Regressive
I've removed some sections from my website. Typically, websites are supposed to grow and expand, but every once in a while it becomes necessary to do some pruning. I haven't added to these sections in ages and I'm not likely to do so in the near future. Honestly, I haven't added to several of the sections that I left, but I still have some vague intentions of contributing to them, so I'll leave them for now. I simply haven't found time for the site beyond the occasional Journal update, and until I do I think it's best to focus on some core elements.
I'd like to revamp a few things to take advantage of external resources, but we'll see when I get around to that. It would be nice if the Photos and Projects could bring in data from things like Facebook or Flickr, since that's where I've been putting those things.
Work Begins Anew
I've decided to make some significant changes to XeoMage. As usual this involves a fair amount of new coding, which is already underway. I don't have an immediate forecast of how long this will take, but expect to see something new here in the not-too-distant future.
I've been floating around some vague ideas for a couple of years and a lot of it still needs to take shape. However, I have some broad strokes in mind, and given a little bit of work I think I can bring it about. Some of these changes may see older content fall off. I haven't found the time for some of the section of this site, and there's no use in convincing myself to keep them up if my heart isn't in it.
Instead I think I've come up with a way of making this site work for me instead of the other way around. It can still provide a forum for me to expound and share my thoughts, but it doesn't need to be presented in a way that makes parts of it seem abandoned. It doesn't need to ignore a lot of the things I do online that I'd like to share with everyone. Lastly, it doesn't need to be constrained in ways that prevent me from really using it.
Minor Site Fix
I believe I have corrected a bug where the last post time wasn't updated when I posted something, but would be updated when I modified something. Having this fixed means that anyone relying on the date in the menu to know when I've updated will now see accurate information. This was apparently caused by a line of code getting the last post time that was "less" than "now". I have now set it to update when the post time is less than or equal to now. Programming is really frustrating at times.
Searching, for real
When I launched Search a week or so ago, there were a couple of problems with it. Those have been corrected, along with a number of other bugs, most of which only pertained to me when I'm logged in. Regardless, I wanted to mention that it's fixed now, in case you tried it earlier and didn't get any results.
Digg widget
I finally got around to figuring out how to correct the way the Digg widget on the Profile page displays in IE7, and made some improvements for other browsers as well. Sarah reminded me it was broken, with massive text that overlapped content. I got the DOM snapshot working in Opera 9.5, since their new developer console doesn't show that, and then I was able to comb through the html to find what I could add style to.
So it's looking a bit better, and I even managed to get the digg count to disappear, since that wasn't supposed to be displayed in the first place. It still has the stupid fixed height, leaving a bit of a gap under the text, but I can't make it smaller since a story with a long title will wrap. Oh well, it's definitely an improvement.
Searching
I've gotten a new build of Spark --XeoMage's backend software-- online, bringing with it Search. This long-overdue feature means that if you want to track down a picture from sometime in the summer between 2000 and 2003, or a movie review that was who-knows-when, you can just type in a keyword and get right to it.
There's a number of other things in the new version, but that's the only one I really have implemented. I've got some plans to spend a bit of time enhancing XeoMage style and layout. The templates that make up the site have gotten pretty cluttered and I have a few adjustments that I want to make since the site doesn't render well in certain situations.
Images
After roughly six months I have completed adding image support to Spark, and hence XeoMage. Today I ported all of the pictures in the Photos section into the new image management system. That included generating larger thumbnails (ooh, 70%!), fortunately not a manual process, followed by some cropping of existing photos to standardize all of my image sizes, unfortunately a manual process. However, I'm thrilled to say that after a rather long hiatus I can start adding new photos!
Regular readers may recall that I lost about a half terabyte of data to a raid array configuration problem, and as a result there will be a gap between what's on the site and the new stuff I add. However, I will try to make up for that with quantity. Adding photos was always a pain, involving a tedius process in PhotoShop, file naming, ftp uploading, and then posting to the site. That is now all handled by Spark in one fell swoop.
Pending Enhancements
Work has been ongoing on Spark, the backend to XeoMage. Most of my focus recently has been on the image system, which will let me upload and crop photos directly through the browser. Unfortunately because I've been working on this and I'll have to go back and import all of my existing photos when it's ready, I've been reluctant to add any new Photos to the site until it's done.
The reason for this post is let you know that I'm finally close to finishing, and that my hope is to bring the new version live in the next week or so. Once that's done I hope to add a whole bunch of new photos, and possibly a new project as well.
New Web Hosting
It shouldn't make much difference to those that visit the site, but I have just changed over to a new web host. The new host is a larger company, so hopefully it will be a bit faster. More importantly it gives me the tools and control I need to continue developing Spark (the software that runs XeoMage). So look forward to some new features in the future, and at least a couple of minor bugs getting fixed in the next few weeks.
Fixes
There have been some broken things here and there recently, due in no small part to my ongoing work improving the backend code. While I try to work on dev code and leave the site working on known good, some changes require the database to be altered. When that happens I often find unintended consequences to a change I made, which I then bug fix on the live site. Then I think everything is working only to find later something else is broken.
However, I want to let you know that for the time being I believe that I have corrected these issues and that everything is working correctly. I also don't have any short-term plans for database changes, and if I do I will try to test them on a dev copy. Unfortunately, most of the improvements are for Spark itself, and other sites using it, moreso than XeoMage.
I have some new site content that I've been meaning to get to for a while but haven't. I will try to get better about that, but some of it is a lot of work to launch and with my current focus on Spark it's difficult to find the time. Hopefully soon.