For any who may care, my site now is now validated XHTML 1.0 Transitional.  I was gonna do strict, but it seemed a little too strict (no target attribute on an anchor tag?  What’s that all about?).  Oh well.  I wanted to make a very short post after my previous very long post, so... peace out homies.

Some of you are probably aware of PicTML, a Visual Basic program I wrote with back in high school.  Well, now it exists on the web.  Go here to see some examples of what PicTML can do, and feel free to make your own pages and publish them for everyone to see.  There are a number of improvements, namely different optimization options (I find it easier to tweak settings in “small HTML” mode, and then convert to “accurate image” mode before publishing).

I try to make my site accessible to non-geeks, and PicTML could use some help in this area.  The background color field currently accepts the following colors:  red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet, purple, magenta, white, grey, black, and pink.  And of course you can use any hex color you want, but if you know how to do that then this paragraph isn’t really directed at you now is it.

I was actually a little disappointed with how easy PHP made it to do a program like this.  I had the working prototype done in a single evening.  I had set out to make this a two-week project, to take me right up until Christmas break.  I mean, when I was learning to code on the TI-83, we had to program uphill, in the snow, barefoot.

Geeky sidenote- once I had finished I realized that I had used an MVC design pattern without even intending to.  The image itself, the $_SESSION vars, and the script to validate the $_POST vars are the model.  Then the control frame is the controller and the preview frame is the view.

Quick note to say that I’ve got RSS feeds for our blogs now.  If you don’t know what that means, you probably don’t care.  And if you do know, there’s a good chance you still don’t care.

Kip’s RSS feed
Steph’s RSS feed
Both blogs’ RSS feed

There will be links at the bottom of the page later, but for now you can use those.

Update
Upon learning of Firefox’s automatic live bookmark (very cool feature by the way), I retooled the RSS feed so that now there’s a feed for both blogs (as well as the original two).

A few things to say:

I’m glad to see lots of people posting comments. If you are wondering what the magic rules are governing whether or not you can leave/edit comments, here they are:

1. You can add comments to any post that is less than one week old.

2. You have one hour to edit your comments.  The feature is there so that you can fix a typo, not so that you can change history.

3. In order to edit a comment, you must be in the same browser session. In other words, if you close the window you’ve lost the ability to edit.

4. You may leave the name field blank, but if you do so you will be labeled “Anonymous coward” in long-standing internet tradition.

5. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

If you’re having trouble making comments, there’s now a link (you really can’t miss it) to go to the javascript-free version of the site, which should work fine with any browser made since 1994. This includes Internet Explorer for Pocket PC (the reason that I implemented the feature to begin with). Does anyone else ever browse my site--or any site for that matter--from a PDA/cell phone?  If so my site should be about as accessible as they come.

As far as my life is concerned, I have no complaints. Today (well, technically yesterday, since it’s after midnight now) was my birthday. Stephanie and I went out to Tsunami’s (a Japanese Steakhouse) for dinner. Probably my favorite type of food. Although I think Kanki in Raleigh is my favorite. We went sorta late and ended up being the only people at our table, which was a little bit awkward, but we ended up getting way more rice than usual. Which I don’t really have a problem with. Well this story isn’t really going anywhere and I have to be at work in about six hours so I’m going to bed.

All I really wanted was a Happy Bird Day card from my boss

It’s been over a week since a new blog post, but stay tuned. I am working on giving you the freedom to comment on my posts! Hopefully the first comment-able post will be made Sunday or Monday. And I’ve already got a good idea of what it’s going to be about...

Your secret’s out and the best part is it isn’t even a good one

I just added a text-only feature to my site.  If you’ll notice at the very bottom of each page is a “View text only” link.  That might be useful if you are on dial-up.  And the setting is stored in a cookie so you don’t have to keep clicking it.  And, if you are browsing from a PDA, my site will default to text only, which is nice for people who, like me, browse the web from a PDA from time to time and don’t like how this page doesn’t fit neatly into a 240x320 screen.

Hope you like the new design.  It is nothing like what I set out to make.  I wanted something mostly white.. kinda like Google’s homepage.  Instead I got something that looks a lot like a church bulletin.  Hope the inspirational feel leaves you.. inspired.  The image is from sunset horseback riding in Hawai’i.

A few more updates coming.. like the return of the music page, and a text-only option (which should be really simple to implement with stylesheets).  And I don’t really like the Homer icon, I’m trying to think of something else that is more appropriate.. and not that Pyre image I use all over the place..

Kip finally finished working on his website tonight!!!  That means that I get to post all of my thoughts right alongside his!!  I’m sure after a few days of this he will realize what a BIG mistake that was.  Then again, you guys out there can always just sort so that you only have to see his posts and you can skip all of my nonsensical babbling.  Otherwise, we’re in for an entertaining ride!!!  Anyway, it is late and I need to get to bed, I just wanted to experience what it was like to put my thoughts out on the interweb for all the world to see.  I’m sure you can’t wait until my next post!!

Good night world...I’m looking forward to you getting to know me!!!

Stephanie and I are doing much better now than we were when I made my last post.  After twenty-four hours most of the hurt has gone away.  Thanks to everyone who’s sent me an e-mail or instant message, it means a lot to us.  I’m always amazed that anyone actually reads my blog.  I know of at least five or six people with blogs and I only have (make) time to read one of them with any frequency.  Of course that particular post was kind of advertised by my away messages and my mom’s e-mail, but still.

On a related subject, for anyone keeping track, these are my two most favorite pictures of August.

Having a puppy is so much fun!  I’m teaching her things!  I’ve never really had a pet that saw me as its provider.  Kind of weird seeing as how I grew up in a house with Snookums, Biscuit, Muffin, Toby, Grace, Ted, Boots, Oreo, and Sniddley.  But all of those animals saw my mom as their provider and me as someone else my mom let sleep there.  Or in the case of the cats, someone besides my mom that they let sleep in their house.

Unrelated topic:  I’m planning on redesigning my site.  I don’t like it now.  It’s too dark and “goth.”  A lot of my graphics were intended to be placeholders but stayed there for a year because I got lazy.  I really came up with the homepage logo and then designed my site to fit that.  Now I’m thinking about a very white, plain design.  And something that uses more of the screen--I don’t like how I restrict my text to such a small space just because someone out there still runs their computer in 640x480.  In fact, the inspiration for my next design will come from this nifty little picture Garrison came up with.  Not that I’m going to rip it off.  It might not even look like it.  It’s just going to be inspired by it.

I’m also considering updating my blog.  I’m thinking about using an actual database (this will require a small amount of learning on my part, which increases the chance that I’ll put it off indefinitely).  I’m also going to make it so Stephanie can make posts too.  I’m thinking of a format similar to Penny-Arcade’s news posts.  And I’ll probably add options to filter just my posts or just Steph’s posts.  And I wanna do one of those calendar views of posts.  I think that’d be useful.

Some interesting things I came across when looking at my site’s stats.  No one goes to most of my pages.. so I’m going to take a lot of them down.  Interestingly enough, Yahoo! will send you here if you search for “ssbm3” or “super smash brothers melee tournaments” apparently.  Those two search queries were my top two referring pages.  Although when I just tried them, I couldn’t find myself in the first eight pages of either (sidenote:  I think that was my first non-Google internet search in about four years).

My AIM-Profile blog view is apparently one of the more popular ways of reading my blog (I’m KipTheGreat on AIM, in case you didn’t know).  So I might update that a little bit.  But there’s really not too much updating to do there.

I never planned to fade... away