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Help with floaties on my tumblr?

floofisfloofy:

How can I get these images to float over my posts instead of under them? Thank you! I’m really bad at HTML. 🙁

image

I think the solution, to what I interpret your problem as, isn’t HTML, it’s CSS: try something like

<div style=‘z-index:10;’><img src=’https://31.media.tumblr.com/d05d38d4d6efe869097468d75add16fe/tumblr_inline_myst7vyIJL1qjjckl.gif’></div>

The answer is in ‘z-index’ – it creates a layer over the page (content is assumed to be z-index:0 but may not be in your case)

However am confused by ‘instead of under them’ .. so could be completely wrong – I suspect its part of a theme, which could involve more complex editing, in which case you need a ‘floaty’ specialist (is there such a thing?)
sorry if I screwed up, it’s 1am and I’m bored – good luck

PS turn on answers in your posts, like, so you get answers! I did!

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The slippery slope of UK Internet censorship is alive and well

How unanswerable companies and government departments choose what is acceptable (to them)

? do you want to support these companies making decisions over your rights

? will opting out identify you as some sort of social deviant, ala ‘Daily Mail’ 😉

BT … admitted that UK parents who don’t want their kids to seek advice about their sexuality online could block access over its network.

However, while BT continues to offer that control to its subscribers, the company has now backtracked on how it labels its sex education category.

BT defined as sex education websites, which said they could be blocked “where the main purpose is to provide information on subjects such as respect for a partner, abortion, gay and lesbian lifestyle, contraceptives, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.”

BT, defending its wording, said on Friday that “Some parents of very young children may wish to block sex education material.”

.. the control stays for any mum or dad who might have a serious problem with their child’s sexuality

To the dismay of some, O2 appeared to be offering to block all sorts of websites … over its service when a subscriber switches on the “parental control” feature .. 

Burger chain McDonalds was apparently included on O2’s whitelist of safe content for under-12s. But Childline, a charity set up to protect kids from – among other things – violent parents, was on the banned list under the parental control option.

O2 confirmed..t it was “working closely with BBFC [British Board of Film Classification] to review and change the site classification as we speak.” The BBFC cobbles together a Classification Framework for mobile operators to help define what content should be deemed unsuitable for under-18s.

O2 added that “BBFC is used by all major networks in the UK. They review all the content that’s suitable for under 12s.”

BT said its Parental Controls blocking system would cover all internet connected devices in the home.

New customers will have to make a choice on whether or not to activate the parental controls when setting up their internet connection for the first time. The option of having the controls implemented is pre-selected and customers have to confirm that choice or actively choose not to switch on the controls which block content potentially unsuitable for children.

BT will be contacting all of its existing consumer customers during 2014 so that they then have to make a decision on whether or not to set up the controls.

UK mobile operators have finally announced the body that will regulate and classify adult content available on mobile phones. The specially formed organisation – called the Independent Mobile Classification Body (IMCB) – is an independent and separately-financed subsidiary or the premium rate regulator, ICSTIS.

Meanwhile, it’s likely that Virgin Media will unveil its DNS lookup-based blocking system before the year is out.

Main article 

Of course children should be protected, remember our own childhood, but extreme over protection is not far from brainwashing the next generation. What happened to good parenting?

BTW, merry Christmas

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Chindōgu: were we sold that gadget as a solution to our problem? A Xmas thought, whilst you search for gifts

Chindōgu: were we sold that gadget as a solution to our problem? A Xmas thought, whilst you search for gifts

A life-saver or another well disguised millstone?

Chindōgu (珍道具?) is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that .. seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem .. find that it causes so many new so many new problems .. effectively it has no utility whatsoever

I often find myself wondering how many of the things we allow into our lives could fall into the category of chindōgu.

How many problems in our lives were introduced by the things we hoped would make it so much better.

Especially in the area of technology. The things that do have many useful qualities, yet create many more unforeseen and unexpected problems.

An even better line of thinking may be what useful things become chindōgu because of the way that we use them. Is a smartphone just out of the box useful but, after installing a few dozen distracting and purposefully time wasting apps does it become chindōgu? Was the social network you joined useful when you only followed a couple of dozen friends to keep up with their lives useful but, now that you follow a few hundred people you barely know, is it chindōgu? How about those few blogs you added to a RSS feed reader to stay abreast of a particular subject or save some time navigating to each one? That was useful, I’m sure. Are the few dozen more you added after that?

please read the full article ..

But please enjoy the Christmas season, remembering that the giving of gifts is the sharing of good-will and showing thanks for friendship and generosity received. A true and open heart is rarely wrong.

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#Pinterest layout vs. ‘content-is-king’ website models. Are we being distracted by visuals?

found on a recent design-led article

There are 2 types of designs.

1- User enters the page, thinks how cool the page looks, plays with jquery functions, slides up, down etc. BUT (a very big but) doesn’t or can’t focus on the content. Which we all want eventually is the content.

2- User enters the page, thinks a normal page, therefore focuses on the content.

All my life I tried to balance those 2 in my designs and its quite hard.
In which I never understood people who liked pinterest style. I’m afraid to tell my opinions about modern designs because supporters & fanboys of those design patterns are worse than hitler. They tend to linch you everywhere with capslock.
Finally my subconscious is free. Thanks for this post. You made me feel relieved.

[anonymous for their own protection]

What’s interesting here is not whether one should predominate over the other, but which is MOST SUITABLE for the site and its message. For example photos look great on a wall (ala Pinterest or Flickr) yet mixed media is presented in a  linear fashion on Tumblr.

The question always exists in design, are you designing to the fashion, or applying new ideas creatively?

Your choice: choose.

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review: Windows 8.1 update available – a positive step

review: Windows 8.1 update available – a positive step

If, like so many of our clients, you are buying a new computer (in almost every case, a laptop!) you’ll have had Win8 foisted upon you.

This update should be available for download via the Windows Store

Store tile showing updates available

– if the option to update isn’t splashed all over your face, there’s a problem (surprised?)

You might need the latest updates from Windows Update

You might be running an edition of Windows 8 that doesn’t support updating from the Store

Windows Store might not be showing the latest content

About the Update:

Pros: 
It’s free; Customisation options added; SkyDrive tightly integrated

Cons: 
Start Button not fully functional; Still no unified inbox; Upgrading from Preview can be troublesome

Verdict: 
If you’re on Windows 8 we definitely recommend updating to Windows 8.1 as soon as possible. It rectifies a number of issues which plagued the original release and whilst it’s not perfect, 8.1 is a step in the right direction.

The Start button

The Start button has returned to the bottom left hand corner of the desktop but don’t get too excited. A traditional left click switches users between the Live Tile interface and desktop, whilst a right click brings up the power user menu (Win + X).

These features were already available on Windows 8 – Microsoft has just added the Start Button icon into the corner. There’s only one material difference. When you hit right click on the button – you get access to more programs including Device Manager, Control Panel, Network Connections and even have the option to shutdown the machine.

SkyDrive syncing

All documents are now saved to Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud repository by default. Of course it’s still possible to save files locally, but if you’ve got multiple devices the ability to pull them from the cloud is invaluable.

Alternatively, we can help you switch to Linux!
– and keep that old XP or Vista machine going with a modern computer system

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Is coding going over the top and overly complicated? Create code that matters

OK, the computer Science Education Week is coming to an end – hope you’ve had fun.

Of course, the coding doesn’t have to stop! – keep building, testing, refining – make something that makes a difference!

Lets look at something I have seen rather a lot of over this week, and in my mind at least, relates to lack of proper planning and getting caught up with bells-and-whistles
– Elegant solutions come from planning

I know people, read: designers, are looking to an ‘assembled web’, where everything is created by libraries and plugins.

Not picking on anyone, I just happen to see this example, and being my personal bugbear, not everyone enjoys high-speed Internet access everywhere
– so why overload pages with redundant weight (and ‘garbage’)?
– especially when it comes down fancy bells & whistles/ eye-candy?

Just try it over a dial-up modem connection .. and dont be so arrogant.

Side-chat over ..

You certainly wont learn coding doing this ‘assembly’ stuff idea

ZURB reports loading Facebook, Twitter, Google share widgets took 19 HTTP requests & added 246.7KB to a page’s weight

250KB is a few thousand words that actually say (and mean) something, or maybe 5 pictures (that maybe dont). More design sophisticated for sure, but the web is becoming so visual, something that no-one reads any more. For me, that’s sad
– the number of sites that take me ages to work out what the company or product actually does, how it works, just gets me down. It looks pretty and the message is getting lost.

Some say a picture is worth a thousand words – yeah, depending on the picture. And I can read a 1000 word summary on the Mona Lisa faster than most ordinary mortals (and me) could decipher the hidden qualities studying the picture .. I digress.

Back to the point. For example: letting.js, a jQuery library,  spotted on CreativeBlog: Polyfills

<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
$(“.fancy_title”).lettering();
});
</script>

(remember to write the code to embed the jQuery and the letting plugin as well)
– the idea is you then manually adjust the CSS for each .char#, adding salt according to taste ..
– outputing this HTML

<h1 class=“fancy_title”>
<span class=“char1”>S</span>
<span class=“char2”>o</span>
<span class=“char3”>m</span>
<span class=“char4”>e</span>
<span class=“char5”></span>
<span class=“char6”>T</span>
<span class=“char7”>i</span>
<span class=“char8”>t</span>
<span class=“char9”>l</span>
<span class=“char10”>e</span>
</h1>

So, since you are such an ace coder, why not just code the <span> classes in the first place?
– a simple JS loop would ‘document.write’ this without clutter
– or, Heaven forbid, just write the HTML (h1-)heading – how often is it going to change anyway?

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Underground and bus fares freeze? Only for some

Underground and bus fares freeze? Only for some

Winners include pay-as-you-go Oyster users, who will see no rise at all in peak fares at Tube and rail journeys starting or finishing outside Zone 1. The daily “cap” on pay-as-you-go charges also stays at this year’s prices, meaning a price cut after inflation.

But single journeys within Zone 1 rise by 10p to £2.20, a 4.8 per cent rise. A single bus fare with Oyster goes up 5p to £1.45, while the cash fare stays at £2.40.

Weekly Travelcards jump up 4.1% overall, in line with national rail services. A weekly Zone  1-6 card will rise 4.3 per cent from £55.60 to £58.

The few people still paying cash on the Underground, mainly tourists, will see a single fare in Zone 1-3 rise 20p to £4.70.

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BBC: UK ‘let NSA store email addresses’ & NSA planned to shame by revealing browsing history

Put together, doesn’t this rather demonstrate the NSA’s approach to freedom and truth? Like a gun, once data is in the hands of those that will use it for no-good, it is a weapon. History has taught us well what happens when humans get their hands on a new weapon.

We’re not good at walking the straight and narrow, governments (and political bodies) especially so

Publication of any such or similar information is intended to smear the target, how can anyone be sure that such a disclosure (aka leak) is in fact of genuine data. The NSA (and others) is certainly capable of at least altering any information it has collected, if not actually planting such evidence for others to find.

BBC UK ‘let NSA store email addresses’

NY Times NSA planned to shame ‘radicalizers’ by revealing their porn-browsing history

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The High Cost, for the Poor, of Using a Bank

The High Cost, for the Poor, of Using a Bank

Banks are often costlier for the poor than check cashers and other alternative financial services.

There have been a lot of reports lately on the growing numbers of people  .. use alternative financial services such as payday loans. All this has convinced policy makers and many consumer advocates that low- and moderate-income people are victims of “financial exclusion.” They have therefore concentrated on moving these people to banks.

The numbers of “unbanked” and “underbanked” people are indeed growing. Seventeen million people nationwide are unbanked, up from 10 million in 2002; 43 million are underbanked. In very low-income areas like the South Bronx, where I worked, more than half of the residents have no bank account.

To understand why, consider loans of small amounts. People criticize payday loans for their high annual percentage rates (APR), which range from 300% – 600%. Payday lenders argue that APR is the wrong measure: the loans, they say, are designed to be repaid in as little as two weeks. Consumer advocates counter that borrowers typically take out nine of these loans each year, and end up indebted for more than half of each year.

It happens that banks offer a de-facto short-term, high-interest loan. It’s called an overdraft fee. An overdraft is essentially a short-term loan, and if it had a repayment period of seven days, the APR for a typical incident would be over 5000%.

To be sure, payday lending is a growing business, increasing from ten billion dollars in 2001 to nearly $30 billion in 2010. But Americans paid more than that on overdraft fees in 2011: a record $38 billion. (Banks are allowed to charge checking-account customers, on average, a hundred and forty dollars per day in overdraft fees.)

What’s more, many of the customers we interviewed told us that a lack of transparency at banks contributed to the costs they incurred; they found it difficult to predict when and what they would be charged. At RiteCheck and most other check cashers, in contrast, the fees for each transaction are typically displayed on large illuminated signs that span the row of teller windows, like the menu sign at a fast-food restaurant.

Joe Coleman, the president of RiteCheck, put it this way: “Banks want one customer with a million dollars. Check cashers want a million customers with one dollar.”

For low- and moderate-income people with few assets and some unpredictability in their income and expenses, banks simply don’t stack up well against check cashers and payday lenders. The number of people in a financially unstable position is rising. Yet policy makers continue to assert that banks are the answer.