Playing around with HTML

In this day and age, there are quite a few people who have their own blogs, if not a personal website. While making a blog, the blog hosting service offers its own collection of templates, from which one can choose any style that seems suitable. These templates are quite diverse in terms of layout and colour scheme and take away the whole hassle of ‘designing’ from the blogger.

However, they sometimes do seem incomplete. A blogger or a website owner can always think of changing one colour, or one font type to suit him or herself. But without adequate knowledge of HTML, this task is not possible.However, there is one website which can make things easier for you, and that is ‘HTML Playground’ where any novice blogger can generate the required HTML code. This code can then be inserted into the blog to achieve the desired effect.

It works in a simple way. As soon as you enter the website, it gives you a short demo of how you need to use the tool. Once you hit close, you are ready to go.

First and foremost, you select the HTML tag — this basically means you choose whatever you want to alter, for instance, do you want to alter the heading on your website/blog or insert a table?

Once you select the tag, you choose its attributes — what font type and size do you want your heading to be; what colour should the heading be when someone places the mouse over it? You choose your own attributes for the tag, and the code generates itself in another box. All the while, there is a description box to help along the way. Once you get your code, you can simply insert it into your blog.

While this website is definitely very handy and very convenient, there are a few things which need to be looked into. Firstly, there is no way to bring back the demo window once you hit close. One idea can be to open this website itself in two different tabs or windows, and keep the demo window open at all times for reference. This way, even if you get stuck at some point, you can refer to the demo of this website. Having said that, the layout and colour scheme of this website is definitely very appealing and well-chosen. Those who wish to explore deeper can visit the blog and forums available here.

To tweak the HTML of any of your websites or blogs, use the handy tool available at http://htmlplayground.com/

Risks, risks everywhere!

Another year means yet another Earth Day. Like the previous years, this year’s Earth Day will also see more and more appeals by environmentalists to pay heed to the state of our planet. There will be yet another call to ‘go green’. More and more people will join the cause, albeit virtually, to do something about global warming at an individual level.

However, as proven by current scientific research, all that is being done to improve the state of the planet is clearly not enough. Every single slip has huge repercussions, whether those slips occur on an individual or on national level. The bigger culprits are, of course, the corporations to whom ‘going green’ also means a decline in profits.

So what does research say anyway? What is the current state of our environment? What is this planet going to be like for the generations to come? Following are some of alarming news stories, based on the latest scientific research, which have been collect from Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com)

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/in-paper-magazine/sci-tech-world/earth-matters-risks-risks-everywhere

Cook what you have

There are some people for whom cooking brings sheer pleasure. They are ever ready to meticulously plan their grocery purchases, set out the monthly menu and cook with an enthusiasm which reflects in the taste of the dishes that they prepare. For others, however, cooking is a tedious chore. They would rather spend as little time as possible on it.

Yet there is one characteristic similar to both, which is their expertise in cooking up something from the leftovers, especially now that food prices have taken their toll on the budget of many households. But those confused about how to make the most f the veggies or anything in the fridge, Cooking by Numbers is a site that will prove to be an aid.

Just select the food items which are in your refrigerator — and pick the same on the website, there is quite a long list to choose from, like butter, chicken, cheese, salad, beef, steak, etc. The next step is to select the items which are in your kitchen cupboard. You can select from flour, lentils, noodles, pasta, bread, coffee and loads more. Once you are done, you can point and click to find out which recipes you can try out.

The recipes are ranked in a unique way, like the recipe containing the most number of items that you are looking for is ranked first — with the percentage showing next to it. The percentage will tell you the extent to which the recipe contains the ingredients that you have specified.

While you are here, you can also try a tomato game available for free. There is also a segment on general cooking tips. If you are a beginner in the kitchen, this section will fill you in on the correct way to chop an onion, make bread crumbs, how to peel citrus fruits and how to get many other basic things done.

However, the most irritating thing is its blue background which hits you in the face — and yes, this background is there on every single page. Moreover, it is again apparent that the basic layout design has not been considered closely, and lacks the pictorial aspect as well. There are many web pages which are titled “Untitled Document” — which does look highly unprofessional. Moreover, the steps in the recipe are not numbered — they appear as one paragraph.

But as far as the functionality goes, this is definitely a very handy website. If you are blessed with a cable or DSL connection, you can log onto this website whenever you are stuck anywhere in the kitchen.

To find out how you can convert leftovers into exotic dishes, log onto http://www.cookingbynumbers.com/