Two Cents and a Thousand Words

I’ve been programming all afternoon and I came up with this.

Before you say ‘So? What’s different?’, I’ll answer. My blog display is now programmed in PHP. What’s that mean to the loyal justinrussell.com viewer? Next to absolutely nothing. However, it allows me to add things even more easily, and there are a couple new features. The biggest is the categories display on the main page (it’s the last box in the right column). Click on any category name to see just entries of that type. You can also now choose the number of entries you want to display at a time; I’ll be adding a display changer box sometime soon, I think.

Where’d the sections go?

Well, I figure that a lot of the information that used to be in the sections in the right column are now just put in the blog. This is one of the reasons for the categories; you can now just display all of one type – Exploring Maine, for instance – to see information that would’ve been put into its own section before. Don’t worry, I didn’t erase the info I had up here before. A lot of it was just getting old.

I want to see whatever again.

E-mail me or post a comment.

What’s so great about PHP?

Without getting into a big technical description, it allows me to bring up a page in a WYSIWYG editor like GoLive and program HTML around PHP instead of having to try to wing it with CGI. Trust me, it’s just easier.

What’s going to happen in the future?

You’ll have to wait and see. Stay tuned this week for the special Halloween edition.

Please e-mail me or post a comment wiith any bugs you find or any suggestions. I’m sure it won’t be a flawless transition; I’m not that good of a programmer (I still wrote all of the blog display and update code from scratch, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few bugs).

Today’s recommendations: ‘Think About That’ and ‘Piano Message’ by happy ashtray at the recently re-designed mp3.com. I’ve also started a trial with emusic.com, so we’ll see how that works out.

I played my first round of golf this year yesterday. I don’t really know why I never got out to the links before; I guess I was too busy with work this summer and I wanted to take trips instead of doing golf. I actually did pretty well, though; no pars, I don’t think, but considering that I hadn’t played 9 holes in over a year I don’t think it was that bad. It was also probably the weirdest round I’ve ever played; you’ll probably see why a little later.

I went to my first football game of the season today; too bad it was probably around 40 degrees and raining for the entire time I stayed. I went with my dad and we left right before halftime; we couldn’t stand sitting in the cold rain any longer. On top of that, it was 17-0 Hofstra when we left.

It turned out to be 24-17 UMaine. Oh, well. I’m personally glad I took a hot shower instead of staying for the second half.

I’m actually looking into doing my PHP blog soon. If it wasn’t for a new media project I’ll be filming this weekend, I’d probably have it done in a couple days. Who knows, I might anyway.

Remember, you can always check the progress by going to the ‘PHP Blog’ link under Projects in the right column. Right now the design’s there, but I still have to re-incorporate some of the right column features and make the blog viewing options available (it only shows the latest 20 right now). PHP is actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.

P.S.: Referrers are fun. 🙂

How many of you have read [the chapter in the book]? I should cross this off and say, ‘Help yourself. Help yourself.’

– Dr. Alexander, right before giving a lecture on the ‘Helping Others’ chapter

This has to be some of the most amazing research I’ve ever seen – maybe because it combines both psychology and technology. Langlois & Roggman in 1990 did a study of how average faces – facial features composited among a population – became increasingly attractive as more faces were added to the composite. As far as I’ve read, they only went to 32 faces, but the composite (in my opinion, at least) was getting more attractive. So if we put all of the faces of everyone in the world together into a composite, what would happen…?

After a couple of hours of debugging, I got the referrers script to work on this thing. It’s in the last box in the right column (‘Last 50 Referrers’).

Of course, I talk about switching over to PHP, then I go ahead and mess up the CGI. Sorry ’bout that. Should be fine now.

Well, yup, I guess that just about sums it up.

I guess people at TechTV liked my video (thanks, Leo, Dave, and Megan!). If you’d like to read thescreensavers.com article about it, click here.

If you missed my first compilation, here’s my blog entry about it.

I’m feeling SOOO good right now. Thanks for your compliments, everyone. You’ll see more in the future. 😀

(The funniest part: a plug for freegrandmamorrone.com on the TSS site. I’m still laughing!)

For those of you who still wonder why I do what I do, I find that for me it’s most effective if I take a certain subject and study it in many different ways. I do that with photography, and in this case I use TSS to experiment with new programs and techniques; it kind of makes things even across the board. Sure, it may cause me to have a possibly unhealthy connection to a certain television show, but hey, it’s a small price to pay in the name of creativity. 🙂