Not Just No But HELL NO! To SOPA And PIPA

You may not have heard of this but with all the publicity you probably have. Congress is working on a new bill called the Stop Online Priacy Act or SOPA. It has been introduced and championed by none other than those who refuse to change their business models to meet popular demand and attempt to punish their customers as a means of survival: The Entertainment Industry.

Here's a snippet from Wikipedia:

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.^[4]

Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites.^[5] They cite examples such as Google's $500 million settlement with the Department of Justice for its role in a scheme to target U.S. consumers with ads to illegally import prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.^[6]

Opponents say that it violates the First Amendment,^[7] is Internet censorship,^[8] will cripple the Internet,^[9] and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions.^[7][10] Opponents have initiated a number of protest actions, including petition drives, boycotts of companies that support the legislation, and planned service blackouts by English Wikipedia and major Internet companies scheduled to coincide with the next Congressional hearing on the matter.

Here's the part that concerns me.  It requires "Internet service providers to block access to [infringing websites]." ISPs are a utility, not an enforcement agency. It's like asking the gas company to patrol the streets and turn off the gas to the homes of suspected drug dealers. It's an impossible task.

Okay, maybe ISPs won't have to patrol for the sites but simply block them when they are informed about them. Well, that currently requires a court order and sounds a lot like DMCA takedown notices and we all know how well those have worked out.

Boil it down and it's censorship without due process. I am all for copyright owners protecting their works but this is not the way. It blatantly ignores the concept of fair use which includes criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

How You Can Take Action: (many taken from the EFF website)

1. Via Google: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
2. Call your Senators and Representative and tell them to oppose Protect-IP and SOPA, respectively.  Click here for some suggested talking points.
3. Contact Congress through EFF’s action center.  Customize your letter to explain who you are and why you are worried about this bill.
4. Do you administer a website? Then put a banner on your site protesting censorship or link to EFF’s action center. I put a banner on my wav site.

Don't be silent or you may be silenced.

Why You Should Always Proofread Your Web Pages

Simply Communicating

One of the links you'll notice on my blogroll is Baskin Dim Bulb. This is a marketing blog written by Jonathan Salem Baskin. I don't know him from Adam and I don't recall what first brought me to his blog but I was impressed enough to immediately add him as a site I wanted to keep track of.

Many of his posts are very heavily business related and I don't read them because they have little to no application in the realm of state-funded education. Once in a while, however, he points out some boneheaded marketing approach or lauds a very good one. He also has some really insightful observations about communication.

Today's offering is called "Text is the New Multimedia." It speaks to the ineffectiveness of video or other "cool" multimedia experiences and how many businesses fall short when utilizing simple text (as in a press release excessively heavy with meaningless adjectives). What caught my eye was this:

As opposed to video, text is a "hot medium," if you buy into Marshall McLuhan's theories about media (and I do, for the most part). Even when viewed online, words engage a single sense, and thereby establish a direct connection that is richer in specific information and meaning than more participatory, or "cool" multimedia experiences.

When we're blown away by a video, we translate it into words to label our reactions, code our memories, and subsequently share our thoughts. Even reduced to tweets and abbreviations, text remains the most facile communications engine available to us, only you wouldn't know it from all of the media excitement and agency sales efforts to tell us otherwise.

Maybe that's why blogs and things like Facebook and Twitter are so popular.

Just What I Need!

More bullshit propaganda in my email from a company I don't really want to hear from in the first place.

Assholes.

All I wanted to do was download a couple of ringtones from AT&T.

Do Only That Which Is Right

Although my father would almost assuredly cringe at the thought, I have been thinking about being ordained in the Universal Life Church. That's the internet church that you basically give your name and email to, like you were signing up for Facebook or something, and Ta-Da! you're clergy. I have thought about it before as a lark (for $12 you can get a certificate saying you're a "Reverend of Rock 'n Roll" or one of several other official- and not-so-official-sounding titles - I kind-of like "Universal Philosopher of Absolute Reality") but backed out because it seemed somewhat sacrilegious.

So, why am I thinking about it again? I have a friend who is getting married. In two weeks. In the middle of nowhere. In Wyoming. And based on other indicators, I'm not sure he has exactly secured an officiator for this ceremony. I am driving out there with a mutual friend in a straight shot, we're going to crash in a hotel room for the night, attend the ceremony, then do a straight shot back to Oklahoma. If I'm going to go through all that trouble, I want to make SURE this thing happens even if I have to officiate it myself. As such, my ordination would not be for any spiritual reason, really, but only so I could legally solemnize the/a wedding. Of course, what I do with it from there... who knows?

Utterli Failed

I posted an audio clip to Utterli on Saturday. It was supposed to post here, too. Apparently it didn't make it.

Update: D'Oh! I forgot that I had changed my password and forgot to tell Utterli about it. All fixed now.

The Best Web Hosting Company EVER!

I have been fiddling around the web for several years now. I started with free services like Geocities and others who's names are lost to obscurity. In order to spread my wings and have more space, I finally moved to paid services.

The first service I used, MidPhase, was $7.95 per month, which was about the going rate for budget web hosting. They were okay but I signed up for an extended contract (buy 12 months, get 3 free) which, in the end, they didn't honor.

My next host was Siteflip. This was bargain-basement shared web hosting. $4.00 a month and, according to the reviews, you got what you paid for. They gave you space but the support was almost non-existent. I didn't much care since I hadn't had much interaction with MidPhase and I was getting a serious upgrade on disk space. Of course, it didn't help that I had to go through a special link to get that price.

When renewal time came around, I was heavily into listening to the Geek News Central Podcast, which is sponsored by GoDaddy.com. Not being entirely comfortable with the lack of support and shady side-deal style of SiteFlip, I checked out GoDaddy. For $4.99/month I could get 5GB of space (which turned into 10GB by the time I signed up) and have up to 10 MySQL databases and unlimited subdomains (subdomain.domain.com). Why some sites charge extra for subdomains, I'll never know. It's simply a pointer that exists in a single file on the server that tells Apache (the web server software) that when someone gets to the site using subdomain.domain.com, direct them to a particular folder. Anyway, I signed up and used the special savings code from Geek News Central (todd20) and saved 20% on my order which brought it down to... $4.00/month.

When I first logged in, I didn't know what to do. As far as control of my account I was at least a level higher than any other service had let me operate. Once I figured out that I had control over any and all domains I may set up through GoDaddy instead of having individual accounts for each, I was impressed.

GoDaddy has an excellent knowledge base to begin with but I have had a couple of occasions where I've needed to contact support. They have been prompt with their responses and, more importantly, they actually answered the questions that I asked.

One of the nice features of GoDaddy is the one-click install of applications such as Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Coppermine Photo Gallery, SilverStripe and a host of other, mostly free, applications. You click the install link, answer a few simple questions (i.e. where do you want to install, password for the database, etc.), then sit back and let the servers handle it automagically. If an update is available, you can click an update link and the server will let you know when it is complete. You literally don't even have to think about it.

Now here's why GoDaddy will forevermore have my web hosting business.

One of the applications I have installed, SilverStripe, that runs my wav archive had an update available about a month ago. I clicked the update link and the update failed. With another click, I rolled it back and tried again. It failed again with some sort of internal server error so I rolled it back and left it for another day.

Yesterday, I tried the update one more time and one more time it failed. I decided to contact support and see if they had any idea why this was (not) occurring. I didn't expect a response until sometime Monday.

Later yesterday afternoon, I received an email stating that my issue would require additional review and was being escalated to the Advanced Support Team. I figured a front-line soldier looked at it and, not having access to the proper resources, bumped it up the chain. No biggie. The site was up and running and I could be patient until I got another email on Monday either asking for more detail or telling me what was happening.

About 30 minutes ago, my phone rang. It was a support representative from GoDaddy. He wanted permission to have them try the upgrade on their side so they could see if they could get it to work or trace it and find out where the hiccup was.

I never expected to have my issue about installation of a third-party product update even examined over a weekend much less have someone call me personally on a Sunday evening.

Friends, if you are in need of web hosting, I can unequivocolly and without a moments hesitation strongly recommend GoDaddy. Plus, I know some codes (like the todd20 one I used for hosting) that can save you money and let you help keep the lights on at my favorite podcast. Just send me an email and I'll share them with you.

These Aren't The Droids Deals You're Looking For

A few weeks ago, my wife discovered Swoopo. For those not familiar with Swoopo it is what is referred to as a penny auction site. The auctions run on a timer with a fixed bid interval (2¢, 6¢, 12¢, etc.). When you bid, just like in a real auction, time is added to the counter. In this way, you can be within a minute of the auction ending literally for hours.

The lure is that, sometimes (rarely, actually), the item goes for very very cheap. A Canon Rebel T1i 15MP Digital SLR for $6.80, an Acer 18.1" laptop for $3.20, and a 32GB iPhone 3G S for $1.14 are but a few of the extreme examples. But imagine that iPhone for even $263.88 (no contract required) - it's still a great bargain.

The catch is that it costs 60¢ to place each bid.

Some people have equated it to gambling and, honestly, the psychology involved is very similar and the site does a lot of things to enhance those effects. Having been a previous estate auction junkie, the psychology is very similar there, too.

After watching for a relatively brief time, the wife decided to jump in and give it a try. She bought some bids and started bidding on items. It took her a couple of days and a couple of bid packs to even start getting the hang of it and still she wasn't winning. She checked out the beginner auctions and won a 20-bid voucher for just under $2, I think. That got her back in the game and play the game she did.

Having been drooling over iPhones, I had been carefully watching the iPhone auctions. Looking at average prices, close times, etc. I registered so I could ad them to a watch list but I wasn't going to start bidding until I had a decent grasp of how things worked.

Then they got me. Do you remember me saying the site does a lot of things to enhance the psychological effects? They sent me an email telling me that "today and today only" the first bid pack I bought would include 25% additional bids for "free". Hmmm... I was planning on buying bids eventually anyway. Why not buy them now and get a little bonus? Which is exactly what I did.

I tried to be very judicious with my bids and was even bidding on bid packs to try to pad my stockpile. But, you see, they have this thing called a bid butler. You set a lower and upper limit and the maximum number of bids you want to allot within that range. The bid butler is guaranteed to place a bid for you within the last 10 seconds of the auction as long as the price is within the range you specified and it has not expended the allotment of bids you gave it.

Here's the rub. If I have an active bid butler set for, say, $5.00 to $15.00, the price is at $5.22 and my bid butler has bid for me in those "last 10 seconds" a couple of times already. Then, somebody else activates a bid butler starting at $5.24. His bid butler will make his first bid, the next bid, to which my bid butler will react and bid $5.26 (assuming a 2¢ auction) and what I have termed a Bid Butler Battle will ensue. The two bid butlers will continue to bid against each other (quite rapidly) until one of the contestents is out of bids or out of range. The bottom line is that a Bid Butler Battle can eat up bids very very quickly.

So, why use bid butlers? Because if you look at the ended auctions you'll see that the majority of the winning bids were placed by a bid butler. At any rate, I burned through a couple of chunks of bids before deciding I didn't necessarily want to use bid butlers anymore.

So, there I sat, placing bids now and then on this item or that (not simultaneously) until I had only a single bid left. I was just going to let it languish there until, on a whim, I took a look at the beginner auctions. Beginner auctions are reserved for those who have not yet won any auction. The participant pool is limited and the experience level is lower but you also won't find any big ticket items there.

At any rate, I was perusing the auctions and across the top the site was showing four or five auctions that would be "ending soonest" and I saw a 20 bid voucher counting down. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... I clicked the bid button, I saw the bid amount flash and saw the timer jump up but my bid count didn't go down. I quickly clicked the title to go to the actual item page and discovered that my bid hadn't registered. So I waited a few more seconds and 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... bid! My bid registers, timer jumps to 20 seconds, and I watch it count down to zero. I won the 20 bid pack for $1.20 ($1.80 when you calculate in the cost of the bid). I was back in the game!

So here's what's happening. When you go to the site, you see a lot of shiny, valuable objects being auctioned off at very low prices. Those low prices are attached to a counter that is ticking away ever closer and closer to zero "Oh my God! I'm going to miss out on a fantabulous bargaination! I better get in on this before it gets away." Then they start enticing you in with special promotions and special deals and before you know it, they have you hooked.

So, I had my 20 bids and decided I might as well use them to try to get that iPhone. I got up this morning and started watching one who's timer was counting down. I bid very very carefully. The competition was tough but I was still in the fight. I had about 5 bids left and decided that I was going to use them up and be done with it. If I won with those 5 bids, so be it. If not, I was out.

Then I saw it. On the lower left of the bid button there were three little people figures. They had closed the auction to new bidders. It was just us now (however many that was). If they've closed the auction, maybe it's almost over. Well, I just have to stay in it now... so I bought another bid pack [hangs head in shame]. I actually made a good show of it but when the sale price got within a couple dollars of $100, I had to back out. The competition had gotten too rich for me.

Now, here's what I figured out. I went to the AT&T site yesterday and found out I can get a refurbished 16GB iPhone for $299 ($317 w/ shipping/tax/fees/whatever). Knock off the $100 gift card I got when I won the Matrix pro and that brings it down to $217. I sold the Matrix Pro for $182, leaving a manageable balance of $35. But because of the shiny psychology of Swoopo, I no longer have all of that $182. I still have a decent chunk but not enough to make as big a difference. So, I'm letting my wife use up my remaining bids and I'm walking away for good. If I ever win big in the lottery I may go back because the bargains are good if you can stick it out but the site sure isn't losing any money. Let me show you what I mean.

Let's first look at one of the cheap auctions. Remember the Canon EOS Rebel T1i I mentioned going for $6.80? Swoopo puts the MSRP for that particular item at $819.99. Now assuming it was a 2¢ auction, that means there were 340 total bids placed on that item (6.80/.02). At 60¢ per bid, Swoopo collected $204.00 (340*.60). Add the $6.80 and they sold that camera for $210.80. Now, Swoopo probably got it for wholesale so they're not losing the $609.19 it looks like they are but they've taken a loss on that camera.

Now, let's take a look at an iPhone. Swoopo puts the value of a 32GB iPhone 3Gs at $898.00. Looking at 27 sales over the past week, the average selling price comes out to be $124.03 (including one for $1.14 and another for $309.42). Let's just give the benefit of the doubt and say it's a 6¢ auction. Using that average selling price and dropping a penny to make the math come out even, that's 2,067 total bids. At 60¢ per bid and adding in the $124.02 selling price, Swoopo took in $1,364.22 for an $898.00 iPhone that they didn't pay $898.00 for. That's a little over 1.5 times the MSRP. And if you use the high-end number I quoted, you're looking at a raw selling price 3.8 times the MSRP (309.42/.06=5,157*.6=3,094.20+309.42=$3,403.62/898=3.8 times MSRP).

Whoever came up with this concept is a genius! I applaud you but I have to stay away.

There Goes The Neighborhood

Before Google. Before MSN. When Yahoo was just getting started. When Alta Vista was the king of the search engines. When I first got into this world wide web thing back in nineteen ninety whatever with a copy of HTML For Dummies on my knee and notepad on the screen, my first public web site was posted at Geocities. At the time, Geocities offered something like 5 or 10 Megabytes of space and was organized into categories that were accessed as "neighborhoods." For instance, my site was going to be related to entertainment (specifically movies) so I moved into Hollywood. All of the 'addresses' in Hollywood were full so I moved into the Hollywood Hills. The site is long gone (it disappeared a few years ago) but the address was www.geocities.com/hollywood/hills/2766.

I envisioned a site where peolpe could come to get various types of information about movies: release dates, video release dates, reviews, etc. I called it "Uncle Bubby's Weird World of Wacky Entertainment" (yeah, I know, title lameness and stupidity factor: 9.5). What I envisioned my site would become eventually materialized on the web as The Internet Movie Database (IMDB). Can you imagine little old me and my basic HTML skills putting together something like that? It turned out that it was a lot of work that took a lot of time that I didn't have so I dropped the concept after less than six months (and a few years before IMDB). But I kept the site.

What I did with the site after that still lives on. I still utilize the original concept but the site has taken many forms. It has been edited using Netscape, a couple of different free WYSIWYG editors, MS Frontpage, and is now utilizing a Content Management System. The site has been hosted at many different providers: Some free, some not and sometimes two at a time to have enough storage to accomdate it (I can't name them all). But Bubby's Wav Archive had its humble beginnings at Geocities.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, it seems that Yahoo is quietly shutting down Geocities some time later this year. It's not surprising, really. Beyond the fact that Yahoo, as they often seem to do these days, let it wither away with a lack of promotion, I think times have changed. Like the transition from open-air shopping malls, to enclosed super-malls, to now independent stores connected to each other, the web has changed. With Geocities, you could actually go to a portal and search all of the different neighborhoods. With the strength of modern search engines and the numerous cross-site portals, who needs a portal like Geocities? Plus with the dynamic nature of web sites sometimes, who wants to be locked into a subject matter?

Geocities was good to me and it was there when I needed it. I am sad but not surprised to hear it will soon be no more. Goodbye, old friend.

Another Reason To Be Suspicious Of Microsoft (as if you needed it)

I'm trying to embed some wmv files into a PowerPoint presentation. They play fine on my PC but won't play on another PC. I figured out that what I am doing is simply linking to the files and not placing the actual movies into the presentation. So I pulled up help and typed in 'embed wmv.'

The first item that was listed looked promising. It read, 'Troubleshoot issues with sounds, movies, and links in your PowerPoint presentation.' Ah, just what I was looking for. But instead of being directed to a Microsoft KB article or even to a Microsoft forum, I was directed to a third-party site called pptfaq.com.

Well, presumably MS knew it was there because they had to integrate it into their help system, right? The only problem was that it had inaccurate information. One of the first things the article does is to point you to another site that has a free add-in for embeding movies. The only problem is that the developer of the add-in has decided that he now wants to get paid for his efforts.

Normally, at the end of every help article, Microsoft provides a feedback box. Was this article helpful? Care to comment? But since this was not a Microsoft site, there was no feedback form. Is MS now endorsing third-party help sites? did this just get picked up via an integrated web search?

Trustworthy Computing... right.

I Don't Get It

I went to work again on figuring out why my pages aren't rendering right in IE. I deleted one line of code and took a look. It looks fine. I put the code back in. It still looks fine. I'm just going to go with it.

GAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

I hate Internet Explorer.

Okay, so, here's my problem. When I set up my new wav site using a content management system (CMS), I previewed it exclusively in FireFox as I was building it. It did and still does look just fine in FireFox. In IE, however, the background graphic that is supposed to be behind the content section displays at the very top of the page, then stops and it shows the main page background. Here, let me show you what I mean.

The one on the left is how IE is rendering it. The one on the right is how it's supposed to look and does look in everything but IE.

I've done all sorts of troubleshooting. I've added code, I've taken out code, I've substituted code, I've reverted to the original code... nada. I then decided to take a drastic step. I loaded another instance of the CMS I'm using into another folder. Once it was installed, I started going through the tutorials to build the basic structure of the site. I did this while previewing the changes in Internet Explorer. I wanted to see where it broke so I could figure out which file might be the troublemaker. If I made it all the way through the basics without a problem, I would start adding my customizations and mirroring my production site so I could see which one of my brilliant ideas screwed it up.

It broke pretty early on. I didn't even make it through lesson one. The only problem is that it broke in reverse. Here, take a look at what I mean:

What am I supposed to do with that? I can't troubleshoot if it won't break the same way twice. Do you see why I hate Internet Explorer?

Update: Apparently, the test site is broken in Firefox, too. I guess I'll move forward on it tomorrow.

CMS - A Double-Edged Sword

CMS stands for Content Management System. It's a system for managing digital media and text on the web without having to get your hands dirty. A blog is a good example of a CMS. You log in to the system, an editor pops up, you enter your text, you save it and it appears on your site. Without a CMS, you might have to write your entry offline, save it in a special format, then upload it to the server via FTP and possibly have to edit some code to get your new content to appear.

A CMS makes life so much easier. Content is usually stored in a database so it takes up less room, the system handles all the linking and code writing and, unless you want to change something in the structure, you never have to see its innards.

A CMS is not without its limitations. The user is bound by the rules of the system. For instance, some systems will automatically add new content to your menus while others require you to manually create menu entries. The tradeoff is that, with the latter, you have more control of where and how the entries appear.

With the system I'm currently using at work, you have to create the content and save it. Then you have to create a menu entry under which the content will appear. After that, you have to tell the system how and when to make those menus and menu entries visible.

Once it's setup, of course, your content just drops in but making those decisions can be a little frustrating - especially if you want to emulate how a different section functions and can't remember how you did it... or where.

Yes, I'm complaining - but in a nice way. I'm kinda mellowed out this morning because I'm on some mild muscle relaxers for a neck/back/shoulder spasm and they're relaxing my attitude as well.

I could really go for a nap right now.

Missfire

Something has gone wrong. I thought the 404 error was due to the DNS server update not completing. It's getting to the right place but it says it can't find files that are, in fact, there.

I would still like your input. Until I get this subdomain nonsense worked out, please use this URL: http://www.unclebubby.com/wavs

Trigger Pulled

I have submitted the subdomain change request. Once it propagates through all of the DNS servers wavs.unclebubby.com will take you to the new site. If you visit, please Please PLEASE leave me some feedback. I want to know what you think of the look and feel, navigation, ANYTHING (even if you think it totally sucks, which I hope you don't). There are comment forms at the bottom of many of the pages and there is an email link at the bottom of every page.

In the imortal words of Bartles & James: "Thank you for your support."

Update: It is going to take a bit for the DNS servers to pick up the change. If you get a 404 from the link above, go here

Small Victories

When I got home from work this evening, there was an envelope sitting on my side of the bed. I asked my wife, who was sitting on her side of the bed working on her laptop, "What's this?"

In a thoroughly confused voice she replied, "It's a check."

Oddly enough, getting a check in the mail lately has not been good news. A particular group managed to screw up some insurance coverage I had and sent our premiums back. (long story that's not worth telling) So I carefully peered into the envelope thinking to myself, "what now?" As I slid the paper out, I read the word "Google" on the top and, for a brief instant, became extremely confused as to why Google would be sending me a check. When I actually looked at the amount of the check it hit me as to what it was and I just had to laugh.

In October of 2004, I signed up for Google AdWords. You know those relatively unobtrusive and easily ignorable "ads by Google" ad banners you see spread around on quite a few web pages? Those are Google AdWords. The site creator chooses to put those on his/her page and each time you or someone else clicks on one of those ads, he/she gets a credit. If enough clicks happen in a specified period of time during which there have been a particular number of impressions (displays of ads), those credits translate into real money. The month after your account credit reaches $100.00 or more, Google cuts you a check. Unless you have an imensely popular page, the credits don't rack up very quickly but they do add up. I got my first Google AdWords check today! To understand why I started laughing when I realized what the check was, I refer you back to the first sentence of this paragraph that mentions that I signed up for AdWords four years and three months ago!

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one.

If you've been following along, you know I am migrating my sound archive to a different management system. The sound archive has been the only one of my sites that has contained the AdWords banners. I have been debating whether or not to place them on the new site and receipt of the check closed the deal.

Not knowing enough about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or the CMS (Content Management System) I'm using and how it is structured, I knew that placing those banners where I wanted them to be on a page would be a challenge. Think of it this way. If you've been to the site, there is a menu that appears on the left side of pretty much everything but the home page and a few select others. I have had no idea what piece of the puzzle told it to be on the left and allow the page content to be just to the right of it.

You see, the only web technology I really ever learned was HTML. Programming and scripting languages are much like spoken languages in that, once you learn one, you can use it to relate to the others. In other words, if you know what the 'print' command does in language A, you know it's very similar to the 'write' command in language B which is similar to the 'echo' command in language C, etc. HTML is pretty specific about page layout. You [can] basically tell an element (text, picture, whatever) exactly where it is going to be on the page and how it should relate to the elements around it. When you're using CSS, you tell your HTML code to go ask the style sheet how things should look, where they should be placed, and how they should relate to the elements around it.

With that in mind, I went trudging through the CSS looking for the part that said 'the menu goes on the left, give a little bit of space, then put the page content to the right of it.' I couldn't find it. In HTML, you might use a table to accomplish this so I was looking for something similar. Finding the section that specified how the menu should look/act was easy enough but it didn't contain any code I could recognize for positioning.

After a couple hours of pulling my hair out (and those of you who know me are aware that I ain't got all that much left), it finally clicked. When it did, I began to understand how the CSS and the HTML related to each other. I built a little piece of code to to tell the provided AdWords script how it should display then told the core page types to utilize it. After a bit of fiddling with positioning in the layout and positioning of the command within the page, I had it right where I wanted it! Since I understood how it worked now, I made a coule of other minor changes to the layout while I was at it.

I'm not ashamed to say I'm proud of myself. I've been able to build this CMS from the ground up (you have to) and have managed to get it acting the way I want it to. And, given historical data, I should be receiving another $100 check in April of 2013.

Kickin' It

I've been off work for the past two and a half days. An ice storm moved through mid-day Monday and didn't stop until late yesterday. Today, the sun came out and I'll be back to work tomorrow.

I've taken the opportunity to spend some quality time migrating my wav site to the new CMS. It's been a very looooong time since I've done any serious work on this site.

Have you ever gotten deep into a project and you realize things are missing? That's the way it's going for me. In some ways, it's good that I'm migrating the site. With the difference in structure I'm finding pages that were in the wrong place or otherwise hidden. I'm also taking the opportunity to sort-of standardize some of the elements. On the other had, I've figured out I'm missing at least one movie and I'm sure I'm missing some wav files that I recorded long ago. Between two interstate moves and a hard drive crash... they could be anywhere.

Anyway, the migration is coming along very well. If you want to take a look, feel free. I think I may have it ready to switch over the subnet (is that the right word? I'm not sure - I'm a little tired) in a few days. Maybe over the weekend.

Other than that I've been relaxing and I got another one of my dad's Beatles records transferred.

Calling Any PHP Programmers

If you know PHP, I could use your help. I've got some code that's not functioning as expected. I am attempting to break some data extracted from MySQL into three sections. The relevant segment of code is below:

function Row1() {
$Part = ceil(($this->Articles()->Count()) / 3);
return DataObject::get("ArticlePage", "", "", "", "0, $Part");
}
function Row2() {
$Part = ceil(($this->Articles()->Count()) / 3);
$Part2 = floor(($Part * 2));
return DataObject::get("ArticlePage", "", "", "", "$Part, $Part2");
}
function Row3() {
$Total = ($this->Articles()->Count()) ;
$Part = ceil(($Total / 3)); $Break = ceil(($Part * 2));
return DataObject::get("ArticlePage", "", "", "", "$Break, $Total");
}
}

Row 1 displays the first third of the results. Row 3 displays the last third of the results. Row 2, however, is displaying the second third all the way to the end.

Example: Let's say there are 6 items.

Row 1
Item 1
Item 2
Row 2
Item 3
Item 4
Item 5
Item 6
Row3
Item 5
Item 6

Click Here to see the actual output.

Any ideas why it's breaking down like that? The calculation for $Part2 should be correct since it's the same as $Break and Row 3 is starting in the correct place. I'm not a PHP programmer so I can only assume the last parameter in the Get statement indicates "start, end"

I would also like to alphebetize the list but I haven't even started on that yet.

UPDATE: I figured out what my problem was. I was assuming that the last parameter meant starting record number, ending record number when in actuality it means starting record number, number of records to display. It works now!

Something New (ish)

After many (many) years, I am once again revamping my wav archive. I am trying to get away from Frontpage as much as possible since MS stopped developing it.

GoDaddy has several open source programs that you can install on your site with one click so I tried out all of the content management systems. I was originally just going to go with Joomla since that's what we use at work but the more I started looking at SilverStripe, the more I liked it.

Keep in mind it's basically just a framework right now and the theme will most likely change but feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. My original wav archive is still online.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

Part of my new job is caring for the departmental (yes, I certainly do put the mental in departmental... depart mental... a mental departure... leave your senses... that's kinda freaky... but I digress) web site. As such, I may be called upon to edit a cascading style sheet at any time. Therefore, I am finally going to update and tweak the template for my blog. What better venue to play in than your very own playground... and what better opportunity than as a learning experience for work.

UPDATE: The new templates are actually XML, not CSS... who knew? Doesn't matter, it's good experience either way. I'm having some difficulty with enabling comments, haloscan or otherwise, so until I get that fixed, commenting is not available. Feel free to email me, though, at jfusco[at]gmail[dot]com.