Recently in Web Vanity Category

Ok, I admit it. I do love to find fun, silly, little devices to toss up here. And this one is in the ultimate silly category. While reading the About entry on a blog, I just had to chuckle. I figured what the hell, let's see how I can approximate me on this site. The web site is called Meez and it has a super easy interface that walks you through the process which yields an exportable animated GIF file. They used a lot of imagination in this process, so much so that I could actually get pretty close to how I appear and what I am doing right now. So, what are you waiting for? I know you can't wait to try it yourself! Using that link will gain you 5 extra coinz, the currency used to get extra special additions to your Meez. I admit it - I get 5 as well. And, yes, I know they are aiming at the younger crowd, but us more mature people can have fun, too, right? (via Grilled Cheese)

I was over at the Yahoo Developers web site today to grab an application key for a new web site. I noticed that the featured video on the front page was about a new plug-in for Wordpress. It is used while you are writing a new post (or editing an old one) and what it does is scans the content for possible items of interest from Yahoo. Things like maps, graphics, photos and such. So, what the hell, being a tech toy whore, I decided to load it up and see what it yields from the wealth of Yahoo Maps, Search, Flickr, and whatever other goodies they have stored. So I will pause in writing and see the three shortcuts it found already! (pause) So far, it basically found the links you see in the post above, as well as putting a Flickr badge at the bottom of the post, using those three terms as the keyword search. Now, let us add West Chester, Pennsylvania and the West Whiteland Fire Company to the mix and see what else show up. (pause) So, I removed the links to the three obvious web sites and added in automatically a map of the borough. It did not find the fire company's web site Curious as to how precise the search is, possibly only related to map locations or Flickr-finds. Now going to enable everything and see how it looks in reality! Update: Well, after publishing the web page and bringing it up in both Firefox and IE, I was singularly unimpressed with what happened when you moused over a link. It came up with some skeletal-looking windows and was not until you actually clicked the link that a Yahoo box came up with several search results. While it is a cute way to find related maps and pictures on Flickr for your post, I find that its usability for the general (read: non-geek) reader is lacking greatly.

Yep, it is snowing today - a bit more than the few flakes we had yesterday, but enough to give a minor coating on the grass. So, while tending to cleaning up the rec (read: wreck) room, I am getting things back in shape here. I do like this new format (hats off to Bob) and am having fun adding widgets and plugins. Yes, I am a geek and I do like to over decorate... but things will settle down, just bear with me in the meanwhile. Please, if you see something you like, leave a comment... also if something annoys you too. So, back to cleaning out boxes and straightening out the mess, off- and on-line.

Well, I am well underway with the design work for the rest of the web site. I just got tired of the typical MT look and feel. My next challenge over the next week or so will be to try and apply it to the MT template system. It may take longer, but I want to give it a shot so that I can beter understand how the templates really work. I have tweaked them, but nothing super critical like an entire look and feel change. Something to play with in my spare time (like I have any).

I have been using Furl since it opened up and quite satisfied with the way it works. I have also used del.icio.us as a resource to see what's hot around the net, even had an account though I hadn't used it for storing much of anything. Yesterday, I decided to export my Furl links and import them into my del.icio.us using their import facility. It went very smoothly except for what I think is a major problem: it marked all of the 1750+ links as not shared, hidden from the public view. In a system like this, one that is used by the gazillion or so folks on the web, you would think that there would be a make 'em all public click. Well, there isn't. So, I am off to look at the API to see if there is a way to undo this with a little perl magic. Don't forget - today is 06-06-06, the apocalypse date. Beware of evil spirits!

In an effort to move to the next layout design, something I usually do every 6 months or so, I decided for the moment to emulate the look and feel of my blog. The basic MovableType blog layout is a simple one and, since I converted back to MT, I think that I'll tinker with MT-driven layouts. Since the stylesheet is a general one and the layout is basic two-column menu on the right, I decided to transform the whole site. Since I use a combination of SSI and a homegrown perl CMS, the transformation took about 10 minutes, including a new this section contains block at the top of each page. It may not be the fanciest or the most original, but it will keep things running while I add more content and do some creative work.

I feel like I will be on a random walk through the rest of the month. There are only nine days left, but still I feel like I have such a diverse group of things I want (and need) to get accomplished. Some are interrelated, but some are not. I feel like I have taken a long vacation since Election Day, basically recharging the body and mind from the numbing experience of 20-hour days, the one thing that I gladly left behind when I retired from the phone company. The major difference with these was the high level of satisfaction received from the hard work, something that was sorely lacking in the latter part of my IT career. So here is my to do list for the next little over a week:

• Pearl Jam - yes, I am going to see Pearl Jam live in Philly!
• Begging forgiveness on course #3 - yes, I need to take care of this issue tout de suite! I have been avoiding and now I will have to pay the consequences.
• Business stuff - making money is important if you want to eat and the good thing is that we have yet another new customer with three more potential right behind. Also, have to get working on the next level of one of our best customers. Sharpen the pencils and get to coding!
• Weather data - I have to get the cron processes running on our meteorology server at school so I can get all of our observational and model data pulls from NOAA up-to-date. I have been running them manually, but it is a pain when Linux can take care of it all for me.
• Weather tools - now that I have Fedora Core 5 running on my laptop under VMware, I want to get some of the nifty weather tools from UCAR running. Just in time for hurricane season...
• The pool - yes, this is always hanging over my head... I am going to get this started this week, dammit!
• The RV - ditto

And I am sure that there are a dozen other things that I need to get done, but I just don't want to think about them yet. They'll creep up like they always do. So, the hell with changing the blog template for now - actually like this one - and put it off until I can rip May's page off the calendar.

I feel like I am finally getting some things accomplished around here. I don't know if it was school this past semester, the campaign, or what, because I think that I am finally coming to grips with actually having both a lot of work to do and a life, too! I cannot remember the last time that I actually put in more than one entry in a week, let alone a day (I know, you're all bored already...). It may just be that the weather is getting nicer and that I can actually sleep for more than two hours a night. Anyway, I am very pleased so far with moving back to MT. I have been watching the logs and the major spiders are running rampant at the moment. Yahoo! has jsut about finished roaming through the whole new file structure. Google is doing it much more efficiently, a few pages at a time. One thing I did find during the conversion process was that WP has no export feature. So, I did a search and found one that someone had written. It had to be tweaked a bit to work on the latest version of WP. It also did not handle comments perfectly. I ended up without about 200 blank anonymous comments. The good thing was that I simply went into MT after importing and basically killed them all off in about 3 minutes, rather painlessly. That brings up another good feature of MT - most if not all of the selection menu-type displays can be easily optioned to show 10, 20, or all of the entries at once, something lacking in most of WP. Sure, I could have gone in and tweaked. My issue is that in the case of blogging software, I want to use it for the most part, not mod it. The analog I like to think of is comparing blogging software to a pencil. To write with it all I have to do is occasionally sharpen it. I always felt that when blogging with WP, I had to take all the wood off the pencil, mine my own graphite, form it into a cylinder, cut down a tree, whittle a cylinder, and put the lead inside of it. Sorry, I have better things to program - my blogging software is just a tool to edit, archive, and present my journal. Sure, I like the toys you can sprinkle through it, but that is not the reason I blog. Back to cooking dinner (wow!) - have to get it done early since Monday night is drill night!

Yes, I have done it again. I have moved back to MovableType again. Not exactly a 180-degree turn since I have been on a wide variety of blog software - if someone writes it, I will try it. Started originally on Blogger right after it was first released (yes, that long ago). I tried GreyMatter, bloxsom (I really liked it, don't now why I just didn't stay with it), b2, WordPress, and MovableType. Of all of them, my favorite was WP. Yes, so why didn't I stay with it?

• php - Yes, first and foremost, it is because it is written, added-on, and hacked in a language that I personally do not feel comfortable with. My personal preference for programming has been, is, and always will be perl. Sorry, but I have been writing in it, professionally and personally, since I learned at the high temple of perl, Bell Labs, many years ago. Use all the arguments for php that you want, but the vast majority of the exploits against web site, whether it be spamming or hacking, are because of poorly written php scripts. If I had the time or the inclination, I would probably learn php better and take the time to go over the thousands of lines of code in WP and do some fixes. But time is not something I have a lot of and the inclination to get involved in a OS project is not either.
• perl - I can write perl code in my sleep. MT is written in perl so I can feel comfortable about mod'ing and debugging it.
• spammers - I think I'll just turn comments and pingbacks off. Farr too much useless traffic (and its associated cost) from the idiots who make it their business to trash other peoples' creative works.
• layout - I have always found the way that WP basically says use our wrapper, use kubrick, or spend a thousand hours developing your own. With MT, I can simply strip the shell, tweak my CSS, and it is done. No php mumbo-jumbo, no extensive testing. Then my blog fits right in with everything else on my web site. No, I never thought more than a few seconds about using the WP page creation routines. This facilty is rather stiff and allows little creativity and, again, you are stuck with the overall WP layout. My web site has a blog, not the other way around.

So, the next step later today and tomorrow is to blend this into the rest of the web site's layout. Again, if you want to comment, drop me a note or catch me online.

I have amassed an amazing assortment of alphabets (could not resist the use of alliteration) over the years in the form of TrueType and OpenType fonts. I always try to have just that right look for my work in print. I have always found it annoying that I could not be as liberal with fonts in my web work. I tried several of the dynamic font loaders but was never satisfied with the uniformity of the finished page under different browsers. Today, I am working (finally) on the rest of the web site and I wanted something unique for the section headings. Thanks to a tweak from A List Apart, I have replaced the simple text headings on the rest of my web site with stylish ones. They are dynamically generated using PHP and GD magic. The nice part is that I can easily change the font when ever I feel like it . Just upload a new font file, tweak the script, and it is off and running. For many, many site design ideas, A List Apart is a wonderful place to start. Update: I liked them so much that I added them here, too!