Two Cents and a Thousand Words

Holidays are weird if you really think about it… while some have remained true to their original purpose, we’ve really gotten strange with some of them.

Halloween: we go around in costumes asking for candy from complete strangers (isn’t that what we shouldn’t be doing on a day like Halloween?)

Christmas: we cut down a tree, put it in our house, and give presents to each other, and a guy in red comes into our house and leaves wrapped up boxes

Easter: a big white rabbit comes around and gives little chocolate eggs (or the like)

Columbus Day: we don’t do anything… well, neither did Columbus, really :p

Thanksgiving’s actually one of the only holidays that still makes sense – we gather together to give thanks to what we have in life. We’ve developed some pretty strange traditions for other holidays (on top of celebrating the original intent of the holiday, of course). I should really read up on how those traditions got started sometime.

This is from an exercise in art class called ‘matching the machine’. It’s a 5×7 photo I took from Cadillac Mountain in Bar Harbor, and we needed to extend it three inches on each side using pencils and a black Prismacolor pencil. I really like how it turned out; I think it helped me see that I can ‘draw’, but I can’t draw something from nothing. I have to have something to work with first. (Click on it above and it’ll get big.)

Check out today’s FoxTrot strip. ‘Ha, ha,’ you may be saying, ‘what kind of idiot would dress up as a computer for Halloween?’

No comment. Just don’t look through my Halloween pictures from a few years back.

I really like PHP. Too much. I’ve been doing it for hours over the last couple of days.

My next project is something that’s pretty similar to RateMyPage.com, only I think it’ll be attractive to a wider audience. It’s another Web service, it’s free, and it’s easy to use. It’s just not done yet. It’s giving me some really good PHP experience, though, even if I want to throw the darn book out the window.

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