Blog 046 > Backwards & Forwards

Backwards & Forwards [Saturday, March 31, 2007] Guess what? For the first time in years, I’ve thrown a bunch of 80s-90s CDs (Alice In Chains, Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes, Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk, Def Leppard, Erasure, Garbage, Guns N Roses, Heart) into my ancient SONY 100-CD changer, and pumped up the volume on my stereo. Is it nostalgia for my rosier college days? A return to my 20s? Haha, who knows, but I just felt like it, lol. :)))

Meanwhile, in the other direction, went out today to my usual Borders and Barnes & Noble bookstores to pick up some programming books on WordPress and PHP coding, even a British WebDesign magazine! Yup, I think I’ve decided: I’m going to totally reconstruct my website in PHP and CSS. Same design, but totally removing old HTML-extensions and table-based structures. A big project? UMM YEAH! A HUGE PROJECT! But I think it’s time, and maybe I’ll learn something along the way, hehe. Kudos to DannyChoo.com for the inspiration!

Finally Arrived. [Friday, March 30, 2007] Well, the day finally arrived. A Friday. Before I left for work, Jen and I said our last goodbye. Her last teary-eyed goodbye as a Las Vegan. With 95% of her stuff already boxed and taken away by the moving company this past Tuesday, she’ll drive her remaining things to Seattle tomorrow, Saturday. It’s funny. Not funny haha, but funny weird. It seems like major or unusual things always seem to happen in March, both of our birth months. Destiny? Coincidence? Or maybe it’s simply the start of Spring, a sense of renewal…

Getting Better! [Thursday, March 29, 2007] Whew! Even more PHP experimentation, including header.php, footer.php, as well as replacing random-image javascript with random-image PHP. Looks straight-forward and do-able after all! So now, HTML-to-PHP-conversion could be my next late-night website project. Beyond that, I wonder how far I can integrate my other-hosted blogs (seamlessly) into my self-hosted website. Or perhaps, vice-versa; integrate my website around my blogs? Either way, that’s the ultimate challenge.

Looking Good! [Wednesday, March 28, 2007] Wow, in addition to my existing LiveJournal.com and self-hosted WordPress.org-based blog, I did some heavy-duty research comparing WordPress.com (not .org) to Blogger.com. With its awesome (1) widgets, (2) HTML/CSS customization, (3) RSS in/out feeds, and (4) Google AdSense features — all for FREE — Blogger seems to be the winner! Sadly, WordPress.com charged $15 simply for editing CSS. So if I can get Blogger’s design to come close to my website, I might ditch LJ posts altogether! Well, except for staying in touch with LJ friends, hehe. :)))