Monday, August 4th, 2003
I'm home from LA and had a wonderful time. The weather was amazing and I was able to relax more than I could have imagined. It was so great to see old friends and I got to do some really cool things. I'll have stories and pictures to share later this week.
You may have noticed that my site was down for THREE DAYS last week. The sad thing is that it was not just my site, but EVERY site hosted by the guys that I use. I applaud their effort in fixing whatever problem that they had, but am stunned that there was no backup plan to get everything up and running in short order.
Over the next two weeks I am going to re-code the ASP on this site and switch to PHP hosted on Linux. I'm done with Microsoft hosting.
Tuesday, August 5th, 2003
I got 5 rolls of film from my Lomo developed tonight. Some of my pictures are really cool and I can't wait to post them, but it will have to wait until tomorrow night. My trip is finally catching up with me. I'm about to fall asleep.
Tuesday, August 5th, 2003
I just remembered that my birthday is on Friday. I don't have big plans. Just a dinner with mom, grandma and a friend of mine. My brother is in Morocco for the month, so he'll miss all of the excitement. Nobody has heard from him since he left last week, so I hope he's okay. Okay, enough of this. I need to clean and eat before I get back online and post some photos for you.
Tuesday, August 5th, 2003
I put together a Flash slide show of some of my LA pictures, but the file size was HUGE. I need to work on a better way to preload that doesn't involve forcing 500kb in one shot. I'd like to do that now, but I'm still so f'ing tired from the lack of sleep this weekend. So, in the meantime I put a few of them here. I think the top shot will be my first entry into the mirror project.
Wednesday, August 6th, 2003
I'm getting so frustrated with the amount of time that I have to work on my site. There are so many things I want to do and I feel like it all just can't get done. I think I need to take a step back and break it into small chunks.
Over the next to weeks I want to convert to php and move to a linux server, convert to a css/xhtml only layout, get a flash slideshow working with an effective preloader for each image, rethink and create sections to better accommodate photos, flash projects and music, and clean excess class tags out of database.
I'm taking next week off, so I hope to spend at least 4 hours each day working on nothing but these things. Wish me luck.
Thursday, August 7th, 2003
Don't have a Lomo? No problem! Thanks to one of my recently discovered favorite sites, I found a link to a Lomo Photoshop action.
Thursday, August 7th, 2003
Here's the Flash slideshow that I promised. Let me know if there's anything funky with it or if it doesn't load for you (Flash 6 is required). I based the slideshow on this. I modified it a bit and may post the source file soon.
Friday, August 8th, 2003
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Friday, August 8th, 2003
I updated the about page last night. Check it out.
Saturday, August 9th, 2003
Today I hit my bare leg with the weed wacker. I don't recommend doing that. It hurt SO bad. I think that next time I'll wear my Wacker Chaps.
Monday, August 11th, 2003
Head over to mezzoblue.com and read about the new feature called a second voice. On it's own, the site is an amazing study in what standards based design can be. That's not enough for Dave. He's now using his site to allow web specialists to share what they know with the rest of us. Thanks, Dave.
Tuesday, August 12th, 2003
I watched Style Wars last night and was inspired to walk around the city looking for graffiti to photograph. I found a few things that were interesting enough to take photos of and got lots of sun. The weather today was amazing.
At one point during my roaming I was stopped by a fireman who was sitting on top of the firetruck taking a break. He asked if I'd take his picture. I did and told him I'd bring it by the station.
Tuesday, August 12th, 2003
On Wednesday I have some tweaking and testing to do with my xhtml/css layout and then I'll be ready to unleash it and start converting the interior pages. For starters I have recreated the current layout. I did this to prove to myself that I could do it. However, the xhtml will be flexible enough to accommodate an unlimited number of style sheets for formatting.
Thursday, August 14th, 2003
Okay, now this is just depressing. There is no living person in the world that I would pay $20 to talk to. I can't even say that I've heard of half of these "celebrities".
Thursday, August 14th, 2003
Well, here is the xhtml/css layout. I'm pretty glad that I was able to reproduce the styling of the original design. I want to contemplate the code a bit more and get some feedback from you all before I convert the interior pages.
So far, I have been fortunate to test in the following browsers with good success:
- Opera 7.11 (Win)
- Mozilla 1.3 (Win)
- IE6 (Win)
- IE 5.2 (OS X)
- Safari 1.0v85 (OS X)
- Opera 6.02 (OS X)
- Netscape 7.1 (OS X)
- Netscape 6.2 (OS X)
- Netscape 6.1 (OS 9)
- IE 5.1 (OS 9)
- Opera 5.0 (OS 9)
- Mozilla 1.2.1 (RedHat 9)
- Konqueror 3.1 (RedHat 9)
IE 4.5 shifts my site over to the right to the point that it is off the screen. A few of my favorite sites are also mangled in IE 4.5, so I am not terribly concerned, but will welcome any advice to fix this.
I have decided to hide all styles from Netscape 4. I have also opted for a hybrid of css image replacement techniques found at Zeldman's site.
Please contact me with any bug reports or suggestions. This is my first css layout, be kind.
Friday, August 15th, 2003
I'm currently obsessed with trying to hide my css stylesheet from handheld devices. My Sanyo 5300 uses NetFront v3.0 and I can't figure out how to display my site as plain text without using ASP or PHP to sniff the user agent string. If anyone can help or has any ideas, PLEASE contact me.
Sunday, August 17th, 2003
I've spent hours this weekend trying everything I can think of to hide my stylesheet from my handheld browser. I've tried using different import methods and media types with no success.
On Friday I visited mezzoblue.com on my handheld and it was displayed with no stylesheet association and I saw nothing in the code that was different than mine that might be letting that happen. I was frustrated and obsessed! Today I visited it again and the stylesheet was displayed. Perhaps the NetFront browser on my Sprint phone is too buggy to worry about testing on just yet.
I am still considering server-side user agent detection, but will save that as a last resort.
Monday, August 18th, 2003
DMXZone has a great interview with CSS Zen Garden creator Dave Shea. Read it.
Tuesday, August 19th, 2003
Why buy an iPod with you can get one free?
Friday, August 22nd, 2003
Today is National Slacker Day for all of those hard working Brits. Join me in joining them for a day of sluffing off...as if I needed a reason.
Monday, August 25th, 2003
This was the last official weekend before college starts up again and I've finally reorganized. You'll notice that the navigation now includes links to a photos section and a Flash section. This is something that I've been wanting to do for awhile now. For the layout of these two sections I've mimicked Doug Bowman's clever styling from the Wired news photo gallery.
As is stands now, I believe that I only have one page left, excluding the archives, to convert to the css layout.
Tomorrow I am going to start working on a section to indulge my musical endeavors.
Bug reports are always welcome.
Monday, August 25th, 2003
I only need 16 more downloads to reach the 500 mark and receive the coveted bronze film icon.
Thursday, August 28th, 2003
School starts tonight. It technically started Monday because I am taking an independent study course, but tonight is my first time in a classroom since April. I'm not too concerned about much other than how I'll eat dinner and make it to class on time.
As a tribute to summer I finally posted some pics from my Los Angeles trip over in the photos section.
