eric's little black star » Newly designed poetry site is up and running

eric on Dec 1st 2008 at 8:34 am Random Life Stuff

Newly designed poetry site is up and running

Last week, I redid the front page of my site. This past weekend, I completed work on the poetry portion of my site.

Previously, I had the poems displayed via a clunky system of iframes. Each book was present and every poem in the book was available.

It wasn’t really user-friendly, but then, poetry on the net never is.

I also had a growing dislike/apathy for most of my older poems. That’s a good thing, of course, it means that I’ve changed over the past ten years.

What I have now is divided into three sections. The first two are collections of poems that I still rather enjoy. the first covers 1999-2002. The second, from 2003-2007.

From 1999 to 2002, I wrote a lot. Like three or four poems a day. When you’re cranking out that much material, you end up mostly writing about writing. And while that’s definitely something most writers need to go through, it’s definitely not something that most readers should be forced to read.

During 2003 to 2007, my writing slowed down. My life got busier/weirder and I also started to focus on photography a bit more.

The third section is the full book, passage. That was the one that Jeff, Sarah and I bound during the summer of 2007. You’d think that that would be included in the 2003-2007 stuff, but it’s not. I wanted that book (which is the last one I churned out) to stand on its own.

So now the poetry section reads like a book. Or at least as close to one as I could get without installing some ebook software. They’re arranged in a photo gallery. The text should be large enough to read.

Except on passage. You will probably not be able to read that. That is why there’s a little “download” button at the bottom left corner of each page. Click it and it opens the poem up in a new window. It’s not easy or efficient, but it’s how it is. Unless you have a larger screen. Then no problem, I think.

The poetry, as well as photography, sections can be accessed from the main page – littleblackstar.com – or from the blog (look up at the top).

Anyway, let me know what you think of all of this, ok?

19 responses so far

19 Responses to “Newly designed poetry site is up and running”

Dwija says:

December 1, 2008 at 7:11 pm

Hey, sorry to crash your poetry piece but I just noticed you got SPARKS! I remember seeing them on BBC’s Top of The Pops back in the early seventies. They were sooooo cool and a bit freaky. A quick search on You tube, and “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us… duh duh duh duh duh.”

Must show Rati.

eric Reply:
December 1st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I do indeed have Sparks. Honestly, it’s the only thing I have by them/him. Anything I should be getting?

Dwija Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Since, if it were possible, I would live in a perpetual state of early seventies, I’d have to say their early stuff is the best. It’s funny, Rati and I were going through You Tubes of them and we both agreed (it does happen sometimes) that they go down hill as they get closer to the eighties.

If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s a must.

For me, this is SPARKS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax8JYmoRhy4

Dwija Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Oh, and look out for when he pops the wind shield of the Mic. It’s wonderful.

eric Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Well…. these guys are… odd.. I think I love it. A lot. Or I really hate it and never want to hear it again. It’s one or the other.

The singer looks like the inexplicable lovechild of Syd Barrett and Freddie Mercury.

And check out the suspicious looking Mr. Hitler sporting the full mustache!

Rati Reply:
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 am
I went from never having heard of them, to having “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us” stuck in my head for days.
Ryan Beggar says:

December 1, 2008 at 8:59 pm

looks really good. i remember reading this why i love the poems in passage so much. they are really amazingly good.
and now in interweb form!

eric Reply:
December 1st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
hey thanks! i really appreciate it.
Ryan Beggar says:

December 1, 2008 at 9:00 pm

oh and i still dont have more than 39 comments? dammit!

eric Reply:
December 1st, 2008 at 10:14 pm
That is weird. You should totally have more than 39 by now. hm..

You have 38. Close.
I did some cleaning. Welcome.
urukrama says:

December 2, 2008 at 1:57 am

Your front page is too big for my normally sized screen (1024×768). I need to scroll horizontally to see the rest of it (I only see it until ‘poet’; the ‘ry’ and the rest of the picture is not visible).

Otherwise it is nice. The poetry section is nicely done.

eric Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:58 am
Thanks a bunch! I think I’ve fixed that now. I forgot about normal 4:3 screens. I have one, but it’s big so I’ve it set to a higher resolution. Thanks!

eric Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
What I’d really like is for the whole thing to be center aligned. I’m not really sure how to do that. Tables, I’d suspect. I’m using css, which makes sense to me. The other stuff, I just don’t know.

urukrama Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:40 am
It is better now, but still not entirely resolved. I can see all the text, but I still need to scroll sideways to see the full picture.

I know very little css, and what I know, I’ve learned from looking at the code of existing webpages. Perhaps if you find a webpage that has something center aligned, you can look at the source and figure out how to do it.

eric Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 pm
HA! and HA HA!! I figured it out! It even looks ok on IE! I’m impressed, actually.

IE wouldn’t allow me to put layers in a horizontal row. Why? No idea. So I threw all the images (blog + photography + poems) into one layer and BOOM it works. I’m ridiculously thrilled.

Thanks!

urukrama Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Yes. All fine now. I really like what you did with the poetry section. That BananAlbum thing is neat. It would have been nice if you could select the text (and copy), but this has its charms.

eric Reply:
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:13 am
Thanks!

Which text? The ones of the poems themselves?

urukrama Reply:
December 4th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Yes, the text of the poems themselves.

eric Reply:
December 4th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? I can and did choose those. In passage, it’s based upon some work by Scott Walker. The text is small, but can be expanded. In the other two books, I just liked the font, etc. They seem to be pretty readable, especially on larger screens.