Happy Bastille Day...

I am so glad that the American Revolution didn't go the way the French one did.

Sorry I haven't posted much lately. I have had lots of fires to put out... in fact, I nearly had a literal fire today.

I was out mowing and started seeing smoke. Well, when I stopped there was a black and ominously smoking patch of grass on the mower deck. I scraped out as much as I could and called it a day. That's the last thing I need!

How would you explain that one at the pearly gates? "How did you die?"

"Well, my lawn mower caught fire..."

I can just see it now.

Things are getting pretty busy around and I just haven't had a lot of spare time to write. It is a shame because I have a lot of things that I would like to say, just not a lot of time in which to say them. Most of the stuff I want to write about will take me a while to say just the right way and will require a little research. I will do my best to get you caught up on my various threads of activity.

The garden is still doing well. The garden peas are about done it looks like. I need to pick them tomorrow. I won't go into too much about that right now because I want to do a full garden post this week, so I'll keep you in suspense for a bit.

I am also starting to get busy doing web design. I have a couple things that are pressing right now. Unfortunately, that takes precedence over blogging. Still it looks like my self-education has begun to pay off.

I have also begun to work with the youth at my church to put together a youth praise band. We had our first rehearsal last night and they did very well. We managed to get through "Take My Life" and it sounded about good enough for them to lead the congregation. We also started on "Every Step I Take." We didn't get all the kinks worked out, but I think that next week we'll probably have that one conquered too. I'm really impressed by the talent in this little country church.

Well, I suppose that is about all I will tackle for tonight. Hope all is well for you, and I'll be writing again soon!

Just An Update

Hello there. Unfortunately tonight I won't be able to dive into any topics too deeply. This will just be an update.

Over the past couple of days my web design has been brought back to the front burner. I have been working with a new program, Microsoft's Expression Web. I like it. It is pretty comprehensive and automates a lot of the process. I haven't found it to be terribly clunky either. Of course, very little software is as intuitive as I would like to see, but overall I am happy with what I am seeing so far. It allows you to handle styles in a variety of ways, but the coolest feature that I have found so far is that it makes it easy to preview your work in any web browser that you have installed on your computer.

All this has come about because I am the acting webmaster for a friend's company. He has an interesting product - home automation. Right now I am in the process of tweaking a couple things on the website. Next my job will to be to find some ways to make the site even cooler. If you are interested in finding out what home automation is you can check out his site at http://shautomation.com. So far none of my changes are public, but I hope that I will have several changes available by the weekend.

I am also hopeful that as I learn more about Microsoft Expression Web that it will help me to expedite the go-live of a couple other sites I am working on... including a redesign of RealSalisbury.com.

Things have been kind of quiet with the StillWaters Jazz Band. We had a gig two weeks ago that went fine. The only problem was that we only got to play to a handful of people. We played for the fundraiser for the JC Carson Bible Teaching Association. They are trying to raise the money to hire a Bible teacher at Carson High School here in China Grove. I thought that we played pretty well, it was just that the audience was sparse. We have a much bigger gig coming up on July 19, 2008 at Dixie's in China Grove. July 19 is Farmers' Day here and I expect that we will have a pretty good crowd. I don't know what time we are officially playing, but I'll get back to you as soon as I know.

The garden is doing well, but feeling a little neglected. I haven't been able to work in it since last Saturday. Now there is a ton that needs to be done. Everything needs to be sprayed again, and the tomatoes need to be tied, and the rocks need to be removed, and fertilizer needs to be put out. Dad told me tonight that the green peas have begun to bloom.

There are lots of other things going on right now that I'd like to comment on, but I am trying to think them through before I write and besides that it is late and my bed is calling me. Hopefully I will have some time between here and the weekend to do a little more posting. I'll talk to you then!

Just In Case You Were Wondering...

I am just about done with the document that will give you additional pictures of the car. Once I have that worked out it shouldn't take too long to get the extras of the tractor. I'm trying some new stuff that should end up expanding my web design experience and capabilities. It is fun.

I haven't posted much about the website lately because it has been on the back burner a little while. I am trying to get my sister's site up and running, and I am very close to having it finished. She has to write some text for the "About Me" section, I have to do a little formatting on the home page and finish my text on that page, and I need to play with the PHP to automatically detect the end-user's browser and pick the right style sheet.

I think that the PHP shouldn't be that hard, but I really haven't learned that much about PHP, and I haven't worked with it at all, so wisdom (and past experience) tells me that it may not be as easy as hoped for. This of course tends to stoke the procrastination fires, and I have to admit that I have been putting it off a little bit for that very reason. Still, it needs to be finished.

There are some interesting developments that may put the commercial website on hold for the time being. I can't go into the details here - at least not until they become a reality - but let it suffice it to say that it would be a good thing. I still intend to finish the website, but perhaps not in the way I had originally planned. If this works out it will be great.

I also have another website that I need to finish up for another friend. I have 95% of the content done, but need to redo the formatting. With what I have learned over the past couple of months I should be able to crank out this website in a couple days' work. Yet one more place where having that PHP code functional will be useful. I guess I have to quit putting it off and jump in and see if I can get it to work.

So that's where things stand for now. I'll give you the address as soon as I get my sister's website live.

A Quick Update... And Some Lovely Swiss Chard

Anyone for some colorful Swiss Chard? I have a feeling that it probably wouldn't taste as sweet as it looks like it should. It kind of reminds me of rhubarb. I have never eaten Swiss Chard before. My best guess would be that it is like any other salad green or cooked green. Still, the colors are nice.

I have been able to spend a decent amount of time outdoors the past couple of days. I spent a little too long today and ended up with my first farmer's tan burn of the season. It doesn't hurt that bad and it is in about the only place on my body that will tan - my arms.

Today I mowed my dad's place. I have been in a mowing mode. Tuesday I mowed my grandfather's old place. Yesterday I mowed my yard - well, most of it anyway. And today I mowed my dad's place. I expect to finish my yard tomorrow. It should be a good day for it. Unfortunately, it sounds like it is going to get cold again this weekend. I could do without that. I've been without fuel oil for the furnace since January, and I'm tired of being cold. Still, it could be worse. At least I have ways of getting warm. There are plenty of people in the world who can't.

I nearly bought some oil towards the end of February, but at $3.52/gallon (with a 100 gallon minimum) it was a little too rich for my wallet. These folks don't even act embarrassed when they tell you the price. I asked the fella if it came with dinner and a show, and he laughed and said no. That's what I figured....

I don't know about y'all, but I have to throw the BS flag when they come on the news and say that we're not experiencing inflation. Everything is up except the housing market - and even that still is in many markets. There is just no way to avoid inflation when the greedy oil tycoons are pushing the prices up higher and higher with no end in sight. It is bound to effect everything else. All of our goods are shipped using some petroleum derivative. (THIS is the reason that we need alternative fuels!) Add to that the inflation in food due to the push towards ethanol and there is no way to deny that prices are going up, and it is getting harder and harder for folks to make ends meet.

In other news...

Yesterday I also began work on a website for my sister. It is amazing how quickly you can put one together once you have learned how! Hers is nothing too complicated, just a nice basic informational website for her interior design business. I am awaiting a logo device from a friend who is an expert with Photoshop and with about one more day's work I think that I can have her site finished. I'll give you a link when it is done. I think my layout is improving.

By the way, I have heard yet another confirmation of the story that I published a few days ago. This one was from a nationally recognized individual who hears from God quite clearly. Batten down the hatches, y'all, it looks like some stormy weather is approaching.

Saturday the StillWaters Jazz Band will be playing for the veterans at the NC Veterans' home in Salisbury, NC. I'm really looking forward to getting to serve these folks. I hope that they enjoy the show. I am humbled by the sacrifices that they have made on my behalf.

Well, that is about all the stuff that is floating around the front of my mind at the present. Thanks for reading!

An Excellent Weekend

What's this picture about? Well, it has nothing to do with this post, but I found it online sometime last week and thought I'd share it. The caption that came with it called it "Heaven's Hammer." Seemed like a good name to me. I have always been fascinated by severe weather. Tornadoes are just plain cool-looking, and I love to watch thunderstorms. (I'm sure that the tornadoes aren't nearly as cool when they are barreling down upon you or your property.)

Sorry I have been away for a few days. I took a little trip up to Apex, NC to visit my friend DP and to do some work on the website. While there isn't a whole lot of tangible evidence of work done, I did pick up some good tools to use in my development, and I was able to have some very profitable conversations with DP about the use of PHP.

I am not sure if I mentioned it before, but I have begun to learn PHP, and have not found the tutorials as helpful as the ones for HTML or CSS. I suppose there is only so much that you can convey in a tutorial. The hard thing is understanding how to apply some of the elements of what I am learning. DP gave me a really good flow diagram to help me to get a handle on how the various pieces fit together. He even gave me some rudimentary code to use. In addition to that he helped me to understand better the environment in which everything is going together.

The main forward progress this weekend was that I began to build the data collection forms for the website. It had been a while since I worked with forms, so I had a little bit of catching up to do. It is good practice. That's part of the reason I don't want to use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. It gives me the practice that I need to learn to use HTML more instinctively.

Friday night DP, his wife KP and I had a great time talking about various things that the Lord has been teaching us lately. We reflected on the warning post that I made a couple of days ago and discussed what sort of response we should make to the warning it contained. I have had a couple of interesting discussions surrounding that post. We also watched and talked about a speech given by an expert in the physiology of the human brain who had a stroke. She described her experience from a clinical and experiential perspective. It was an interesting speech.

Saturday for lunch we dined at Char-Grill (spoken of in hushed and reverent tones around NC's Triangle.) We came back home and I worked for the better part of the afternoon. Then we got some snacks ready and watched UCLA and UNC get creamed in their semi-final games in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. It was painful to watch two teams get pummeled so.

I really hate basketball. I don't like games where the rules are not consistently applied. Everyone fouls in basketball, and the referees seem to only call it on a whim. I can't tell you how many times (especially in the Carolina game) I saw someone being brutalized in the paint with no call only to turn around and see someone get a foul for a hand check. My OCD tendencies just cannot tolerate that kind of inconsistency. I feel the same about the holding rule in football. 10 yards is too severe a penalty for holding. It happens on every play from scrimmage, but only gets called in the most flagrant cases or on plays with big gains. 5 yards is plenty for that. But I digress.

This morning I went with KP and the fam (DP had to work) to their church: CrossWay Community Church. It is a great little church. I thoroughly enjoyed the Sunday School (I usually don't get into Sunday School) and really enjoyed the worship. KH led a very talented team of musicians in a worship set that flowed well and seemed to come from a pure and passionate heart in pursuit of Christ. If you are in the Triangle area and looking for a church, this, I believe, would be a great one to visit. I know I plan to go there again next time I'm in the area.

I returned home to my parents' home this evening to celebrate my brother-in-law's 35th birthday. Mom made lasagna, salad, green beans, and bread. It was wonderful. But the piece de resistance was the Italian Cream cake that she made for dessert. (Actually, my nephew made most of the cake.) That's his favorite, and it's definitely in my top 5.

So there you go. My weekend in a nutshell. OK, it is a pretty big nut, but it was a good weekend. Much thanks to DP, KP, CP, and AP for their hospitality. It was very greatly appreciated. Also thanks to the folks at CrossWay for their hospitality today. It was a special treat to get to meet KH, DH, and TC over there today. I hope to see you all again soon!

Learning and Growing

I have been working on the website for RealSalisbury.com and have made a few improvements. Most of the changes have come to the feature articles for the houses that are being advertised there. I have made the features a little easier to read and it is much easier to see the pictures. I have also added some borders around pictures and have added some background color. I am pleased with the way that the project is beginning to come together.

I have talked with a local builder who has a couple of houses that he may be willing to advertise. I would love to get them because they would help me to be fill in a couple of other categories on the website. I need to begin to take some time to start selling the service now. It is stable enough for me to be able to start doing that.

I do need to develop one more template before I get too far into it though. Not everyone will benefit from a full-blown feature article like I have done for the three homes advertised on the site right now. I need to develop a nicked down version that will include a main picture, the basic details about the property, a short description, and a few thumbnail pictures. It really shouldn't take me that much to do it. I already have most of the raw materials in my existing features.

Doing that will allow me to have some pricing flexibility too.

Today I got my Content Management Bible in the mail. It is a huge book - over 1,000 pages! I have read through the preface and the forward and a couple of other introductory bits and it looks like the book will be very readable and helpful. I hope so. I bought it with the hopes that it would assist me to get a better idea of what I am doing in developing the Joomla site.

In the next day or two I also need to get started on the tutorials for the scripting language PHP. It will allow me to be able to add searches and other functionality to the websites. (It will also help me to understand what the heck I am looking at on my Joomla template.) I hope that there aren't too many more layers that I have to add before I am able to start making good headway on the Joomla site.

One thing is certain though - there is no better teacher than experience. The more I work with this stuff the better I am understanding all of that information that I have crammed into my head. I am beginning to understand when to use different elements and how to put them to work for me. I'm far less frustrated than I was.

The more I work on this project the more I realize just how big a bite I took off. I think that if I had realized what I was getting into I would have been far more likely to write this business off as a crazy dream. It still feels that way sometimes now, but I am beginning to feel more confident that the tide is beginning to turn and I am finally starting to get to a level of competency in my basic knowledge. I am not saying that I am competent to the task yet, but I do feel like I am getting much closer. Of course the new book may bring me back to my senses!

I guess the biggest puzzle that I am dealing with right now is how to get my website to show up in the search engines. I have submitted it to Google and Yahoo!, and have worked on my meta keywords. So far I haven't been able to find my site using the most general key words in the search engine. I definitely need to find a way to get to the front page.

Well, that is all of the shop talk that I will bore you with for now. If you get a chance to check out the site please do. If you want to make suggestions to improve the site feel free to do so. You can email me at the link on the main page. If you know someone in my area who could use my service please let them know (or me.) And if you have the answers to any of my various conundrums please share!

Live!

I am very pleased to announce that my upgrade to RealSalisbury.com is now live. Hopefully, in the coming days I'll be adding additional properties for people to see. I hope to have something in each property category just as soon as possible.

Now things get really interesting because I need to do some sales, but I also need to do some development to the site so that I'll be able to handle a higher volume of properties. This solution will only work in the short term.

I also need to find a graphic designer to come up with a logo for me. I have some ideas, but for me to make those logos a reality would mean a whole new learning curve, and I'd really rather cut that short for right now.

On top of that I need to talk to an attorney about my terms of use and liability issues. And, and, and... Oh well, I knew it would come to this and that is part of making this whole project a reality. I'm excited about it really.

This has been a very gratifying couple of days. I have been extremely pleased with the progress I have made. Hopefully we will continue to go up from here.

What A Day!

Today was great. It was the most productive day that I have had in months. I woke up early and was able to get through my morning routine fairly early. Then I got to work.

When I stopped work on Saturday night there were some problematic little buggy things with the website. Today I got almost all of these problems sorted out and created a lot of content.

The last thing left to do before I can go live with the new design is to fix the feature article that has been up there for the property at 105 O'Hara Drive. I don't think that it will take me that long to get it worked out. I am also going to add a couple amenities to the feature articles too. I am going to add a Mapquest link and a couple of other things.

If you have been keeping up with things here on the site, you may have picked up on the fact that I had been employed as a lift salesman. I cut that short on Friday. I knew that I shouldn't do it when I took the job, but with my situation I didn't feel that I could turn down work.

What I found was that it divided my energy too much. The Bible says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Well, I was living that. I'd try to get started working on one thing, but felt guilty for not working on the other and I ended up so addled that I didn't do either one. It made for one stressed out fellow.

As soon as I cut the sales job loose, I knew I had done the right thing. Of course, I'm kind of flying without a net again, but I've been doing that for months. So what's new? I really have faith that this is going to work in spite of some of the challenges that are still before me.

I have lots of challenges. I still have to figure out how to handle large numbers of properties being advertised on the website. How can I allow people to search for properties based on their preferences? I'm still turning this one over in my mind.

I do have a real estate program that may allow this to be done out of the box, but I am afraid that I will have trouble configuring it to look the way that I want it to.

I need to learn PHP (a scripting language) so that I can understand what is being done on the template that I am using. I also need to start selling my service. Fun! I can actually get paid for working! How cool is that?

I am finally getting to the fun and exciting parts I think. Yes, I am sure there is probably more headbanging at some time in the future, but I am actually seeing the potential for reward for all of my hard work. Hopefully one day soon I'll have an "Eureka!" moment with Joomla. When I do there will be much rejoicing and you will be among the first to know!

Retooling

I spent much of today working on an update to my web page. I am trying to simplify the page and get to where I can actually start making some money from it soon. I made pretty good progress and I'm pretty happy with the results of what I have been able to accomplish today. Of course there is always some little annoying thing that isn't working quite right.

For some reason, the numbers don't add up. I am working with a three column layout. Each of the side columns is 25% of 1024 pixels. The center column is 50%. When I try to make the right column 256 pixels wide, the text isn't wrapping in the element correctly.

I have been playing with fixed positioning on my sidebar elements. I like the idea of being able to keep the sidebars in place when someone is scrolling through content, but it doesn't seem to allow you to scroll to see the entire page in a cascading view or in a window that is smaller than 1024 x 640 pixels.

Enough of all of that technical mumbo-jumbo. I am trying to clean up the lines of the web page and make it a little brighter than the original. I am also trimming back from the grand vision of the webzine to focus on real estate for now. That will generate revenue and allow me to develop the Joomla site in the meantime.

Anyway, hopefully we will be live with the new improved website by the middle of the next week. I'll let you know when it is ready. Thanks for reading!

Long Day

It has been a long day, therefore this will be a short post. I spent most of the morning getting caught up from being gone Sunday and Monday. Then I went to take pictures of my sister's home for a feature that will be viewable soon on my web page. The lion's share of the evening has been spent creating a template to use for these feature articles that I am doing, modifying the CSS file to make it work, and writing the text for the feature article.

I think that I am on the verge of getting the feature template working, but I have one less than ideal behavior that I need to figure out how to fix. I have gone away from using relative values in the CSS to help avoid some of the display problems that I have been witnessing across different browsers and different monitors. The problem is that my current configuration gets screwed up on anything other than full-screen view. Everything is still where it is supposed to be, but you have to scroll to the right to see it all. Still not what I want. Grrr.

And trying to find a template that will look like what I want will not be a simple thing. Nothing is ever simple...

Tomorrow I have to put in a long day working on the lift business. I didn't get a thing done for that at all today.

Oh well, I'm not going to worry about it tonight. I need sleep.

A Little Different Perspective

It is funny how new information can change an opinion. Take, for instance, yesterday's post. I saw the headline on an RSS feed on a friend's computer today and suddenly realized that with the picture that I had posted and the headline someone might get an entirely different picture of what I was trying to communicate than that which was actually intended! Rrrrowr!

Similarly, I am finding the results to the placeholder page that I posted tend to get an entirely different perspective depending on the browser, monitor size, etc. used by the viewer. I am really not happy at all with the way that the page is being publicly displayed. There are huge gaps in the layout that weren't present when I developed the site and checked it against both IE and Firefox. It would seem that using relative values when doing layout isn't an effective practice.

After I looked at the template for my Joomla site, I began to understand why I was having so many problems. They had created specific CSS fixes for each browser that the template encounters. I don't have time for that. I will probably rummage around in the next day or two and see if I can find a decent template to clean things up until I can get the Joomla site online. I do think that I will attempt to fix the HTML for the real estate feature that I have created for the site. (By the way, that house really is for sale.)

Speaking of the Joomla site. I AM VINDICATED!!!!!! I spent the better part of today working with a developer (who has almost 20 years' professional experience) who was as annoyed and perplexed about how to configure Joomla as I was. (It was nice to find out that no, I'm not an idiot when it comes to Joomla and that yes, Joomla is neither easy nor intuitive.)

Together we were able to come up with a couple changes to the new website, including downloading and configuring a weather module and an RSS news module. I'm pretty happy with the weather module, and the new website will be getting RSS feeds from The Weather Channel. I'm not completely happy with the RSS News module. I may end up grabbing another and seeing if I like it better. We also did some configuration to the layout of the page and discovered a module map for the template. (VERY useful piece of information.) Overall, I am thrilled with the progress that we made today.

One thing seems evident, though: it is time to revisit the Joomla tutorials. I understand enough now to where they should actually be helpful.

Christmas Tree Down

I finally took my Christmas tree down last night. I know it's the middle of February. I really don't feel bad about it at all. It might still be up if it weren't starting to turn brown.

I had decided to leave it up till the end of January anyway, (I didn't put it up until 2 weeks before Christmas) and since then I have been pretty busy between working on developing my website and getting started on my new career(?) as a heavy duty lift salesman.

There's a career that I doubt you will ever hear a kindergartener name when asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" As I am getting started with it I am really surprised at how big the market is for these things. It is amazing really.

I finished another part of the RealSalisbury.com page last night. It is the feature article about the house whose picture is on the front page. Please feel free to check it out and give me your feedback on it.

Well, I have to run and get ready for my jazz band gig this afternoon. If you are in the area, stop by Dixie's on Main Street in China Grove between 1:00 and 3:00. Dixie's is located on the corner at the main stoplight next to China Grove Hardware. Come on in, check out the StillWaters Jazz Band, drink some coffee, and get to know your neighbors in China Grove's coolest venue!

Quote Of The Day

I'm afraid you might be using a hammer when you need a dentist's drill.
- DP (The anonymous friend)

Either way, the cavity still comes out, yeah?

Jonathan And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Yesterday I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. If I could I would have moved to Australia. But that takes money. Crap.

Yesterday absolutely nothing that I attempted on the computer worked. Nada, nothing, zilch, pthbthbthbthbbbt. As ill as I was, they would have never let me on the plane to Australia anyway. They would have ended up tazing me right there in front of everyone. Grrr.

By the time that I went to bed (which was about 16 hours later than I should have) I was relatively sure that I would not maintain any ounce of sanity that still remained had I been forced to endure another day like that.

I had been working on a page with additional information on the house featured on my website. (http://RealSalisbury.com) I was sure that I had coded everything correctly, but no matter what I did, it wasn't displaying correctly. I checked the HTML and then I checked the CSS and then I rechecked them over and over, and there was NOTHING wrong with the way I had written the code!

In utter frustration and Vesuvial anger I decided that it was time to step away from the computer and call it a night. When I turned on the computer this morning, the evil thing displayed perfectly. Jerk.

Today went some better. No rage issues. That's good, but the computer is still a fickle mistress. I am utterly perplexed by some of the behaviors that I have witnessed using CSS. I must be misunderstanding some definitions somewhere, because it surely isn't behaving the way that I expect it to most of the time. I'm back to blind squirrel in a field strewn with acorns again.

I am not completely satisfied with the design of the page. I am going to try to see if I can't improve it and make it display a little cleaner. I really hate the way the nav bar is behaving. I am going to have to find a better way to do it.

The thing that is really messing me up is that every browser displays a little bit differently. I had things looking OK on IE and Firefox, but when I looked at the page on a Mac it wasn't right. Hopefully the template that I will be using for the Joomla site will help me to overcome these issues. Please do keep the critiques coming. I have found them to be helpful.

By the way, I discovered that Judith Viorst, the lady who wrote Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day has done an online adaptation of the story that can be viewed at the Kennedy Center's website. Hopefully, it will help you out if you find yourself in my position.

I Hate Computers

I hate computers.

That is all.

It's Here!

OK, if you have actually been craving an opportunity to see the website I have been talking about you can check it out at http://RealSalisbury.com. There are a few links that aren't connected yet because the pages that they will link to are still under construction. I hope to get them finished in the next 72 hours.

My friend, Rick Carangelo was a huge help this morning, helping me to get everything FTPd up to the server. His keen eye helped me to spot some things that kept the page from displaying correctly. Thanks, Rick!

By the way, the house in the main feature really is for sale by a friend of mine. If you are interested, I can get you more information. (More will be following about it on the web page soon.) I am also really trying to organize an NC State Alumni club for Rowan County, so if you are interested in that let me know too. Finally, if you are from this area and have something that would fit into one of the categories on the site, please feel free to let me know about that as well.

Please offer your critiques on the site. This isn't exactly the way the Joomla site will look, but it is the same general idea. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. I'll get over it. But I need brutally honest feedback about the look of the site and the navigation of the site to make it the best that it can be. Do the buttons make sense? Would a different color combination be more appealing? Should I vary background colors? Does it display OK on your browser? Etc.

You can either comment on it here or email me at administrator at realsalisbury dot com.

Thanks for your help and thanks for reading!

It's Coming...

Well, I think that I have enough of the placeholder done to publish. I hope to have everything FTPd up there tomorrow some time. I will make an announcement here when it is ready to check.

It is amazing how different things are between browsers. I referred to Mozilla Firefox mostly while building and when I checked things over on IE there were some fairly noticeable differences. I ended up splitting the difference between where I really wanted it on Firefox and where it had to be on IE to keep from stepping on one of the other elements.

I have a couple more files to create to make things work smoothly, but I will probably go ahead and publish as soon as possible - even if everything isn't as functional as I will eventually make it.

I guess that is all I have to say for right now. Hopefully, the FTP will go smoothly tomorrow and I will be able to announce the unveiling of the proof of concept as early as then. We'll see.

Web Design... ugh

Just when I think I have figured out what I am doing, I run into something that makes me realize that I am a blind squirrel in a field strewn with acorns.
- Me

Today was productive after a fashion. I realized that I had kind of bootlegged some stuff to work and set about to do it the right way. This ended up messing something up, and after fiddling with it (the website) for the better part of 8 hours today (while listening to the same CD over and over) I was ready to hurt small furry animals.

So I watched Braveheart. Aye, I did.

Didn't do much for my foul mood, but now I am better informed on how best to hurt said small furry animals. (Dinnae fash y'sel, the wee beasties aer safe enough.)

The page is actually coming together alright. If I am able tomorrow I'll try to finish up the content of the first page and see if I can fix the bloody navigation bar.

I won't bore you with any more details for now! Thanks for reading!

Coming Along

Today's web building exercises were productive. I got all of the nav bar linked and created the pages to which they would link. I also added most of the content to the main feature of the front page and also added content on the two sidebars.

I realized mid-afternoon why I was having some trouble manipulating the positioning of some of my elements and began to restructure both my HTML and CSS document. I needed to group some of my divisions together instead of leaving them all as individual elements. I think that will make things work much better. I also re-organized my main CSS document to make it easier to find the various elements. Now I think that I finally have the home page organization figured out.

Tomorrow I hope to create the content for my three remaining main elements and hope to get them configured so that they end up in the right places. That will be a major coup. I will also hopefully complete the remaining elements for the side bars. That will probably be more than enough to keep me busy with the time that I will have for tomorrow.

I'm not completely thrilled with the way the page looks just yet, but I am going to go ahead and get everything laid out and possibly even publish it while I fiddle with making the improvements to the design. I doubt that I'll have it published by the weekend unless I am able to work most of the day tomorrow, but it should be up and running next week.

Thanks for reading!

Forward Momentum

Today I managed to move forward on the vaporware project for my website. I have completed 90% of the header. I have also created an "under construction page" and the CSS page to go with it. I am pleased with my progress, considering the lack of sleep that I got last night, the fact that I was on the phone all morning, and that I was interrupted regularly through the afternoon. I should have fewer distractions tomorrow... I hope.

Tomorrow I hope to have linked the nav buttons on the top of the page and created my first main division. I would like to figure out how to do drop down lists on the nav buttons. I guess it will depend on how complicated they are. I would also like to get the content for my second through fourth main divisions completed. Hopefully I will be in a productive frame of mind. If I am, I may even be ready to publish something tomorrow.

Well, I'm exhausted. It has been a rough couple of days. More updates tomorrow, but for now I'm out of here!