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Monday, September 22nd, 2008 13:06:37 GMT ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down |
Hello world. As you can see, I finally got somewhere writing my own blog software. It took me over a month of grueling, awful work to get it to this point. It was horrible.
And unfortunately, my blog software is still not done. The only reason you're looking at this page is because I uploaded it manually, not because my blog software was clever enough to update the online version of my entire site automatically.
I haven't yet written an RSS feed generator, and the most daunting task of all will be trying to figure out how to automatically send pings to notify various sites that my blog has been updated. At least, I'm assuming that will be the most daunting task of all. It might very well be that writing the option to update only the pages that need updating, instead of every single page of the blog, will be harder than I expect.
But at least my blog software makes hardly any database queries, and my blog doesn't have to query a database every time someone loads a page. It has archives in chronological order, and it has some nifty JavaScript buttons which will hide and show posts based on the posts' categories.
I didn't make any other notable site updates besides adding this blog - all I did was, I improved the color scheme a bit, and I got rid of the links to the ad-related pages and the page offering my proofreading services.
I'm not sure how frequently I will update this blog yet, or even what exactly I'm going to put in it. But, I guess I'll sort that out later.
I'm going to continue slaving away to try to complete the blog software itself so I can finally release it into the public domain.
As always, donations and microdonations are welcome.
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Monday, September 1st, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down Up ↑ |
Well, around 2:15-2:19 PM, I put the MagnaMural stuff back on its own subdomain, because I stumbled onto the fact that for some reason, some Google PageRank-checking sites began to think Astroblahhh.Com has a "fake" PageRank.
I still don't know why that happened exactly, but, I read a little about "fake" PageRanks and apparently it often seems to have something to do with redirects. So, my guess is, those redirects I put in inadvertantly caused this to happen. Which suggests to me that "fake" PageRanks aren't necessarily intentionally faked.
There's no way for me to retire the http://magnamural.astroblahhh.com/ URL entirely because every copy of the MagnaMural I've ever distributed has that URL on the box. But, I don't think keeping the redirects is the best option, because of the idiotic way PageRanks and "fake" PageRanks are calculated, and the fact that more Google traffic never hurts, even though Google annoys me in some ways.
So, I just put everything back essentially the way it was, and also made local, functioning copies of the images from Astroblahhh.Com that had stopped working on the MagnaMural subdomain before, so now everything should be working fine.
And, unlike WordPress (or at least WordPress without caching plug-ins), merely loading the blog pages won't cause any database queries, and it doesn't take nearly as many database queries to generate the pages in the first place. Among other nice features which you'll hopefully be seeing soon.
If I get really impatient, I might just upload the output from my blog software manually until I get everything fully automated. It already generates perfectly useable pages, I just don't have all the archive-generating stuff ready, and currently my software only has the option of generating every page, instead of only the pages with new stuff on them.
I did in fact attempt to install WordPress a couple weeks ago, but after a few hours of me experimenting with my own custom template led to over 3400 database queries, I realized it was totally unfeasible for me to use, and that it would actually not be hard at all to make something dramatically more efficient. Not that it's going to have all the features of WordPress, but, it will be adequate for my purposes, I think.
I've made pretty good progress on my blog software. Relatively soon, I won't have to update this updates page manually anymore, and, the front page of Astroblahhh.Com will begin to feature the most recent posts of my new blog. The blog's archives will be in chronological order.
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Sunday, August 10th, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down Up ↑ |
I finally got tired of the nuisances resulting from having the MagnaMural stuff over on its own subdomain. It was really annoying having to have duplicate sets of SSI files for that and the main Astroblahhh site, but the last straw was when I saw that the site logo and PayPal images weren't showing up for some reason.
So, this finally spurred me to create the Second Life section, a long-overdue addition to this site, uploaded at 4:01 PM. It currently only has the MagnaMural stuff (which I uploaded between 3:33 PM and 3:47 PM) and some links, mostly from my former links blog on del.icio.us. Anyone visiting the old MagnaMural URLs should be redirected seamlessly to the new location of the files they were trying to reach.
That's the only significant update. So, the following is nothing important, it's just me rambling on pointlessly in a blog-like fashion.
Now that I have some advertisers, and have actually made 6 cents so far, I'm feeling increasingly restless and as though I really need to update this site more.
It's making me feel torn between two projects - to try to quickly write some blog software and change the layout of my site, or finish my web links/file organizer, which has now become an ideas/goals/things to do organizer as well, and is actually turning out to be really nice and useful for me even in its partially complete form, but which may take a while yet to complete and release.
I've looked around for some free blog software other than WordPress, and even seriously considered just putting up a temporary WordPress blog until I make or find something better, but, I probably won't. I don't really want to, because having to eventually make a transition from one blog software to another would be annoying.
Oh, well. I guess I'll just try to hurry up and finish my web links/file/idea organizer. Or maybe I'll work on both that and some blog software at once. Or maybe I'll just struggle against procrastination. I don't know, but, I'm definitely in the mood to get some things done, so, that hopefully bodes well for this site having some more updates hopefully soon, maybe.
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Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down Up ↑ |
Yet another insignificant update. I changed the 768 x 60 ad banner at the top to a row of 5 ad squares, 125 x 125 apiece. I just thought I'd give any repeat visitors to this site something new and different to look at, even if they're only ads.
Besides which, Project Wonderful's statistics page isn't picking up on that many visitors, which is rather disappointing, since what this probably means is that most of the visits to my site are just search engine robots.
So, I figured until I build up a significant amount of real traffic, I might as well give away some cheap (or free) ad space. I also decided I'd rather do this for a larger number of advertisers than just 1 at a time.
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Friday, August 1st, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down Up ↑ |
Another insignificant update. This evening, sometime between 9:42 PM and 9:58 PM, I added an ad box for a third-party ad system I'm trying called Project Wonderful. As of 9:58 PM, the ad box is activated and bids on the ad space can be placed.
I don't yet know how much money it will make me, but, I quite like Project Wonderful's ways of doing things. There are many things about Google AdSense I object to (lack of transparency, the fact that the ads are pay-per-click, etc.), but Project Wonderful has none of those problems.
I changed the advertising page a bit to reflect these changes. It's still possible to buy ads directly from me (even though no one ever has), but for the time being, that costs more than buying ads through Project Wonderful.
If all goes well, this will most likely encourage me to update this site more frequently, I hope - since increased traffic should translate directly into increased advertising revenue. It might also inspire me to finally finish my simple blog software.
Not much else to say. I'm hoping to be done with my file organizer software soon. I will hopefully release it within the next month or two, along with the web links organizer (they're part of the same software package).
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Monday, June 16th, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down Up ↑ |
This isn't much of an update at all, so I'm not even going to announce it on the front page. All I did was, at 12:26 PM, I toned down some of the swearing over at the credit card boycott page. :-) Of course, I still despise the credit card companies just as much - I just thought, what the heck, I'll make the page a little more appealing/safe for advertisers, maybe. I might have changed other minor things elsewhere on the site, can't remember what, though.
I'm mainly making this update because I just felt for some reason like rambling on a bit about my life, just in case anyone is wondering. Not too much is going on - I've just been feeling a bit guilty about not updating this site more often.
I've partially finished a web links organizer thing which is similar to del.icio.us, with tags, a tag search thing, and additional informational fields which I will probably also make searchable. Similar to the AMODB, it's a PHP/MySQL thing which is intended to run on your own computer rather than being uploaded to the web.
It's already much nicer than del.icio.us, at least for me - it's private, I can customize it any way I want, and it doesn't have a horrible white background with a sidebar, among other cosmetic horrors which repel me from del.icio.us.
So, I've been happily adding all the formerly horrifyingly disorganized links I had collected over years using a horrible system of just dumping them in plain text files with the date/time I collected them and sometimes a short accompanying note, and occasionally adding the most frequently-used links to HTML files.
I look forward to finishing this thing up and releasing its full source code into the public domain.
Years ago, I sort of liked Google Desktop, but the fact that it's not open source makes me a bit squeamish, wondering what kind of private data Google might secretly collect with it. So, after my old computer broke down, I never installed Google Desktop again, but I've sort of missed it, except for the privacy concerns and the fact that I prefer to do without anything that writes to my hard drive constantly for no good reason.
I think my file organizer program will be much better for me - I'll be able to trust it, and I won't have it constantly monitoring everything I do and writing to the hard drive. I also think being able to tag my files and describe them in my own words, a bit like my web link organizer, will come in handy. It will be great being able to customize everything about it, and to not have to look at ghastly web pages with white backgrounds (I hate those!), and never have to download upgrades (or be forced to automatically download them), or wonder what the program is doing that I don't know about, and what information it is sending to Google.
Wow, just found this article - seems like the privacy concerns with Google Desktop are even worse than before. I'd never install that now. :-) I wouldn't really trust Yahoo or Microsoft's desktop search tools either, though, and I also just have too many of my own ideas on the best way to do things (and too little patience to try to understand someone else's source code) to really be happy using anyone else's software, so, I guess that means my only option really is just to write my own. :-)
It will be most refreshing to finally be able to easily find things amongst all the disorganized chaos I've amassed over the years.
Eventually, though, it might be good for me to have some kind of blog - it will help draw traffic here, will hopefully educate and amuse, and encourage donations, as well as make it a lot easier for me to update this site more frequently than in the past.
Unlike most blogs, it will provide the option of reading posts in chronological order like a proper book. I'm thinking it's probably also going to feature multiple differently-themed pages with hopefully all different posts and no redundancy, as well as a central page which contains all (or almost all) posts so people won't have to keep looking all over the site to see every blog post I've made.
OK, that's all for now.
I also am beginning to work on a file organizer thing which will, for me at least, take the place of Google Desktop, and actually be an improvement on it, because I really don't need something that is constantly running in the background gathering more and more data for its dreadfully (and hopefully needlessly) colossal database.
I still haven't finished my blog software, though I haven't been working on it. Which is probably good, for now, because I used to pointlessly waste a lot of energy on writing blog posts complaining about my life. My life still sucks so much that if I had a blog, I might end up doing the same thing again.
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Sunday, May 11th, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down Up ↑ |
Well, at 4:26 PM, I added a new Self-Help section to this site, mainly just to house a not altogether serious but also not very humorous article I wrote. It's called How to Be a Woman, and it never would have been written if Steve Pavlina hadn't asked on his blog for people to write an article by that title, since it's not a topic I ever would have thought of on my own.
Anyhow, I have no idea if it will be selected as one of the best articles, but, I figured it was worth a try, since getting more traffic over to this website and a permanent link from such a well-known and excellent website as StevePavlina.com would hopefully be a good thing.
Also in the Self-Help section are some external links to self-help/personal development websites and articles I like. If you happen to follow my Links Blog, you might already have seen most of those links. (Note, 7/7/2008: As of 12:33 AM, 7/7/2008, I deleted my links blog).
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Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down Up ↑ |
Finally, another update. At 7:07 AM, I added a new Ideas section to this site, so I'll have a place to share any ideas which I might or might not ever implement myself.
There is currently one article in that section, Ideas for Internet Login Security. Any website where it is at all important for user accounts to be secure, like PayPal, or bank and credit card websites, should probably implement some of these measures.
Well, guess that's all for now.
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Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom ↓ Down Up ↑ |
Well, I finally released the MagnaMural's scripts as public domain, and updated the whole MagnaMural section of the site. Worked exclusively on that since this morning, and I finally finished it all at 5:56 PM.
The MagnaMural's public domain release is also available for L$0 - free - at OnRez or SLExchange, and you can also find it by looking at my profile in Second Life. If you want it, you should probably get it one of those ways, instead of trying to build your own just by putting the scripts in some prims - because the packaged version contains fully-assembled MagnaMurals and other things that go with it, like gestures to control it, etc. - all full perms.
It took longer than I thought. The code, though it was quite functional and stable, was, under the hood, a cluttered mess, with no explanatory comments (despite the fact that they were much-needed, especially for the link messages), and confusing variable names. No wonder it took me so long and was so hard to finish. I guess I could chalk up the messiness to the fact that I was miserable and desperate at the time I was writing it. (And, I also didn't have to worry what anyone else might think of it, since it was closed source - so originally I didn't go out of my way to make the code look nice). I'm a bit amazed that I got it working so well back then, in view of both my absolutely ghastly emotional state, and having created such an avoidably confusing labyrinth of code for myself.
Fortunately, I've definitely improved quite a bit at programming in general, so, I was able to clean it up rather nicely, with nice, clear, and hopefully educational comments. I even added some improvements on the original MagnaMural. Now, when you say "rs" or other commands to resize or reshape it, you can have the size you want to resize it to on the same line, and the silent chat channel changer and text color changer work similarly.
(Such a simple little feature - as for why I didn't implement it before, it was probably a combination of a) I thought it would be too hard and b) I was running out of memory in my script, and back in those days, when I was just getting started with LSL, I mistakenly thought you could only have one script per prim.)
Anyhow, it was a lot more fun to work on this than it was to work on the closed-source version. It really sucked having to hold back the code before, because I really wanted to show it off and share it with the world... :-)
I'm happy that now the MagnaMural will probably no longer keep on gathering dust and being hardly used by anyone, and people will be able to learn from the code, and modify it, and create new things based on it, etc.
Plenty of other projects to work on... but, I think I'll just let myself drift for a while and not publicly dedicate myself, yet, to any specific plans.
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Friday, April 4th, 2008 ▲ Top ▼ Bottom Up ↑ |
So, it turns out the first big PHP/MySQL project I completed wasn't a blog, nor was it a web bookmarks organizer similar to del.icio.us. Instead, it's a music organization database based on my "astrosorting" system of music organization.
I call it the Astrosorting Music Organization Database (AMODB). It's free, open source software, and actually public domain. I last uploaded the zip file at 1:24 PM, the Readme file for it at 8:59 AM, the example database at 5:53 AM, and the AMODB home page at 5:58 AM.
I have to admit, though, I don't always document the times of these updates this carefully - there is, in fact, a limit to my patience for insignificant minutiae - so, often, and even below, I just mention the time when I finally left the files alone after uploading several versions which had typos and other errors I noticed and fixed several minutes after first uploading them - or, I give the time when I first uploaded them.
However, the release of this software is a major event in my boring life, so, I was a bit more particular here about noting the times of its release. :-) ).
At 4:20 AM, I uploaded a renovated version of the Astrosorted Music List (which is now spread out across multiple pages) with 40 wonderful new songs, along with a new Musician Links page. There's also now a Song Update History page (which I uploaded at 4:35 AM).
At 6:26 AM, I also uploaded an updated version of the description of astrosorting system of music organization. The system now contains an additional new label named after the dwarf planet Eris, which is named after the Greek goddess Eris of strife and discord.
Since the AMODB makes it effortlessly easy to update the Astrosorted Music List (which I used to have to put together manually), as well as make a list of my favorite musicians and web URLs associated with them, that means it is likely more frequent updates will happen around here, since I'll likely run into at least a few decent new songs every few weeks or so, at least if I'm looking for them.
Oh yeah, I guess I ought to prepare the MagnaMural for its public domain release. Why am I doing that? Because I realized I have a moral problem with selling restricted, proprietary, closed-source, "black box" software, even in Second Life. Plus, it seems like all my effort on this tremendously useful script is going to waste, because hardly anyone gets to use it because hardly anyone buys it. So, I've decided I'd rather just give it away, earn people's gratitude, and accept any voluntary donations.
This excellent essay by Richard Stallman helped me make up my mind: Why Software Should Be Free.
OK, guess that's all for now. Enjoy.
(I first uploaded all those files at 5:53 AM, but after that I noticed some errors I had to fix. Anyhow, it's annoying listing out all these times and being so specific about them, but I guess various astrologers out there might appreciate it.
Whew, it's such a relief to have the AMODB finally finished. Took me about 2 months to finish that off, but, I learned a lot, and I'll be able to reuse pieces of it in other projects.
Not sure what I'll work on next, but, I have plenty of ideas to choose between.
Lastly, I made some minor updates. At 12:08 AM, I changed a few minor things on the AstroTally Home Page, mostly just to reflect my future plans for AstroTally a bit better. At 12:32 AM, I updated the MagnaMural page to reflect my future plans for that.