Category: Web Design

October 3, 2003 /

Also! Webcomics are maybe the one source of content with the biggest conflict between proposed and actual posting schedule, which makes them PERFECT for RSS feeds… except nobody has one. Okay, Penny Arcade does, but they never miss a day anyway. Even Keenspot and Keenspace, the people who get probably half of all webcomic traffic in the world (and write the software that implements probably 80% of all webcomics), don’t have any kind of update feed.

So they should, basically, is what I’m saying. It’s called Really Simple Syndication, you know, it can’t be that hard to add in.

(Yes, I realize that my comic probably needs it more than anyone’s. I do plan to add one, once I have the time to rewrite my entire site apparatus. But again: I’m lazy.)

September 4, 2003 /

I’m finally initiating the domain transfer to the PHPWebhosting name servers tonight; it should refresh around the world in less than 48 hours, so this thing may disappear for a while. I haven’t managed to get NewsBruiser to show anything on the temporary (subdomained) site over there, but then it may be a domain name problem in the first place. We’ll see.

Anyway, hang tough, and don’t plan on xorph@xorph being too reliable for a couple of days. If I go anywhere I’ll be back soon.

August 22, 2003 /

Bleagh. The facility from which Deep Fried, my current and past webhost, rented its space is filing for bankruptcy. The admin at Deep Fried is going to shut down his hosting operations (and it’s lucky I started trying to track him down, or I probably wouldn’t have known about this until my site suddenly disappeared). I’ve got everything copied over to PHPWebHosting now, but the domain transfer is looking to be a pain in th’ butt. I’m being forced to save local copies of all my journal entries, since I have no idea when xorph.com will suddenly start pointing somewhere new. When it does I’ll be unable to get to the old files, which means no copying. This is dumb. At least I managed to get out of going through the default, register.com.

Anyway, yeah, expect continued hesitations in content. I don’t much like the situation, but hopefully this will allow me to stave off another site move for a few years (at which point I will have a million dollars, and will buy my own damn dedicated server).

Argh.

August 13, 2003 /

Okay, so at some point my subdomains stopped working. That’s fucking great. No wonder people think the site is down–I’ve been giving out notfallingdown.xorph and shamzmam.xorph (for AZWP) forever, and now they give big old 404s. This is ridiculous. I really need to change webhosts, but I need several hours to get through such a transfer and it’s time I don’t have.

August 10, 2003 /

Maria and I saw a church marquee the other day that read

GOD IS BIGGER

We figured it was the ontological argument for God’s existence at its highest possible compression.

For the record, I know that xorph.com is experiencing outages (well, besides the failure of its cartoonist). Deep Fried, my webhost, is getting really flaky because the colo facility from which it resells is also getting really flaky, which explains the problems I’ve had with PHP, ftp and email accounts. I’ll probably be moving to PHPWebhosting soon, as it comes highly recommended and seems to have everything I need. (Stephen, we may have to talk about this–where are you, anyway?)

July 11, 2003 /

So the design isn’t quite done yet, but here it is: NFD now bruises its news with some of the neatest software I’ve ever had the chance to yell at. The archive navigation is a lot different now, but one thing I’m actually pretty proud of is that all the old permalinks will still work–if I’ve done it right, there’s a little script that will redirect you right to the newly bruised entry.

I actually started working on this over a week ago, and once I’d started using NB to post I couldn’t go back (which is why there hasn’t been anything on the old NFD page for so long). Switching my journal software was like walking into a dealership with a wheelbarrow and driving out with a red Ferrari, so I’ve been writing, but in here instead. You can read like two weeks of the stuff starting on June 27 (although I think this next one is my favorite yet).

The front-page design has been trickier, since I wanted to finally have something on this site that was valid XHTML and built entirely with CSS. I think it’s pretty close now, but the design still looks better in IE than Netscape. I also tried to tidy all the old code in the conversion, but I’m sure I missed something; if you find broken links or funny-looking entries, let me know.

So enjoy the calendar, the searchability, the randomnymity and the category madness; pretty soon there should be something else up top, either a random quote or a Today in History feature. Expect entries to be rather more frequent but correspondingly shorter, as now updating isn’t such an ordeal that I feel I have to save up my material. Expect also at least two more of the secret projects I’ll be developing this summer, involving obsessions and imperatives.

I really do hope you like the new NFD (BC). And I’d love to stay and type more, but today is Blood Drive Day and I’ve gotta go faint.

September 5, 2002 /

Apartment update: There’s no stopper for the kitchen sink, so I’ve been using a wad of Saran Wrapto plug up the drain in order to do dishes. If you were to conclude from this, without other information, that I’m living in a guys’ apartment, you’d be right. But, y’know, at least we are doing the dishes (which we only dirtied four days ago).

As is usually the case when there’s actually a lot happening in my life, I haven’t had time to write it down. I have literally not spent one continuous hour in leisure activity since Monday,when it became apparent that I was going to have to personally reset the speed and duplex mode on every single Ethernet card in Cheek / Evans. There are 109 students in Cheek / Evans, and almost all of them have computers. You can imagine the rest.

I’m also way way behind on the Cento web site, which is supposed to go live next Monday (this statement and the preceding paragraph are not unrelated). I’m really unhappy about this, plus of course the fact that the middle room is a disaster zone. A lifetime of Mom’s cleaning habits is starting to drive me out of my mind. I know I don’t have time to clean up all my junk, and I don’t even really want to, but if I don’t do it soon I’m going to start screaming at random. Thanks, Mom!(I’m kidding. Mostly.)

Also I got a girlfriend. You might have guessed that.

I think I’m really going to enjoy this year if I can ever catch up enough to notice that it’s happening.

so what! say what! for your own sake
do you have a headache or heartbreak?
P.S. Anthropology rocks!