Category

Internet

This category is for anything network / internet related. I use it mostly to describe website updates though.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Another round of website updates

I've tried to stay with a weekly update similar to Rick's, but with my long posts these days I've exhausted a lot of the tech posts I've had in mind. Less than a month until aphelionsites.net expires, so I've got to get all the sites moved over. Obviously this is my new blog site, the dgs is backed up here at /dgs/ and my flight instructor wiki got moved over to ksuflightteam.net/cfi. The index page of merkur.aphelionsites.net now redirects to this site. Instead of making entries, I find it an acceptable alternative to work and improve different features of this site. Some updates are small, such as new icons for the apple and flying posts. Another little update inspired by my longer entries is clicking "comments" at the bottom takes you down the page directly to comments posted and the entry form.

Little cosmetic changes are nice and all, but where's the beef? Well for the major update made last week, click features at the top of the page. What you'll see is the original idea behind having a features page. Before it was just a few links w/entry titles. I didn't like this for many reasons. It was way too plain with no creativity. The only good thing about it, I could edit the entries and switch it from "weblog" to "featured" and it would automatically move itself over. Problem is when you went back through the history of the weblog, those posts were now missing. It interrupted the history and now has a much better integration with the site. The idea is, if you were coming to the website for the first time, and wanted to know what it's all about, you go to "Featured".

The second big update I did today, and involves the "Friends" page. From version 1.3 to 1.4.1, the friends page can now detect how long it's been since you posted via RSS. Now the friends page will color code people based on how long it's been since you posted. If it's been longer than 2 weeks, your name turns purple and the entry is hidden. There shouldn't be any time where I go longer than 2 weeks without checking it, so it's not like I'm not seeing your post, but I can only look at that guitar you're planning on buying for so long. Jo suggested a grey color if it's been longer than a year, which sadly, I may need. You get a light blue color if you posted today, dark blue up to two weeks after that, and purple for longer. Red means RSS error. Your site could be down or the script timed out, etc... I like it organized by name, but someday might change it to order of entry.

RSS is tricky to program around, because it's very flexible. For example, Livejournal doesn't require you to title your post so that field is sometimes missing. I use the title as a link to the post on its home site. So I have to have a backup idea which is to use the link itself as the title. The content:encoded tag which I discovered on schultz's site gives me problems too. Which do I use? Content:encoded or description? What if there is no date? What should the script output? What color does it use? All these things have to be thought of and still make the script small and fast. I'm pretty proud of the script. It uses magpie RSS to actually grab the entries, but the output and design is all mine. I don't think any other people actually use the page, but who knows.

So now all that's left to do is make entries....but that seems to be getting done too!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Welcome to DarkMercury.net!

It's about time for an overhaul of my blog site. I've had this domain for a few months since this is an update I've wanted to do for a while, but just like my actual posts I tend to put it off. I do feel bad since I enjoy writing on this site, so I've spent the last week making updates to make this site more enjoyable. So what's new at DarkMercury.net and why should you care?

• Obviously the new design header at the top of the page, brings the site into the new century at least. (big thanks to jo for the transparent logo .gif)
• Removal of the giant eclipse in the background.
• The text area of the entries are allowed to extend much further to the right, making the site easier to read (since it doesnt overlap the picture anymore).
• Bigger text!
• A lot of old entries lost their formatting and ended up as one huge paragraph. I had to manually go through and add br tags.
• No more Dates at the top of each entry. Time and date are smaller at the bottom.
• No more "Posted by Eclipse" since you know it's me.
• Updated the top links. The DarkMercury.net logo is clickable to go back to the homepage.
• I've joined twitter and have a feed from it on the left.
• Updated the Meh and Featured pages.
• The white links on the left remain there when looking at single entries and the news page.
• Wider comment entry form.
• Blue multiple entry seperators.
• Some other smaller things like formatting that you can't see.

What is still left to do?

• iPhone friendly links page (possibly iphone friendly blog site).
• Gallery is semi-broken again since the move to the new site. Mostly the new albums.
• Actually posting entries!

One of the best iphone features is the notepad so I can jot down ideas for writing and come back to them later. I think that combined with the twitter for quick updates will make it a little more interesting around here. Don't forget to update your links and RSS too.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

My Gallery is fixed!

and not a moment too soon…

And to celebrate, here are some pics of the car with a little more light:

Album: My new 2008 VW Eos Convertible

Check out my Gallery for a ton of new pics, from my trip to Russia, my new desk and apartment here in Dallas, and pics I’ve taken while flight instructing in Kent.

Monday, May 28, 2007

In Finland

Well I’ve been away in Russia for the last two weeks.  It’s been….interesting.  Now I’m in Finland with some way extended family until the 13th of june.  Ouch!  Well at least I have internet a little now that I am off of that boat.  So I went over to the dark side.  I got a facebook.  Now I’ve been a pretty big advocate of hating the social network sites and liking the personal blog sites.  (especially making your own, but I can accept livejournal)  Well facebook isn’t really intruding on the blogging world I have discovered, so I made one and trying to find everyone on it.  If I don’t find you, then you find me.  More later maybe.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Website Fixed

I fixed the PHP errors I was having.  Actually I didn’t, but I hid them from view.  I have yet to see anything not work, so I don’t know why it was throwing errors around.  Just had to put an ini_set(‘display_errors’, 0); tag in every .php file.  Search and comments are back up.  Tell me if you see anymore errors kthx.