Well you may have noticed that all of my websites were down again today. After last time, I actually feel good about a (still unacceptable) 20 hour outage. But again my host's tech support is proving to be more enemy than help. Except for this domain only, all of my other websites were reverted back to states from 2006! Huh? My PSTValumni.com website in particular is currentlyexactly how it was on July 7th 2006! This is just maddening!!!
I'm so glad to see that my website just came back online, but I am livid at my website hosting company! All of my websites went down Monday afternoon. An occasional outage should never last more than a couple of hours at most. One came back 24 hours later but all databases were lost so that didn't even count. A few more came back after 48 hours. And my personal website (this one) didn't come back online until just a few minutes ago - 100 hours after it went down. Aaarrrggghhhh! Do not sign up for hosting with either Energized Hosting or PugMarks. I'm now looking at new hosting options.
As frustrating as this was (and still is since some sites still aren't working right), I'm glad all of my personal email goes through Google Apps so I could at least communicate with people. And thankfully my site is finally back online... for now.
So I have this webcam but it's doing absolutely nothing. It was pointing out the window for months but during the day it's too bright (it's a crappy camera) and at night it's all black. What's the point? So I recently just stuck it on top of my computer but since neither of us want to be constantly watched by strangers, it's just pointing at the blinds. Boring.
So what should I do? Better yet, what do YOU want me to do? Here are a few thought I had:
BoomerCam - We've already tried having a camera on our dog Boomer but his window seat is gone so he's less likely to laying in one spot during the day.
HelloCam - The computer beeps whenever somebody connects to the webcam. We don't like to be on camera but we don't mind giving a friendly wave to people.
Maegan's ArtCam - Sort of stupid to have a live streaming camera for a motionless drawing, but we could set up an easel to display Maegan's latest art work.
The reason I'm thinking about this again is because Yahoo just released their Y!Live service, which allows anybody to broadcast themselves to the entire world. Again, (despite the graphic on the homepage) I don't want to broadcast myself all day. However it may be nice to utilize the camera to occasionally video chat with family and friends. My mom in Florida just got DSL and my sister's always had high speed. And I know Dee would love it. I've tested it out and I know it works and that it can be made private, but I can't run the 24/7 webcam at the same time. So what should I do?
I've always hated the homepage of my website. I tried including sample content like blog snippets and photo feeds but it felt too redundant. I tried avoiding redundant content but then the site seemed boring and unaesthetic. This past weekend I finally sat down and just started fiddling around with PhotoShop, with no particular ideas in mind. Eventually I came up with a new homepage design that looks okay and doesn't repeat content found on other pages.
There are currently three panoramic images (normal photos that I just cropped) that are rotated randomly each time you visit or refresh the page. One image is of Maegan digging for shells during low tide at Isle of Palms, South Carolina. Another image is of Patty and I at Tybee Island, Georgia, with the lighthouse behind us. A third image is of the Morikami Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, Florida. That last one looks nice but I hope to replace it eventually with something more appropriate since none of us are actually in the photo. In the future I'll try to take more photos with "panoramic-cropping" in mind.
Last month we lost our entire website Photo Album due to an unknown issue on my server. Since I had to start from scratch again, rather than reinstall the software which failed I decided to go with Picasa Web Albums. I much rather prefer to fully embed my entire photo album within my website like I was able to do with Gallery, but this is not possible with PWA. Gallery had other great features too but I just couldn't beat the convenience of being able to upload my photos straight from Picasa, plus the reliability of not having to maintain the online software myself. So check out my new photo album! (I haven't gotten around to sorting and captioning all of the sub-albums yet.)
Picasa Web Album is an offshoot online product of Picasa, the desktop photo software from Google. I've been using Picasa for our family photos for about a year now and I'm very happy with both the quality and its ease of use. Like the desktop software, Picasa Web Album is also free.
As you can see, I've redesigned the website. It's a simpler design, but one big difference is a rotating header image. Every time you load a new page or click "reload" on your browser you'll get a new header image. So far I've got four header images available but I'll add more later. Another big difference is the switch to a horizontal navigation bar with pulldown sub-menus. This makes the menu more streamlined and organized, and the page content wider.
I've still got more pages that need to be converted. I also need to fix several problems that popped up unexpectedly, such as the fact that the right-side blog menu has somehow fallen to the bottom of the page if you're viewing this in Internet Explorer. And although it's unrelated to the new website design, I need to create a new Photo Album. This time I promise to keep it up-to-date.
My long list of website updates, upgrades, and fixes contiues to grow. Between this website and several others I operate, I've been stuck in limbo waiting for:
phpBB3 - This message board upgrade (for another website) is huge, but it was expected to be released last summer. Come on already!
New Blogger - Google's Blogger.com already upgraded to a new and improved version but for unknown reasons my account was unable to migrate to the new system. I'm still waiting in limbo, unable to use the new features and not knowing if this eventual change will cause me any problems.
Website Redesign - I've settled on a long-overdue new design for this website, written the necessary code, and tested the template for browser compatibility. However it will take a few hours to properly implement the changes and I just haven't found the time to make the switch yet. Hopefully I'll get it done sometime in the next few weeks.
Gallery - I'm not waiting for any major upgrades but this morning I found out that two of my three websites that use this photo album software have suddenly stopped working, and I haven't got a clue as to why. This website is the only one which the photo album is still operational.
For those who are not internet savvy, no, I did not spell the word delicious wrong. del.icio.us is an extrememly popular social bookmarking website. Like other social-networking trends that are popular among teenagers (like myspace.com), I just didn't care about it at all. However I found an awesome blogging trick that allows me to organize my posts by categories (also known as tags). Since I use Firefox and I already installed an extension called Greasemonkey, all I needed was the third ingredient of a del.icio.us account to add categories to my blog.
What's great about categories/tags is that it allows you to easily find related posts that may interest you but which aren't listed anymore because they're older. At the bottom of this post you'll see that I added the category tags of "blogging", "Internet", and "Webmaster" to this post. Clicking on any of these links will send you to a page which lists every other related post with similar category tags. Plus you'll now see a cool category list in the right sidebar of my blog.
Wow I blog about Maegan a lot.
P.S. I find it interesting that del.icio.us is actually the domain name of "icio dot U-S" (like this domain name is "mikesussman dot com"). Then they simply made a prefix directory called "del" (like you often add the usually unnecessary prefix of "www" to other websites). It's amazing that this creative mistreatment of the domain naming system ever caught on. Although it seems that enough people didn't "get it" because they needed to also buy the more traditional website address of delicious.com which forwards you to del.icio.us.
On our website there is a section called "Maegan Says." It is a collection of funny quotes that I began collecting last year. There is only one single link to it via a tiny graphic located in Maegan's mini bio section, not visible unless you scroll down the page. But oddly enough, "Maegan Says" has become more and more popular lately. How people manage to find and click on that link more often than some of the main menu items, I don't know.
So the only logical step is to give the masses what they want. I have now placed a link to the "Maegan Says" section on the main navigation menu. Keep talking Maegan!
Once in a while I stop in to let everyone know I'm still here. Earlier this month we all went to Florida. It was great. Lately I've been working on my newest website, The Dugout. Also, softball season begins next week. I'm sure other stuff is going on but I can't think of it right now. I promise that after I revise my website this summer, it'll get updated more regularly.
*The blog entry above was originally posted in March of 2002, but was just re-posted from backup files in 2007. Despite the promise above to regularly update the website, this is apparently the last time I posted to my blog until 15 months later.
Patty and I were on vacation in Florida last week visiting my mom. It was great. We went to a spring training baseball game between the Mets and Cardinal, went to the zoo, the beach, and went swimming several times.
After returning, I finished up and launched a new website. It's been a couple of months of work, and it's only 90% done, but it's ready for the public. Check it out at www.CharlotteMLB.com.
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