New homepage, other goodies

September 11th, 2008

The past few days I’ve been very busy with web development.  I’ve written a new home page for this site—from scratch—and I think it’s an improvement over the original one.  I’ve also revamped the family business’s website, though those changes aren’t “live” yet—I only need switch out the index page with a new one that redirects to the new site location.  I’m waiting to see if everything works out well and if everybody likes the new design.  I’ve based it (surprise) on a WordPress blog.  I’ve ported all the original pages to the blog as, well, pages; and I’ve even created a link to download a stock list—something I didn’t really know how to do when I put the first site up.  Yes, I know it’s as simple as uploading a file and then placing a link to it on your site, but remember I was still having my hand held by FrontPage at the time.  To be honest, I think WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors hurt web development in this respect: they allow people to get by with only serial knowledge about web development.  In other words, anything FrontPage doesn’t make obvious is a mystery to many prospective site creators.  I know this.  I was one.

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So far, so…quiet?

September 3rd, 2008

I’ve been here at Wayne State for several full days now.  I arrived Monday evening, laden with stuff, and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with any of it.  Oh, I dragged out my computer, plugged that in, and raided the Grape Nuts.  They look suspiciously like sawdust.  My friend Saad helped me move my things in, though the current room arrangement doesn’t really afford me much room.  I had planned on lofting the bed as I did last year, and then putting the desk and dresser side-by-side beneath it.  No dice.  The lofting materials were not anywhere in the suite.  I have no sides and no pegs.  I’ll have to ask for those downstairs, and frankly, I kind of like the arrangement I’ve got now, anyway.  No more crawling up a damned ladder every time I want to get in bed.  I can sit and type away on my computer all I want from ground level, and when I want to put it down, the chair’s right there.  I can work lying down, too—something my habit of getting up and walking around to work through ideas never let me do easily if it meant crawling up and down a ladder every five minutes or so.

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