Outages. I hate them. You hate them. We all hate them. Just fixed an issue with a component which should have automagically updated itself but when pressed into action curiously deciding that it wasn’t in a co-operative mood, refusing to play ball and failing “closed” making the entire site unavailable. It was a lemon moment.

I’m reminded of my last email conversation with one of the WordPress developers where I likened my “fix” for a theme specific social icon spacing problem as “elegant as a lemon wrapped around a brick”. I’m pretty sure I stole that from THHGTTG, yep, confirmed:

The Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is an alcoholic beverage invented by ex-President of the Universe Zaphod Beeblebrox, considered by the Guide to be the “Best Drink in Existence”[1]. Its effects are similar to “having your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick”.

Quite how that melds itself to a CSS hack I’ll leave to you, the gentle (?) reader to ponder. For the record here is the hack in all of its supreme elegance, feel the width, marvel at the symmetry of the braces/squiggly brackets. The point five is an as yet unrecognised art form:

.sd-content {
 margin-left: 1.5em;
}
a.share-linkein.sd-button.share-icon.no-text {
 margin-left: 1em;
}
a.share-facebook.sd-button.share-icon.no-text {
 margin-left: 1em;
}
a.share-twitter.sd-button.share-icon.no-text {
 margin-left: 1em;
}
a.share-google-plus-1.sd-button.share-icon.no-text {
 margin-left: 1em;
}
a.share-email.sd-button.share-icon.no-text {
 margin-left: 1em;
}
a.share-pocket.sd-button.share-icon.no-text {
 margin-left: 1em;
}

 

OK, I’ll come clean, I’ve recently been reading The Lost Chapters of the Hitchhikers Guide to the GalaxyI can’t find the “serious vs solemn” quote though which has been rummaging around in my head for a few days and which I’m drafting a post around. I thought it might have been from Policy 4; I’m sure it harkens back to BBS days. In time, I will find you 🙂