One of the reasons that I wanted to become a faculty member is because I enjoy interacting with students. Unfortunately, online interactions (such as video calls using Microsoft Teams) isn’t as fulfilling as face-to-face interaction.

After staring at my computer for hours without many breaks during the past few weeks, I decided that it would be fun to create an “Easter egg” for the course website. Truthfully, it isn’t much of one because I’m telling you about it, but hopefully you’ll enjoy it.

If you click the toggle button that follows, you’ll receive an alternate site theme. Go ahead. Try it. You know that you want to see what it’s like.

Of course, you can always toggle it back to the original theme if you don’t like all the coronavirus red. Your choice will persist across this site’s pages courtesy of being stored in a cookie.

To make things a little bit more fun, I’ve obfuscated the name of the theme. (No, my CSS theme isn’t really named 0x62696f68617a617264.) If you can decipher it and email me the actual theme name, then I’ll award you 1 point of extra credit.

You may not consult with anyone else to decipher the theme name. Any other resources are allowed.

For anyone who is really enjoying web design, you can create your own CSS theme, which I will post and allow you (and anyone else) to use. If it’s really spectacular, I might even award you extra credit as long as you’re willing to let me use it for future course websites instead of Minima. If interested, I recommend using the definition of the alternate theme as a starting place for development and the demo page that illustrates the style of various elements.

Any theme that you create must not use font and background combinations that are difficult to read (e.g., yellow-on-white is not appropriate).

I refuse to be an intermediary for you to create your theme – i.e., I’m willing to post the theme, but I’m not going to accept daily updates if you want to constantly tweak the style. Make sure that you’re happy with the theme before you send it to me!