>> Archive 2005
[December 8th, 2005]
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes...
Finished with finals yesterday. Survived Cisco with GPA intact. Spent most today goofin off here. Pretty cool. It needed some changes - see added links to left, below menu. Created a navwrap div, put menu and links div's inside. Added headings to entries. Date only version was pretty lame. If you've yet to make the change to CSS, be ashamed. After settling on my refinements, very minor changes were needed to bring all pages up to date. Without CSS, updating such things as fonts and padding on each page, even on such a simple site, would have been a time consuming pain. Still have some cleaning up to do, archive entries... and who knows, maybe fix those menu links that remind me of old Seattle I-90 ramps to nowhere.
Took Jeffrey Zeldman's Web Standards off the shelf. Bought sometime last year. Really should finish it.
Still have a couple 20 bucks off SiteGround web hosting certificates left. Yes, some real people wandered by and picked a couple up. Imagine my surprise.
[December 2nd, 2005]
More Google, Adobe, Other Misc...
Hooked up with another cool Google creation...Analytics. Provides stats/traffic info. for your site.
Current conditions: 31°F, 2 inches snow. Yeah, nothin big. Makes everything look cool, though. Couple pics here.
Will have a month of freedom after finals next week. Hoping that means getting around to making some changes here, which I've meant to do for some time.
Invested in Adobe CS2. Pretty stoked. Was 'trying' to use Paint Shop Pro 9, which many out there probably like, but I find it much more, uh, 'challenging'. Opened Illustrator and created some flyers for my wife in no time, and with no hassle. Adobe's interface just makes so much sense to me. Gig (2x512) of Kingston memory should be arriving today, from Newegg, via UPS. (Sick name dropping freak.) Oh, and a NEC dual layer DVD burner. The Dell included drive up and quit over the weekend. Only year and half old. Not too happy. Of course, didn't get extended warranty. Trusted all components were of the highest long lasting quality. But let's not complain. It didn't burn and always wanted to upgrade.
Last but not least, fixed page validation. Traced CSS "no stylesheet found" reply to my failure to add type="text/css". One XHTML problem was all the &'s in the google video links. Other was an unclosed tag...oops.
[November 21st, 2005]
20 Buck Web Hosting Discount!
if you'd like one of my 5 $20 discount certificates for web hosting from SiteGround, the fine people through whom this site is hosted. Making their incredible $5/month, $60/year, even that much better. On top of that flabbergaspingly low hosting price, you also get (in your best Ginsu Knife announcer voice) a jaw dropping 5000 MB of space! But that's not all, what would you say if you were to receive 100 GB of monthly traffic?! Don't answer yet. Throw in 100 FREE subdomains and 1000 FREE email accounts! Now what would you say? But don't answer yet. There's more! You'll also receive 10 MySQL/Postgre DBs and Spam Protection. Wait! There's still more... 5 parked domains, traffic stats, PHP/Perl/Python, CGI Scripts and unlimited FTP access. Now how much would you expect to pay? $100 a month? How about $80 a month? Maybe $60 a month? Well, how about $60 A YEAR?! Yes, you heard right. You get all this for only $60 A YEAR! And if you hurry now, you'll even receive a $20 off certificate. Yes, act now and get your site hosted on SiteGround for the amazing unheard price of $40 a year!!! Email now - Spam filters are standing by!
Okay, here's a portion of what SiteGround told me:
Each gift certificate gives a $20 discount for purchasing SiteGround hosting services. You may issue your certificates to 5 people you choose, including yourself. You may send your certificates by December 24, 2005.
Hey, including myself? Dude, how does that work? Hurry, only 4 certificates left!!!
(Dude, have looked at the site traffic. I'll be fortunate if 4 delirious non-spidered personages stumble upon this site by years end.)
[November 5th, 2005]
Too Much Google
It's crazy tryin to keep up with everything Google. Here's all the mostly beta stuff I've run across. On top of this, there's Google's recent foray into the ISP market by providing WiFi access (articles here and here). Check out these wifi.google links, FAQ and download (currently no download available). Imagine the excitment of being a Google employee. The freedom to invent and explore, along with seemingly bottomless cash pockets to make anything possible. I'd be stoked.
Posted a bigger list, but that seemed pretty silly seeing as you can find practically everything by clicking more in search or visiting Google labs. Have scaled it down to my favs.
Print - Search the books they've been scanning. Very cool.
Video
Blogs
Mail
Talk
Earth - Is awesome and about 1/5 the download size of Nasa's Worldwind. Rad zooming, tilting and moving through the Grand Canyon, around Mt. Rainier & Mt. Baker, through downtown Seattle between the buildings.
News
Maps - Don't think I've used another since.
[October 31st, 2005]
Google Video
Tomorrow's the big important CCNA midterm. Here's how my studyin's been goin, thanks to the discovery of Google Video:
SNL Jimmy Fallon Winter Olympic Parodies (no longer available)
SNL Cookie Dough (no longer available)
SNL Ashlee Simpson Lip Sync (no longer available)
Napoleon Dynamite on David Letterman (no longer available)
Seinfeld "the 2nd Spitter"
Hockey Scrap, Perry/Richards
Snowboarding Chads Slams
Hey Mace, check out the 'trucks'...
Thunderstruck
10/25/05
Killa B's
[October 28th, 2005]
Revived From Profound Unconsciousness
Inconceivable! It's an update to thy homepage. The slacker I've been. You can thank Marc for the inspiration. Also, check out the cool pics of his brothers wedding. Take Marc's advice and start from the bottom.
In the many other life happenings since April...
-Completed a couple C# courses over the Spring and Summer. Hope to take Java next quarter(winter). Am currently studying hard for my CCNA Ch1-11 midterm this coming week (Yes, Cisco networking). Those Cisco guys are the personification of evil. Hardest course I've taken. Might cause the 3.84 GPA to take a hit. And if so, you'll find me, not at Starbucks, but the local liquor store stocking up for some memory loss.
Site happenings over the past months...
-"Attempted" (yeah, as in "failed") to create my running table as an XML file, so it could be sorted by say "park" or whatever. Really, the plan was, and still is, to write a program whereby could simply fill in the fields, then import from that file into my webpage. Not so much failed, more like got half through and ran out of time/motivation.
-Added a Message Board. Not really for the public, though. So why am I telling you?!
Some other ideas I'll post here so as to not forget...
-Add a journal page. (...to remember what in the world I'm doing)
-Or hows about write a journal program. (...get together with Marc. Think he has same idea)
-Get Gallery2 to install correctly. (...another half way done project)
[April 29th, 2005]
Melody Ivory-Ndiaye Presentation
Attended a thought-provoking presentation in Bellevue last night (through Puget Sound SIGCHI) on web design given by Melody Ivory-Ndiaye, founder of the University of Washington's U.B.I.T. research program. Though more a preliminary study, still found the results fascinating. It looked at what makes a site usable, accessible or universally accessible. 1st) from the perspective of users (site visitor), then 2nd) the perspective of web designers.
A few points I found of interest:
- No major difference in user perceptions due to demographics or impairments.
- Users and web designers have different perceptions of what makes a web site usable and accessible.
- Web designer views were more relative to each other according to how many sites created, not how many years designing. 3+ years experience but only 1-3 sites answered much the same as a person with 1 year experience creating 1-3 sites than with another 3+ yr designer with 4-10 done sites. And vice-versa, 1-2 years with 4-10 done sites had views more in common with a 3+ yr 4-10 site designer.
- Even more interesting, though the designers did have differing perceptions from the users, designers with 1-3 sites experience were closer to the users view than designers with 4-10 sites.
- Designers were given sites to modify (5 existing sites, 20 min. to modify each site as they wished). Again, those who had designed the least number of sites were closest to the users (receiving a higher rating from users for usability, accessibility and universal accessibility) than designers with more site experience. Breaking it down 1-3 sites, closet to user. 4-6 sites, middle rating. 7-10 sites, least similar to users(lowest rating).
- Users rate content as very important. They could easily find the information they were looking for.
The more sites a designer had created, the more they were concerned about the design aspect and less about content. - And the moral is ... in design approach, the users perceptions should be considered and integrated throughout the design and development processes.
Of course, this is simply a relating of results that interested me. There's a lot left out, like: number of users, number of designers, background of users & designers, perceptions of usability / accessibility / universal accessibility ... among other things.
[April 5th, 2005]
Free Hosting?
Hot off the unimportant news presses: Marc found his old site still alive. Created way back in the year Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Three. Of course, you'll notice it's been updated in the years since. Marc had no idea of it's continued existence. Ain't paid the guys for years.
[April 4th, 2005]
Nothing Really
The latest... Replaced Hike Story on menu with 'Story Dept'. Removed JS link. Decided would never use it. Any JavaScript will end up in Web Dev. Anyway, tryin to avoid scripting and create strictly using CSS.
Tuna has taken his radio control genius to the web. RC master teaches his followers how to assemble the Q300.
[March 18th, 2005]
Site Updates
Have made a few minor site changes. Many barely noticeable. For one, those of you using Mozilla's Firefox browser (which I highly recommend) might have noticed a strange occurrence where the menu would float down below the text, as opposed to top right. Simply refreshing put it back where it belonged. Have changed the layout somewhat, shall happen no longer. Put #menu inside #maincontent and floated right instead of floating outside and alongside #maincontent. Secondly, that let's my text flow underneath the menu.
Also, exchanged percentage widths for pixels, added DOCTYPE/other missing heading info., and last but not least, finally validated my pages(about time).
[March 12th, 2005]
Thunderbird email
Changed over to Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird. Thus far, really likin' it. Using it for the J-Dude mail. Yes, that means you can , if you so wish. Will get a link on the pages soon.
(update 3/19/05 7:06pm - 'contact me' added in footer)
[February 28th, 2005]
J-Dude lives!
Here we go ... live at the Dude-pollo. I'm up and running. After months of selfishly hoarding this all to myself, it's up for all to see. My apologies for non-working menu items. I'm ashamed at my neglection and bad parenting. But now that all wandering web eyes are on me, I'll do my best to impress.
This is pretty much a place for me to write, blog, whatever really. Will have links to my creations... halfwitted stories, web pages, scripting... all code will be accessible. Hopefully ones with some real 'know how' will stop by and give me pointers. Probably have a section with links to HTML/CSS problems that are driving me absolutely crazy. And, of course, section with solutions to past insanities.
For example, sometime ago learned the hack to make margin: auto; work in IE is add text-align: center; into the parent element. Or as I did, in the body {}, which I shall be doing automatically with each new creation(I am dude of lame puns).
And there you are. My introduction. Have I grabbed you, mesmerized you? You're addicted, can't go without me, need your daily fix? Well, hopefully this becomes something fun for others to look in on, get inspiration from, or add ideas to.
