Posts Tagged 'This Website'

Unfinished Thoughts 2.0

It's been a big week for this website. Almost everything is new. The server is new. The design is new. Heck, there's even a new blog post! Let's dive in and I'll show you around.

The Invisible Stuff

For the past year, I've hosted my website with A2 Hosting. A2 has been a great host for me. It gave great performance, unlimited storage and bandwidth, and lots of extras that make web hosting a little easier.

About a week ago, I was browsing through Twitter and stumbled across a link to NearlyFreeSpeech.net. As I read through the documentation on their services, I realized some important things:

As little traffic as I get, I really don't need unlimited bandwidth.
I only used one of the many extras offered, and it has been spitting back errors at me for weeks.
Given these things, I was paying far too much.

Being a bit of a tightwad, I switched over to Near Free Speech's pay-as-you-go model rather than the all-you-can-eat model I used before. So far I have been nothing but impressed with the new service, and the 3-4¢ per day is much more attractive.

Introducing: The Fridge

When kids are growing up, what is a sure-fire way to get them to do chores? Post a list on the refrigerator. The public humiliation of not getting smilie-face stickers for each day can act as a stick, and the pride of filling up every row, every day can act as a carrot.

To help me with my New Years' resolutions, I decided that I needed a fridge to post my workout data to. However, the microfridge in the dorm room was not going to suffice. It's too low to the ground and only three other people ever see it. Instead, I am creating a virtual refrigerator door, right here on this website. Right now, it's very simple: a list of the things I'm supposed to do every day, and the results of those activities. If I don't work out, you'll know it. My performance can now be pushed by everyone walking past the virtual icebox.

In the future, I plan to make The Fridge much more robust. It'll give you more data, make entry for me a LOT easier, and even let you join in. It hardly seems fair to consume an entire refrigerator door with only my stuff, so, if you so choose, you will be able to keep track of your goals. I'll have more information about the specific features once they're completed. I hope that you will find The Fridge as useful as I do.

So, what are you waiting for? ~~Check it out~~, and be sure to stop by on a regular basis to help make sure that I don't start slacking off.

Update (March 14): My workouts have been going well. My ability to keep up with this log has not. I greatly appreciate everyone's help in keeping me honest until daily workouts became a habit rather than a chore.

Just in the Nick of Time

Here we sit, the last minutes of the first month of a new year ticking into oblivion.

And here I sit, working on the my first blog entry of said new year. Talk about procrastination.

"New" Year's Resolutions

Although it's probably a bit late to make resolutions for the ~~year~~ 11 months ahead, the entire month of January seemed to be a blur of non-productivity, and therefore, I'm working the resolutions in where I can. And that time is now.

As my roommates already know, I am going to make this year the year that I start taking care of myself again. My first three semesters at school saw my diet decline from healthy foods and milk to cheeseburgers and EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS IN THE ROOM. (Sorry guys…) The month of January saw my introduction of phase I of Operation Stop Being a Fat-ass, where I have worked to stop eating the stuff in our room. Every now and then I still slide back into garbage-disposal mode, but Daniel is always there to remind me of my goal. I really owe him a lot. Thanks.

Phase II, which I started the other day, is to fix my habit of drinking about 27.3 metric tons of sugar per meal (ed. note: there is a margin of error of approximately ±2.3%). So, to correct this, I am stopping drinking all sodas and sweet tea. It's really hard, but necessary. Also, I am slowly starting a "workout" routine. As of yesterday, I now go on brisk walks around campus. They're really tiring; I'm really out of shape.

Phases III through whenever I stop numbering them will extend these reforms to actually modify what I eat at meals, expand my exercising, and hopefully, make me less of a lazy bum. Only time will tell, but for now, I have forever inscribed this resolution in the stone tablets of the internet.

I have no other resolutions: I think what I've set on my plate is plenty.

Website Updates

Despite the dire lack of blog entries, things have not been completely quiet on the website front. The ePortfolio is slowly being fleshed out with actual content (all presented in such a way that all people, including the blind, will be able to read my documents.) I also have some new ideas for the site, as well as some old ideas to continue working on (such as hopefully getting my Salkehatchie-related pet project functional.) Stylesheets for mobile and print have been refined a bit. There's a lot going on, but a lot more that still needs to happen. I hope to have the time.

In conclusion, it's been a whirlwind month. My plan is to manage my time, manage my self, and manage my goals in a manner that allows me to actually do the things I love and the things I need to do, rather than just existing day to day. Wish me luck!

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