As you’ve probably noticed already; I’ve finally switched over to the new look that I’ve been working on for CoffeeBear.net. It’s not 100% finished but it’s close enough that I wanted to go ahead and make the switch. My thanks go out to Root for his Trident interface/template on which this new look is based. Sure, my implementation isn’t fancy but it’s a nice change from the old look and is more mine than any other look that I’ve used.

Also, I’ve finally opened my Gallery for your viewing pleasure. Currently, the only thing in there are a selection of photos that I took during my Japan trip. I’ll be adding more to it later.

Enjoy!

Update: Err, I’ve noticed that the new look is busted up on my Portal page and on some of my posts. I’m working to correct that now.

Update 2: Oh and a word of caution, my gallery pages are massively picture heavy. I’ll see about sorting them out a bit later into smaller folders, but for now if you try viewing those pages over dial-up… You’ll be sitting there a while waiting for the thumbnails to load.

Update 3: I forgot to mention, my gallery is currently being powered by Paul Griffin’s Simple PHP Gallery

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*grin* For a novel way to spend a Friday night/Saturday morning, I’m at a bud’s house and we’re firing up a LAN party. For extra fun, he’s got broadband Internet access. Schweet! 😀

Update 14 August 2004, 20:29 : I’m back from the LAN Party. It was a blast. We tried out a bunch of games that none of us had really played before:

We also played a bit of UT2004 and SS2. It was a flippin’ blast; though that last game of WoR sucked when J stomped all our butts 3 minutes into the game. Still to be fair, I smoked everyone at FarCry. Oh and for the record, “Daddy’s Favorite Gun” was the P90 SMG and for a bit of sniping action either the AG36 Assault Rifle or the OICW Advanced Assault Rifle would do nicely.

Note to self: Next time play with the fire modes on the assualt rifles and try out the grenade launcher mode!

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).
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As you might imagine, I’m bored at work1 and I’m trying to come up with something to keep my brain alive. So here’s another QotD2 for you; what are your favorite web development tools?

My response is slightly complicated because I use both Linux & Windows and use different tools under each. Note that these lists are presented in no particular order.

Linux Web Development Tools

  • Quanta for editing HTML, CSS & PHP.
  • Bluefish is another good tool for editing HTML, CSS & PHP but its interface just feels a lot more clutured.
  • GIMP for editing images, though to be perfectly honest I hate using it because the interface is just wretched. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of another image editor that I can use under Linux which has the functionality that I need.

Windows Web Development Tools

  • UltraEdit is the best text editor for Windows. Period. It’s not free but there is a time-limited demo. You can edit pretty much anything with UltraEdit and there are additional wordlists & dictionaries for it to make it even easier to use. Though as I recall CSS is not included with the default word list –this means UltraEdit won’t do syntax highlighting for CSS by default– but an additional wordlist can be downloaded to take care of that.
  • Fireworks MX is the best image editing program, particularly for web work. It’s interface feels very well laid out, hiding options you don’t immediately need and grouping similar options together. Plus, it uses Adobe Photoshop’s plugin architecture allowing you to easily expand the functionality of the software. Again, this isn’t free software but there is a time-limited demo. Unfortunately, the Crossweavers version of Wine lists this program as Known Not to Run; so I won’t be running this under Linux any time soon. *sigh*

1 For the record, I am working right now. I’m trying to get the program I test to generate some errors so I can test some new functionality that the programmers added to the error handling. Naturally now that I want the program to break; it’s not. *sigh*
2 QotD (acronym): There are 2 generally accecpted meanings for this acronym,

  1. Quote of the Day
  2. Question of the Day

Unless otherwise noted, this site uses the 2nd definition.