Wrote an entry last night and it's not showing up. This is a test.

Testes testes 123...

I get a fair amount of comment-SPAM at barenada.com. Maybe a couple hundred a day. Most of them I just delete. But this one I thought was funny enough to post.

Your site has very much liked me. I shall necessarily tell about him to the friends.

If you're seeing this entry, then your DNS servers have recognized the fact that barenada.com has moved to a new hosting company.

Congratulations!

If, for some reason, you're feeling nostalgic (I never do that) then you can go back to the old site. I won't be deleting it for a few days.

Stolen from TuesdayPillow.

Seems pretty fucking arbitrary to me.

I've been working on embedding videos, and I guess it's time to test it in public.

I don't sing, and I don't dance. What I do is shoot pool and drink beer. Since a video of me drinking beer would be quite boring except to my most devout stalkers, here is a video of me shooting pool and almost accomplishing something.

Please let me know if it displays okay. This requires Flash 8 I guess. And probably a broadband connection.

...then you're lucky.

My hosting company did some shit last night and the problems caused are continuing.

This site is either completely down or it's unbearably sloooooooooooooow.

This sucks.

Well I'm pretty close to getting this update completed.

The most obvious thing left to do is the graphics section - I haven't even touched it yet. Instead, I've been working on about a million little nagging nuisances with the blog pages.

Some are still there, but most have been taken care of. I'm hoping to have the rest of this shit done by this weekend, but I make no promises.

Okay, this is still a work in progress.

I'd wanted to get the entire site revamped before I went live with this new look, but it's taking me forever.

I decided that I didn't want to wait any longer. I wanted to provide commenting capabilities.

So, as of right now, the main blog has a new look that is still being tweaked, but all of the other crap on this site still has the old look.

There are zillions of things left for me to do, I know.

But the commenting seems to be working.

Well I've gone and rearranged most of the files in this site today, putting things into subdirectories and such.

I don't think that any of the internal links are broken, but if you find any please let me know.

External links to this site, such as those from google, will probably be messed up for a while.

Over here at barenada.com, that whooshing sound, the sound of everybody leaving very quickly, has lessened a bit today.

One of my stalk, er, readers has come back to me and sent me a PM.

I'm very excited. More than is warranted, I know, and I also know that she will be quite embarrassed to be mentioned here.

I'm irresistible I tell you!

Somebody did it again.

They went to google and typed "eating human testicles" into the search box.

This is actually the second time this has happened since I started tracking this shit.

I don't know what's more disturbing; that somebody typed it in, or that I'm listed fourth in the results.

Going to try something here. First I need some text.

This is the caption for this imageAmerica was a great country, and that Americans were right to be proud of her. I'd think a lot more of today's politicians if they'd show just a little bitof that optimism instead of telling us that America is spiraling down the toiletand

Caption goes here.America was a great country, and that Americans were right to be proud of her. I'd think a lot more of today's politicians if they'd show just a little bitof that optimism instead of telling us that America is spiraling down the toiletand

I think the nation lost a great man in Ronald Reagan. I don't say this because he was the first man I ever voted for (which he was). I don't say this because he was instrumental in bringing The Cold War to an end (which he was). I don't say this because he seemed like a hell of a nice guy (which he did). I say this because of the optimism he had about the country he led. He truly believed that America was a great country, and that Americans were right to be proud of her. I'd think a lot more of today's politicians if they'd show just a little bitof that optimism instead of telling us that America is spiraling down the toiletand they're the only hope for a recovery. It pisses me off to no end to think of the ultra-liberals, hating Reagan for no reason other than his political party affiliation, furiously masturbating to the images of his flag-draped coffin.

I think the nation lost a great man in Ronald Reagan. I don't say this because he was the first man I ever voted for (which he was). I don't say this because he was instrumental in bringing The Cold War to an end (which he was). I don't say this because he seemed like a hell of a nice guy (which he did). I say this because of the optimism he had about the country he led. He truly believed that America was a great country, and that Americans were right to be proud of her. I'd think a lot more of today's politicians if they'd show just a little bitof that optimism instead of telling us that America is spiraling down the toiletand they're the only hope for a recovery. It pisses me off to no end to think of the ultra-liberals, hating Reagan for no reason other than his political party affiliation, furiously masturbating to the images of his flag-draped coffin.

I've gone ahead and put in a page to list all of the quotes that may come up on my main page.

Now, everybody that asked owes me a blow job or something.

I went ahead and made a little About Me page.

Everybody else has one, why not me?

It's still a work in progress, though.

I also changed the quote mechanism at the top of the main page to provide a link to the original entry.

Just a small change to the main page.

I now have it selecting a random quote, selected from my 'blog entries, and displaying it instead of the static quote that used to be there.

Of course, this means more work for me because now I have to keep the quotes file updated if I write anything quote-worthy aver again.

And just now I got the idea to include a link to the original complete 'blog entry. I'll have to think about how (and if) I should go about this.

Reading through all of my old entries to select the quotes was fun though.

Just working on a new archive page.

(update: Okay, well that was fun I guess. It had better have been fun because it's the only thing I did all day Tuesday. Besides work and sleep I mean.)

Today, I actually accomplished two things.

Not much in the grand scheme of things, to be sure, but two things nevertheless.

There have been, for quite some time now, two glaring problems with this site.

1. You couldn't select text when using the Internet Explorer browser.
2. If you made your browser very wide the text just kept on getting wider with it.

Neither of these is a problem anymore.

The first problem was quite aggravating for me. It ended up being caused by a bug in Internet Explorer that only came up when "position:absolute" was used for layer positioning. I removed all such declarations from my stylesheets and html files and the problem went away.

While I was messing with my stylesheets anyway, I assigned a maximum width to the "body" element so that there's essentially a maximum width for the site - no matter how wide you want to make your browser window. This has been something that's annoyed me for a long time, but it obviously wasn't as serious as the text selection bug.

Oh yeah, I also moved the side panel to the right side of the screen. Looks pretty different over there, doesn't it?

(response to message)

How did you get the people out of the way long enough to take that poster-pic? It's a high traffic area.

Cool site, but the set-up aggravates me. no direct comments, etc...

As far as taking the picture went, it's amazing how quickly people will get out of your way when you threaten to take their picture and put it on the Internet. Plus I took the thing after work one day last week so it wasn't that crowded.

I had a much simpler 'blog navigation setup originally, but several people complained that they wanted the ability to see the posts in either ascending or descending order. That's pretty much why things seem so complicated. You do have a lot of choices to make though. I think most people just keep hitting the "previous" link until they run out of new stuff. A lot of people will also switch to ascending ordering almost immediately. I always do that when I'm reading my old entries.

I don't have individual comments for my 'blog entries because I don't have the time to screen comments before they get posted, and I've seen enough abuse dumped on other bloggers via their comment forms that I just decided to pass on the whole public comments thing.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Just changed the beer page from a static page to a dynamically-generated one. Visitors shouldn't see any difference, but this will make it much easier for me to add new entries when I'm travelling.

I need to decide if I'm going to be concerned with the order of the entries. For now they're mostly alphabetical, but any new ones I add will just get stuck at the top.

If I decide that the order of the entries is actually important to me then I've got more work to do, and I'm not really sure where to begin.

(update: Okay, I've figured out how to keep the listing alphabetized. The beer page is actually a separate 'blog, specifically it's a single-page archive for all entries in a new "beer" 'blog.

Because this particular archive page doesn't include the date of the posting, I decided to use that posting date for sort order.

So what I did was go back and change the date on all of the entries to match their alphabetical order. I left plenty of blank dates between entries so that any new entries can just be added with the proper date to put it in its proper alphabetical place. Pretty snazzy.)

Just put in a new function to display random 'blog entries.

It's not (right now anyway) available on my home page, but if you go to any of the 'blog pages that list the monthly archive links, right above them is a new link labelled random.

This link will, duh, display a random entry from the appropriate 'blog.

Here's a link to a random entry in the main 'blog just so you see what I mean.

This morning I finally got fed up with the rapidly deteriorating performance on the server where my site was hosted.

So I called my hosting company and asked them if they had any solution for me other than my switching companies.

They offered to move my domain to another server, away from from whichever domain(s) were hogging the system resources on the current server. This is the sort of response I was hoping for. See below for the type of response I was not hoping for.

Well, that process has begun.

I've had all of my files copied over, and I've requested that the DNS entries for barenada.com be changed to point to the new server.

Still waiting for the DNS changes to propogate around - it could take a few days - but for now I've been testing my relocated site using the IP address.

Everything seems to be working except the functions to send me private messages and ask me private questions. I do not, on this new server, have permissions to run the /bin/mail command as I did on the old server.

Called tech support. The guy was less than helpful. Tried to tell him that their preferred method of opening a trouble ticket (I send an e-mail) has never, does not now, and I expect never will work for me, so would he please just open the ticket himself.

The guy was still less than helpful, continuing to parrot his standard send an e-mail advice, so I told him I'd call back tomorrow when I'd be more likely to get some actual help.

So, for tonight at least, any message or questions you send me will not be immediately forwarded to me. I'll have to watch my server logs manually for them. So don't expect the rapid responses you may have become accustomed to.

(update: About a half-hour after I hung up on the less-than-helpful guy I got an e-mail from the nice girl that helped me this afternoon. She's looking into the permissions issue for me. I guess the guy I talked to at least passed word of my problem along. Even if he said something like "Hey, listen to this asshole's problem" that's still being helpful and I appreciate it.)

(update: Well it seems that my streaming movies will not work until the DNS gets propogated around. So if you got here via the error page I left on the old server the streaming movies still will not work for you. The WMV formatted movies should be fine. Once the DNS gets around everything should work correctly.)

(update: The permissions problem with the message/question forms has been fixed. Yay! The issue with the streaming movies will still take up to a few days to correct itself. Boo!)

I've begun the laborious process of rewriting all of my beer ratings to give them a common format.

Then, once that's done, I can write a script to pull all of the ratings out and list them on a single page.

The other day I added this page to list some of the strange search strings that lead people to my site.

What I failed to anticipate was that, by listing these gems, I was skewing the search engine results.

So now, for example, if someone googles i like to smell my own butt it's pretty likely that this site will be one of the first ones returned.

This is completely unfair to those people who are desperately seeking other autoanalolfactory perverts and only finding me.

So what I've done is, I've added a META tag in the file obscure.shtml to prevent well-behaved search robots from archiving that page.

Now, once the already archived versions of the page expire from the search sites, the perverts will be free to search, unimpeded, for things like eating human testicles and happy crotch.

I've mentioned before some of the sick/funny/strange search strings that lead people to my site.

I've put together a new page listing the gems.

I'll try to keep it updated as new weirdness comes along.

Just fixed a stupid bug where a search for the category general matched all entries because the 'blog name is general.

That was the highlight of my day.

I'm having some trouble with 'bots again.

This time, however, it's my fault.

Basically, the 'bots are indexing the pages that contain dynamic 'blog entries.

For example, Google might index my index2.shtml page and note that it contains the word "Freeze" - but once I type a few more entries, the one about Polly's Freeze is no longer displayed on index2.shtml because it's not one of the ten newest entries anymore.

This means that somebody can Google the words "double poo-poo" and get led to my main page, but when they get there those words are nowhere on that page. That's just too much disappointment for me to want to take responsibility for. I mean, when you want to read about double poo-poo you just shouldn't have to wait.

What I need to do is have the 'bots follow the links on pages like index2.shtml, but not index those pages themselves.

That way the links to the single entries, like this one, are followed, and only those (static) single-entry pages are indexed.

So here's what I've done:

1. I put this line into the code for my non-static pages:

This tells the 'bots that honor this type of line to follow any links found on the page, but not to index the page itself.

2. I put this line on all of my single-entry pages:

This does the exact opposite - it tells the 'bots that it's okay to index the page but not to follow any further links. These pages are a dead-end, in other words.

Of course these modifications only work if the 'bots are well-behaved. The ones that aren't I try to take care of with my robots.txt and .htaccess files as described in this old entry.

The whole thing would make Rube Goldberg proud.

I really need to simplify my 'blog configurations when I do my next site redesign. Until then I'll probably just do some minor tweaks like the one I made tonight.

Made a slight change to the 'blog displays so clicking on the category name will bring up a search of all entries in that category.

Clicking some of the categories, like drink, will return a shitload of entries.

I should probably look at a way to limit the entries returned from a single search. Maybe display them in blocks of ten or so.

We'll see.

So I've had to completely rebuild my 'blog database.

Unfortuately all of the entry IDs got renumbered.

This means that none of the favorites, and none of the links from one entry to another, will work correctly until I get it all sorted out.

Sucks to be me.

(Update: Problem fixed. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. Search sites that have the old entry IDs cached will get caught up eventually I guess.)

I just added a new category for my 'blog entries.

The pictures category can be accessed via the 'blog search form, or if you're lazy you can just click here.

I've also had to make some changes to the underlying software to handle multiple category assignments. I think it's all working correctly, but bugs do have a way of appearing. If you notice anything broken just let me know.

My next (related) task is to go back through all of my old entries and assign multiple categories where needed.

I think I'll also add some more categories. Here are some that come to mind:

• daily
• ramblings
• sanity
• memories

There will probably be more that reveal themselves as I peruse my old entries.

Just a couple of small changes to the site that I want to make public. Very boring stuff.

First of all, I've recently been slammed by some searchbots that are retrieving, then ignoring, my robots.txt file. This file specifically states files and folders that I don't want indexed by 'bots. I make these areas off-limts for bandwidth reasons, or for simple site functionality purposes.

For example, I don't want 'bots bumping up any 'blog entries - those are for actual people who like the entries.

I also don't want 'bots searching the raw 'blog files themselves, and I don't want them downloading all of my movies files.

Well I've become sick of 'bots ignoring these rules, so I've decided to block them completely. This was done with an easy addition to my .htaccess file:

As I see new 'bots ignoring my simple robots.txt file I'll block their asses as well.

(Just after I posted this entry I got slammed by another asshole, so his address is now blocked as well.)

Another thing that's been bugging me lately is that I've been getting what's called referer spam. This is when assholes modify their browser to change where they appear to be coming from. Many people, for privacy reasons, will simply change this value to a blank or something. But these assholes are replacing the real referer value with a URL to a site they're hawking.

My .htaccess file can deal with these people as well:

In the example of above I send anyone with the string viagra in their referer to a site that I'm hoping will get them fired if they hit it at work.

On a completely unrelated note, I've changed my site search function to just go to Google. My own home-made search script wasn't working correctly and I just haven't found the time to debug it. This change was for the site search only - the 'blog search is still home-grown.

And finally, I'm beginning to contemplate another site redesign. If I actually decide to do this then barenada.com V5.00 will feature a cleaner design and will make even more use of CSS.

Somebody actually typed this into Google and got led to my site:

Can a Monkey come out the wood to surprised a human person to be seen standing in front of a human person then he will take the human person in his Monkey jungle to force the human person to change the human person to a Monkey animal?

Well I certainly hope they get their question answered somewhere. Then, I hope they take a class on grammar and punctuation.

One of the things I enjoy doing is checking my web server logs to see what search strings are leading people to my site. Because my 'blog covers such a wide range of topics, I see a wide range of search strings in my logs.

Well today I encountered the search string of all search strings. One that may never be surpassed for weirdness:

I like to smell my own butt

There's nothing I can say about this - it speaks volumes all by itself.

I'm sitting here at my computer, waiting for the dryer to dewrinkle my shirt so I can go over to the tournament, and I really want to write something.

I'm not sure exactly what I want to write. I just know that I want it to be good. I've had too many bland entries lately and those entries reflect the blandness of my life. If, I theorize, I can think of something interesting and exciting to write about, then maybe I won't be such a loser.

Wait, that's not right. I'm not a loser.

You have to play to lose.

I am a bench-warmer in the game of life.

So I've met several people (at the tournament) these past few days that only know me from my 'blog. People from the local area, from Russia, a group of Canadians. I even signed my name on one guy's poster. These are people, pool players, that went to this site for the pool movies and articles and then strayed over to this 'blog. Now they keep coming back, and they think that they know me from what they've read. They come up to me and ask me how I'm doing, if I'm really over her leaving, if the flu has made a reappearence. Hell, one girl asked me how much weight I'd lost. She could tell from my videos that I used to be heavier than I am now.

Of course I know that people read this thing. And I know that they're not all relatives and friends. The majority of the readers here are complete strangers to me. Even though I know this it's still pretty surreal to actually meet these people in person. I mean, I don't even know their names and they know all this shit about me.

I find it kind of odd that I don't really care how my 'blog reads to my friends, or to my relatives, but I find myself caring deeply how these strangers are perceiving me. These are people that read this thing because they want to read it, not because they know me and feel an obligation to read, and not simply because they want to know what's going on with my hair, my love life, my liver, etc. They're reading because they're getting to know me and want to know more. Weird, huh?

This 'blog is all that these strangers know of me, and I feel that I owe it to my readers (and to myself) to, at least every now and then, post something brilliant, or insightful, or scandalous.

I want to keep paying this tab, this debt I owe my readers. I want to be funny and compassionate and thoughtful, and I want to be perceived as all of those things.

I want people to like me I suppose. That's pretty normal, right?

Calm and relaxing. Nice and pleasant. These are the words that describe me and my life now. Excited and apprehensive were replaced with tortured and grieving, and they in turn were replaced with mundane and boring.

Well, the dryer just beeped at me, signalling the time to head back to the hotel.

This isn't the entry I wanted to write, that entry is still inside me. I can feel it in my head, rattling around, trying to work its way out.

Not just yet.

Just to clear up some recent confusion:

ahhhhhhhhh: Wow I sure am relaxed now

aaaaaaaaah: I am freaking out!

awwwwwwwww: What a cute little kitty!

ohhhhhhhhh: I understand that now.

oooooooooh: That's really cool.

Keep this handy guide with you.

I've mentioned before some of the unusual searches that lead people to my site.

This morning I saw this Google search in my server logs:

Why does my cat hiss at me?

Typing this, I imagine, is some poor little girl, perhaps eight or nine.

It's just so sad. I hope her kitty still loves her.

One of the downsides to having a 'blog that people know about is...that people know about it.

Sometimes they even read it.

Sometimes they read a 'blog, decide that the person doing the writing is vulnerable, rebounding, or whatever, and that's when they make their move.

Somebody just made their move on me.

If this had happened a couple of months ago, things would be different indeed.

But as things stand now all this has done is confuse the issues tumbling around in my head.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a brief entry about writing a letter that I didn't plan to send.

The gist of that entry was that it felt really freeing to be able to write something without worrying about how the readers of this 'blog would react, and that the whole thing reminded me of my old paper journals in that they represented the real me. The secret me that only I knew.

So freeing, in fact, that I took it one step further and opened up an entire new 'blog, on another site, where I could vent and rant and rave anonymously. A completely separate place that I figured could contain the things that I needed to let out but couldn't in my real 'blog.

So I set up this other 'blog, and started posting.

I started with the letter I mentioned. For the next several days, I put up about an entry per day. I vented to people. I vented about people. Hell, I even wrote a little story about some bullshit that could have happened but didn't because of a butterfly.

It was a very good feeling, that being able to write whatever I wanted without fear of repercussions.

Then I stopped. Here's why:

Reason The First.

These anonymous entries were, to me, better than almost anything I'd ever written in my regular 'blog. I'd get messages from people wanting me to fill in the holes in my story but I couldn't without breaking my cover. And in the end, I found myself letting my public 'blog slip while I let the private one become my main target for expression. When I did make a public entry I became paranoid that I'd be repeating some anonymous entry and someone (you get one guess) would put the pieces together. I didn't like the way things were turning, so that's the first reason I stopped the anonymous 'blog.

Reason The Second.

I was proud of some of that writing and, more than that, I identified with it. Those entries were from the real me, but I was the only one who knew it. In the end I figured that a toned-down public entry was better than a balls-to-the-wall private one. At least with my public 'blog people would know what I was thinking and feeling even if they didn't know how strong those thoughts and feelings were becoming. One of the reasons I write is to help the people in my life understand what's going on in my head, and that wasn't happening. So that's the second reason I stopped the anonymous 'blog.

Reason the Third.

I reached a point where I couldn't write anymore. One night I sat here at my keyboard for what seemed like hours and I was just unable to put together a single coherent thought. There was simply too much emotion and confusion, and reading the entries I'd already posted only made things worse. It was just too personal. I'd been writing things about myself that even I wasn't ready to face. And that's the third reason I stopped the anonymous 'blog and deleted the account.

Why am I dedicating an entry here to a series of entries that no longer exists in a journal that no longer exists?

Because today I got this e-mail:

Hi Dave,

I know you probably still want to be anonymous but I wanted you to know that the things you wrote and the feelings you've been having are nothing to be ashamed about. The thing's you?re going through are tough. I see that even more now that I've read your real journal. They're tough but we all go through these things. I know I have, and reading the things you wrote made me realize that I wasn't alone either. I think you expressed yourself very well and you even made me cry several times!

I don't think you should hide. I think you should keep writing about what you're feeling and just let the chips fall as they say.

Even if you don't take my advice I hope you'll at least keep writing because I want to know what happens next.

I feel like I've gotten to know you a little bit by reading all of your journal and I think you must be a pretty cool person.

Sincerely,
(name withheld by Dave)

I appreciate what she wrote. A part of me even agrees with her that maybe I should be a little more forthcoming in my entries.

But I don't think it'll happen. I may have learned to open up quite a bit since I started writing this 'blog a little over a year ago but I haven't opened up that much. I still have restraint, and that's probably a good thing since I'm not the only person that might be affected by some of my more honest ramblings.

So I don't think I'm quite ready to unleash myself on the world, but I will keep writing.

I am a pretty cool person, and I want to know what happens next too.

A message I got today via my form thingy:

Great Site!!

Thanks, anonymous Internet person! I do it all for you!

Since I'm not sleeping any more, I've used all that extra time to tweak my 'blog software to include links to newer or older entries.

This should be a refreshing change from having to wade through all those monthly entries.

Or maybe I'm the only one who'll notice.

One of the more surreal things about having a website is the feedback you get from complete strangers.

Start publishing an online journal and people really start crawling out of the woodwork.

Place forms on your site to allow anonymous messages and your inbox can fill up pretty quickly.

Here are some statistics on the messages sent to me over the past week:

66% were simply positive comments about the site. Of these, 60% were about the pool section, 20% about the main 'blog, and 20% about the cats' section.

Of the remaining 34%, an overwhelming 95% of the messages contained advice of various forms regarding my love life or the lack thereof.

Sixteen messages asked for advice or instruction on playing pool. Three people want to arrange gambling sessions with me.

Three messages asked me if I wanted to adopt a cat. I don't.

There was one offer for a date the next time I'm in Seattle. I think I know who that one was from.

Six messages could be dismissed as simple trolling.

There were three SPAM messages.

And finally, fourteen people asked me what happened to the Pronto section of my site.

I must admit I wasn't expecting to get anywhere near this number of messages. I need to decide what to do about the ones that need a reply. I'd thought at first the I'd just use the appropriate 'blog, but the volume may be too high.

I suppose for now these messages will for the most part go unanswered.

But not unread.

If anyone out there needs a response just use e-mail instead of the web forms. Or put a reply address in your message.

I've completed a long-overdue revamp of my 'blog search engine.

It now supports quoted phrases and boolean logic.

Yay.

Still playing with CSS, I've made some of the letters that begin pages/sections stand out.

I thought this was a really good idea at first, but now I'm second-guessing myself.

I suppose I'll leave it like this for a while to see if I get used to it.

I just noticed that two days ago was the one-year anniversary of my starting this 'blog.

WooHoo.

Other anniversaries coming soon are 11/12(bad) and 11/14(good).

Okay, I took all of the orphaned images and moved them into a new gallery.

That was 15 minutes of my life I'd like to have back.

One of the reasons I first decided to learn some CSS was to have the ability to wrap text around images.

Now I've finally got that ability. You can see examples on some of my cats' pages.

Also today I added a couple of little mini-forms, one on the main page and one on the FAQ page, to allow short messages or questions to be sent to me.

Okay, I suppose I'll just go ahead and declare the barenada.com version 4.0 redesign complete.

Of course one never really finishes with a website. It's an ongoing evolution.

And then there's the fact that I just hacked away and deleted about 700 files that I hope weren't being used anymore.

I also want to see about putting in a mechanism to change the color scheme (such as it is) on the fly.

Oh yeah, I also want to standardize my image borders.

And then I want to finish my email-based 'blog system.

Maybe I'm not as done as I initially thought.

Since I decided about a zillion years ago - or it may have been last Thursday - to do a complete site redesign I've spent nearly all of my at-home time sitting at this computer.

I think I'm almost finished, but along with the inevitable bugfixes and layout tweaks I still have a couple of bigger decisions to make.

First, do I even bother with the Pronto pages? I still get hits against these pages even though they haven't been updated in years and years, but converting all of those outdated pages to the new site format seems like a really daunting task.

The other four sections (gross exaggeration alert!) that the old site had were the humor page, the page about my Monte Carlo and my dad, my resume page, and the page which shows the states I've been to.

These four single-page sections (there it was again) would be pretty easy to convert to the new format. I suppose I've just gotten a little burned-out from using Dreamweaver and Fireworks over the last few days and so I'm currently limiting myself to bugfixes and layout tweaks.

I had this well-written and eloquent entry about Friday night all ready to be posted when I accidentally hit the escape key and wiped it all out.

I'll rewrite the stupid thing tomorrow.

Today I started work on an entirely new 'blog software suite.

I've gotten to sick of all the typos and other errors on my posts - errors that I sometimes don't discover for months.

I was first just going to work on the spellchecking function of my existing software but in the end decided that it would just be easier to start from scratch.

I hope to have the new (email based!) software ready for production use this weekend. Hopefully nobody will even notice the difference except that it might be a little faster.

The hardest part will actually be converting all of my old posts to the new format. I haven't quite figured out how to do tackle that problem yet.

(crossposted from pool 'blog)

Just a follow-up on the theft of my PDFs and videos by another site.

I've had two conversations with the owner of the business with the website. He's assured me that all of my files will be removed from their site during a change of their outsourcing company. That change will take place within the next few days.

They're changing outsourcing companies at least partly because that company was, I believe, responsible for putting my stuff on the site to begin with.

I believe that the business with the website had no idea that this was being done, and I'm giving them several days to make the changes we've talked about.

I check my own website access logs regularly, and today I was able to follow the trail back to what looks like a new version of one of the offending pages. So far, it's exactly the same except for a little blurb at the end about how the videos came from www.barenada.com.

I don't know if the plan is to leave things that way, but if so, those plans will not be acceptable to me. My files are still there, and I want them gone.

Please people, just put up a link to some pool pages. Don't copy their files to your own site.

This while thing still has several days to get straightened out.

It's surprising how many attorneys are pool players. I've been contacted by several. I just tell them what I told the guy - if they remove my material from their site then I'm quite willing to drop the whole matter.

(crossposted from pool 'blog)

Today I got an email from someone I didn't know telling me to check out another pool site.

What I found there were copies of my PDF files and videos. Exact bit-for-bit copies even.

I received no credit, and if not for my URL at the bottom of every page in the PDF, and the fact that it was me shooting in my basement in the videos, there would have been no mention of me or barenada.com on the entire site. The files were clearly meant to look like they belonged to the company with the website.

After a few phone calls I spoke to someone at that business. He assured me that they had no idea that the site contained copyrighted material, and that he would take care of it.

Time will tell I suppose.

For now I'm not sure whether to feel violated, or proud, or both.

I've been tweaking the layout of the 'blog entries - mainly just adding a background and a border as you can see.

I have some more to do. The text padding above the entry headers is not consistent.

I'll have to dig out my CSS book to see what I'm doing wrong.

(cross-posted to the pool 'blog)

Every now and then I do a search for "barenada" just to see what comes up.

Occasionally I'm pleasantly surprised with what I find.

Take these Gems from the Billiards Digest community board:

UWPoolGod

You guys ever go to http://www.barenada.com/index2.shtml
and check out his daily banter on which beer he tried last night. Pretty funny. And some good pool vids.

Aboo

That's a very cool site I've never seen anyone bank like that in my life... and he says he can't compete on the upper level in the DCC. Wow. That's all I've got to say. Wow.

Finally fixed the bug in my code that was supposed to automagically fill in my age at the top of my main page.

I left the bug in for a long time because I thought it was funnier when it just said "error: value too large."

Now I realize that this is no laughing matter.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I've been find it harder and harder to pick an image to eliminate, when posting a new image, to keep myself down to five galleries total.

To help ease that pain somewhat I've gone ahead and added a sixth gallery.

Actually what I did was add a fourth Terragen gallery and rename the old galleries four and five to five and six respectively.

Instead of doing things I should have been doing, like mowing my lawn, I worked with Terragen today and came up with this:

On a related note - I've got so many images now that I'm finding it harder and harder to find one to eliminate before I can put a new image in one of the three Terragen galleries. I really need to start thinking about adding a fourth - and maybe a fifth - gallery for Terragen images.

It seems that every time I go back and re-read some of my 'blog entries I catch at least one - and sometimes several - spelling and grammar errors.

I go and correct these errors, knowing all along that I'll just find more in the future.

I'm not really this horrible at writing. I blame the fact that my brain often outpaces my fingers, and also that the spellchecker on my 'blog software is apparently for decoration only.

I'm pretty sure that I've solved the problem where the font on my 'blog entries would change for no good reason.

It seems to have been the little trademark characters I was putting after some nicknames.

I've removed them all and everything seems okay with the fonts now.

It's too bad. I liked the trademark signs, and now people can freely steal all of my cool nicknames.

Something is messing with my 'blog displays.

I keep seeing the font change right in the middle of a post.

I don't know if it's caused by my browser, my ad-blocking software, or if the entries themselves are somehow getting corrupted.

I really need to look in this and get it to stop.

Every now and then I notice that the counters on some of my pages have become hosed, and I have hit them with a hammer to get them working again.

Perhaps I should start working on a more robust counter script.

For months I've been convinced that my 'blog software was corrupting some of my entries, and that I'd need to wait for a new release to solve the problem.

Well I've identified the real problem - located between my chair and my keyboard.

It was all my fault. My program that I wrote to display the log entries had a malformed expression, that, given the proper characters, could completely mangle the offending sentence.

I've fixed it now, but there's no telling what other bugs still lurk.

Fixed the 'blog search function to accept multiple words and do an OR search against them.

Also changed the search results to highlight matching words like this.

Uploaded small icons of the cats' faces for inclusion in their 'blog posts.

An icon for my own posts is being contemplated.

For the record, the Nugget face on the main cats' page, with the animated mouseover, is probably the most adorable thing I've ever done.

I noticed today that when I set up the site search function I sorta broke the 'blog search function. Well, not really broke it, I just caused it to display every matching entry twice.

I fixed it quickly enough, but I should have noticed it way before today.

I've reimplemented the Site Search Function, accessible from the main page.

Maybe I'll add some bells and whistles someday.

I've got the site search function working - but not well enough to implement it yet.

I need to decide how much of a matching page to display. I could chose to display only the matching line(s), I could add in a couple of lines before and after the match, or I could just display the entire page.

Whatever decision I make I'll probably change the 'blog search function to display the same amount on a match.

I should have this ironed out within a few days.

Had to remove the site search function that was provided by my hosting company as I found it was searching everything and there's no way to configure it to skip the 'blogs.

I'll need to either write a new site search function or (more likely) create a combined function to search the site and/or 'blogs.

Forgot about the ability to search blog entries. I'll get to that soon I guess.

I've finally wrestled these archive templates to the ground and kicked the shit out of them.

Actually what I did was run screaming from the templates and write my own CGI scripts to handle the archive displays.

Either way, it still works, and I think I can say that I've got the blogs fully implemented.

Now I've managed to cause the blog software to forget how to do any rebuilds. Just trying to add some new categories. If this entry shows up in the "technology" category then I guess I got lucky.

I'm not an idiot, I just play one on the Internet.

I'm not a particularly stupid person. I know there are some who'd disagree with that statement, but they're the stupid poopieheads, not me.

There are occasions, however, where I'm made to feel about as smart as the crap clinging to Happy's butt fur. This is one of those times.

I'm implementing these weblogs and the damn templates are driving me crazy. Why they have to make these things so complicated I'll never know.

The problem I'm having here is that all of the templates assume that I want to build complete pages. That's not the case. All I want is the weblog data itself so I can SSI it into my own pages.

I will figure this out, but for now I've removed the blog search and archive links since they were pointing to broken pages anyway.

This is a test of this blog thingy.

Continue reading "Testing" »