We’re coming down to the wire on this semester; only two weeks left to finish up (aka write) those final papers and do those last projects. And we know what that means! Layout change! It’s like a Pavlov’s dog scenario, for serious. Anyway, I’ve actually been messing around with the layouts for a while, but I kept getting roadblocked from what I really wanted to do by my lack of PHP knowledge. But mostly what I wanted was to be able to do was highlight video clips, and I finally found a layout template that had enough space in the sidebar to manage. I can never decide how many columns I need, so this one that lets me sort of have both two and three at the same time is perfect!

Of course, the real reason I needed to move to something with wider sidebars is so I could display my brand spanking new Xbox Live Gamertag. I tell you what, the thing is eating my life. In a good way. Mostly. I’m now addicted to getting achievements, which is encouraging me to replay Call of Duty 2 at the highest difficulty to get more. I never do that. I used to just play games through on Normal difficulty once and then quit; yay for increasing replay value! I also finished Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which was so great I’m very close to naming it my new favorite RPG, even over Knights of the Old Republic. And that’s saying something. It’s saying a lot, actually. Now I’m lusting after Mass Effect, but I’m going to wait and give it to myself as a post-semester reward. In any case, if you have Live and know me, add me! I don’t know very many people on Live, so I need friends.

It also lets me put last.fm‘s radio widget in there instead of the playlist one; I no longer have full control over the songs, but they’re all recommended based on my musical taste and they’re the full songs rather than the 30-second preview. I think that’s better. Plus I don’t have to feel guilty that I haven’t changed the playlist for months.

Let’s see, anything else new and interesting? Or at least new? Nope, not really. Back to last week’s Grey’s Anatomy. It has Seth Green! I swear, I’m getting to the point where I recognize half of the guest stars on TV. Eliza Dushku was on Ugly Betty last week, which was awesome. I miss her. Did I ever post about the show she and Joss Whedon are working on? I don’t think I did. But they’re working on a new show, and I’m so excited. Okay, rambling now.

My paper due tomorrow is done, the one due Tuesday is only lacking two pages (out of 22, so percentage-wise…) and what I’ve got is looking good, so I took some me time to play with my layout. I’m having trouble keeping both sides of my brain working–when I worked at the bank, the creative/imaginative side got no play (hence the scurrying back to grad school in English), but now that I’m spending 3/4 of my waking moments reading and writing about literature, the analytical side is feeling left out. Coding layouts helps that. (Oh, and dude, I worked on The Frame some, finding a way to incorporate inline media players and such, and I can now totally code html tables in my sleep. I always relied on DreamWeaver’s WYSIWYG interface for that before, but no more! So much more control now.)

Anyway. I’ve been eyeing this layout for a long time–it’s really clean and bright, but it took me a while to sit down and figure out how to smash everything that I had in a three-column layout down into a two column. I did try at first to make this one into a three-column one, and though I was moving in the right direction, my PHP/CSS skillz aren’t quite up to that yet. Now I just have to make a custom banner for the top…I sort of like the default one, but it’s not mine, you know? But that’ll have to wait until the next time I need a procrastination project. You know, nobody’s going to ever believe that I actually do study, because all I ever post about is taking breaks from studying…ooh, did I mention that I was playing Midnight Club 3 and won a race by less than 100th of a second? Seriously, check it out:

I know, right? Awesome. I made so many mistakes that run, too…it was raining, couldn’t see a thing, plus I’d just upgraded my car (Lotus Elise–the thing rocks out), and it always takes a little getting used to the new power and handling.