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2 minute read

November 11, 2005, 1:24 AM

So far, I’ve refurbished two sections of the site: the Journal (which you’re looking at), and the Online Store. The Journal’s update is one I’m quite pleased with, as it adds some functionality that wasn’t there before. For one thing, I added “permalinks” for the entries, linked as “Link to or print this article”. Those are at the bottom of each entry. For an example, here’s a link to the recent Journal entry entitled A fun day was had by all…

Notice how it’s on one page there by itself. And print it – it doesn’t run off the side of the page. It is all neatly fitted in there. At least that’s what it did on my printer.

Another fun feature I added was what I’ve heard called “bookmarks” and “anchors”. It’s used on FAQs and things like that where if you click the link, it skips you to a spot on the page. Here’s an example of this in action, click this link to the Journal entry Talk about threatening-looking weather… from August 2005.

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

November 5, 2005, 8:21 PM

I am taking a break from hunting for a moment to speak to you now. For the last hour, I’ve been hunting for the CD that contains the original for this image of a Wheelock MT horn/strobe. I want to use it for the photo feature. Why I can’t find it, I don’t know. I obviously knew where the CD was on June 14, when I uploaded it to Wikipedia. As I mentioned, I don’t know why I cannot find it. I’ve practically turned this place upside down looking for it, too. It’s got to be around here somewhere.

And by the way, if you’re reading this, and that photo of the MT is in the photo feature, that means I found it.

Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

November 4, 2005, 1:26 AM

Since March, as you may know, I’ve been running a photo feature on my main page. You may recall that this replaced the quote article that previously occupied that space. And ever since the photo feature was launched, I’ve only displayed vertical photos due to the vertical nature of the page’s design.

Now, however, I also want to display horizontal photos, since I have a whole bunch of those that I want to show on the main page, but the space as currently designed won’t allow it.

I want to make two versions of the main page – the current one for when a vertical photo is the feature, and a second one for use when a horizontal photo is the feature. In addition, I don’t want to make the photo feature a pain to update with two versions of the main page. That’s a lot of what killed the old quote. It had become a colossal pain in the butt to update because it was such a complicated process. So we’re trying to avoid that. Thus I don’t want to just simply have two versions of the main page saved and just upload the one I want. That adds an extra few steps to the process. Right now, it’s just some image work, one upload, and then an update using an online form.

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

October 21, 2005, 1:25 AM

I’m working on the preliminary stages of a site redesign, and as with every year, I start with writer’s block before suddenly getting inspiration.

This year, keeping in mind that the look I choose will be the one that the site wears for its ten-year anniversary, I have been looking at silver as a possible color. I’m not too keen on using gray as a main color, but I’m hoping to artsy it up a bit and add some more color to it to balance out the grayness of it – though silver is a nice color.

You know what this reminds me of? Going through all the color swatches in the paint department of Wal-Mart or Lowe’s looking for the proper color of paint for various paint jobs I’ve done in the past. After a while, you just start to get numb to it. This is how you can tell I’m not cut out to be a decorator. Blue is blue. This is blue. I also consider this to be simply blue. And after a while, they all kind of start to look the same. And this is also why it’s not a good idea to start obsessing over colors over an extended period. Short sessions are good before it gets mind-numbing.

Still, though, I’m not going to be able to tell you the difference between “Bondi Blue”, “Azure”, “Cerulean”, “Cornflower”, “Dodger”, “Denim”, etc. I lump them all into “blue” and say “that one”.

But the interior decor metaphor goes on, as I choose a color scheme to carry the site to the big 1-0 mark and pick something that isn’t going to make me want to retch when I see the finished product…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

October 14, 2005, 11:57 PM

Finally, my September 24 photo set is finished. Three weeks from shooting to completion. Of course, this means that now I don’t have to look at my photos from September 24 for a while. For let me tell you… when you do a photo set, particularly a large one like September 24 (121 photos plus 14 movies), trust me when I say you can get tired of looking at the photos.

But I’m quite proud of the set. I covered the Mobilization for Global Justice’s feeder march, I covered the ANSWER/UFPJ march, I covered the Freepers, plus I met up with Mom after it was all over.

Now the next photo set in the hopper is from my vacation to the beach. I’m also working on some anti-war stuff for Wikipedia, and some stuff about the Metro, also for Wikipedia.

I also have the 2005 redesign to think about, and I can tell you this – it’s getting later and later every year. The annual redesign was originally in September when I first started doing redesigns annually in 1999. Then it was moved up to July in 2001. Then 2004’s was in October. Now, since I have a backlog of photo sets, and since I generally like the way the Web site currently looks and operates, I’m thinking about doing a very minor redesign on the site, mainly to correct any shortcomings on this design that turned up in the year we’ve had it.

Categories: Anti-war, Schumin Web meta, World Bank

< 1 minute read

October 12, 2005, 12:39 PM

I am sending this from the middle of Dupont Circle on my cell phone! I am amused. Needless to say, typing like this is cumbersome, but it is something new.

Categories: Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

September 21, 2005, 8:33 AM

It’s September! Can you believe it? That means it’s almost redesign time again!

And, like last year, I go into this season once again wondering what the heck I’m going to do. Of course, last year, that turned out very well, turning my site, which still featured “College Life” and “Web Cam”, among other things making the site a college student kind of thing, and gave it a shift to being more an adult kind of thing. College Life was shifted off to its own subsection, Web Cam is gone, and more emphasis was placed on my Journal and Life and Times.

All throughout last year, Life and Times was a bit of a “lost” section, though, housing the Journal as well as a few mostly-transplanted photo sets, but with no strong purpose. It was just a mess. The redesign repositioned it, plus with the introduction of the hybrid photo set style (narratives with photo sets), it gained a reason to live.

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

September 17, 2005, 7:13 PM

What can I say? Sometimes simple, well-intended things yield up unexpected results. Why do I bring this up? I was reading my Discussion Forums, and one thread went into state fairs and such. A link was provided to the Web site for the Haddam Neck Fair in Haddam Neck, Connecticut. The address of haddamneckfair.com, due to the way the domain name is formatted, coupled with my forum’s built-in swear filter, caused the URL to be rendered like this:

had[expletive deleted]eckfair.com

I knew that the swear filter would render certain words (the famous seven-plus-three, plus a few others) as “[expletive deleted]” when displayed on-screen, but I never thought it would filter out a URL like that. Still, that’s pretty efficient for the swear filter, even rendering the URL incorrectly in its mission to filter out the profanity I’ve told it to watch for – something no one expected it to do. After all, it took the “damn” right out of haddamneckfair.com.

I ended up fixing the problem by taking “damn” out of the swear filter. I rationalized it on the forums by saying, “I figure we’re all old enough for ‘damn’ on here, and since it’s interfering with legitimate activity, I’m going to let it through.”

That was quite a strange thing to happen, though.

Categories: Language, Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

August 30, 2005, 8:44 PM

I was really excited to find out that the photo of the soldier that was prominently featured in a photo in the Day of Activism photo set was actually Casey Sheehan. From there, a little research led me to find that Cindy Sheehan, along with others, were at the funeral-style procession. I also was able to positively ID the photo – that is Casey Sheehan in the large photo. His name is easily read on his uniform in the high-resolution original photo.

I’m just amazed. Makes me look at “Day of Activism” a little differently now, since now I find that someone who has become a bit of a household name was at the same event as I was, and even possibly appeared in some of the photos.

Wow.

Categories: Activism, Schumin Web meta

3 minute read

August 21, 2005, 9:13 PM

I’ve got my suitcase all packed up, and all I have left to do is to properly pack Big Mavica, unhook my alarm clock and my cell phone charger, and put together my entire toiletries kit. Not too shabby. Then over here on the Web site, I’m going to change the photo feature to an image from last year’s trip to the beach (the black-and-white photo of the woman in Dupont Circle was deliberately held longer than intended to time this next feature), and then I’m going to put a vacation message on the updates list.

All in all, I’m excited! And I think that everyone at work knows that I’m going on vacation. I told everyone, and even was nearly counting down the minutes until 4:00 (which is “quittin’ time” for me). I also jokingly told a few more coworkers I’d get them some sand as a souvenir. And then other coworkers were saying it’s going to be so quiet around the store without me for those five days.

Also, I had one of those priceless moments at work today. In a slower moment, a coworker needed a CSM. They ultimately needed to page over the squawk box for them. So they dial the number to page, and thought they were paging. What do we hear? A voice without amplification. So I said, “I don’t think you got it.” So they try again, and they still don’t get on there. So I give it a try. I dial to page, and I’m live on the PA system, and successfully deliver the page. I hang up, and turn to the coworker: *raspberry*. Yes, I couldn’t resist doing the old “Bronx cheer” there, giving them the raspberries. They knew I was being silly, and so it was all good.

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta, Television, Travel, Virginia Beach, Walmart

< 1 minute read

July 16, 2005, 11:22 PM

Three days of no Internet and four updates ready to go (Photo Feature, Childhood Days, Transit Center, and Journal) will drive a person completely up the wall. There’s just something about knowing that your Internet connection is down that makes you crazy. No Email. No AIM. No forums. No Web updates. Seriously, everything grinds to a halt.

Of course, it could be worse. I could be one of those people who do their Web page right on the server, and thus not have a local copy to do. I have the whole Web site right here on my computer, and that’s my “master” for the site. What you see online is simply the latest update from the master on my computer.

Still, it makes a person crazy to have all these updates ready to go and nowhere to put them. Hopefully, now that we’ve had the cable guy in to fix it, the connection will stay up. They rearranged how everything was wired together, giving the cable modem its own cable jack and somehow making it work. So I’m pleased.

Categories: Internet, Schumin Web meta

5 minute read

July 15, 2005, 5:35 PM

Wednesday and Thursday were such wonderful days off. I ran some errands, ran around a bit, and also got a lot of work done on the computer.

On Wednesday, I spent much of the day out. I first went to the RadioShack store in Waynesboro to return that RF switch that I ended up not needing to hook up my Super Nintendo. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the switch that was the problem, but rather where along the line I was hooking it up. So no problem. The Super Nintendo works, and I got my thirteen bucks back.

Then I went over to Staunton. Since the Harley-Davidson shop moved to its new location in Staunton, I’d heard a lot about it. Add to that the fact that they had their first annual “Rally in the Valley” about a month or so ago, and that generated a bit more buzz about it. So I went over to take a look. Now I’d never been to the old Harley place when it was in Waynesboro, so I had nothing to compare this to. Still, I was favorably impressed, even though biker stuff isn’t exactly my thing. First of all, the sense of space really gets you. The place is huge. And that’s not even the whole place. That’s just the main salesfloor. And on the salesfloor, there are bikes on display, there are sections for parts and accessories for one’s motorcycle, sections for men’s, women’s, and kids’ apparel, a section for shoes, a section with hats, helmets, sunglasses, and goggles, and even more. Then on the other side of the building, there’s a service area, and a well-appointed waiting area for people whose bikes are being serviced. And then outside the building, down a hill, is a course for people to take on their motorcycles. With it being down a hill from the main building, it makes for a great viewing area. As I said, I was favorably impressed with the place, even with biker stuff not being my thing. The place is very high-visibility (it rises high above the VA 262 loop), but actually getting to it is a little weird, since you have to go south on US 11, turn left onto Rolling Thunder Lane, which is almost right after you get onto Route 11. Then Rolling Thunder Lane is a longish, slightly-curving road with the Harley place looming up at the end.

Continue reading…

Categories: Blue Ridge Parkway, Retail, Schumin Web meta, Video games, Weather

4 minute read

July 1, 2005, 12:35 AM

First of all, welcome to July, which means I close out the journal file that I use for the first half of 2005, and open a new journal file for the second half. So that’s why none of the previous entries are showing on the front of the Journal. They’ve been swept off the page because I’ve switched journal files.

Otherwise, though, I did add one new feature to to the Journal with this new journal file for my own information. Now, whenever I post a Journal entry, it will capture the remote host name of the place where I posted the entry. Most of the entries will show the host name for my regular computer, but there are times when I post from elsewhere, like that time in the middle of March when I posted an entry on the Infoshop‘s computer while I was up in Washington on my first post-surgery DC trip. From your perspective, there will be no change in your experience. The host name information will not show on the site.

What’s ironic about this new feature, though, is that with this first entry in the new journal file that captures the host name, is that I’m writing it offline, thus there is no host name to capture. Why? A few reasons. First of all, my Internet connection is down for some unknown reason, and thus the online form that I usually use for it is inaccessible. So I’m writing this directly into the database. Secondly, I’ve not yet done any of the changeover work on the site for the new file. And lastly, this entry was not supposed to be the first July entry, but rather the final June entry, but a fly got into the ointment while I was out today after work, which made me FAR later in getting home than I wanted. That story follows.

Continue reading…

Categories: Driving, Schumin Web meta, Weather

3 minute read

June 29, 2005, 11:41 PM

Yay! The closet is clean! It only took me a month to do, but the closet is completely devoid of all of my crap. And I took no prisoners. Sixteen tubs’ worth of crap went to the landfill. I have one tub’s worth of stuff that I’m keeping/selling/donating. Not much came out of the closet that was of any worth, though.

I did find some interesting stuff, though. One was an old videotape of early-1990s television that I had been looking for on and off for years. Turned out it was in my old toy box the whole time. How it got there, I don’t know. But that tape was a lot of fun to watch again. It contains, among other things, a re-airing of the original 1990 pilot of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Let me say this about it. The pilot was awful, but it showed great potential.

Speaking of my old toy box, we found it, and it’s in pretty good shape. I cleaned it completely out, and Mom and I are going to refinish it. Right now, it’s got some splinters in it, mostly around the edges, it’s got some weird marks on it, and some discoloration. So we intend on sanding it and painting it before it sees a new life storing whatever it is that I choose to put in there. It could hold a lot of stuff.

Continue reading…

Categories: House, Schumin Web meta, Video games

< 1 minute read

May 9, 2005, 11:24 AM

Finally, after about two weeks of server problems, everything is working properly once again, and I can do regular updates again. I am just tickled.

I know that everyone on the discussion forums will be happy, too, since the server problems caused more issues there than anywhere else. After all, that’s probably the most complicated part of the entire site. Most of the site is fairly simply done.

And then once everything got rectified, then it was a matter of cleaning up the forums. Any new topics attempted during the outage were lost, and so I had to manually create text files and posts for them (since the titles still showed up), and then delete them.

In any case, though, I’m just glad I have my site back.

Categories: Schumin Web meta