Advocate Survey – Best LGBT Blog
2022-03-16 Update:
Not sure what ever came of this survey.
Not sure what ever came of this survey.
More Designy Goodness
I’ve tweaked my new design here and there, made some color use more consistent and added some extra flair. There are still some css layout changes that I need to make to fix a couple of pages, and I have a one-off template or two that need some work here and there.
I must say, I really enjoy looking at my own site now. Before I say that, though, I should probably look at it on the PC and in some different browsers to make sure it doesn’t look crap to anyone else. Heh. Looks fine everywhere I can test. I’ll look at in browsercam later.
New Site Design
As you may have noticed (or maybe not, if you read via a newsreader) I installed a new site design today. This is one that I’ve been tinkering with for awhile, and it’s not perfect yet, but because I started it in February, before the house buying and other life events occurred, I decided it was time to finally throw it in the water and see if it would swim.
It seems to be working alright, for the most part, with some tinkering on some pages that needs to be addressed, and some fine details that need knitted into the look. But least I’m not sick of looking at it, the way I was with the old design.
It’s finally web standards compliant (with the exception of some pages that are still static content, which I’m moving into my CMS) and it’s even closer to being flexible and more easily updated than before, which is always a positive.
commonplacebook.com graph
A graph of my website. Created using this HTML DOM Visualizer Applet.
See the picture on Flickr.
All my friends are bloggers, too
A long while back, I deleted my blogroll because the software that I was using for it was causing my site to hang while loading. I never got around to researching better software and putting it back, which I’ve always felt kinda guilty about. Lately I’ve noticed some of the big league bloggers are doing their blog rolls via del.icio.us tags, by saving all their friends sites as del.icio.us bookmarks under the tag of “friends.”
So I did that myself, and here’s the big, fat list of people who are my friends.
If you want to be on here, shoot me an email and let me know.
UPDATE 2012: Yeah, I haven’t done this in years. And all my friends who were blogging eventually quit, for the most part. Life flows on.
My “Friends” Map
I’ve been playing around with “Frapper” which is a Googlemap application that lets you create a google map of your own, letting friends add themselves to the map. So here’s mine, and I’d be much obliged if you would add yourself to it. Your e-mail is hidden and your location is based on zipcode, so it’s pretty general, and no one can use it to stalk you, or anything. {grin}.
UPDATE 2012: Yep; the frappr site is long gone.
Weekend Update 2006-02-20
What I accomplished this weekend:
- Comment Code – I worked on the comment code on my site to accomplish:
- Cleaner xhtml and css. This was hard, but I got it working well.
- Displaying the number next to the comment. This wasn’t hard.
- Displaying comments from me in a different color than others. This seemed to be fraught with errors, for some reason, but I eventually worked it out.
The comments aren’t perfect yet; I want a more subtle look and feel. But getting the above out of the way was a huge step in that direction.
- Close examination of my error logs. I scoured through them to see where I had broken links within my own pages to correct them, and what pages that other people were linking to that had moved. Then I set up a huge redirect file to point other’s links in the right direction. I also redirected sections of my site that have moved into my content management system. All of this will hopefully clean up my error logs a lot, and, with any luck, increase my page ranks within Google.
- Moved more of my static pages into my content management system so I can update and control them more easily. There’s still a lot to do in that area, but I’m working on it.
- Wrote two book reviews that had been lingering around waiting for attention. I’m slowly but surely making my way through my reading list for 2006.
- Watched a lot of the Olympics with Stephanie. We are sad about Johnny getting 5th (not 4th, actually) place. This week is women’s figure skating, and I’ll be cheering Kimmie Meisner and Emily Hughes. They’re both too young to really do well, but both of them are great sports. I’m not a huge fan of Sasha Cohen.
- Went on a huge stocking-up trip to Cost Co. I could now survive a ten-day blizzard, no problem.
Quiet time
Sorry about the lack of new and unique writing over the last week or so. I’m writing a couple of long book reviews that are still in draft form, and doing a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes on the site design to get everything cleaned up, so things have been quiet ’round here. I’ve missed posting about the new Abu Graib photos, the VP shooting people, Willie Nelson’s gay cowboy song, and a dozen other assorted cool things in the process, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Rough Cut: My New Site Design
[/my_design_work/prototypes/commonplacebook/homepage.gif] Here’s what I’ve been working on all weekend. It’s quite rough, still, and needs a lot of refinement. I haven’t picked the correct font for my new logo, and there’s a lot missing and lots of little stuff that still needs cleaned up. But you get the general idea of where I’m headed.
[/my_design_work/prototypes/commonplacebook/homepage.gif]
span class=”hilightyellow”>2019 update: No clue where this design is or if I would still be willing to show it.
Ego Surfing
What’s your Ego Surf score? Mine’s 9,142.
I have to say, I’m gratified that I beat the pants off of (original link, no longer active – http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/ego_surfing/ | j-walkblog.)
2022-03-15 Update:
I outlasted both J-walkblog and Ego Surf. Take that, internet!
I outlasted both J-walkblog and Ego Surf. Take that, internet!