CommonException[dot]com

I decided to get ambitious this morning and I went through and added some cool stuff to the site. First, I’ve got a new contact form you can use to send me a message. I’m not really expecting much to come of it, but hey, it’s there. Thanks to One Woman Show for the plugin.

Next, you’ll notice there’s a section in the sidebar showing recent comments and trackbacks. This one is also kind of useless because no one actually leaves comments, but maybe that will change one day. Thanks to Krischan Jodies for this one.

The last and probably coolest change is that I’m now able to use Lightbox to display (some) photos. To see it in action, try clicking on one of the thumbnails in a post below.

Edit: I almost forgot - a little while back I fixed my flickr integration so you should be able to see all of that again at /photos/. (I lied - some combination of FAlbum and/or flickr is being a pain in the ass.) Eventually I’d like to put a button on my nifty toolbar up there, but since this is a part of my latest theme, I have to figure out how to hack it first. Also, this doesn’t use Lightbox; I’m not sure how complicated that will be.

Edit 2: I also wrote a few posts over the last year that I never posted for whatever reason. Their now sprinkled around in the archive on the appropriate dates, mostly from our honeymoon last February.

So I haven’t transferred over everything from my old host. Frankly, there’s a lot of junk that was on the server that I’m probably going to get rid of. But until I decide what to toss and what to move over, there’s probably going to be no images and plenty of broken links in older posts. I’ll fix them eventually.

Well. I’ve been neglecting my site. So much in fact that I didn’t realize it went down a while back. I don’t think it took me too long to realize it, but once I did it took a few weeks to get it working again. To make a long story short - under my current hosting if there’s a problem with my account, there’s only one person who can get it fixed. If that person isn’t available, I’m just out of luck.

Anyway, I recently registered a few new domains (I’m not abandoning this one quite yet) and I’m gearing up to switch hosts to something more reliable and more in my control. I probably don’t have many readers at this point, anyway, but some other changes are coming. I’m working on a new layout and adding some content to make this a *little* more than a blog. The site may be down again for a bit while I get things changed over.

Update: The photo gallery is now open. Over the next few days I’ll be attempting some further integration like adding pictures to the sidebar and other parts of the site. If you’ve got a flickr account, feel free to comment on the photos themselves by visiting the flickr page linked under each photo. If you don’t have an account, consider signing up or ask me for an invitation.

The lack of updates could mean I’m just lazy. It could mean I’ve been working on our taxes. Or it could mean that I’ve been working on improving the site. Over the weekend I started working on some additions that should make things a lot more interesting around here. At minimum, I’ve got a photo gallery in the works (that’s right, Jamaica pictures are coming) and who knows, maybe I’ll also get rid of the default WordPress theme soon.

The photo gallery is actually online already, but I’m keeping it’s location under wraps for the time being. I’ve got a little bit of work to do in giving pictures more interesting names and making sure things are in order. It’s setup through my new flickr account and a pretty little plugin called FAlbum that I discovered yesterday. I’m still trying to figure out what all I can do with it - I’ll unveil it soon.

This is a pretty cool list of ways to take better pictures. I’m happy to say I’ve been using most of these techniques for quite a while now.

I’m really looking forward to adding more photos to this site. I’m hoping I can make it a regular thing, but there’s a lot of planning I need to do first. Be on the lookout for more visuals coming soon.

I’ve successfully installed WordPress. Now to start my Blogger import, clean up the server, and get my template reset…

I Went to post tonight and Blogger was choking hard. For hours, it wouldn’t post anything, but instead threw up some unhelpful error (001 java.net.UnknownHostException - what the hell is that?). In the meantime I managed to screw up my template and left things looking crappy until I was able to hack together a fix. I don’t even know if this post will show up anytime soon. Anyway, it’s been a long time coming, and this was just the push I needed to end our 19 month relationship.

Blogger, you made it incredibly easy to get on the web, and I thank you for that. You’ve come a long way with new features, usability, and decent reliability. But It’s time to move on. Don’t take this personally, I’ve just found a better blog system.

I will very soon be switching over to WordPress, most likely before the end of the weekend. More on that later.

Edit: It’s now 7:45 the next morning and Blogger is finally allowing me to post again. I’ve also discovered that Blogger now has the ability to moderate comments, but I don’t get spam comments (yet) anyway, so I don’t think it’s enough to save this thing.

I got in on this whole idea pretty late in the game. About 5 days before the reboot to be exact, so please bear with me. This is a major work in progress, and some might look at my before and after shots and wonder how this is an improvement. And maybe it’s not…the point is that I’ve created a tableless CSS design that is truly mine for the first time. I know that everything doesn’t validate correctly yet (although I think Blogger is partially to blame when it inserts my content), but I’m working on it. I wanted to have something to show for those who come by to check out my site. This isn’t a radical change, but I didn’t want to jump in over my head and wind up nowhere. I welcome comments, both criticism and praise, but if you’re going to criticize please be constructive so I can learn from it. Also, if you do comment please leave your name and contact info as well as your site if you have one. Feel free to critique my design, then hang around and do a little reading.

Edit: I stamped this post in the future so it will remain at the top for a while. Originally posted: 10/31/2005 @ 11:45 PM.

It’s official. I’ve finally started working on a new site design. I’m trying to do things right using CSS for a standards based layout. I’m saying goodbye to tables, so this is a new experience for me. I’ve used CSS quite a bit before, but never without tables to structure the site. No promises on when this thing will be done. It’ll probably be a work in progress for a long time, especially since I hope to do this all on my own. If I want something like rounded corners that will require custom images, I’ll have to create them all on my own.

There’s several things I really want to be able to do with my site. I’m hoping I can add a photo gallery of some kind, because I have a pretty decent digital camera and haven’t really shown off many of my pictures. I really want to create a layout that will allow me to easily change the theme to coincide with the current season or whatever holiday is coming up, hopefully with some kind of artistic image highlighted at the top of the page (similar to HumanRadiator.com). I’m also trying to be less dependent on Blogger for everything except some of my content (and I hope to phase that out at some point as well). Still considering a change in domain name, but I’ve got this one for another five months, so it won’t be happening right away.

Currently Playing: The Web 2.0 Show

So apparently I decided to start posting again. Who would have thought. The thing is, now I’m itching to change things up (in more ways than one). The site needs a new layout and a major overhaul in general and possibly a change in hosting. There’s files all over the place on the server, a lot of which aren’t mine and I don’t care about. Jimmy left long ago, and now Dylan has got his own website he’s been working on as well. So now it’s just me. I don’t even know if I want to keep this domain name, but until I come up with something better I’m hanging around here.

The first thing I decided to do was to switch back to Blogger for comments. I dropped Haloscan for several reasons. One, it was Dylan’s account so it doesn’t seem right to keep using it now. Two, I realized a few months ago that Haloscan doesn’t actually keep all of your old comments (at least not when you have a free account). It’s limited by either number of comments or a given amount of time, I’m not sure which. Three, Blogger has made a lot of improvements to the way they handle comments and I like it much better than I did when they first introduced the feature. So yeah, some comments have disappeared, but I can’t imagine there was anything that interesting there anyway.

I’m probably going to stick with Blogger for now, just because it makes things so easy, but I’m considering something else down the line. I’d really like to build my own system, but I doubt I could ever make something as effective as WordPress, MovableType, or TypePad.

One thing I know will change is the layout. We took the easy way out before and used a slightly modified, pre-existing Blogger template, but this time I think I’ll go for my own design. Stay tuned to see how that goes.

Currently Playing: Trapt - Stand Up