Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

While Nefarious was at one of this weekend’s birthday parties I did a little more fiddling with my proof-of-concept javascript-based image gallery (no flash, although it looks like a flash gallery)… I added a “loading” interstitial image, two side images for extra info pages (with a nifty animation and overlay), made the main image “float” — which makes me a bit sea sick! — and added a “slow-down” and then pause when you mouse-over the thumbnails. Like I said before, it’s my first real javascript project and if you look at the source code you’ll see it’s actually remarkably simple to do this. Doing it gave me some ideas for much cooler projects. The only thing I haven’t got working right is opacity issues (the thumbnails fade in and out at the edges in Firefox) in Internet Explorer. The code is all commented and easy to read so it’s set up for anyone who wants to learn from it.

We take possession of our studio later this week and I’m looking forward to getting started on new projects as well as setting up Nefarious’s dream room… Because she’s got a full roof of sky-lights (we’ll have to set up some good curtains), we’re building a garden in her room full of edible plants. As long as we’re stuck in the city, I’d like to still teach some of the lessons one learns much better in a rural environment.

Other than that, this is Nefarious’s drawing of Gurgi — a well-meaning and cartoonish sort of ape-man with the odor of a wet wolf hound that’s every child’s favorite character in The Book of Three. I do not like Disney’s version of Gurgi at all (from their movie The Black Cauldron), and I think when Nefarious finally watches the movie she’ll be quite disappointed. We’re well over half way through through the first book (it’s a set of five) and have been reading it for over an hour a day (in addition to reading other books as well).

To other parents considering reading this series, one of the things I like is that unlike many fantasy/fairy/princess type stories, this book has strong female characters that are every bit as powerful and important as the guys. I don’t like the Disney attitude that where at best the women aspire to be pretty enough that some prince will fall in love with them. Oh, and a funny conversation from the book… Prince Gwydian comments to young Taran that if he keeps dashing into battle so eagerly that “he won’t live to become a man” — Nefarious says, full of wonder, “he’ll turn into a girl?!?!?”