I have been playing ArtRage again. This time I finally got around to buying the non-pro version. I have a couple of in progress versions of a self-portrait that I will have to toss up eventually. Toying with some of the new features from the old version I had (mostly the stencils) lead to this theme, which I am calling 'blurb' (and 'blurb-minimal' if you click on the software link). I normally avoid warm colors, so this will probably look very different for me. Like my temp layout has been for the past couple of days, I left it wider (1000px instead of 900px) and the bar is still on the left so large vids and photos don't overflow on the bar like they used to. Even though everything but the menu got more room to play in, everything feels jammed in there, so I might be playing with margins and such over the next couple of days. Of course, I might decide I really, really hate warm colors again and completely change everything.
6 Years of TME! - Site News - Birthdays - Computer - Work
Posted on: 2010-02-28 05:54:21[ More - 6 comments ]Today (Sunday) this site is officially 6 years old, and to celebrate that fact, I figured I would actually post...which is something I have been fairly bad about recently. I go in waves, as most of you know, so me going some time without posting shouldn't be too surprising. I have been in a huge work-wow-sleep schedule and everything else has been drifting away.
One more thing... - Site News - Misc
Posted on: 2009-12-22 20:46:36[ Add comment ]I added a new (or three) 'built-in' page(s) to rantfest. I have wanted a good archive page for awhile, and I have had a number of ideas to make one. As is obvious, since I never made one, I didn't like any of these ideas. But a couple of more tangible ideas came to me while I was messing with the search page recently, so I am going to slowly roll those out here. There is nothing cool about this page yet, and it will probably be slow rolling out. Eventually this will be a time line including user comments and twitter posts. Tack on some category, date, and keyword filters and I think I will be happy.
Catching up with the last couple of days. - Computer - Games - Comics - Site News - Misc
Posted on: 2009-12-14 04:55:26[ More - Add comment ]It doesn't feel like it has been six days since I posted last. I have been playing catch up, I guess. I mentioned that the wife's hard drive died, but I left it there. Not bothering with all the details, SpinRite managed to work some magic, and I was able to recover the files. I seriously thought there was a dropped platter or the head was grinding into one at least, but somehow SpinRite fixed it (there were two unrecoverable sectors, but everything else was fine). After finishing off the wife's computer, I tossed the drive in my laptop, reloaded Windows, and it has been working fine ever since.
Computer day! - Site News - Computer - Mobile
Posted on: 2009-12-06 19:30:08[ More - Add comment ]
I love computers, but I hate reloading them. The wife's laptop hard drive crashed this morning, and once I woke up, I started messing with it. It was doing the click-grind thing and sounded like it was only going to last minutes. I didn't want to miss anything in the backup process (she was napping), so I wrapped it and tossed it in the freezer. Luckily, the drive in Lightman is the same as Buster, so I pulled my hard drive from Lightman and tossed it in Buster and have been reloading it. I figure me being down to one computer is better than the wife being down to none.
Now with more ads! - Annoyances - Site News
Posted on: 2009-11-23 16:12:09[ More - 6 comments ]I have been running ads, or at least an ad, on the site for some time now. I think I first added them in 2005, more as a page analytics thing than an effort to make money. And it is probably a good thing I wasn't shooting for money since in the many years we have been running ads, we have only racked up about $23 (you don't get your first check until you hit $50). But they have shown me something interesting, even though I get more page views than the wife, her site is gaining a little more value. I am sure Google isn't the only one who thinks her page had more value than mine, but still.
Small changes you can't see. - Site News - Misc - NaNoWriMo
Posted on: 2009-11-13 05:30:39[ More - 2 comments ]I didn't work on NaNoWriMo today. It isn't that I am out of ideas, I just didn't feel like messing with it. Instead I cleaned. My little room is much, much cleaner. I moved most of the furniture around, gave the vacuum a workout, pitched a bunch of stuff, did some dishes, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember now. I also listened to several episodes of Buzz Out Loud (I am way behind).
Oh yeah, DST... - Site News - Annoyances
Posted on: 2009-11-04 15:33:00[ More - 5 comments ]I was all set to do a post about how great I was for hitting 12k in NaNoWriMo, which is about my first years effort, when I noticed the time on my last twitter post "2009-11-04 06:10:57". I didn't think I was still up at 6am, and then I remembered Daylight Saving Time. You remember DST right, the twice a year annoyance that forces people to arbitrarily adjust their clocks so we can save money in the long run even though we are actually spending more money...that one. Oh well, I am not going to rail on today about the absurdity of this biannual annoyance or how lame Indiana got when we decided to join in on the stupid...I have done that twice a year every year since we joined in on the stupid. You know, I started to write joke about how my DST rants were almost as regular as clockwork before realizing that it is our irregular clockwork that is my problem.
Twitter and Search Love - Twitter - Site News
Posted on: 2009-10-29 22:56:12[ More - Add comment ]I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was going to probably be more active in NaNoWriMo updates on Twitter, that coupled with the small edits I did to make the NaNo box less buggy made me want to work on the Twitter box. I mentioned it was broken here. Well, it has been updated a few more times and has much better backwards compatibility (or maybe it was a library dependency that was removed...don't remember), so all the rewriting I was going to have to do turned into a very little about of rewriting. Procrastination FTW!
NaNoWriMo: Year 3 Day -3, Vampires Suck - Site News - Stories - NaNoWriMo
Posted on: 2009-10-29 02:10:54[ More - 2 comments ]
It might be slightly premature, but the NaNoWriMo stat boxes are on the sites. It might be a bit glitchy between now and Nov.1 since the NaNo people tend to do major work on the page prior to launch, but I am hoping that it will be fine after that...it worked fine last year. I also looked over their API, and I might do a daily progress box as well. It would show the totals at the end of each day of the month as opposed to simply showing the total. It might happen, might not, we will see.
