This site is now running on TextDrive‘s servers. I made the switch because they were running a special “Hosting for Life” promotion that will save me a lot of money in the long run; I’ve also heard a lot of good things about TextDrive and their focus on great hosting service for people who “get it.” I plan to move all of my other sites to TextDrive in the coming weeks, so there may be some downtime. I highly recommend you take advantage of VC3.
Category: Web Design
New Speed Web Design
I finished the newest version of Speed Web Design on Wednesday, but I have not had the time to mention it here. There are still a few minor quirks I need to work out of the code and I’d like to make complete project pages for each project I’ve completed, but the site is basically complete.
When I was working on the basic design for the site—way back in April—I needed some kind of pattern to really make the banner stand out. I found that in Mando Gomez’s Flightplan desktop image and he was generous enough to let me use it. He does amazing work and seems like a genuinely nice guy, so I encourage everyone to make a donation using PayPal and stop by Mandolux for some excellent desktop wallpapers.
Hotlinking Fun
Am I becoming popular? Considering that I was a victim of design theft and forum hacking last month and bandwidth theft this month, I think I am gaining popularity (on a small scale). I noticed in my referral logs—aka: my best online friend—that someone was requesting one of my images many times from another URL. Apparently, Mr. Monahan is unaware of the finer points of online etiquette; I consider it my duty to teach him a lesson.
Long story short, I modified the image he was requesting (The Guns of August book cover) with an educational bit of advertising mockery. I’m not sure how long it will take before he notices, but I’ll be interested to see how long it will be until he makes a correction on his page. It is an interesting coincidence that I found this about the same time that I read a related post by Dan Cederholm. Luckily, I had a few more pixels to maneuver.
Script Kiddies Must Die
Within the past week, Turkish hackers losers decided to hack the Northumberland.us Forums using a simple exploit of phpBB‘s session handling twice. Why? I have no idea. There are only three forum members and hardly any activity, so why anyone would go to the trouble is beyond my understanding. Were they tired of popping zits in their parents basement or what? I respect people who know how to hack and do so with good or benign reasons, but corrupting forum databases for no reason at all? It’s not cool, it’s sad.
Another Design Thief
I must be getting popular: another person has stolen one of my designs. Mohammed Khan of Nashville, Tennessee stole the entire “Request a Proposal” form from my site and slapped it up on his site, Computer Technologies Inc., sans the style sheet. I’m surprised he’s not hotlinking the section heading images. Judging by the Whois listing, Mohammed Khan (1150 Vultee Blvd Apt #G106, Nashville, TN 27217) took less than two months to register his domain and steal my form. I think it annoys me even more that he didn’t bother to rewrite any of the drop-downs to fit his site. They’re all exactly the same as mine. By the way, nice work on the rest of the site, Mohammed! It’s so… colorful.
So how did I find out that Computer Technologies, Inc. of Nashville, TN stole my form design? Same way I did when SeeMonroe.com stole the old design for Northumberland.us: I check my referral logs. The only reason I didn’t bash them online is that they were modifying the design in an area that wasn’t live. I emailed them about it and they took it down. However, Computer Technologies, Inc. links directly to the form page; it’s available for all to see. Secondly, SeeMonroe is not for profit, while Computer Technologies, Inc. stole my design for profit. Oh, and last I checked, “Porposal” isn’t the way to spell “Proposal,” as it is in the URL. It’s only correct on the page because it’s ripped from my site.
Google Goodness
Yesterday, I noticed that Gmail has upped the number of invitations for my account to 50. Looks like they’re getting closer to completing their beta period and interested in how their servers will hold up under increased demands. Would you like to help them? Send me an email if you would like one of my invitations; make sure you include the email address you’d like me to send it to in the body of your friendly letter. Tell me if you have a website or a little bit about yourself: I’m interested to see who’s reading this site. Yes, I suppose your Live Journal counts.
But that’s not all, kids! Today, I checked out Google Maps, which made my head explode. It’s Google’s answer to maps and an interesting alternative to Google Local, which came out a while ago but focuses more on websites related to a business than to maps. The new Maps is slick; it’s smoother than desktop map software. I think it also seems to be the death knell for MapQuest and other online map services which suck worse than Sour Skittles; I put up with their annoyances because there wasn’t a better alternative.
I added a few lines to the Northumberland.us code to print out a link to map each business’ location via Google Maps. I think it will be useful to visitors to Northumberland County. I also did it because the maps are just so slick. Did I mention that they’re slick?
Vote Kerry Button
I wanted to add a little John Kerry button to this site, but I didn’t like the downloads at the official site. And what kind of web designer recommends using an iframe for an image anyway? So I made my own John Kerry button!
I used the flag from the official Kerry/Edwards images and added it to a button I made using the Kalsey Button Maker. I Photoshopped the two into one image, and voila! An attractive button to promote John Kerry for President. Just save the button, upload it to your website, and add the following bit of code to your page:
<div><a href="http://www.johnkerry.com/" title="Vote John Kerry for President"><img src="votekerry.gif" alt="Vote Kerry" width="80" height="15" /></a></div>
If you’re using the button, just leave a little comment to let me know—I’m curious to see where the button shows up. Thanks!
Alexa Favelet
In the past few months, favelets (or bookmarklets) and I have become good friends when exploring this World Wide Web. I like a lot of the favelets found here and here, but I have not found one that looks up Alexa information for the page you are viewing. I now present my Alexa Favelet: Alexa.
Just click and hold on the favelet link and drag it to your Links toolbar in IE or Personal Toolbar Folder in Mozilla or Netscape. When you visit a page and would like to look up the Alexa related info for that page, just click the Alexa link on your toolbar.
Riding a Caffeine Wave
These past two weeks have been hectic and the next two weeks are going to be worse. I’ve been involved in 30 different things and haven’t had any time to write here, despite the fact that I have a lot that I want to write. In fact, I shouldn’t be writing now, but I’m procrastinating and the lack of new stuff here is getting on my nerves.
I launched the new version of Northumberland.us to little fanfare on April 1. It was a long time in the works but well worth the effort, I believe. It’s now much easier for me to add new categories and businesses and lends itself to unlimited expansions. I’m in good company too: both Kinja (here’s my digest) and Gmail launched on April 1.
The following weekend, I visited Annie and we went to her last Spring Formal; I know, we’re just precious, aren’t we? Unlike some people, Annie will be graduating on time. It was good times, despite the small turnout and hot air blower aimed directly at our table.
Easter break was nice, but way too short to be relaxing. Also, I had plans to accomplish some much-needed work over break and little was done with the exception of some initial design work on a brand-new Speed Web Design. I like it a whole big bunch; it’s bright, clean, and it’s gonna have some flashy stuff, to boot.
Oh yeah. There’s also the Studio Series that I’m directing on April 23. I’m directing a staged reading of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park. It’s going to be quite interesting getting that all together in a week and a half; needless to say, that’s upping my blood pressure exponentially. I wish I had more time. I wish I didn’t need to sleep. That would be nice.
All in a Day’s Digital Work
I’m proud of the work I’ve done in the past twenty-four hours. I updated the Scranton Student, updated this rinky-dink blog, posted a whole slew of new side links that have been clogging up my Favorites, helped name a chameleon, unpacked all of my suitcases, and did some online shopping. Granted, my work’s been mostly digital—and therefore, ethereal—but for an English Major who is used to dealing with the fleeting, it’s all right with me. Tomorrow, Annie and I are set for a real-world shopping adventure. It’ll likely be the discount chains for me, because like today’s work, my cash flow has also been fleeting lately.