Posts From September 2009

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch Changes

Alrighty, a large number of changes have now been instituted. All of the pages should now be HTML5. The style sheet has been completely rewritten, most of it from scratch, to accommodate the new markup. Each and every blog post has been edited by hand to adapt its code to the new format. I don't expect you to actually care about this: I just wanted to let you know how hard it was.

Of course, some things are broken: The mobile site is totally busted, the print styles are totally busted, Internet Explorer support is totally busted, and all other events are pending. Sorry, The Lonely Island's Space Olympics just jumped in my head.

In any case, if you see anything else broken, let me know.

Failing to Leave Well Enough Alone

Caution: Yet another nerdy, self referential post follows

In building this website, I opted to code everything by hand. In doing so, I've had a lot of mess ups, I've learned a lot about web development, and, most importantly, I've had a blast doing it. Today I am announcing the next phase of my development.

For the past decade, the web has been powered by the 4th version of the Hypertext Markup Language, HTML4. As you may have noticed, the internet neither looks nor acts much like it did at the turn of the century: the web has evolved, but the language used has not kept up.

HTML4 has been good, but it's time to do better. For the past few years, teams of devoted developers have been writing a complete overhaul to the system: HTML5 (catchy name, huh?). I know that most of you will not find the incrementing of version numbers particularly interesting, but as a web developer, it's really awesome.

Why HTML5 Matters

For years, there has been some semantic nature to the tags used to mark up web documents. The <p> tag marks up paragraphs. The <blockquote> tag marks up large blocks of quotation. While I doubt many of you have ever seen these tags, they are invaluable to search engines like Google when figuring out what a page means, to unsighted people reading the internet with screen readers, and a host of others.

HTML5 lets me mark up more of the document in ways that directly helps these users. No longer is navigation considered just an arbitrary place in the document: instead it is readily apparent as a navigation bar. The words that you read have meaning, and with HTML5, the structure of the document is a part of that meaning.

How Does This Affect You?

Over the next few weeks I will be transitioning my pages to this new standard. It's a surprisingly large amount of work, but I quite enjoy doing it. The site may have to come down several times, so expect seemingly random delays. But, in the end, it's gonna be great. I've got some cool ideas for things I can do in conjunction with this project, and hopefully the site will be prettier, faster, easier to use, and updated more often.

Thanks for the patience, support, and reading of posts that are really, truly, uninteresting

Thrill of Victory, Agony of Defeat, and Something In-Between

These past few weeks have been interesting. I would have posted about them more, but I was too busy doing things to tell people about them.

Football, Part 1: Clemson vs. USC

The first game that I got to go to last weekend was the famed Clemson vs. USC game. Ok, so I only got in because it was a soccer match, but still. It's technically a Clemson vs. USC 'football' game.

Despite the fact that I haven't been to a soccer game since, well, the last time I played in elementary school, I had a good time. By every account except the final score, Clemson was sort-of dominating. We had better control of the ball, we shot at the goal more often, and still managed to lose 0-1. Soccer's a weird sport.

On a related note, the soccer stadium, despite being rather miniscule, is almost exactly the same size as Summerville's football stadium. It adds a weird sense of scale to life here at college.

Unfinished Thoughts

The Personal Website of William Flake