collisionbend.com

And I’m dead tired. This is the fourth site launch in as many weeks for me, and each one has been a challenge in one way or another. This site was going great last night in my development partition on my live server, so it was time to push — and a few things are now a little wonky.

The Pages listing in the Rail (far right column) isn’t listing Pages. The navigation menu just below the masthead isn’t giving up its dropline with the subpages on hover; in fact, WordPress isn’t generating the subpage menu at the moment, so I’m not surprised the Pages listing in the Rail aren’t working — the two are somewhat related. The weather plugin in the right column has died as well.

The rest is going as it should. The Moblog column works as designed, although I wish I could res up the photos a touch; that would be nice. Archives, etc., are functioning better than I thought: no glitches from the nickel seats — so far.

Yes, I know the new design is a reverse, and I know there are some who despise the style… but there will be a style switcher coming soon, and the other choice will be this same layout, same color palette, same everything, except a white page with dark text and a different masthead image (and different RSS and “made on a Mac” footer image).

All in all, however, things being as they are, and as tired as I am, I’m content enough to call it a night — I just can’t do any more tonight, that’s for sure.

Anyway, come on back, especially over the next 10 days or so, as I get the issues worked out and some content added to both the Photography subpages and the Moblog (I think I’ll have some interesting stuff to show in the Moblog over the next few days).

I’ll let the tech specs wait until later. Sweet dreams!

Tags: design, Moblog, WordPress

First, Time-Warner Internet service to the ‘Bend dropped like a rock on Sunday.

Besides the frustration of not being able to go anywhere on the Net, check the weather to see if it would rain when I went to the golf course (it did), or catch up on my email, I was unable ot do any serious work. Oddly enough, I still had VPN, SSH, and FTP access, just no SMTP or HTTP — which hardly works when you’re developing on an online development site. TW’s EPIC FAIL also delayed the relaunch of this site.

Yes, I’m about to relaunch. The delays have prevented me from completing the alternative style sheet, and I will hopefully be able to add it to the site and make it active in the next week. My schedule, however, will force me to launch this week without the style switcher.

No big deal, you might say, and I agree — to a point: the primary style will irk some folks (hint: it’s a reverse), so the traffic might suffer for a couple of days. For this, there is nothing I can do, unless I want to wait another 10 days to upgrade — which I don’t. You’ll see why during the next week.

Stay tuned.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The ISP issues forced me to spend time with the folks at the Time-Warner/Roadrunner help desk — which forced me to disencumber my network, killing my laser printer in the process.

In getting the printer back online, I ran a diagnostic (it’s an older HP LaserJet 1200 that I got used — for free), and it gave me an interesting statistic:

Total pages printed: 41,736
Pages jammed in printer: 24
Pages mispicked in printer: 24

One in 1,739 pages printed have jammed. Not sure if this is a good ratio or not, but since only about 3 or 4 have jammed since I have had the printer, and I’ve printed a good 20,000 pages (giving me a ratio of between 5,000 or 6,600 to 1), I’d say it’s more likely that the previous owner had no idea how to operate the printer in the first place.

It’s been a great printer for me, with service even better than the old HP LaserJet IIIs and IVs from 10 years ago… you might remember: some of them are still around, in service today. As long as I can get toner and a current OS X driver for my 1200, it’ll stay right where it is: in my office, hooked to my network, where it gets used almost every day.

Now all I need is a photo-quality, multi-function (scanner, printer, fax is unnecessary), ink jet printer that will print from a roll to a long length (i.e., for hi-res panoramic photos) that will work on a network — and not lose Photoshop functionality — and I’ll be all set.

Any suggestions?

Whoa, relief…

I was just able to relieve myself from a difficult client’s expectations and go to another project at work this week. The initial client is a bit, shall we say, persnickety; everything has to be absolute letter-perfect, pixel-perfect, etc., all the way down the line.

Print stylesheets? Perfection need only apply. (What? We have lousy print CSS support across browsers? The Hell, you say!)

We have a bug tracker, of course, and I have been free for a couple of days now — that is, of course, if you ignore the client’s bug reports issued today, which were really a series of change requests…

All that aside, it was a pleasure for me to move from one challenging site to another, internal, site that is probably more like moving from the frying pan into the fire than it is moving from one difficult situation to an easier one.

Seriously.

But what I was able to do, this week, was to leverage some recent learning into the internal client’s site that saved me time, countless hours figuring out stuff, and plenty of headaches.

I used jQuery, my new heartthrob.

My superiors are impressed, and so am I — and the best is yet to come, as I have more wrinkles to expose in this project: the sky is my limit!

So I just got home, after numerous hours at the agency this week, slaving away, and I come home feeling… well… tired, yes, but…

…damned good.

It’s a feeling of accomplishment, but better: it’s knowing that I stretched myself to create something that should be; something that belongs where it is as it is. It’s a feeling that I created something that simply deserves to be. Something right.

It’s rare, because it’s a feeling that I did it.

It’s a good feeling, too: and I want more.

Twelve days into 2008 and I have written absolutely nothing.

Shame on me. Other than having a lot going on, both personally and professionally, I just haven’t had the time to sit down and keep Dear Constant Reader (that would be you) posted on the goings-on and what-not.

Issue #1 for me is that I’m terribly busy at work. A couple of clients are keeping me going, and I find myself doing more and more each day — which is a good thing for me professionally, but it’s bad for me here.

Issue #2, if you are aware of what I’m facing, has also been an issue, what with doctor’s appointments and such. Wednesday is D-Day; for those of you who don’t know about this, I’ll write more later this week.

Issue #3 is (well, was) the Bucks in the NCAA National Championship Game this week.

<rant>Let’s face it: the Bucks had no business being there; had there been a playoff system, they wouldn’t have made it to the final game.

I’m not dissin’ da’ Boys, nor giving up on them: I’m just being blunt — and honest. I’m proud to say that I went to The Ohio State University (I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything!), and I’m proud to be a dedicated Buckeye fan: I fly a black Block-O flag on the house on game day; I wear Scarlet & Gray on Fridays; this is the first year I haven’t redesigned my Web site for Michigan week (I got half-way there, OK? Time-Warner scotched that idea when they busted negotiations with the Big Ten Network — I would have been home redesigning for the game that day); I have ‘colors’ hanging in my cube at work.

Hell, even my last three cars have been some combination of Scarlet & Gray!

So I’m not saying that the Buckeyes are a bad team, or that Jim Tressel is a bad coach — far from it. This was a rebuilding reload year for OSU; nobody, at the beginning of this season, even expected the Bucks to so well in the Big Ten, much less play for the National title.

So winning the Big Ten, beating Michigan (yet again), being in the NCAA Top 10 — all of this is a testament to the quality of Jim Tressel’s coaching and recruiting abilities. He is, most likely, the best (or one of the best) head coaches in NCAA football: in a reload year, they didn’t win the Big Game, so quit your whining. Just being there was the feat-and-a-half; let that be the end of that discussion, OK?</rant>

So what’s on tap for 2008 at the Bend?

Wednesday. Getting through Wednesday. Say a prayer, OK? Thanks in advance.

Golf lessons. Yes, you read that right, golf lessons. I always wanted to learn how to play the game, and the bride has made the same desire known, so we’re going to do it. I’ll keep you posted; I’m sure there will be a new category in the old blog soon.

Speaking of the old blog (it’ll be 4 years old this April), it’s getting a redesign — actually two designs, both versions of the same theme, and it’ll have a better focus on usability and accessibility, more up-to-date code, upgraded WordPress, a couple of new wrinkles, etc. Look for it in about a month or two. It’s cool, if I do say so myself.

I’m having thoughts about returning to my dojo, although he is in Akron, so I’m not sure how that will work out. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any teaching students in the Cleveland area anymore, so if I return to him, I’ll have to drive a long way. Yeeesh!

I’m probably going to write more about the Web and designing/developing for the Web than I have in the past; I’m doing more — and making more and more “Command Decisions” every day for clients — as my experience and scope both grow, my comments will as well, I’m sure. I’ve noted too much lately that I could — and probably should — comment on, both good and not-so-good, and some points cry out to be made, and it surprises me that none of the big dogs out there have said anything about some of it.

I’m going to bring back the Recto-Cranial Invert of the Month Award (non Web design-oriented, thank you). Every month, on the last day of the month, I’ll give the Award to the person (or persons) most deserving of being honored for their absolute brainlessness. Kind of like a “News of the Weird,” or “Knuckleheads in the News.” Who knows? I might even open it up to voting, if I can polish my PHP skills enough…

So 2008 will be for me a year of refocus, redesign, redevelopment (both personal and professional), and re-application.

Let’s hope I can get through at least half of it.

OK, so the feed was down for a few. I had a parse error on my archives page, which downed my feed. It’s now corrected.

One of the things that ticks me about scripting languages is the idea that if you have one simple character mis-typed, missing, or otherwise impaired, it impairs the whole shooting match. There’s nothing I can do about it, so there’s no use complaining about it — just fix it and move on.

This, my annual “Go Bucks!” style, is only a temporary design until about Thanksgiving, when I will change the theme over to yet another theme (”Denim & Dinge”) with this same layout and structure. The color palette is the same as the old Bend, except it’s been re-arranged a bit, and the denim image is coming back.

The site’s been restructured, too: I moved the archive links, the calendar, etc. over to their own page; it simply makes more sense to do it that way. In so doing, I also revamped a little of WordPress’ output code to simplify the links: it now puts out one, simple unordered list instead of several lists and several embedded lists. It’s much easier to style now. In fact, I was able to cut out close to 100 lines out of the style sheet. I cut another 100 lines or so out of the CSS file with this layout as well, which makes the site a touch quicker and a lot easier to manage, style-wise.

I’ve been toying with this layout for over 18 months now, and I finally decided to do it: the layout is not liquid, not ice; it’s what they call “jell-o.” If you have a wide-screen monitor, and your browser is not maximized, you can click and hold on the lower right corner of your browser and resize it and the content area resizes along with it — to a point. It has both minimum and maximum widths, so it will maximize the use of screen real estate in any resolution.

This way, it looks good at 800 x 600, and it doesn’t look whacked at 1440 x 900 (like on my screen). It’s a usability thing: easier for the reader, and easier for me. Easier for me means that I’ll spend less time maintaining the site and more time doing what I need to do — and that’s a Good Thing.

Now I haven’t yet tested it in IE7, so if you see something in IE7 that is a little whacked, please let me know; most of the JavaScript that holds this site together in IE is set in conditionals specific to IE 6 and below, so it really shouldn’t break.

That being said, it’ll probably be totally borked in IE7…

I was fiddling around last night, looking for a couple of new twists for the site, and I couldn’t get over how hot it was — 94 degrees at the time — so I decided to find a weather plugin for WordPress.

I found WeatherIcon, a nifty, little doo-dad that takes up about 3 lines of code, is modifyable both through the WordPress Dash and your CSS file, and it displays weather information from whatever site you select.

In this case, it’s getting its information through METAR data from Burke Lakefront Airport in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.

It slows the page just a tad, though, which is something I’m not totally happy about; it’ll do for now, however.

So, as I write this, WeatherIcon is telling me that the current tempurature is 94 degrees, with a heat index of 105; the humidity is only listed at about 53%, which I know is incorrect: it’s actually more like 72%, according to the National Weather Service’s Cleveland reporting bureau — which is what all of the local media outlets use.

Otherwise, however, I like this new thingy; the only thing I might change is the icon style. We’ll see.

(71.8 — 65.4 — 6.4 — adjusted by WW)

By now you’ve noticed: I’ve redesigned. Again.

And while it only looks like a slight upgrade to you, it’s totally rebuilt from the ground on up to me: I’ve re-written the entire style sheet, re-worked the graphics, and tightened up the code.

I’ve also switched hosts: collisionbend.com is now hosted at mediatemple instead of Digital Space, where ole’ CB thrived for the last two years (well, that’s two years on April 18th — it didn’t quite make it).

I made the switch for a number of reasons: security (I was hacked three times in one day at the old server), speed, bandwidth, and the overall great feeling I had while talking and working with the folks at mediatemple. They’re great folks, and I recommend their service highly.

Not that the switch went without a hitch, either: I inadvertantly left creating my email address on the new server off my checklist, causing me to forget overlook this little glitch, and I left about 11 hours’ worth of email in the ditch.

Ooooops.

So if you sent me email between 11:00 p.m. Eastern on Thursday night and Noon today (Friday), I probably never received the email; please resend the email and accept my humblest apologies.

But that was the biggest goof-up in the whole process; no losing my entire database like I did when I upgraded WordPress the first time…

Anyway, I’m back up and running with no other issues, save for the fact that I still need to tweak my style sheet for the supporting pages. Er… I’m working on it, trust me. I still have some changes to make to the Photography and Portfolio pages because I don’t like the way I floated the images, and there are some menu issues across the board, as well.

I did all of this to make my site faster, leaner, meaner and easier to navigate. It also gives you a fresh look instead of the same-old, same-old. I hope you enjoy it.

(73.8 — 34.6 — 39.2)

Finally. WordPress 1.5.2 installed on the Bend.

I haven’t upgraded for a while for a number of reasons: the new job (which now isn’t) took a lot of my time; school took a bunch of time as well; general life gets in the way (I don’t necessarily want to sit in front of a computer monitor for 16 hours a day); and the last upgrade (from 1.0.1 to 1.2.2) borked my entire site.

Not this time. Smooth as silk.

And I like this new version of WordPress. It handles plugins better. It’s faster. It’s more secure. It’s better at blocking SPAM (which I know will piss off a couple of folks who love to SPAM this site. AWWWWW!).

It has more gadgets and gizmos, and I like gadgets and gizmos. And yet it’s all familiar. Nice.

I upgraded another thing today: I refenestrated my house. It’s a little warmer in here now, also a little quieter. I hope it helps lower my heating bills. I’ve already lowered them some 45%, but that wasn’t too hard considering the bonehead that owned the place before us…

Another upgrade on the horizon: CB v3.0 is on the way, hopefully to be released before the New Year. Jello City. Won’t look too much different, but will be a little better for those of you on large screens (1600 pixels and larger).

And yet another upgrade in the works: I’m planning my office makeover. Woo-hoo!

I just had some asshat dump 591 pieces of comment spam in my moderation cue. I shut off comments. I placed redirects based on his IP into my scripts. I edited my .htaccess file and banned him from my site.

All of this — to no avail. I think the only thing that slowed him down was Tar Pit, which denies comments that come from the same IP too quickly. I could have had four or five times as many spam comments.

Fortunately, I know a little PHP.

Dreading opening my moderation queue and WordPress‘ nasty clumsiness in handling 500+ comment spams at once (there’s no “Select All” option), I went into PHPMyAdmin and wrote a simple select statement. I brought up all 591 (or so) spam comments and simply deleted them from the database directly.

When I opened my comment moderation queue, I only had a couple from folks that I already know, which I allowed. Took me only a few minutes.

WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! I AM A PROFESSIONAL.

Seriously. Don’t do this, because you might screw up and delete the whole thing. Or mung it up so badly that you’ll have to re-install everything — and lose your blog in the process. Before you try to do something like I have just described, CALL SOMEONE WHO KNOWS HOW TO DO THIS WITHOUT MUNGING EVERYTHING UP!

I should write a plugin to do this very thing so that you don’t have to worry about it. Hmmmm…

ADDENDUM — I can’t fathom, for the life of me, why some idiot would spam a website that has Comment Moderation turned on. You don’t get the Google juice you seek. You don’t get squat: WordPress keeps everything in the database under wraps until you decide what to show when. All you end up doing is wasting your (and someone else’s) time.

And you know what they say: “Time is Money.”

I am no longer griping about the massive amounts of comment spam I receive; I now have four layers to my comment spam defense.

The first is Tar Pit, a lovely little device that slows spammers down and eventually bans them from the site. Lovely.

Layer two is, of course, comment moderation: it’s always on. I will not reveal layers three and four, since I don’t want to give away the keys to the kingdom. They are new, freshly installed, and have cut my comment spam rate from 60 - 90 spam comments per day to less than 1 per day.

That’s progress.

It’s sad that we have to resort to multi-level defenses to prevent these RCI’s from trying to sap our bandwidth; I’d much rather be writing than playing with my software.

Don’t these idiots understand that the more they weigh us down with comment spam, the less good it does them? It’s a strict law of diminishing returns: the more time you take from a blogger to make him or her remove the spam means the less time they have to write. The less we write, the lower our page ranks. The lower our page ranks, the less effective comment spam becomes.

Then, of course, Google takes a dim view to comment spam altogether. But, I don’t think these people are smart enough to comprehend a document like this, let alone take the time to read it.

My comment spams are down — for now. More changes are on the way.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.