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Saturday, January 5th, 2008 |
Well, Happy New Year. Didn't really make any interesting updates, I just tidied things up a bit, like making it so the free advertising I put up to help out Ron Paul's campaign for President is no longer out of date.
I have plenty of ideas for things I'd like to put up, but I just haven't gotten around to doing it. I can't even say I've been enormously productive otherwise. I've been studying various subjects here and there, and, well, I guess I've managed to overcome my all-pervasive sense of futility enough to do at least a little more than usual - though I still don't have much to show for it that I can put up on this website, yet.
Still, overall, I'd say I'm doing better. It fills me with glee that my credit card companies are wasting all kinds of time and energy (and hopefully money) on trying to contact me. For a long time, I didn't even know about it. (I usually am not within earshot of the answering machine, and, my relatives never told me about the calls).
Capital One and Providian, this is what you get for mistreating me. No money, and a credit card boycott. :-D I'll never be your customer again, and if you ever want my forgiveness, you'll have to pay me tons of reparations for all the damage you've done to my life, as well as reparations to everyone else whose lives you've helped ruin.
I still haven't revived the Donations & Microdonations for Individuals & Groups forum, the last vestiges of which remain at http://pods.zaadz.com/microdonations. It's probably going to be a long time before I get back to that. It might be best if someone else implements that idea, especially, someone with money.
Been trying to get all my old CDs, files, web bookmarks, etc. organized, and off and on have been making something using PHP and MySQL to help me with that. I guess if I ever finish that tool, it will end up on this website, one of these decades.
There are so many little odds and ends I should put up. I guess someday I'll get around to it.
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Sunday, January 20th, 2008 |
OK, here's another unimportant update. Around 1:53 AM, I updated the MagnaMural pages with the new location of my puny shop, and made some very small, unimportant changes/fixes to the manual which I lethargically hadn't gotten around to making.
The thing that inspired this update was the recent release of the January issue of The SLEngineer Magazine, which mentions the MagnaMural. It's a nifty magazine and I really appreciate the MagnaMural being mentioned, etc. Thank you, SLEngineer Magazine. :-)
The only other notable thing I added was the best Winamp equalizer settings I've created so far for my new Radio Shack headphones: 2008-01-20-radio_shack_headphones.EQF
I'm almost done with the PHP/SQL/Apache book I've been studying, Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours. (I found out, too late, that there's a more recent version of that book called >Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One).
(Note, April 20, 2013: I removed the Amazon Associate links, inspired by Richard Stallman's Reasons not to buy from Amazon page. Here are some links to the website of the PHP books' author instead: Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours and Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One)
It's not like I'll get a huge amount of money in commissions if someone who clicks those links buys something at Amazon, but, being a rather lazy sort of person, not wanting to spend a lot of time researching the web just to find the best possible link about a book or other product I'm just mentioning in passing, and Amazon often having a lot of reviews and other info about books and other products, it's possible I'd link to them even without any incentive. (And I think I actually already did, in the past, in old deleted blog posts, not sure, though). So, why not (potentially) profit from it?
Anyhow, though, to distinguish such links from normal links which I won't possibly get any commissions out of, etc., I've color-coded them green. I do not intend for these links to imply that I recommend that you buy these products at Amazon, or that Amazon definitely has the best price. Sure, Amazon often does have good prices, or even sometimes the best prices, but, still, I suggest looking all over the internet for the best prices. Oh, and don't forget about how the cost of shipping can often make internet purchases cost more than just buying something at a store).
The project I have the most interest in finishing is my web bookmark/local file bookmark thing similar to del.icio.us but with more features.
Now that I've read far enough in the PHP/MySQL/Apache book to finally become informed of important database programming concepts like the peculiarly-named concept of "normalization", I'm making much better progress with that. :-) I had foolishly started out with just a flat table with many columns, despite nagging misgivings that there was probably a much better way to structure things that I just hadn't thought of yet. Sure am glad I didn't have to reinvent the wheel from scratch there.
I got practically used to my speakers, despite how relatively (but not entirely) pathetic they are, but it's really nice to have headphones again (two months after my old ones broke), and also to be able to just space out completely, hearing nothing but the music (these headphones seal out sound from the outside world really well), etc.
I just wish these headphones rendered intricate details a bit better, but, powerful bass really does make up for a lot. And, actually, now that I figured out that lower than average equalizer settings in Winamp seem to make these sound a lot better, it turns out they're actually very satisfactory!
(Even though they still don't pass my acid test for clarity - listening to 3:22-3:40 of the Castlevania 3 remix Luminescent Blues by goat. That section of that song is absolutely stunning if you have headphones which can render it properly instead of garbling it up into blurry noise. The only headphones I had which did so didn't even fully enclose your ears, and had wimpy, underpowered bass compared to my next two sets (including my current set), though - but if not for them, I never would have known what I was missing).
It's always fun to get new, good headphones - it's almost like getting a whole new music collection, at least if you're very sensitive to subtle differences (or have had only desktop speakers for two months). Here are the best Winamp settings I've created for them so far: 2008-01-20-radio_shack_headphones.EQF
I'm not going to risk installing my old, better sound card until I have to install a new hard drive fan (my old one broke, actually around the same time that my headphones broke), which I'll probably do when the weather gets warmer, and after taking many precautions like backing up all of my files, etc.
That's all as far as updates to the site. I guess since I'm having a bit of blog withdrawal, I'll ramble on here about some recent events, until I get around to coding myself some actual blog software.
(By the way, yes, those book links are Amazon Associates Program links, since a while back I joined the Amazon Associates Program.
So, anyhow, it turns out that PHP/MySQL stuff really isn't as hard as I thought it might be, so, it is actually possible that I will sometime create my own simple custom blog software exactly the way I like it, etc. And, wow, even forum software is a lot simpler than I thought. Hour 14 of the Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours book is a good example.
I finally got a new pair of headphones using the only Christmas money I've had in years that I didn't use to pay credit card bills, so, I can finally get back to doing (some) music-related stuff. Radio Shack Full-Size Stereo Headphones (Note, 4/20/2013: Amazon links removed, inspired by Richard Stallman's Reasons not to buy from Amazon page.) They aren't perfect, but they're pretty good, and a lot like my previous headphones (jWIN Dynamic Stereo Headphones, JH-V100) - the bass is satisfactory, possibly even better, even though some subtle details are obscured.
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Friday, February 1st, 2008 |
Another update which isn't important enough for me to mention on the front page. I just changed the donations page to reflect my current situation better. I also slightly changed the credit card boycott page. I uploaded both pages at 11:20 PM.
I'm making good progress on my own custom blog software, made with PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. Not sure when that's going to be done, but, it will make it easier for me to update the various sections of my site with fresh, new content. I'm also going to release the blog software itself, once it's done.
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Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 |
At 10:35 PM, I updated the Donation History page - not with new donations, just some more up to date explanations of stuff. This update is so insignificant I'm not even going to update this Update History page with this addition until I make some more interesting updates.
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Monday, March 31st, 2008 |
At 6:14 AM, I updated the Donation History page, to mention the fourth (and largest) donation via PayPal yet, $16.00 received 3/12/2008 9:55:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time. Thanks!
At 6:31 AM, I updated the Donations page just to point out that another advantage of donating to me through Second Life is that your donation will be anonymous, unlike PayPal.
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Friday, April 4th, 2008 |
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.
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Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 |
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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Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 |
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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Sunday, May 11th, 2008 |
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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Monday, June 16th, 2008 |
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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Friday, August 1st, 2008 |
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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Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 |
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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Sunday, August 10th, 2008 |
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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Monday, September 1st, 2008 |
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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Monday, September 22nd, 2008 13:06:37 GMT |
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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Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 01:40:02 GMT |
Happily, I no longer have to upload my blog pages by hand, because yesterday (Oct. 13th), I finally finished the part of my blog software which updates only the pages which need updating, instead of every page of the blog.
What an exhausting ordeal - much harder than I expected. I sure am glad that's over with. Programming is so tedious. Even though there are plenty of encouraging little successes along the way as things gradually start working better and better, the most fun part for me is just being done and having a finished creation ready to use.
Having made this is pretty satisfying, almost like the feeling I might get from building my own car - or more precisely, my own wonderful ultra-snazzy luxury-mobile perfectly customized according to my every little whim - from scratch, without a blueprint. But even better, since I don't have to be afraid my blog software will kill me if something breaks.
Of course, it's still not totally done, and I can't promise any of you will like this software as much as I do, since it's still a bit lacking in the feature department, and it's customized to suit me, not necessarily anyone else.
But fortunately, since this blog software will be open source and public domain, any deficiencies will be able to be rectified by you, the user - at least in theory. And if not you, then someone else who can program.
I'm not sure when I'll have this software ready for release, but, hopefully before the year ends. I hope it will at least have the RSS feed and ping features by then, but, if those features are too hard, I'll probably just release it without them. It will also most likely be without trackback or comment features, since I think those features will be next to impossible for me to finish quickly, especially in light of the necessity to devise some ways to thwart spam.
In other news, I just registered today (October 14th at 5:30 PM) as a participant in Blog Action Day 2008, and hopefully I'll soon have something ready to post for that tomorrow. The topic for Blog Action Day this year is poverty.
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 01:34:39 GMT |
Here are the most notable recent site updates. I added an expanded table of contents for Steve Pavlina's wonderful book Personal Development for Smart People. I also made a printable HTML/CSS version which is more readily printable (probably best printed in Firefox), and can be customized in case you'd prefer to print it with a different font or font size or something; and a printable PDF version, which should almost certainly print correctly.
I also made a JavaScript random generator for the names of the 66 personal effectiveness habits on pages 149-157 of Steve's book. I uploaded this stuff to the Self-Help section at 8:07-8:08 PM.
Thanks to Steve for the permission to share this stuff, and for writing his brilliant book and website, etc. If any of you out there have somehow had the misfortune of never having heard of Steve Pavlina, I highly recommend you check out his stuff, and also the website and blog of his very gifted wife, the psychic Erin Pavlina. Both of them, through their wonderful websites, writings, etc., have had a very positive influence on my life. Thank you to both of them.
By the way, the last two tips at the bottom of the Watching Videos in Opera section are highly useful for anyone using any web browser, and in fact, I should probably put them on a separate page sometime.
I also made some minor updates in the past couple days. I added a bit to the About This Site page, uploading the update on 10/25/2008 at 4:03 AM. And, on 10/26/2008 at 2:46 AM, I updated the Opera Web Browser Tips page a bit.
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Friday, November 7th, 2008 18:09:00 GMT |
My apologies for updating this site mostly only slowly and sporadically. Sometimes (or actually, even quite often), I just really don't enjoy posting things to the internet. I'm just too shy... :-/ Which is a big problem if I want to make a large amount of money from this website somehow, someday.
Anyhow, I added a new page to the Self-Help section - About Steve Pavlina's Book Personal Development for Smart People. It's basically a review, with some astrological content thrown in.
I actually first uploaded that page at 4:10 PM on Oct. 31st, but, I didn't get around to announcing it until today. The last minor change I made to it was uploaded at 11:36 AM today.
To summarize my review - I highly recommend Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina, which I found to be quite brilliant and well worth reading, as is Steve's website, StevePavlina.com.
I also removed my site's Project Wonderful ads, an action I explained in an earlier blog post.
Some minor updates were, I finally fixed the SSI header and footer over on the MagnaMural pages, which must've been messed up since probably mid-October at least. Oops.
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Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 21:07:13 GMT |
At about 2 PM, I updated the Foreign Language Web Browsing/Translation Frames, just to fix various problems.
Not much else to say. I've barely even worked on the blog software, or my web links organizer, file organizer, or ideas organizer. I think rather than releasing the last three all together, I'm probably going to release them one at a time and make them useable separate from each other, since it should be faster and easier for me to finish and release them as three smaller separate projects instead of one big combined project.
I apologize for terribly underestimating how long it would take. At least, though, in all this time, I've been improving as a programmer, so, the final result will hopefully be better than it would have been had I desperately rushed to complete it all.
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Friday, December 12th, 2008 00:09:18 GMT |
Software Release |
Today (Dec. 11th), at 5:53 PM, I uploaded the newest version of the Astrosorting Music Organization Database (AMODB) software and example database - v2.0.
You can read about the updates and how to upgrade on the AMODB's main page, and also the bottom of the AMODB's Readme file (both uploaded at 6:12 PM). The most major addition to the AMODB is a nice search tag system, which is actually an improvement on del.icio.us's search tag system.
And, happily, due to some relatively minor changes, I should now be much more inclined to update my Astrosorted Music List from time to time. Previously, there were some things I forgot to code in which made the list update process annoyingly less automated, so I avoided updating the list.
I didn't add any new songs to the Astrosorted Music List page yet, but, I fixed some cosmetic errors on those pages at 5:06 PM.
I'm so glad to be done with this. Now that I finally have a satisfactory tag system, I feel much more able to move forward with my other projects. I am so looking forward to being completely done with them all (or at least, having them released). I'll feel so free then.
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Saturday, December 27th, 2008 23:59:58 GMT |
At 6:42 PM EST, I added two new links to the Self-Help section - a link to the Lettersquash blog, and a link to a great article from there, The Law of Attraction is Repulsive. :-)
Since I said I wanted to release my blog software before the end of the year, I've been struggling to work on it. Unless I'm mistaken, I seemingly at least managed to fix the problem of the archive pages sometimes being incomplete. (However, I haven't yet uploaded my updated blog software to the web yet, so the archives on this site are still broken).
Next, I hope to fix the problem where the Earlier Posts/Later Posts links sometimes don't appear. Then, I'll see if I can create some RSS feeds. However, rather than struggling to figure out how to ping other sites directly, I think I might just rely on FeedBurner for that, at least temporarily.
Chances are good I actually won't release my blog software before the end of the year, but I'm at least trying.