More Static Site Fun

6 Aug 2007

I've been experimenting with Drupal and Joomla over the last month. Both are lovely, but I feel more secure knowing that all of the site content is here at home when I need it. That means we're still with WebMake. I am doing a little bit of a try at using Ruby for key parts.

Okay, I'm a little too tired to be useful. You'll just have to take my word: things are lovely.

New screen Page

25 Jan 2007

My 35th birthday was the other day. It was very pleasant indeed: sushi and a copy of "The Ruby Way 2nd Edition" from my wife, then cake and a game of "Scene It!" from our friend. It was low-key, but that is exactly what I wanted.

I have been desperate to get some sort of new content on the site, so I added a very brief view of screen. screen has become a significant part of my toolset over the last six months. The new page is not well organized, but it does contain the few notes I have found helpful regarding screen.

Revamped Ruby MIRE

9 Jan 2007

Happy New Year, folks! I was doing a little housecleaning, and discovered that my Ruby RSS exercise had become so dated that it was useless. It's fixed now, so go ahead and poke at it once more.

I'm also looking curiously at MyBlogLog. Social networking has been all the rage for the last few years, but this seems to have gone into some sort of surreal circle, since a lot of blogs started out as a sort of networking tool. What the heck, though. I went ahead and added a coolnamehere community.

New PageTemplate Site

18 December 2006

Greg Millam registered "http://pagetemplate.org/" a while back, and I finally got around to wedging the PageTemplate pages out of the coolnamehere source and into their own site layout. Go to http://pagetemplate.org for all your PT needs from here on.

Oh, and I did fix the formatting weirdness for those pages. All is well in the world once more.

Formatting Issues

9 December 2006

Something weird is happening when Text::Textile interacts with the source for the PageTemplate pages. I'm working on it, but just wanted to let you know that I was aware of the problem. Okay?

Updated PageTemplate Documentation

8 December 2006

The PageTemplate pages have been embarrassingly out of date. The tutorials were written almost five years ago and hadn't been updated at all since then! That situation has changed. The template syntax notes have expanded from a single page to a whole section. The developer page hasn't expanded any, but I did manage to change the format from etText to Textile. I hope to tackle the developer pages at some point soon, but it seemed unfair to let the designer pages languish in misery waiting for me to finish the rest.

Go buy some books!

30 Nov 2006

Tim Maher's excellent Minimal Perl has been published recently, and I'm very happy to finally see it! I got a chance to review a couple of chapters a while back. It was great reading. I've been waiting impatiently for the rest of the book ever since.

Then there's the book I haven't read any of, but I can't wait to see it. Paul DuBois, the author of MySQL Cookbook, 2nd Edition exchanged emails with me a few months ago about using PageTemplate. He mentioned that PT was going to be used in one of the new recipes. The book is out now, and I'm going to start looking for it immediately. You should too! Although not just for a PT recipe. The first edition of the MySQL Cookbook was good stuff, and I expect more of the same for the second edition.

Employed Again, Yay!

12 Nov 2006

I just started with a new position at Whitepages.com last week, where I will get the opportunity to work among many other Perl geeks. This is a first for me, since usually I'm "the Perl guy" wherever I happen to work. That even happened at Amazon, where they use a lot of Perl. It just happened that I was one of two Perl developers on my team, so there wasn't much room for sharing notes and general geekiness. Whitepages looks like it will be a lot of fun for me as a Perl geek. Heck, I might even start attending SPUG meetings!

Corporate Circle of Life

10 Oct 2006

Hm. I got laid off from Big Fish Games today. If you happen to know anybody who is looking for a slightly eccentric geek with an unhealthy devotion to Perl, Ruby, and an assortment of other languages, send them my way!

Stupid Spambots

7 Oct 2006

Thanks to automated bots plugging into my contact form every few minutes, I had to add a "CAPTCHA" thingy, where there's a word buried in an image and you have to enter the word in the form. Sorry, folks, but I had to do this so I wouldn't lose the real comments in the mess of spam comments.

Oh, Sweet Relief For These Old Eyes!

8 Sep 2006

Can you tell it's been a slow week at work? We recently wrapped up My Bigfishgames, which has been a major project. I was part of the team that put it together. Most of my contributions were on behind the scenes code, though. You won't be seeing any pages put together by me. Well, except for my own Bigfishgames page that I linked to there.

Today I took a little time to update the Python Babysteps Tutorial to reflect the newer release of Python. While I was at it, I realized that I desperately needed the text to be a more readable size. A few adjustments were made, and now the font size is based on whatever the default for your browser is. Almost all pixel-level CSS rules were changed or removed. I had to switch from a div based layout to a table-based layout, though. It was the easiest way to keep the menu from dropping off the page when the window was resized.

Pragmatism must rule over idealism today. But I'm just happy I can read my site again. 11 pixel text on a 15" screen showing 1400×1050 pixels wasn't working for me.

Math Section

7 Sep 2006

I've put up a new Math section to hold various skill development tools as I come up with them.

New Contact Form

1 Sep 2006

Working on pretty new things again. A new contact form with some DHTML goodness. Click the "Contact" link on the top of every page, and you'll get a nice dynamic form. It still needs a couple of steps before it's done, though. I want to fill it with Ajaxy goodness. Still, at least I know it'll degrade nicely. I'm still working out how to make it degrade properly on the client side. The server is all set up, though, and is ready for both AJAX submits and plain old submits.

I've fiddled with Perl, Python, PHP, and JavaScript, all in one day. That's a good day.

Fixed REBOL pages

30 Aug 2006

Things are slowing down at work, so I had some free time to spend answering emails and fixing some of the formatting goofs on my REBOL pages. I even spent a little while last night working on the still-vapor update to my Ruby PageTemplate library. There still isn't anything to show yet. I want to make sure that it stays reasonably backward-compatible to the 2.x line.

Still Alive!

12 Aug 2006

I've been pretty busy with work, so there haven't been many site updates. I did notice that my solutions page needed some formatting fixes and took care of that.

Pugs Pages

18 July 2006

Looks like my Perl browser isn't working anymore. Pity.

Anyways, I finally took a closer look at Pugs, and even looked a little at how some of the small stuff has changed in Perl 6. It's not a tutorial, and it's not a reference. It's just babblings and a little code. Still, hopefully someone out there can get some use out of it.

Perl Package Browser

23 Mar 2006

I decided that it was time to add some functionality to the site again, starting with a browser to show what modules and documentation are available for the Perl installation on your machine. It's still very rough - it makes path names longer than they need to be and doesn't even work under Internet Explorer. There are also more optimizations I could do to make it perform faster, but some of them may require that I upgrade my account for more hard drive space.

The theory is that eventually this script will be useful enough that I can make it available for Web hosts to post on their own servers, so that customers have ready access to the information.

First things first, though. I need to make it work and work right.

Fresh Content

17 Mar 2006

Part of getting settled into the new job has involved learning all sorts of new things. The learning has resulted in some new content.

• A brief mention of the Cygwin Ports Project.
• A new tutorial, this time on XML.

Another General Update

13 Mar 2006

It's been a frantic couple of months, but I'm still alive! Major
events going on right now:

• New job as Tools Developer at Big Fish Games. Yay, full time work! That means health benefits. Dentists, doctors and psychiatrists look out!
• Working on PageTemplate. Several undocumented new features which I should get to, but I'm working hard on getting version 3.0 ready for delivery. Lucky for you, "ready for delivery" happens to include documentation.
• Living in Kitsap County, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. This is a temporary hiccup, and Brooke and I are both itching to get back into Seattle proper.

As far as the site goes, not much is going on.

• I filled out the Lisp page a little bit with some book recommendations.
• Have you been enjoying the new look for the site? I have too, but I should confess something. It's not my design, but Pat Heard's. It's available in the excellent Open Source Web Design repository.

Oh, and it's my Mom's birthday today. Happy birthday Mom!

REBOL OS X Page

10 November 2005

Now that Rebol/View is available for OS X, I've dedicate a new page to
making Rebol work nice on OS X. I'll
start with the basics of installing, and move from there towards streamlining
the use of Rebol on the Mac.

Aiming for Regular Updates

1 November 2005

It's hard to convince folks that you've been doing anything interesting if you take six months to update anything. The contract search is as active as ever, so I've put up a hesitant start to a Solutions page. The idea is that I'll describe some of the things I could do for people as a freelance developer. Should be a little better than just waylaying people on the street and telling them I can program.

Happy Halloween!

31 October 2005

That's all, really. I just wanted to say that I hope everybody's been having a good time since my last update. I'll be playing with the design of the site a little bit over the next few days, and maybe adding a little new content.

Meanwhile, if any of you knows of a good geek job in the Seattle area, or something telecommute-based, please let me know!

PageTemplate 2.1.1

30 Jul 2005

Greg has been working hard on new stuff for PageTemplate. You might want to look at the History page for a quick scan at what's been added over the version numbers.

PageTemplate 2.0

13 Apr 2005

Greg Millam has been helping out with PageTemplate by writing lots and lots of new code. The result of that new code? Lots and lots of new features.

Umm ... just look at the 2.0 overview page for a summary. It'll take me a while to catch up on the full docs, though.

REBOL/Pro Overview Page

20 Mar 2005

I decided to buy Rebol/Pro from RT this week, more to help pay for a few more hours of Rebol development than anything else. But hey, guess what? Rebol/Pro comes with a few bonus items that aren't in basic Rebol/View. So I asked around and put together a quick overview page, listing the add-ons and providing links to the documentation for these new items.

REBOL Grabbag Section added

17 Mar 2005

I don't get it. I keep telling myself that it's time to write about something else. Maybe Ruby or Perl or even Python. What do I do instead? I create a new section, including a page on writing a simple command-line utility for getting information about the current charge of your notebook computer. What's up with that?

PageTemplate 1.2 Released

13 Mar 2005

Last night I pushed out a new release of PageTemplate. 1.2 has a few new things, like loop metavariables and unless blocks, and fixes a few bugs _(like not being able to work in a SAFE environment)_. Thanks go to Greg Millam and tung for not letting PT sink back into stagnation!

REBOL Tutorial Chapter

4 Mar 2005

I am continuing my slow journey towards becoming useful in REBOL. As always, I leave behind me a trail of notes which I hope will be useful to other folks out there who are interested in learning. We have gotten as far as simple repetition structures now, and I hope to cover list manipulation and iteration the next time around. Enjoy!

REBOL "Getting Help" Page Added

28 Feb 2005

One of the most important things to learn about any new skill is where to go for more information. I finally got around to adding a new page on where you can turn with your questions and pleas for help. Sorry it took me so long!

REBOL Tutorial Chapter Added

27 February 2005

Work has been keeping me fairly busy. Sadly, not doing much programming. It turns out that some days just involve finding a bug and then finding out who is responsible for fixing that bug. I love my job, but there's a bit of a bureaucratic aspect to it sometimes. But I digress. I took a few hours out of my weekend to write a new chapter in my REBOL tutorial, covering @if@ and @either@ and selection statements used in the language. It's still pretty sparse, but I will definitely touch it up from any feedback from you Fine Folks.

PageTemplate Release 1.1.1

16 February 2005

There were a few typos in the 1.1 release, and some general chaos, so I touched up the release and made it available to install from a few new approaches (rake and rubygems, if you must know). The PageTemplate documentation was also updated in the last couple of days. Just thought I'd let everyone know.

PHP Again

9 January 2005

The fickleness strikes again. I have decided to use PHP to drive the server side interaction on this site. Why? Well, partly because I want to rebuild my skills in PHP, which have gotten a little rusty. I also have to realize that PHP has the functionality that I'm looking for with the site.

I am still building it with WebMake, though. this way I get to keep the common look across the site without the need to mess with PHP templating systems.

All of the old ".html" pages will be staying in their most recent state until I've put together a proper redirect mechanism. Which may be a long long time :-)

Gamer Geek

8 January 2005

Hey, here's a page talking about what a pathetic geek I am. In the spirit of full disclosure or something.

Same Host, Different Server

3 January 2005

Hey, happy new year! The fine folks at A2 have installed PageTemplate and RMagick for me. Of course, they had to put my site files on a different machine to do it. So now I can work on some nifty Ruby CGI stuff. Thanks, guys!

A Glance at REBOL/View

27 December 2004

Let's see, I threw a few links onto the main REBOL page, and also made a very basic peek of REBOL/View. That's about it, really.

New REBOL Pages

26 December 2004

I hope everybody is enjoying the holiday season. It has been pretty nice around here - no white Christmas, or anything like that, but we did make the best turkey I have every tasted in my life. Oh, and the pie .... mmmm....

Other than that, I've been doing a lot of exploring on the Rebol front. The result so far? A page summarizing REBOL's many datatypes, as well as a "Babysteps" style introduction to the language. As always, I would be grateful for any pointers or suggestions to improve on it.

New Geekery Page: REBOL

22 December 2004

Guess what? I've been messing with yet another programming language. This one is called REBOL, and it's a fair amount of fun. I've added a Geekery page for it, in the wildly optimistic thought that I may have more to say on the topic some day.

Site Reconstruction

20 December 2004

Okay, I've converted everything back to WebMake again. Why? Oh, pretty much just a change of pace. ZenWeb is nifty and I highly recommend it, but I like to fiddle around with all sorts of tools as the whim strikes me.

Let's celebrate part of this with a little bit of a new look for the site, some minor content updates, and ... let's see, what else? Oh, I know, let's dig into the Wayback Machine to find every possible bit of archived coolnamehere news that I've ever posted. Looks like it isn't all there, but I've salvaged what I could.

Oops

15 November 2004

Okay, so here's what happened. A few weeks ago, I released an updated version of PageTemplate. Then I worked on an updated version of the site with updated documentation, because what I had was a little out-of-date (just the reference page, everything else is still cool). Then I was distracted by something. I'm not sure what it was that distracted me - might have been work, might have been a heavy code project, or it might have just been a bright and shiny thing that rolled into my view. Whatever the cause, I completely forgot about the site update until I got an email from somebody today pointing out that all the old PageTemplate pages were full of broken links.

The realy update is at home on my laptop, but I can work on some link fixes to hold me over until I get home this evening and put the real update online.

New MIRE: Drawing Celtic Knotwork

1 October 2004

Right. I'm still determined to keep adding content regularly, and not just the "I like Lisp" sort of content, either. There's a new Moderately Interesting Ruby Exercise today, and this one chronicles my efforts to draw Celtic knotwork panels using Ruby.

New Section: Moderately Interesting Ruby Exercises

17 September 2004

This section actually has content! Today, I explore the brave world of reading Fark headlines from a console.

Oh, and you might notice the link to my Image Gallery. It's been down for way too long, and some of you folks were thinking that I was all about the geekery. I had to correct that little misapprehension.

New Section: UNIX

15 September 2004

Bit by tiny bit, I'm restoring the site content that used to exist in the dark and distant past - before doing an inattentive Linux upgrade wiped out every page. I've added a section for UNIX and the many powerful tools available for that world.

Oh, and I've installed a PHP-based picture gallery.

ZenWeb

23 August September

ZenSpider should be happy to learn that I've become annoyed enough with WebMake that I'm giving ZenWeb another shot.

New Page: Read More Perl

29 April 2004

I haven't been working much on any tutorial content for the last month. Instead, I've been spending my spare time actually writing code. What a novelty! Learning about YaML and SQLite is loads of fun for a big old nerd like me.

Yesterday I took a break from my grand GURPS project to write a few thoughts about reading Perl. Mostly just a few mental notes to myself that I thought I'd share with the world. That describes the whole site, though.

Translation Link

22 March 2004

I have been working on more tutorial content for my Ruby section. There probably won't be anything new until next month. I just had to add this translation service link from Babelfish. A lot of hits come in from countries where English is not the primary language. It only seems polite to do anything I can to make reading these pages easier for them.

Products Section

12 March 2004

I just added a Products section to highlight libraries or applications that I've worked on. Yes, that means PageTemplate. No, that doesn't mean much of anything else at the moment. Nothing public, that is.

Ruby CGI Draft

10 March 2004

Here is an introduction to the wild and woolly world of Web programming with Ruby. It isn't too extensive, but it should give you a start. Well, after I finish it. It's about a third of the way done, but you can already start playing a little bit.

Let's Try a Weblog Type Thing Again

29 February 2004

Mind you, it's not like this will update with great frequency. I just needed to be able to say things like "Hey, the Vim Docs are back up".

So, um ... hey, the Vim Docs are back up.

Math: Factors Drill

23 July 2003

The second drill in the Math section helps test your ability to do factoring, by asking you if one number is a factor of the other. I deliberately kept it simple - even so, I managed to start getting really lost around level three. These projects are going to build my math skill, if I don't watch it :-). You can test your factoring skills for yourself, if you like.

New Site Backend

16 July 2003

It's been a long time since I made a major site change. I would like to add a greater capacity for interactivity, so it's time to transform the static HTML into something else. How about PHP? Sounds good. I've got a fair approximation of the site's old functionality in place: the bread crumb trail works, and you have a useful navigation menu along the side. The side menu needs a few more steps before I'm really happy with it, but it basically works.

Hmm ... I better get a good 404 handler up or I'm going to get a lot of hate mail.

Later that night: I've been up late today. Since I really should be in bed, I had to do something to make myself feel better about it. So I made a math drill PHP script. Check it out.

BBC News Addict

30 June 2003

Yeah, I'm a bit of a news junkie, but mainly from the BBC. That's probably due to some untreated Anglophilia that I really should address. Anyhow, I put together a nifty little Perl CGI to make it easy for me to scan the latest news feeds from the BBC. Eventually, it'll be able to load every single RSS feed that BBC makes available. Right now, it's just the World News headline.

Check it out!

A Gallery Picture

29 June 2003

I got tired of having no pictures in the Image Gallery since the last site shuffle, so I finally decided to throw in a scan of a knotwork picture. That's the biggest change to the site, although there is a new page of links to information about Perl 6. It will make it easier for me to keep that information in a single place, rather than rely on my memory.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a Harry Potter book to read.

Ruby Tutorial Added

12 June 2003

I've been working on an introductory tutorial for Ruby. It's not going to make you a master. In its current form, it's not really going to make you competent :-). Still, it should be enough to get you started with this powerful language. Since there are still not very many Ruby introductions available on the Web, I will probably get some followup chapters as soon as I can.

I also did a bit of a touchup on the site layout. Nothing exceptional, just some new colors and a different style of menu. I'm still figuring out WebMake's sitemap functionality, so some of the page titles in the menu are a little messed up. Still, at least all the pages are there!

New Geekery Stuff

29 March 2003

Well, I've been learning an awful lot about the TCL language recently. It's another one of those languages that gets used all the time, but anyone who doesn't use it seems to hate it with a passion. I can't see why - TCL seems very easy to get started with. Anyways, I've been messing with that. If TCL seems cool enough after a few weeks, I might add a TCL section to the Geekery pages.

Other than that, not much. I'm glad Michael Moore won the Oscar award for Best Documentary. That made me happy.

Tidying Up Here and There

22 March 2003

I'm not a big fan of politics or politicians, so I earnestly hope the current world mess clears up as soon as possible. My sympathies go out to the world at large, while I look at the job market in Canada. Heck, I've always liked the Red Green Show and ZeD, so why not? ;-)

There aren't many visible changes to the site. Internally, there was a massive shift - all of the content is now formatted as EtText, which makes the raw 'source' of the site quite a bit easier to read. That's good, because you want to make 2000+ lines of content as easy to read as possible.

Only 2000 lines? I need to add some more pages.

Huh? What?

15 March 2003

Yes, yes. I'm awake. I've been busy working, that's all. I put a Perl page up, in case I think of anything to put there.

ZenWeb Again

29 December 2002

There we go. I finally did something to change the site around a little bit. I was playing with ZenWeb to build the site. Nothing extensive - I just applied a stylesheet to the StandardRenderer. Now I'll go back to learning Ruby :-).

Minor Updates

14 December 2004

I've spend the last couple of weeks trying to get Ruby/Tk working natively under Mac OS X. It's a real challenge - especially since I'm not that much of a programmer. I write a mean script, but I'm a long ways from finding and fixing obscure bugs. Anyhow, I've added that to the Ruby projects page.

Fabrizio Lippolis was kind enough to point out that I had a typographical error on my "Simple Types in Python" article. It's fixed now. Thanks for pointing that out!

Okay, now I'm going back to playing Civilization 3 and then figuring out how Tcl/Tk works. I hope everybody enjoys the holidays and the new year!

Ruby Project Page

1 December 2002

I've been very busy, but most of it has been coding. I decided that I needed to put up some kind of projects page to keep track of all the Ruby things I'm doing, or thinking of doing.

Ruby Ruby Ruby ... oh yeah, I've got a job, too

16 November 2002

Okay. postNuke is long gone. It's a fine tool, but it wasn't what I wanted to do with my free time. Yeah, I have to think about free time again, because I've just started working at the Omni Group as a tech support person. The job is great, and the people are great. Plus, it's a Mac shop, so I'm surrounded by machines running OS X. It may not be Linux, but it's a much better environment for me than Windows. Life being the odd thing that it is, I am working with ZenSpider, a classmate from high school who also happens to be a freakishly skilled programmer. He's very active with Ruby, and has also been teaching me (indirectly and possibly without his full awareness) about the wonders of unit testing and Extreme Programming - stupid name, but a lot of good ideas.

So I've been working hard on grasping the finer points of Ruby, especially the Ruby/Tk GUI toolkit. There's an excellent tutorial on the subject, but not much else. I have found myself digging around in the tk.rb code, and looking for quick and dirty guides to Tcl/Tk. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Oh yeah, and the Ruby geekery section is back up. Not much there, but ... you know, someday.

A Brief Experiment

20 October 2002

I've been fiddling with postNuke a bit over the last couple of days. It's a bit too cookie-cutter for my needs, though. I think I'll be adding some PHP functionality to the site, just not with that package.

Increasing Accessibility

18 October 2002

While I'm figuring out whether or not to use some fancy PHP Content Management System, I figured I might as well do a quick check of the site to see how accessible it is. Accessibility basically boils down to "Can everybody who visits your site get to the content?" That includes people with disabilities such as blindness. Cascading Style Sheets go a long way towards increasing site accessibility, but there are a few good habits that I'd missed. Due to my intensely fragile ego, it's important to me that everyone can see my contributions to the Web. If you are concerned about accessibility, you might want to put Bobby to use. It will go over a URL and tell you what basic guidelines your site is missing. And that's why there are one or two minor tweaks to the site.

This is the largest news item I've put on the site in ages, and I just realized that it's main purpose is to explain why the site menu uses hyphens now. It must be one of those days.

Getting Into the Groove

17 October 2002

Thanks to Craig Wisti of Globalhonk, coolnamehere is alive and healthy. I had some serious problems with the Web host SWHU, now I'm using Spidersaid, and things are much smoother. Thanks, Dad =-)

Oh, and I'm looking at breaking everything by getting postNuke installed as the CMS for the site.

So I'm Fickle

6 October 2002

I know, the Flash menu is gone. I know, I said I wanted to have fun. I know, I said accessibility was not a concern for me. I know, I'm fickle.

Now go away so I can change my mind again.

Accessibility be Hanged, I Wanna Have Fun!

2 October 2002

I've spent the last few days playing with GoLive and a few minutes today with LiveMotion. One of the results of the playing is the little flash menu you see overhead right now. I know, it's crappy. What do you expect? This is my first-ever attempt.

I fiddled a little with the menu overnight to handle some font-related strangeness in the Flash menu.

Some Random Thoughts

24 September 2002

Hm. The local library is holding a copy of Adobe GoLive Classroom in a book. I should really go down there and pick it up, since I am just sitting here and staring at the monitor otherwise.

Well, I have been fiddling around a little bit tonight. My host supports PHP, and I've been trying to think of a decent project for it. Give me a few days.

Coming Back to Life

18 September 2002

Wow, that was a long hiatus. For budget reasons, COOLNAMEHERE was down for the last month. I've scraped some change together, though, and the site is now being hosted by SWHU. Feels strange not hosting the site from my home machine. Then again, it's nice to be able to shut down my computer every once in a while :-).

So, now I have the Adobe Web Collection. It was money well spent! Time to make some pretty pictures.

Design Fun

30 July 2002

I've noticed that I've been doing very little with the site (or much of anything else) recently. I realized that part of the problem was that I've spent almost all of my free time coding. Not much time making pretty things. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," as the axe-wielding psychopath in The Shining would remind us. After looking at sites like PixelDecor, it was time to use the right side of my brain a bit. So now I'm playing with Dreamweaver. I figure if I want to write code, I can do something besides HTML.

And I must admit - Dreamweaver MX pretty much kicks ass.

Stay Off the Sidewalks

2 July 2002

30 years old, and I just got my driver's license today. Guess I was too busy drawing and messing with the computers to learn. Eventually you get tired of doing your shopping two bags at a time, and relying on the kindness of friends for long-distance trips. Honestly, though, it feels really cool to have it.

In order to better present PageTemplate examples, I whipped up a quick "view source" script which allows you to view the template file used for the examples. It's very simple at this point, but it will get more elaborate as I feel the urge. Now that I have that utility out of the way, I feel like I can work on those example project ideas.

System Stuff

19 June 2002

What's new at COOLNAMEHERE? Not much, yet it seems like a lot. Brooke just got done with finals week for the quarter. That was a busy time for everyone, but things have quieted down now. I'm studying for my driver's test. My original hope was to have a driver's license before I turned 30. Oh well, maybe I'll take the test before I turn 31. The thought occurs to me that I am an odd individual ;-)

Computer-wise, I'm doing some heavy changes to stuff on this computer. The attempt with Redhat 7.3 was a total disaster, but I'm feeling too lazy to mess with downloading a different distribution while people wonder where the site is. I re-installed the old Redhat 7.2 distro, and have spent most of the day upgrading software from source. The computer is in the middle of fixing the RH oversight of not using an official released GCC. This computer will only vaguely resemble a Redhat system by the end of the week.

And yes, I'm working on PageTemplate stuff while all this is going on.

PageTemplate 0.3

7 June 2002

I just packed up the latest release of PageTemplate and sent it out into the wild. New features?

• It works under ruby 1.6 now - you no longer need Ruby CVS to use this little toy!
• Experimental support for caching! If you don't know what this is, don't worry about it for now. I'll come up with a decent explanation when it's working better :-)

No new features are planned for the near future, just some big-time code scrubbing.

New Toys, Old Angst

5 June 2002

COOLNAMEHERE has been pretty erratic for the last couple of days, hasn't it? I upgraded my computer over the weekend - new CPU, motherboard, bigger hard drive. There's practically a new system in this old tower! Little problem: I forgot to get a new power supply. Naturally the old one went pop within a day or two. But all is well. I have my new power supply, and the computer seems quite happy.

The old angst comes from the fact that I also upgraded Redhat from 7.2 to 7.3, and have been having the "but it worked fine in the last version!" woes that seem to be part of the daily grind with RH. It works now, though, so I should stop messing with it. Sort of works - my Wacom Graphire2 is wonky at best. Some clever sod thought it would be fun to reverse the direction that the scroll button works, and it still hasn't occurred to any of the distribution maintainers that somebody might have a Wacom pad and want to use it for ... oh, I don't know ... drawing?

Time for a sideways upgrade on the OS. Something where they trust me enough to let me muck about with things. Debian, or FreeBSD? Whichever one will let me play my old CivCTP and Heretic 2 games, I suppose. And the Wacom. Don't forget about the Wacom.

Perl Section

29 May 2002

It just occurred to me that COOLNAMEHERE had no Perl section. Considering that I've used the language nearly every day for the last 4 years, this is a gross oversight on my part. Well, the oversight has been fixed, more or less.

Better Faster Stronger Image Gallery

27 May 2002

I love three day weekends. I worked my way through using RubyPhoto, and now the gallery is redone with a tool that I like, and it's ready for new pictures! Really. Check it out. There's a lot of pictures there that weren't up yesterday.

A side thought: RubyPhoto and ZenWeb are great tools, but using them is awkward. They need good front-ends. Hmmmm ... I might have a couple new projects to do :-).

Bleagh

25 May 2002

My current contract is filling up a lot of my time. That's okay, though - money is always a nice thing. It means that I don't have as much time to monkey with the gallery, though. Oh well. I found the RubyPhoto package, though, and it does exactly what I want. Once I figure out how to use it and fit it into the formatting of the rest of the site, expect lots of pictures to go back up.

Oh, and I think I figured out what was missing from the Site Map page. Just a little Renderer class, no big deal. I only missed it because it was merely obvious. Something has to be blindingly obvious before it catches my eye.

PageTemplate 0.1.0 Released

10 May 2002

My hands are shaking. Maybe that's just the coffee working through my veins. Anyhow, I've released the first version of my Ruby package PageTemplate, and announced it to the world (or at least the part of it that's subscribed to the Ruby mailing list). Now let's see what everybody thinks of it!

I'm Not Dead Yet!

8 May 2002

Okay. You can't tell from the site, but I have been very busy. That Ruby Templating thing is ready for use. Now, I just have to figure out how CGI works under Ruby! ...sigh...

Instead of the now hopelessly damaged 'template.py' script, you might want to look at the Ruby Template demo page to get an idea of the basic progress of the templating engine.

It's bedtime now, but I had to get another simple example done. Check out this very ... chunky ... guestbook, written in Ruby and taking advantage of my PageTemplate package.

So what's my plan now? I'm going to write up some documentation. You know, tutorials, API guidelines, stuff like that. Nothing fancy, but I want people to be able to use it as soon as they download it. That's just the kinda guy I am.

Just a Little Update

4 May 2002

I began the process of migrating my VIM pages to a more sensible location within the site. Go to www.coolnamehere.com/geekery/vim/doc to find the newest docs for VIM. You'll still find the old pages for a while, but the new section has the docs for version 6.1! How can you possibly resist?

One other thing: The Nifty Python Templating Thingy is most definitely going to be a Ruby Text Templating Idea. I want some more practice writing real code before I go and muck things up in anyone else's Ruby projects. The good news there is that I am already about 1/3 done with the test cases, with each test already passing merrily along. I think that's good. I plan to keep the pace up through the weekend.

Massive Geek Attack

2 May 2002

That Seattle.rb meeting got me to thinking. Unit testing is a big part of software development, but I know very little about it. It seems to me that my cute little PageTemplate project presents a perfect opportunity to learn. It's a small project, so I can keep most of it in my head. It's not so small that unit testing would be overkill - "killing a fly with a bazooka". I was bothered by some of the robustness of the code anyways.

Why has the code been on my mind? I've been reading The Practice of Programming, by Kernighan and Pike. This book is a broad strokes overview of how to be a good developer. It covers design, algorithms, testing, and quite a bit more, in a thin volume. Good stuff. If you already have a good idea how to write code, but want to be an actual programmer, I highly recommend this book.

Enough with the sales pitch. The book helped me understand several data structures: what they are, how to use them, and most importantly, when you could use them. I've had several "a-ha" moments reading TPOP, and one of them involved a complete rewrite of the PageTemplate engine using much cleaner data structures.

That's my new plan. Write some test cases, write the code, release when everything is okay, and then do whatever my heart desires.

Seattle.rb and Me

30 April 2002

I attended the monthly Seattle.rb meeting, and it was a lot of fun. Mostly educational, because all of these guys were more experienced than me. There was pair programming (it's a long story - go look up "Extreme Programming" on Google). There was meeting geeks. I learned a bit about Unit Testing. Plus, it was in the "cool" part of town, so I got to see some impressive tattoo jobs.

Nifty Python Templating Thingy

28 April 2002

NPTT? That's a horrible acronym. Anyhow, I've taken a break from Ruby programming stuff to ... uhh ... do Python programming stuff. Maybe we're talking about a little bit of obsessiveness, yes?

The fruit of my day's labor is a templating mechanism inspired by Perl's HTML::Template module. It allows simple variable substitution, if structures, and loops. I'm planning on spending this week cleaning up the code and figuring out distutils. Once I'm confident that it will install and work in most circumstances without blowing anything up, I'll make it available on the site.

Until then, why don't you go play with the test page? If it's broken, then you probably wandered in while I was fiddling with it =-).

Sorry, Folks!

24 April 2002

See this face? Do you see the expression on my face? No, of course you can't. Trust me, it's not a happy face. I succumbed to a little .NET hype, and went so far as to install IIS, so I could mess around with that nifty ASP.NET thingy. I was a good boy, and I grabbed all of the Windows Updates I could find.

Sometime in the dark of night (or the middle of day, I never can tell), some script compromised my server and set it up so that all of my HTML pages would open some sort of executable file on loading. Every HTML page. Not just the ones in wwwroot, but every dang HTML file readable by Windows. That means my awkward backup system is all messed up, too.

The easy solution would be to simply go back into Linux and never look back. The only problem with that is the fact that most of the available office packages for Linux suck, and the ones that don't are still too raw to be useful for every task. Plus, I would go into withdrawals if I had to miss out on PhotoShop. Don't try to tell me the GIMP is just as good, I've used the GIMP for a few years - I know better.

So, I'm using Apache under Windows. It's going to take me a few days to get everything under control again, but please be patient.

I'm going to go grab some coffee. That usually puts the happy face back on.

Problem (partly) fixed with ZenWeb, a creation of Ryan Davis. I'll fill in the details later, but in the meantime you can read all about my adventures playing with ZenWeb.

New Geekery Topic: Ruby

11 April 2002

I have been fiddling with Ruby for a while now, but just started getting serious about it over the last week. I thought, "what the heck, a Ruby topic sounds like a good idea." Not much there right now. A few links, and that is about it.

Oh, and I decided that the DHTML menu was just too ugly to live. I've replaced it with a PHP-constructed CSS2 menu. There are a few things that I want to do with it (like make it a little more browser-safe), but it works.

If you want to see some browser-busting uses of CSS, be sure to check out Eric A. Meyer's css/edge site.

More Pictures + a Geekery Topic

8 April 2002

I've been digging around in my hard drive over the last week or so, and found a few pictures to add to the Image Gallery. There's also a new UNIX Toolbox topic for the Geekery section. The Toolbox section provides a spot for me to share my notes on using the many many tools available to developers under UNIX-like systems (including Linux and FreeBSD).

The Gallery Lives!

4 April 2002

Whew! I have spent the last week or so working out a decent image gallery to show off photos and drawings. It is finally done. It needs a few things, like a few nifty graphics and ... well ... some more images.

In other news, I decided to put the processed VIM documentation back on the site. All you geeky UNIX folks, enjoy!

DHTML Menu Info System

29 March 2002

There's still a lot of tweaking that I want to do, but I found Ron Grafe's Bottom-Slide Info Box. I works nicely under both NS 4.x and Mozilla, so hopefully it won't break anyone's browser out there. Still ugly as sin, though. Gotta fix that.

Oh yeah ... to see it in action, just let your mouse rest on one of the links in the main menu at the top of the page.

New PHP Backend

28 March 2002

Technical decision here. I had to think about the CPU cycles on this old machine, and yer basic PHP + mySQL solution works pretty fast, and sucks up a bit less memory than Zope.

...Time Passes...

1 February 2002

Nothing in here from the Wayback Machine for a few months. I vaguely recall something about working on a contract in Renton, using Zope to host my site, and probably wiping my hard drive a few times.

Stalking Star Wars Fans

13 January 2002

Sometimes I am overcome by strange impulses. Yesterday morning, on Fark, I read about these two guys who are already waiting to see the new Star Wars movie, "Attack of the Clones". This movie is due out on May 16. Yes, they are hoping to make a record of some kind. I thought they were really sad individuals, until I realized that I was sitting at home reading about some guys who were sitting waiting for this movie. Plus, they've been visited by a stripper for their effort, while I have had no such luck. It turns out that they are camping out at the Cinerama theater here in Seattle. So, naturally, I stalked them. Here is the result, with pictures and everything.

Now I'm going to submit the link to Fark, go eat dinner, and find out if Fark will melt my computer. Wish me luck, folks!

Getting Things Organized

8 January 2002

It's been an organizing week more than anything else for me. I decided to apply the magic of make to the site building process, which automates creation and installation of site files. Either that, or I'm about to wipe out the entire site. Let's hope not!

I spent a few hours arranging and adding captions to some of the galleries in the photo album. Not every gallery has comments, because I ran out of ideas after a while. There are a few, though.

Brooke's 21st birthday was last Saturday. My only regrets are: how much I drank, and the fact that I left my backpack behind in one of the bars and had to come get it the next day. So there are only a couple of pictures from New Years and Brooke's birthday. They're from before anybody got drunk, even! I put them up anyways. What the heck, right?

There's a link to my brother's site on the exit page now. I enjoy mentioning family online.

Once again there are no new drawings. I've been busy with a lot of different things, but I'm running out of excuses now. I best get some new drawings done. Meanwhile, you can peek through history to see a few older drawings that I've scanned and put into the drawings section. It's nothing great, but it felt like too much time had passed since the last time I put pictures online.

Happy New Year!

3 January 2002

Hey there, Happy New Year! 2002 seems to be off to a friendly start for me. There isn't any new content today, because I've been busy with other things. "Like what?" you ask, or maybe not. For starters, I toyed with the idea of redoing this site with Zope. I'm still toying, but that means giving up a lot of hard-won tricks with WebMake. We'll see where that goes.

I used to have a warning on the front page. I still do, but now it only shows up if your browser doesn't:

1. Support the CSS "@import" directive, and
2. Support the "display: none" CSS attribute

It's a cheap and dirty trick, but it should work quite nicely. Now people who don't have to worry about it won't have to see a warning about somebody else's browser.

I finally got around to creating a page for older site news. I just took everything from last year and put it on a different page. I might do something fancier as time wears on.

In news that is much more exciting for me personally, I got an email yesterday from Eric A. Meyer, author of two major CSS books and producer of the inspirational css/edge site. You don't have to look too hard to notice the similarities between COOLNAMEHERE and his pages. I was never expecting to get an email from anybody who wrote books that are sitting on my shelf - especially an unsolicited one. Second off, I was surprised by how nice he was. Not that the existence of nice people is a surprise, just ... oh, I don't know. You never expect people to be nice to you.

Apparently, he was looking through Google to find people who were using his css/edge concepts, and this site was one of the entries that came up. Actually, you should try it yourself. Just go to Google and look for "css/edge" - you will find some pretty awesome work by other folks who found Eric Meyer's stuff irresistably attractive.

He even directly addressed my own little jab at myself for "ripping off" his site. Here's the cool bit:

Far from a ripoff, I think your site shows a nice dash of creativity in taking various css/edge ideas and using them in your own way. In fact, I feel rather flattered to see you using my concepts for your site. Anyway, I made the design concepts and markup freely available, so no harm done regardless. Share and enjoy, that's my philosophy...

Is that not cool? I hurried up to get his permission to mention it on this site. As mentioned elsewhere on the site, I have a fragile ego that responds quickly to kind words.

That's about it. A little site housekeeping, and me jumping up and down in excitement, but no new content. I think I'll go play with CSS now.