinionpirates.com
2. Mild Themes
   mildthemes.com
3. Rightly Wrong
   rightlywrong.com
4. Certain Doom
   certaindoom.net
5. Since You’ll All Die Anyway
   sinceyoullalldieanyway.com
6. Idle Discourse
   idle-discourse.com
7. Born Mad
   bornmad.com
8. Entirely Possible
   entirelypossible.com

Two assessments down, one to go. Then I’m free! FREE! Free at last! Well, free in the ‘unemployed’ sense of the word but hey. I promise, once I’m done with this crap, to go see some actual movies and review things for Grapefruit that occurred after the beginning of the millennium. And that aren’t television.

Also, I’m meaning to slightly rejig the weblog so we can have footnotes in them. I’m lost without my footnotes. If I could have, this would been a footnote.

Just thought I’d share some advice with everyone. If it’s about 5:30 – 7:00pm, and you get a phone call from a private number, and you say “Hello?” and no one answers for about three seconds, hang up immediately. It’s almost certainly a call from a market research person, probably in India, and if it isn’t then I’m sure they’ll call you back.

This has been a public service announcement from Grapefruit.

There’s lots of different ways to review TV. Over the years, we’ve had group reviews, we’ve had rants, we’ve had letters… It’s not usually hard to come up with something interesting when you’re watching something happen every week.

But when you’re watching old stuff, it’s harder to get an entire essay out. You’re watching it again, you’ve read stuff about it, it’s distractingly old… This is why people write episode guides the way they do. And that’s why now, some of the Grapefruit reviews of old TV will be in a different format to the usual. A more episode-guidey form.

Let me know what you think… We’ve almost made a separate Grapefruit episode guide in the past, but I think this is a better solution. It’s certainly easier.

So, I was looking at the grapefruit statistics the other day, and I noticed something. Do you know, less than 1% of you have screens that are 800px wide?

So, I thought, it’s a bit silly to keep Grapefruit so confined. Today I’ve put up a liquid layout for the site that will give you oodles of space. The sidebar’s a bit chunkier so if you do have a small browser window the content may seem a bit squishy but I think everything will be just fine.

Well, except in IE — there’s still some bugs to work out there, concerning a few floating things and such. Nothing too super ugly, but this does bring me to my second point.

26% of you are using IE. Stop it. If you’re reading this in IE, you’ll notice a useful little badge at the bottom of the page saying “Firefox”. Click on it. Install it. Be happy. Make me happy. Browse secure.

Anyhow, hope no one’s induced to vomiting again by the site changes. It’s so messy.

You may notice a subtle change on the grapefruit pages. Well, all of them except these weblog ones.

These bits aren’t done yet, I don’t have time at the moment. I’ve chucked up what I’ve done though, because I’m sick of only me seeing the cool stuff.

Hope you like it. I’ll be fiddling with it over the next few weeks (months?) and getting things just right, but this is a start. Now, bedtime!