You may also have noticed that the heading for each of these menu items is highlighted whenever you hover your cursor (pointer) over it.

What you may not have noticed is that the headings for these items’ parent elements is also highlighted when its descendant is hovered over. In other words, when you hover over the “planned books,” “current books,” or “recent books” list, the parent element, “now reading,” is highlighted as well.

(If you’re still not sure just what the hell i’m talking about, check out the demo first, and then come back.)

This is a cool trick that you rarely ever see on the internets, and it’s remarkably simple to do. You don’t need no fancy JavaScripting to do it, either! No server- or client-side scripts are used at all, just good old CSS, and a properly nested hierarchy of elements.

First, create a nested list, with headings. For example:

<ol>
  <li>
    <h1>text</h1>
    <h2>more text</h2>
    <ol>
      <li>
        <h3>subtext1</h3>
      </li>
      <li>
        <h3>subtext2</h3>
        <ol>
          <li>
            <h4>subtext2.1</h4>
          </li>
          <li>
            <h4>subtext2.2</h4>
          </li>
        </ol>
      </li>
      <li>
        <h3>subtext</h3>
      </li>
    </ol>
  </li>
  <li>
    <h2>text again</h2>
  </li>
</ol>

Now create the following style rules:

li:hover>h2, /* matches the H2 element when its parent list-item is hovered over */
li:hover>h3,
li:hover>h4,
li:hover>h5
	{
	background: #000;
	color: #fed;
	}

(Note that the H1 element is not styled and thus does not actually participate in any fancy hover effects.)

Now save your page and test it out. You can adapt this technique to work with just about any set of nested elements. (Just make sure your nest validates!)

See the demo

So i will FINALLY be upgrading my WP installation and fixing my ACTUAL theme once and for all! I hope to have this completed by the end of the summer.

I promise to make it a whole lot cleaner, too, in layout if not in language.

That is all.

Speaking of which, the ceiling guy (the old guy) did finally patch up our ceiling. In the process, he and his daughter managed to cover everything with yet another fine layer of plaster silt. They’re supposed to be painting the ceiling soon. They fucking better bring more drop cloths this time. Paint is impossible to get out of electronics compared to fine dust.

So i’ve been working on music in my downtime. The good news is that “Like We Are” is coming along rather nicely. The weird part is that it’s somehow morphed from an Afghan Whigs mope-n-dope dirge into a funky piano ballad. I’m not sure how it happened, but the refrain has managed to resolve itself into a syncopated shuffle. I guess that’s okay, but i have yet to toss the guitar part in. That was the first part i wrote, about ten years ago now. I’m just not sure how or if it’s going to fit. I can’t compromise my original vision for this song. Although it’s taking me down some unexpected paths – which i do find myself quite enjoying – i will not let this one stray yet again from being recorded as i have always heard it in my head. So we’ll see. Hopefully it will work out well enough that i won’t have to scrap everything and start over from scratch.

I promise to have some audio up soon.

Music- i’ve been making music again. Funny thing is, i started trying to rework a 10 year old song of mine that i’ve always loved that i’ve never been able to get a good recording of. It’s a dark ballad about love gone badly wrong; very much in the Afghan Whigs tradition. I did arrange a brand new piano part for ambience, but stranger than that is that i was fooling around and stumbled onto a new chord that just completely breathes new life into a chorus part that was definitely in danger of being a little too comfortably numb. I changed a G to a Em/G in the third position, like a Cmaj7 but with a G root. I think it saved my song. I’ll have a recording of that in a few days.

Residence- we have yet to meet the new owner of the house we’re living in. We’re dealing with some tough issues with that. Like what happens if he decides that we’re not paying enough rent to live in a crummy but huge house? What if he wants us out right away? We have no idea what our near future holds with regard to our living situation. And that blows, big time.

Locally- It’s been so hot here that the glue holding the rear-view mirror onto the windshield of my grandpa’s Alero has melted and the mirror fell clean off!