FeralBlog

Well, that did it. With k’s comment about my ultra-white bread spelling of “freakin”, I reached 393 posts (not counting this one) and 394 comments. Considering I started this weblog back in June of last year, it feels like somewhat of an accomplishment that enough of my 5 friends feel compelled to comment on the drivel I write on a semi-regular basis. So, thanks!

I was pretty tired of the .nizzle control that was handling my photoalbum section; I couldn’t add descriptions, pages would get really long and take awhile to load, no preview on the main page, etc. So, yesterday I found this cool (and free!) control that handles all those things for me. I can now go in and edit an XML file to add titles and descriptions to photos, which were sorely needed. Plus, the front page of the photoalbum looks much nicer now, thanks to a thumbnailed layout of the galleries, also XML controlled. I have a lot better control over design and layout of the pages, thanks to a suave template-driven implementation. I’ll try and go back and put descriptions on pictures, but I promise that’ll be a slow process.

I saw this deal for 3 years of free hosting, and had to sign up. Picked up a new domain from Dotster, and everything should be coming online. Problem is, I don’t know what to put there yet. So, what sort of site would you expect to see at http://trulycrap.com/? One suggestion was for bad movie reviews, etc. Another would be where I would put all the uninteresting coding stuff. Any thoughts?

Brian will probably be doing a little bit of posting around here, while he gets his DNS/host issues sorted out. It’ll be nice to have someone with a little bit of intellect posting around here, right?!

Well, that sucked! Just a friendly word of advice, if you’re going to register your domain with Network Solutions), use an email address that you check more often than every 6 months, even if it means having to wade through pages of spam, otherwise you might miss your domain renewal notices. Doh.

I’ve still had it with them, and based on this glowing review, I’ll be switching my domain name to Dotster today. They spam-protect your email address for you! How cool!

Seem to be having some DNS problems with the site last night and today; couldn’t get my mail last night, and couldn’t hit the site (at least from home.. I think the DNS is cached here at work). I used a web-based ping tool, and that also couldn’t do the lookup, so maybe it’s not just me. Sent a message off to my host, so here’s hoping they can resolve the problem quickly.

Got a bug up my ass over the weekend and started work on a consistant navigation for the whole site, not just the weblog. The main inspiration came from this nifty CSS tabs implementation that does rounded corners purely with CSS and no images (if you’re using Firebird). There are some things I’m not sure about yet… the white box over the background is only as large as content, which means that on the weblog homepage when the right-side column ends the white box does, too. (I’m sure there’s a way to fix this.. I just need to delve a little bit into what Matt H. is doing on his site).

I’m also not super-keen on the way that the subtabs are implemented. Right now they’re assigned an explicit top/left position to make them fall under the main tabs (see here for an example of this), but that makes me feel dirty. What if a user adjusts their font sizes? Everything will get thrown out of whack then. I’m sure there’s a way to have the

subnav positioned relative to the parent container, but I haven’t figured it out yet. So, if you see weirdness, kindly refresh and hopefully it’ll get cleared up.

I’m also not quite sure why I’m bothering to bring in other sections of the site, since this is the only place that really has fresh content. According to my stats however, it’s the TiVo hacking and Building a Climbing Wall pages that get the bulk of search traffic. So, I guess prettying up those sections might make people want to click around a bit more. More updates as the redesign progresses.

Update 2003.08.05:

• Picked a more muted background image.
• Pat made the fun little “branding” image for the top bar.
• Made the homepage redirect right to the weblog
• Matt H. is using a table to make the heights of his columns appear even. Booo!!!
 

If you haven’t noticed the low-res image in the sidebar, I caved and got myself a camera-equipped cellphone over the weekend.

I’ve already set up a moblog on TextAmerica. I can send a picture as a message from my phone to a special email address, and it automatically gets posted to the site. They were even nice enough to provide an RSS feed for the pictures, so you can include data from the moblog on any other site, like this one. They had a Javascript file that you could use to do it more automagically, but:

1. the link opened in another window.
2. the link was to the moblog homepage, not the larger image of the thumbnail picture used for the link
3. you didn’t see descriptive text (if there was any).

1. there was a TextAmerica ad button below the image.

   So, being a programmer, with some help from an article from Scott Mitchell, I used the RSS feed to extract all the data I needed, and created the link and description text myself. I’m even caching the data once a minute so the page doesn’t have to wait for the image data each time.

   There are some other neat things besides the camera. I can put my own photos on the phone, as wallpaper or startup/shutdown screens. I can also put pictures as CallerID notifications, so when Ryan calls, his face comes up.

   My 2nd-most favorite feature has to be downloadable ring tones. I admit, I thought that ringtones were stupid; everyone just getting the latest song from 40 cent or whatever. But take a look at some of the ringtones that are available! The Alternative section is a bit thin, but still has good stuff in it; Stone Roses, etc. Right now my ringer is “Let’s go to bed” by The Cure.

    

Got all fiesty after reading the two MT(Movable Type) articles this a.m., as well as this guide to creating a links “sideblog”, and did just that. Created a new blog, and after getting bookmarklets set up in Phoenix Firebird and IE, I can quickly post links of interest to the new “Random Reading” section over in the sidebar.

Couple of quick updates:

• I made a few changes to templates on the site, including using the very cool MTOtherBlog plugin from David Raynes to cross-list new posts from the new Medium Archive on this page, and vice-versa. I’ve also been using the beta release of MT-Textile 2, which has a bunch of new features in it, the coolest so far being the footnoting feature.
• Since it seems to be the new hotness, I’m also posting a screenshot of my desktop. Like the background?

• Ryan emailed me a picture from my night out with both sisters in Philly, which I’ve added to that post.