“In the vigour of his age he married Gargamelle, daughter to the King of the Parpaillons, a jolly pug, and well-mouthed wench. These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon ‘gainst one another, in so far, that at last she became great with child of a fair son, and went with him unto the eleventh month…”
—Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

Summertime in the Northwest is busy busy busy as everyone milks the most out of long days, occasional warmth, and mostly consistent sunshine. This trip was the third camping weekend running! Humorously enough and in-keeping with our daddy/kid camping trip last year, we did manage to find a bit of precipitation as the rain began pitter-pattering on our tents some time during the night Saturday. Very glad it held off…the photos show some of the rather amazing light and clouds forming in the lee of mighty Baring Peak. This night owl stayed up for a bit more campfire and the full moon coming up over the ridge amidst more amazing cloud patterns in the sky. Magical.

It’s hard to get an idea of the vertical relief from lake to the looming summit above, but it’s nearly 4000′. What was even harder to believe is that this is a popular BASE jumping venue. On the way in we passed a group of about 6 or 7 jumpers packing out large packs and carrying helmets with cameras.

Just before dark we took the kids down to the west end of the lake to “the beach”. As we hiked the trail, we heard an alarming roar above the trees which scared the kids (or at least Dylan). Looking up, we just caught a glimpse of one parachute gliding east toward the meadows at the east end of the lake. We were pretty eager to witness this spectacle, but we had just missed it. Visions of bodies screaming, flying down that wall in a wingsuit pulling the chute 100 feet above the trees filled our heads as we gazed up the wall hoping for more jumpers. Alas, there were no more, and the evening settled down eventually as we watched a green heron land lakeside and bats consuming a feast of insects hatching from the water.

Marinate on this:

Baring Mountain BASE jump

I finally found it! Bevin and I loved this song as children. I sing it frequently to my kids and they love it, but could only remember the first verse and certain lines mashed up and combined with whatever I can invent for the second verse. But lo! there are not two but five verses. Will have to roll out the full debut tonight!

I believe the song is called “The Super-Supper March” by John Hamblin, but this is unconfirmned.

Hungry, hungry I am hungry
Table, table here I come
I could eat a goose-moose burger
Fifteen pickles and a purple plum

I could eat three bowls of goulash
Half a pound of wuzzled wheat
I could eat a peck of poobers
Then I’d really get to work and eat

Oysters, noodles, strawberry stroodles
French fries, fish hash, one red beet
Lamb chops, wham chops
Huckleberry mish mash
Oh, the things that I could eat

Doughnuts, dump-a-lings
Blueberry bump-a-lings
Chocolate mush-mash, super sweet
Clam stew, ham stew,
Water melon wush wush
Oh, the stuff that I could eat

Deep dish rhubarb, upside-down cake
I could eat a frittered flum
Hungry, hungry, I am starving
Table, table, here I come

John Hamblin

According to Wikepedia, John Hamblin is an Australian children’s television presenter and actor, best known for his role as a presenter on Play School from 1970 to 1999. He’s co-authored a book within the last few years, and on the back cover, it reads: “Wherever he went, whatever he was doing… John had a talent for attracting quirky situations, questionable associates — and always beautiful women!”

This problem came up yesterday about which I could find nothing on the internet, and it was just whacky enough to deserve some mention…well that, and the fact that we came up with a solution.

So the context is a HTML marketing email we developed for a regular multi-product promotion. As you can see, the rendering in Outlook 2007 on a PC shows the default purple as the visited link color. This was not desired, nor was it described by either the CSS or the HTML.

Visited links showing in default colors (contrary to the css styles).

As you can see, the HTML directs that the font color—in any case—should be white.

<tr valign="middle">
  <td style="padding: 5px 10px;"><a class="link3DS" href="http://link"
  target="_blank" style="color:#ffffff;">Alaska Cruises</a></td>
</tr>

The CSS says the same thing. The class on the above link is “link3DS” which as you can see below also directs the color to be white. (The entire body-embedded email style sheet here for reasons that will be explained later).

<body bgcolor="#1a2639" style="margin:0; padding:0;">
<style type="text/css">
<!--
img {display: block;}
a.orangeLink:link {color: #e6bc50; text-decoration: underline;}
a.orangeLink:visited {color: #969696; text-decoration: underline;}
a.orangeLink:hover {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.grayLink:link {color: #bdbcbc; text-decoration: underline;}
a.grayLink:visited {color: #969696; text-decoration: underline;}
a.grayLink:hover {color: #e6bc50; text-decoration: none;}
a.navLink:link {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.navLink:visited {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.navLink:hover {color: #1d3666; text-decoration: underline;}
a.link3DS:link {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.link3DS:visited {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.link3DS:hover {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline;}
a.SO_link:link {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.SO_link:visited {color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none;}
a.SO_link:hover {color: #a43232; text-decoration: underline;}
-->
</style>

After banging heads on walls, my workmate, Kurt, noticed that if you put the long-deprecated VLINK attribute in the email’s body tag, the visited link would now display the desired color. “But why haven’t we had this problem in the past?” I queried. VLINK could not (will not!) be the solution!

Then I recalled that in designing this email, which embraced an entirely new template, I had stripped down the style sheet according to what was now relevant. In doing so, I had also stripped out the default pseudo-class styles as all the links in the new template were triggered be classes. So I popped these default styles back into this email, we tested it, and sure enough BINGO!, the visited links now rendered in their desired fashion.

So to the above style sheet, these default pseudo-class stylings were added to our anchor links:

a:link {color : #1d3666; text-decoration : underline;}
a:visited {color : #1d3666; text-decoration : underline;}
a:hover {color : #a43232; text-decoration : none;}

The moral of the story? Don’t forget to assign default pseudo-class styles to your anchor tag! Why? I haven’t the slightest idea. Perhaps some jocko working on the Outlook project at Microsoft can share some…well I won’t call it wisdom, but at least an explanation where none seems possible.