Ploafmaster General

So I haven't exactly been posting much here lately, especially not about Italy like I said I would.

Truth is, I've been pretty busy lately with work, writing things for A Pair of Pathetic Peripatetics, and living my life with my lovely Valerie.

So I'm posting here more or less to let people know that I still care about this site. Even though only 4 people a month actually check it out.

Maybe it's more for my sake so I don't abandon the project. I really want to make a habit out of capturing my thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

Anyway, I'm still around, and I'll keep posting!

Well, for the 3 people on the whole of the 'Net who've read my past several posts (Rome excluded), you're probably wondering what that was all about. So I'll explain it to you, as dryly as possible (for added effect).

When I was in high school, one of my best friends, Robert, and I wrote a short series of near-stream-of-consciousness prose. And if you knew anything about what goes on within our respective conscious minds, you would run in terror.

At any rate, I was digging through an online archive of the web (kind of circular, don't you think?) and came across my old website from high school c.1998. This waste of webspace contained one small but excellent section dedicated to said brain-drippings from Robert and myself. I promptly copied them to a text file for posterity, and decided to post them on this website to once again share the demented nature of my friend and me.

That's it.

...which I suppose is a warning of sorts.

I just went and did something potentially wacky...I've decided to allow people to register with my website, and when registered, submit content for consideration to be published.

You can still comment freely without having to register/log in, but now you have the possibility of having your own post on my site!

Yeah.

I know.

You're as thrilled as a sleeping sloth on a summer day. But hey, this is mostly intended for my family and close friends, so don't feel bad if I toss everything you send my way.

I figure this is a good way to get more interesting content on my website, rather than trying to provide it all myself.

All right, this isn't going to be much of an interesting post, but I've found lately that writing is somewhat of a gentle opiate for my oft raging boredom. So I'm writing. Because I'm bored. But you figured that out already...

While I'm writing, I figured I'd extoll the glories of the Mozilla project's Firefox web browser. I use it exclusively at home, and nearly so at work - the time sheet system requires IE.

Now, as anti-Microsoft as I am, I wouldn't be writing about Firefox in this manner if it was merely an alternative. I'm writing this (and using it) because I've really found it to be a superior product. Here are some of the mighty strengths:

1. Tabbed browsing - allows you to have multiple pages open in the same window, on seperate tabs. May not sound like a vast improvement over multiple windows, but a) when you get used to it, you can't live without it, because b) it makes keeping related pages together a snap, among other things.

2. Excellent pop-up blocking - easier to manage than IE's new joint, I feel.

3. The powerful support of open-source software. Whether the security vulnerabilities are fewer because of a smaller user base or not, when problems do arise they're tackled quickly - big or small. That's because rather than a profit-driven firm trying to convey an image of reliability, we have a group around the world dedicated to creating/maintaining/using software that actually works well.

4. Extensions - wow, I just discovered this recently, and it has the potential to be extraordinarily powerful. Here's an example: I installed an extension called Adblock, only 70k in size. This allows me to block on the page advertisements, be they from Google or otherwise. This is pretty serious, because it allows me to see many of my favorite pages without flashing, bandwidth eating advertisements.

I know several friends who have already switched, and I know Valerie pretty much uses it all the time on our home computer without any complaints or difficulty switching.

I figure the more people that try to spread the news about Firefox, the bigger dent we can make in the boys of Redmond. And once one piece of open-source software starts to make an impact, more people will be accepting of others that come after, like the exciting Open Office project. Check it out, you won't regret it.

So last night I was sitting on my sofa, alone in my apartment, when it finally struck me. I figured out the redesign for this website, and in my excitement began drawing it out on a piece of plain printer paper.

Whether or not you've been in my apartment, I'll explain the concept: Valerie and I have this really cool sculpture/relief thingy that her grandfather gave us. It's a scene of Salerno, Italy, right on the docks, and is made entirely from pieces of cut sheet brass and heavy brass wire. Absolutely awesome, and I hope to do it justice with my site redesign, however long it takes (yeah, maybe even a year...I'm that amature).

I hope to start hammering out the structural design first over the next few weeks as I dig through my books on PHP and a borrowed book called Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman. After that's straight, I'll start hashing out the appearance using the magic of CSS (that's to make it look pretty!).

Anyway, now that the creative block is out of my head, I can finally say with confidence that the redesign is officially underway!

Hey everybody! So I finally have my own domain! This page will be fairly bare-bones for a while, but as I expand my horizons with some serious PHP and MySQL goodness, this site should become a fertile ground for my creativity - be it visual, verbal, or otherwise.

Keep an eye out, as this page may change as frequently as a few times a week!
- Daniel