Didn’t get as much done today as yesterday – slept in far too late, which was a bit of a whoops – but my parents and I do seem to have settled into a quietly productive sort of a routine – for the mornings anyway, which is working quite well – for me at least, and I hope for them too. It goes something like this: Once I’ve woken up, I sit up in bed and do my morning pages, then I read a bit more of John Adams’ autobiography, Hallelujah Junction, which I’m absolutely loving. Then I drag my sorry carcass out of bed and greet the lovely parents and have breakfast. I then take my coffee back into the bedroom and start work on some of my theory study while the mama inhabits the study and plays the piano for a little. The afternoon is a little more freeform, but at some point I take over the study and do some listening and some work in there.

Today’s theory study was seventh chords exercises. I found these relatively challenging – it’s the diminished intervals I have to fully get my head around, but the exercises are being very useful – not just building a specified seventh chord on a tonic, but also on the third, fifth and seventh as given notes, which I’m finding VERY helpful for working out the intervals because it’s not as simple as just altering the notes above – you need to work out sometimes whether your actual tonic needs to be raised or lowered. Really makes one think, which is exactly what I needed. Think I’ve got them sorted in my brain now. More or less at least

Did some more work on the site too. Unfortunately, it seems that of the web-fonts-supporting major browsers, only Firefox and Safari understand the text-rendering property, which means that the kerning on the fancy font I’m using in a couple of places is all off in Chrome. I’ve yet to test it on IE in its many flavours. Not sure how/if to hack this one. For Chrome it should be relatively simple – there aren’t too many seriously problematic letters, so one could just surround the tricky sections in <span>s and apply letter-spacing, hopefully, but I’m not sure how IE will react. Yes, I still have to do proper testing in IE. Have been avoiding it. Need to stop that.

Also nearing the end of the scarf I’m knitting for my chilly and very frail great-aunt in Sydney. She’s 94 now and apparently they keep her nursing-home at an Arctic temperature at all times of the year, so I’m knitting her a nice lightweight scarf to keep her warm. I spent a lovely quiet half-hour with my Da this evening in the study, listening to the Mendelssohn string quintets and Schubert’s Moments musicaux, him reading his book and me working on the scarf – happiness! I have lent him Art & Fear which he seems to be finding interesting, as I thought he might.

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I’ve been neglecting my harmony/counterpoint resuscitation programme for a while now – started out well, then life went insane, as it periodically seems to, and it all got a bit too hard. This coincided with the arrival of the Workbook to go with the Textbook and Anthology and CDs, which was rather frustrating but I just couldn’t get my head around counterpoint with all the stuff that was going on. Now that I’m not working, though, and the traipsing about the continent has paused for a little, I’ve been able to start thinking about it again. Yesterday I took a step backwards and started re-reading the chapter on triads and sevenths. I understood it first time round, but I wasn’t sure it had really stuck. Today I started doing the chapter’s exercises in the workbook and discovered that actually, a fair amount of it actually had. WIN! So I spent a largish chunk of the morning writing and analysing triads and I think I got at least most of them right (the only downside to doing all this solo is that there are no answers in the workbook, so if you think you got it right but you actually didn’t, there’s no-one to say otherwise because it doesn’t have the answers in it. I believe there’s a teacher’s edition of the workbook, but unless I run into serious issues, I think I’ll pass on that one – the whole exercise has already cost a small fortune!) – really quite satisfying. Tomorrow I hope to work through the seventh chord exercises so that next week I can move back on to species counterpoint. Yay!

I also picked up my flute for the first time in weeks. Yeah, that wasn’t so kind to the ego. But it had to be done. Hopefully tomorrow will be better… Humble apologies to Messrs Poulenc, Koehler, Sculthorpe and Enesco.

And finally, I got back to the website and did a pretty big chunk of work on it so it’s really looking like a proper site now – my photo’s in place on the bio page, the screensnap from the video on the credo page, there are pages for all the linked compositions, and all the ones that should have embedded audio files (still Flash, unfortunately, but at least it’ll get it online) or links to PDF downloads are now showing these up. I tidied the email form and the page of social networking contact links. I still need to finish testing in other browsers (IE6 is, of course, being particularly stubborn) but I think it’s nearing completion, which earns another Yay!

And I listened to both the Brahms and the Martinu/Schulhoff discs I bought yesterday. Both are lovely. I wasn’t really in the mood for Brahms but the Martinu was absolutely spot on and I think the Schulhoff will definitely repay further listenings.

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Did quite a bit on the site today and had a bit of a breakthrough – I’d been exploring ways to get the latest blog post out of my WordPress blog and onto the homepage (which is a static page, not hosted within the blog) and finally I worked it out, thanks to various posts online, so now I have an auto-updating blog post on the homepage! Whee! Haven’t yet been able to get the Twitter feed working though, so I’ve hidden it for now. And I’ve got the navigation working correctly (highlighting the correct sub-navigation items) across all pages and I’ve added in a home link to the menu for pages which aren’t the homepage.

I also started testing properly in IE6 and I think I’m going to need the JavaScript fix Bruce Lawson talks about in Introducing HTML 5 to get the CSS to apply itself to the new HTML 5 elements that Our Friend doesn’t recognise. I was pretty amazed to see, though, that it’s picked up the fancy font, thanks to Font Squirrel’s easy-peasy generator… although, oddly enough, it has a problem with the blockier font. It’s nothing to do with the position of the definition – it doesn’t make a difference whether I move the blocky font definition to the top of the file, or whether I even remove the fancy font, it doesn’t show up in IE6, so I’m thinking it could be something within the font file itself. Not too disturbed though. After all… IE6 (although obviously I’ll have to see what it does in other versions of IE and that’s likely to do the same thing, I guess). Tossing up whether to put in an IE6 disclaimer. It might be a good idea. Just so that IE users know that what they’re seeing isn’t the actual design. While in general, I feel I should support any browser that is commonly in use, in practice, it’s getting ridiculous to still be fully supporting such ancient technology, when there’s a better, more semantic way to achieve things, so I’m thinking the hybrid approach – ensure all content is accessible, include a note letting IE6 users know that it’d be a better experience if they upgrade – is the best way to go.

Oh, and I made a cake. Chocolate, with chocolate ganache topping. And came to the conclusion that the oven thermometer my mama brought over with her has serious fail. I’m sure the oven’s running hot – it’s been burning everything at supposedly the correct temperatures. So I tested it out with the cake today – I cooked it at the official temperature on the oven dial, as always (because I know it works at that temperature, although it overcooks if you don’t keep a close eye on it) – 180 C, which the oven thermometer then said was only 160 C. Grrr. Might have to invest in another oven thermometer to see if it can do better.

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Today I baked bread I pulled out my new pain de mie tin and The Bread Bible and baked up some bread. Unfortunately I suspect that not only does the oven have fail, but the oven thermometer my mama brought with her has been so long unused it’s forgotten how to properly thermomet. By the time it read the 425 F the recipe said it should be for baking the bread, the dial on the oven was up to about 225 C (should be about 217 C) and while the bread has turned out delicious and with a great texture, it IS somewhat charred on top. Think I may have to get another oven thermometer and compare and contrast.

Apart from that, I didn’t achieve terribly much. Made Nigel Slater turkey burgers for dinner. Did a little gentle grocery shopping and accidentally bought Calamity Jane on DVD for £3 which we watched over dinner. Which then led us on to That Touch of Mink. Might need to make tonight a Doris-Day-free zone for the sanity of my mama.

Did a little bit more work on the site, but no huge breakthroughs.

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Got an absolute truckload of work done on the site today and now the blog is pretty much ready to go – very nearly entirely. I think the only thing left to do with it is to work out the custom template so I can import the latest blog post into the homepage. Worked out some cool features too – selecting subnav items depending on whether the post is in the news or article category (or if it’s a category list page of either) and setting the posting date within the <time> tag automatically.

Also accidentally watched The Omen. I’ve avoided this one for years, but it came on and nobody turned it off… and by the time it got halfway through then I was stuck and had to watch it right through to the end. Really good film – very suspenseful, and much more effective than a lot of more modern movies that have to rely on effects to be creepy.

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I’m afraid I’ve failed at my overall mission for Creative Pact, which was to have caitlinrowley.com online today. But on the flipside, it’s been TOTALLY worth it. I’ve had a fantastic time doing it, and achieved a ton of work I wouldn’t have otherwise, and the site’s very nearly ready to go – I’m hoping I can send it live on the weekend sometime, or at least early next week.

Today was spent messing around with PHP – I sorted out the include files for header and menu and so on and go all that working. I’ve also pulled together a basic WordPress template for the blog (which, bizarrely, has already received its first spam comment – how, I don’t know, given that it’s not been linked from anywhere at all) which is starting to look pretty good. I’ve moved some files around so that the detail pages are in a subfolder to keep the upper levels clean and I think I’ve pretty much decided – at least for now – to use variables in each page which indicate which section should be open in the left nav. I’ve also – I think – worked out how to include the latest blog post in the homepage automatically, although I haven’t yet had time to test it out, but it seems pretty clear how to do it, which it wasn’t before. I found a useful page on creating custom RSS feeds using custom page templates, which made me realise that I actually don’t (probably) need anything that complex, that I should be able to achieve it with a custom page template which consists solely of picking up the latest post ID, and that blog post’s basic code, then reference that as an include file directly from the homepage.

So I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve got through today, and it’s really starting to come together, and feel like going live very soon is a real possibility, which it wasn’t feeling like two days ago, but there’s still quite a lot of work to be done: Fixing up links between pages to make sure they go where they’re supposed to, testing the whole template in various browsers and implementing fixes as needed for IE6 and other contrary beasts, which will probably take a while of course, getting the twitter feed on the homepage sorted (or possibly I might just hide that until I get it working properly – there seems to be an issue with the script I found and my PHP isn’t quite good enough to work out what’s wrong with it), copying across all the various assets for the composition pages – flash files and cover images and PDF downloads and so on, which I haven’t done yet because there didn’t seem to be much point when I was working on the iPad… And I’m bound to think of other things too. It’s enough to keep me off the streets a little while longer, but I’m still confident it’ll go up very soon.

But SO glad I took the plunge and actually did Creative Pact, in spite of my misgivings. It’s been a difficult month for me personally, but it’s been fantastic having a clear goal to work towards and knowing that if I did just a tiny bit each day then that’s at least a small win for that day. And I’ve met a bunch of really awesome people online through it too, doing some fabulously interesting work so YAY! Bring on next year’s!

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And so I’m back on the Eurostar today. With a couple of quiet hours, it seemed a good chance to take stock of what needs to be done in the next couple of days to get this site online, so I’ve started pulling out chunks of code that will become PHP includes, stole the code for the contact form from Minim Media and have built a new page for social media links. So I think that, barring the video page which may be scrapped, pretty much all the content is in place now – huzzah!

Looking ahead, tomorrow I think I need to focus on getting the PHP bits and pieces working – the includes, forms, highlighting menu items, etc. I think that’s the biggest thing. Plus, to go with that, I need to determine how I’m going to identify the various pages as belonging to a particular section. I guess I could just include a variable in each page – it would be nice and clear, but I’ve also been considering whether it might not be easier just to divide up the content into folders and identify the section by folder name from the URL. The problem with this may be one of longevity. There was an article on URL-naming that was referenced from our course materials for the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices course I took earlier this year which I think I may need to re-read – its premise was that addresses of pages should relate directly to what they are about and not reference filetypes, technical approaches or current-but-possibly-unsustainable filing systems. The idea is to end up with a URL that can be used for that content forever – if the page’s focus changes, then it needs a new URL which reflects that. I like the idea of this, that the address for something is permanent because there is no need for it to change – it means that other sites can link with confidence, and archives can be maintained without the need for ever renewing links. So I’ll be re-reading that, I think, and I’ll see what is feasible to implement right now.

And now, back hooooooommme! And then tonight, the concert. Eeek!

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Got another clutch of content pages done this evening – for the pieces Remembrances of half-forgotten dead people, Deconstruct: Point, line, plane, Egg the Fifth and the Satie Chanson arrangement. I suspect there’s going to need to be a LOT of work done on these – linking in cover images, PDFs and sound files properly, to start with, once I get home. Planning on hiding in my study for the first couple of days back in London to get through everything. Although time’s a bit tight, I’m determined to send this site live on the 30th of September – because I know what I’m like – otherwise I’ll procrastinate and procrastinate and it’ll never go live, which would rather defeat the purpose of all this work!

In non-Creative Pact news (sorry for crushing the posts together, but my Internet connection here is VERY flaky and needs to be reset after every gap in use – spend more than about 10 seconds without actively clicking or uploading and the connection dies!) today involved a major culinary revelation. I had resolved to entirely avoid Mariage Frères tea shops, in spite of the intense interest of the fairly-recent tea-convert that I am, on the grounds that I didn’t want to try it, fall in love with it… and then move back to Australia where I have seen it for sale at $170 a tin. But it snuck up on me. Marriage Frères have a little shop lying in wait for the unwary, in the middle of Galeries LaFayette’s homewares store. I said I was just going to look at the beautiful array of tins, but then I found a vanilla tea and, having been liking the concept but not that thrilled with the execution of Lipton’s vanilla tea which was in residence in the cupboard of the flat we’re staying in when we arrived, I couldn’t resist having a sniff. O.M.G. Then I discovered that it was a mere €10, even though it came in a lovely black tin (I use the word ‘mere’ in the context of $170 a tin, obviously not in the context of Tetley’s from Tesco). How could I resist? The smell is amazing and the flavour, when we tried it, was glorious – a beautiful balance of vanilla and black tea, neither overpowering the other, and absolutely none of that tanniney aftertaste you get with normal tea. Absolute heaven. A little worried I may feel compelled to go back and buy a refill pack before we leave to make sure I don’t run out before the next Paris trip, but I should face the expense of the pain de mie tin first… Baking-shop expedition tomorrow

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And now will come a series of posts that will be, frankly, a bit dull. Feel free to tune out for a few days Because today I started loading in content in earnest, which is mostly cut’n'paste with the occasional text tweak, code clean (found an ancient I tag!!!) or shifting something, such as a cover image, from the main content area to the right column. Today I made files from the templates for all the individual work pages and copied full content across for Pieces of Eight, The blood feud and catharsis (started in the middle, then thought it might be easiest to work in alphabetical order). I’m pretty pleased with how it’s looking, although score covers in the right column I think may need a review, both semantically and visually.

In compensation, for the dullness, here is a photo of the patisserie goodies we had for pudding:

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Phew! For a little bit there I didn’t think I was going to get to any of my Creative Pact work done at all today, but lo, a little bit of quiet time became available and I’ve actually managed to knock over the two hardest content pages – ‘hardest’ because one needed to be rewritten and the other needed to be written from scratch. So now that’s the biography and the credo written, so I’m feeling a bit calmer now. Mostly from here the content’s going to be cut’n'paste from Minim Media, so it should be relatively easy to deal with. Might have a stab at the first of the composition pages before I turn in tonight, just to see how it goes.

I always find writing a new credo a bit of a challenge. On the one hand, I think it’s a useful thing to have in a site (although none of my previous attempts have ever actually made it online) because it can help to explain some of the peculiarities of a composer’s style or approach which may not be immediately apparent from short soundbites on a website. On the other hand though, writing these things makes me feel a bit of a self-absorbed prat. But I think the usefulness (especially considering recent misunderstandings) is going to outweigh the feelings of pratfulness (?) and this one will actually make it to the site.

I did have a question of semantics raised during today’s writing, which was the issue of how to code up titles. There doesn’t really seem (still) to be an adequate way of doing this in HTML 5, and I guess that, while common, it’s a bit more of a specialist need than the spec is likely to handle, so from what I can see, the best that can be done is still <span class=”title”>. At least it’ll be an improvement on what’s in the site now, which is plain ol’ unsemantic <em>s but it rankles my cataloguer’s soul. It feels like there should be a tag for something so common. Will have to learn to cope, I guess

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