DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I’ve squashed a few bugs, implemented a few new features, and made some changes to the layout, both in response to reader feedback and my own testing:

• the RSS feed is back online (although still due for an overhaul) (or overdue for a haul, one of those two)
• the font in the channels list is smaller and somewhat less clunky
• the masthead photo changes every 60 seconds, increasing the chances that, at least sometimes, you’ll become convinced that I have as much an eye for color selection as I do for hats. (By the way, it won’t change if you wait for it; you’ll have to reload, or in some browsers, force-reload.)
• comments in image ALT tags are no longer highlighted in search-engine results (yes, this broke pages magnificently; thanks for asking)

Not yet changed, as of this writing, is the hanging nature of list-item bullets. The fact that bullets sit to the left of the text margin causes many people concern. I have not yet determined whether to change this… the stylesheets are not finished, but honestly I like hanging punctuation.

My publishing software attempts to honor the traditions of typography. Note the “smart” quotes — and the emdashes. And the hanging bullets, darn it!

• You’ll
• learn
• to
• love
• it!
  Or your money back.

You know what would be really neat: hanging all punctuation, like in the #3 example of Typography 101. I used to do that in Pagemaker when I did lots of design work on paper, approximately 400 years ago. Another rewarding challenge those days: making sure text baselines were consistent across columns. It was trickier than you might think, but the results were cooool.

We’re awash in spiders. Part of country living, I guess.

Here’s a more interesting spider close-up: Ade Rixon’s “behind the fence post” shot.

Ade’s site has a channel dedicated to photography (click on [big picture].) I’ve borrowed the idea, so I’ll have a place to collect journal entries with photographs.

I’ve become more interested in photography lately. A recent unplanned visit to Jerry Dodrill’s gallery in Bodega led to a 40-minute conversation with the artist about technique. I considered participating in one of his photo-safari workshops, but he’s an avowed film photographer. I never sold my analog camera gear, but I just can’t imagine dealing with film costs again. Or, worse, the delays of developing — who can wait two days to see how a picture turned out? I think shooting film makes great sense for some people, but it’s not for me, at least not now.

Here’s my favorite Dodrill image: Desert Sunrise. Jerry’s gallery has a print of this, measuring about 6' x 4', which would look great in my office. (Is it too close to Christmas for me to drop hints like that without being obvious?)

I’m also impressed and inspired by Matt Haughey’s Ten Years Of My Life site — a ten-year archive of daily photos. It’s a wonderful complement to an online journal. The idea of looking back, in future years, to what I was not only thinking, but seeing, is wonderfully appealing.

I want your opinion, and I’ve made it really easy for you to give it to me… with both barrels, if necessary.

If you have a moment, please take the survey.

I’ve just launched a major redesign of this website, and a major rewrite of the underlying software. New features include:

• valid CSS/XHTML 1.1 markup via templating — no HTML in the source code
• search term highlighting for internal or external searches
  (To see an example of search term highlighting from an offsite search, try this Google search and click the debris.com link in the results.)
• nested channels
• context-specific page titles

More features are in the works. (Famous last words? Hey, just because this launch took me 2.5 years doesn’t mean the next one will too.)

I broke out one of my starters yesterday and did a little baking. Well, OK, actually I broke it out two days ago — the poor thing had been sitting idle for so long it had collapsed completely, leaving a flattened crust with a tiny smear of viable culture underneath. A few refreshments later, it was back to normal.

My new favorite bread recipe is the Cheese Board’s “Berkeley Sourdough,” as printed in The Village Baker. It begins with a firm levain, mixed down into a soupy starter, following which the dough is overnighted in the bowl, prior to shaping. The technique is unusual. I like it because it accentuates the sour flavor of the finished bread.

I make it with about 40% wholegrain spelt and my usual random mix of wheat flours. The crumb was exquisite. Or as one friend remarked, around a mouthful: “This bread is really good.” Two seconds pass. “This bread is excellent.”

The shaping went really well, I thought. Baguette shaping is notoriously difficult to do well, and although I’ve never done it often enough to get good, I thought I’d turned out a four competent loaves. Ooh, was I wrong.

The two freeform loaves spread badly in the oven. The resulting loaves measured about four inches across and two tall — like no baguettes you’ve ever seen, unless you’ve eaten my baguettes in the past. But here’s the secret of shaping errors: the bread tastes great anyway. Flat baguettes make great sandwich rolls.

The other two loaves were baked in a baguette tray. One actually retained its intended shape, and went with us to Thanksgiving dinner. The other one spread sideways off the pan resulting in a sort of organic, amorphous sagging shape never before seen in a commercial bakery. Or even in my home, which has certainly seen its share of poorly-shaped loaves.

It became my test loaf. Bakers always sample their breads before serving them to company. I had to eat a third of it before I was sure it was good. I very nearly brought it along for the drive, too.