Oot and Aboot

Well I’ve spent most of my day taking care of cat mishaps, spring cleaning, and over here, and now it’s time to spring from my cave into the world, and a birthday party tonight is the perfect excuse. I’m supposed to be providing some music, so I better go so I won’t be late(r than I already am).

miniBB

I’ve spent all night hacking miniBB to have some semblance of standards compliance. I like it a lot because it’s simple and easy to get around, but the coding style (or lack thereof) in the source is really painful. In addition to no formatting of the PHP, the HTML suggests a lack of a basic understanding of markup languages, with enough nested tables to curl your toes. But guess what, it validates. On that note I would like to announce that the WordPress Support Forums are now up and humming along nicely.

My Own Medicine

What’s good for the goose… St. Thomas High School (which I didn’t attend) is now compressed and loading using the zlib method which has grown on me since I wrote that article. STHS is the one major client I have that I don’t host (hence the non-mod_gzip compression) which made things very interesting yesterday afternoon when their host moved the site onto a server with PHP 4.0.6, breaking most everything in the process. However the host was very helpful and they handled the situation quickly, upgrading within an hour or so.

PhotoPal

This code really tickles my fancy. If I were starting a photolog now this is what I’d use, but 5596 photos later the prospect of converting is not trivial. I hope this trend of well-designed web applications continues.

The Ones That Almost Made It

So you’ve seen the ten that were chosen from a pool of over five thousand, but wouldn’t it be interesting to know what photos didn’t quite make the cut? Here’s the story of the six photos that almost made it:

  • 6-1-2002, Rachel — I really like this photo but it’s a tad washed out in the colors, though nothing that couldn’t be tweaked I suppose. In the end it was just pushed out by stronger candidates.
  • 1-19-2003, Sarah C. — This is one of the more interesting ones from the photoshoot with Sarah. Again, I like the shot but the contrast is a too high on her face, and overall it’s blurry due to the lack of light. Gotta love the hair though!
  • 2-20-2003, Duck — A fairly recent photo that has some pretty interesting elements. I especially like the duck behind the main one that’s checking everything out. I also enjoyed these subjects because they didn’t attack me like the geese did.
  • 2-16-2003, Wood — Sarah W. swears she took this photo even though I’m pretty sure I did. The whole day is worth checking out as a lot of the photos came out very well.
  • 2-16-2003, Sauce — A cool picture of something hot.
  • 3-23-2003, Trees — I was extremely close to putting this one in, as personally I really enjoy this photograph. In fact it’s my desktop right now. There’s just something about the contrasting colors and shape of things that tickles my fancy.

Done!

Stick a fork in me, because I’m done. My second paper has been handed in and my weekend starts now. Hallelujah! This weekend is looking good with dinner tonight with a new friend who’s in town, a party Saturday, and hopefully oodles of free time to catch up on my reading (check the new sidebar) and work on some new projects.

Do you know that feeling when you’re so sleepy that you can be doing something and you close your eyes for a second and you immediately fall asleep and have a dream, usually quite vivid, and then your eyes open one or two minutes later with a jolt? That’s the state I was in when I wrote paper #2, so barring accidental genius and it getting high marks from the professor, I will not be posting this paper either. Don’t worry though, I have one coming up on psychological and ethical egoism that looks like it’s going to to be good, and I’ll definitely post that. For now, I need a long nap.

Reading

Ever wonder what we’re reading here at PhotoMatt.net International Headquarters? Well now there’s a sidebar widget that says what I’m reading now and links to the edition on Amazon, and I even get a kickback. Comments welcome. I’ve been doing a lot of tweaks to the menu and navigation in general so if you have any comments on that leave them here.

Papers

Two major papers due in the next twenty-four hours. Blogging forecast is light. Don’t despair though, check out my blogroll for the latest and greatest in the independent web world. It can keep you busy for hours, as it does to me often.