Back end problems
Boy, do I have have them. No, I'm not talking about my butt here. (and you shouldn't be, either!) I'm having some frustrating problems with Movable Type that my site hosts can't seem to solve, and Movable Type doesn't have answers for either, despite me spending about 10 hours with both trying to figure it out. That's contributing quite a...
Site News
All the new crap I've done to screw up this site lately. [81 entries.]
Gee, that sounds familiar...
Remember a couple days ago when I said If it were up to me.... and I proposed a new way of doing the primaries that would be more fair? That post did get linked to by about 40 sites... but apparently not everyone likes to give credit. Check this out on Shakespeare's Sister: It wouldn’t have to be hard. Divide...
Blast from the Past
Normally when I upload a bunch of older photos to my flickr account, I turn off the splice between my flickr account and my RSS feeds, so those who read my blog via a feed reader don't get a massive influx of my photos in my feed. However, last night, I forgot to do that. Oops. Umm, sorry. I hoped...
Big Things Photos - Back up and Running
My "Big Things" photo galleries are back up and running, finally, after some coding goofiness. In going through all the new photos, I realized I have hundreds of new ones to put online; I'm further behind on this project than I thought. But I have much easier ways to get them online, so that's good. I'll point new things as...
Working on my "Big Things" photo galleries
The lack of posting around here lately is because I'm reworking my "Big Things" photo galleries. I'm reworking the thumbnails to make them larger, but with smaller file sizes. I'm reorganizing them and making it harder for people to hotlink to the photos and chew up my bandwidth. I also have a bunch of new photos that haven't make it...
OMFG - I wound up on Joe.My.God.
This tabloid magazine photo I snapped on a knee-jerk reaction and then blogged about has been making the rounds of the internets; I swore I wasn't going to do a "oooh, look how popular I am! I'm famous!" post, because that's so lame. Plus, I've had other things to worry about. But today it's on Joe.My.God., which is really all...
Weekend Update
We had a pretty quiet weekend around here. I went to water aerobics with my new suit, which is awesome. Stephanie went skating. Her dad decided against coming down to visit because Valpo got hit with a storm, which knocked out the power for Stephanie's mom. We went over to my old house to check on the water removal from...
Leviticus in My Spam Filter
I was going through a site migration checklist of things to remember when you move your site from one host to another, and one of the items was to remember to look at your comment spam filter keywords, to make sure that additions you've made stayed in the list. Which made me remember a conversation I had yesterday with a...
Getting there
I'm somewhat up and running. I'm still missing some files that need to be transferred over to this new server, and my comments aren't working, but at least the site itself is up so people can see it. It's possible that the domain name still needs propagate everywhere......
Changing Hosts
I'm going to be migrating my site to a new host over the next several days, so fewer posts and updates, and probably some downtown. I'll be back up as soon as humanly possible....
Reworked Shirts and Other Gear
Because our team of designers at work is headed to the SXSW Conference in March, I decided I needed a reworked and updated shirt with my URL on it to wear to Austin. So I redesigned my lightning bolt logo and put together a newer t-shirt design with it for my Cafe Press stores, and while I was at it,...
Blogroll and Charity Links
While goofing off this weekend, I added a blogroll to my site, including some of the blogs I read every day. What stays in my feed reader can vary depending on my mood, but these links are ones that I consistently check all the time, including my friend's sites. Any recommendations on sites I should check out and add would...
Comments Feed
I added a comments feed to my site last night, in case some rare person out there might be interested in hearing what others have to say about my site, like the homophobes and weird flamers who occasionally troll by and leave hate messages that I promptly delete. I don't get too many comments on the site, although weirdly, I...
Social Networking, Me and You - Link Me All Up
So, this whole social networking thing... fun, huh? This past weekend, I actually went out and located my stupid pages on of the social networking sites, updated my picture and profile (holy shit, on some of them I didn't even have my girlfriend listed. Oops. Not single for quite some time!) and crap, trolled around and found some friends that...
I hate spammers
Ugggh. I've had tons of comment spam lately, and a ton of spam come through my contact form. I wish someone would track these guys down and wrench their computers from their evil, annoying hands. "No more computers for you! Ever!"...
Updating
I realized earlier today that my bio page was horribly out of date. I hadn't added any information about our new house, there were no photos on it, and according to the outdated page, Annabelle and Huckleberry were still kittens. So after some massive re-writing and cross-linking, the page is all up to date....
More Designy Goodness
I've tweaked my new design here and there, made some color use more consistent and added some extra flair. There are still some some css layout changes that I need to make to fix a couple of pages, and I have a one-off template or two that need some I must say, I really enjoy looking at my own site...
New Site Design
As you may have noticed (or maybe not, if you read via a newsreader) I installed a new site design today. This is one that I've been tinkering with for awhile, and it's not perfect yet, but because I started it in February, before the house buying and other life events occurred, I decided it was time to finally throw...
All my friends are bloggers, too
A long while back, I deleted my blogroll because the software that I was using for it was causing my site to hang while loading. I never got around to researching better software and putting it back, which I've always felt kinda guilty about. Lately I've noticed some of the big league bloggers are doing their blog rolls via del.icio.us...
Weekend Update
What I accomplished this weekend: Comment Code - I worked on the comment code on my site to accomplish: Cleaner xhtml and css. This was hard, but I got it working well. Displaying the number next to the comment. This wasn't hard. Displaying comments from me in a different color than others. This seemed to be fraught with errors, for...
Quiet time
Sorry about the lack of new and unique writing over the last week or so. I'm writing a couple of long book reviews that are still in draft form, and doing a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes on the site design to get everything cleaned up, so things have been quiet 'round here. I've missed posting about the...
Rough Cut: My New Site Design
Here's what I've been working on all weekend. It's quite rough, still, and needs a lot of refinement. I haven't picked the correct font for my new logo, and there's a lot missing and lots of little stuff that still needs cleaned up. But you get the general idea of where I'm headed....
Ego Surfing
What's your Ego Surf score? Mine's 9,142. I have to say, I'm gratified that I beat the pants off of j-walkblog....
Oldest Blog Ever
I signed up for Media Matter's Blog Registration the other day, and the sent me back an e-mail saying I had the oldest blog they'd every seen. (I have entries dating back to 1995). Yup. I've been around that long, keeping my journal online, using BBEdit, long before blog software was invented. Most of the static content I have (like...
Reassessing Priorities 2
I decided against moving my site to a different URL or restricting access for the time being. Either of those defeat the purpose of what I want for this site, and to me the site is more important than other stuff. I did make a small change that I hope isn't noticable, and there might be other behind the scenes...
Reassessing Priorities
This website is one of the the most important things I do. I'm sure no one in particular cares much about it other than me, but for me at least, it's a creative outlet that I need to survive. I don't think I could have gotten through this past year without it, and as far as I'm concerned, it's as...
Welcome, WISH-TV Viewers
If you're here because you saw Dick Wolfsie's report on the news this morning, thanks for thinking of me. My pictures of "Big Things" are here. I think when I talked to Dick I mentioned some "Lost Big Things" that I took pictures of at one time or another which are no longer around. I mentioned Habig's giant gardening trowel...
I'm going to be on TV Again
I'm going to be on WISH-TV's morning news on Friday morning for my "Big Things" photographs again. I did an updated interview with Dick Wolfsie a few weeks ago, and it will air then. So check me out being all famous and stuff. On top of that... I won first place in the Nuvolab 2005 Journalism Awards. My friend Bil...
CD Mixes converted
In my continuing quest to move my static html pages into Movable Type, early this morning I finished up entering my CD Mix Playlists. I also added a number of playlists that for one reason or other (mainly because it was a pain to do the old way) I never made a page for....
RSS feed changes
I switched my RSS feed over to a feedburner feed, which will be more robust and will tie in my flickr photos into my feed. So if you're subscribing to my RSS feed already, you might want to grab the feedburner link instead. http://feeds.feedburner.com/electrasteph Also, I'm converting all my old static content into Movable Type, so some of my journal...
Testing, 1, 2, 3
I may or may not have my Movable Type upgraded. I have to check everything out and see if it works. Yep, it seems to be functioning. Hmm. Now I can see if I can install the photo gallery templates for a photoblog, and see if I can get that up and running. MT has lots of nice little tweaks...
My Photo Galleries
So, I have this dilemma about the photo galleries I have on my site, and what to do with them going forward. I've had them ever since I got a digital camera in 1999, and since then they've been a major feature of my site, although it's one I never managed particularly well. My Big Things Photos especially have generated...
commonplace books
Years and years ago, (1998) I was sitting around reading my copy of Benet's Readers Encyclopedia, which is a somewhat obscure reference book. I came across a passage about "commonplace books" which described them as a type of journal from the 1800s where people would collect scraps of poetry, ideas and their own writing along a common theme. It differed...
commonplacebook.com nominated for a journalism award
On November 5th, 2005, Nuvolab XII will announce the top two Journalism Award winners. The best independent blogs will be awarded for promotion of equality, political insight, creativity, and presentation. Award winners will receive custom award images to display on their site, as well as permanent recognition here on Nuvolab. Third, fourth, and fifth place winners will receive honorable...
The Steph Mineart Morning Gazette
Here are all the fine sites I read regularly.
Howdy, Mumbai!
I upgraded my google vistors map to include the last 100 visitors to my site. Yea! Australia, Australia, Australia, we love you, amen! Crack two! Hey, whomever it is in Hong Kong -- e-mail me. I want a pen pal from Hong Kong. Antartica, however, is sadly not represented....
Google Map showing where my site visitors are from
Check this out, a Google Map showing where people are viewing my site from. I have visitors from Oxford, England; Napoli, Italy; and Athens, Greece. That's scary....
Electronic Frontiers Foundation: Legal Guide for Bloggers
This is really cool... a legal guide of what your rights are as a blogger. Keeping this handy for future reference....
Commonplace Books
About nine years after I did, the editor of technology review suddenly realizes the parallels between "Commonplace Books" and personal websites and weblogs. Too bad he came late to the party and didn't get the URL he wanted, and had to settle for "New Commonplace" instead. Sucker. E-mail him and tell him he's nine years late....
Guest Blogger
Just testing -- I'll be guest blogging and providing updates while Steph is in the hospital. Looks like my new laptop works just fine at Steph's house. Woo hoo!...
Blog Frustration
I have Movable Type up and running on my site, and this blog you see is in it now. However, I'm still working on moving my old blog posts from Blogger into Movable type, and I'm only about half done. The difficulty is with Blogger, not with the new content management system. Within Blogger, I can only export 999 posts...
Movin' on up, to the east side...
I'm getting ready to convert my blog over to the Movable Type publishing system, from Blogger. MT is much more customizable and robust, and I've learned how to bend and shape it to my will in creating IndyScribe, so I'm hoping the transition will go smoothly in moving this blog. (Oh, it never does, does it?) I have something like...
Like my blog? Fill out this survey
Fill out this survey and enter my site on questions 15 and 16 to give me some more exposure... It's being done by blogads.com, which I will be putting in place on my site soon to help defray costs....
The Nuvo Article
We went to Shalimar at lunch and grabbed copies of Nuvo to read while we ate.... The article turned out very cool. Dan Rafter is a great writer and did a great job making sense of my answers to his questions. I have a feeling my girlfriend might have something to say about the headline "A love affair with Mr....
Big Things Updates
In preparation for the Nuvo article coming out this week, I've been working on and updating my Big Things web pages. I added photos of the big things I took in Valparaiso over the holidays, and updated and added some other photos. The only thing I haven't added are the pictures my brother Todd gave me a while back, which...
I'm going to be on the cover of Nuvo (and weekend update)
So I found out today that the article that Nuvo Newsweekly is doing on my Big Things Photo collections will be a cover article. I have to go in for an additional photo shoot this evening and the article will run in the January 5th issue. This weekend my grandparents and Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Gerald came from Iowa to...
Big Things Updated
I'm being interviewed by a reporter from Nuvo tonight about my "Big Things" Photo Galleries, so in honor of the occasion, I've added tons of photos to the galleries. I'd been behind in adding things for awhile, even though I've been taking photos constantly over the last year. Now all my new pics are added, with the exception of some...
Finally! I was able to fix my blogger templates
Sometime back in May, blogger stopped supporting my archive index page, and they failed to tell me about it. So since then, my archive pages haven't been updating. I noticed the problem two weeks ago, and since then have been struggling with blogger help to figure out how to solve the problem. I finally got it to publish and update...
Discovery Channel's "Big"
Several people sent me links to this, because I love photographing "Big Things" -- Discovery channel is having an entire series on Big stuff and the people who create it. Cool....
Comments Enabled
Blogger did some major updates to their technology, and now I can allow comments on the site without having to use a third party. So I'm going to turn on the ability to comment on some posts on my site, just to see how it goes....
Note to self:
start here: Week of April 20, 2003 end here: Week of June 15, 2003 Just editing some stuff and making notes for myself. Not too important really....
Vacation, all I ever wanted...
Today, on the first day of my spring vacation, I took my little dog and went on a road trip, where we snapped photos of a giant pink elephant, two giant shoes, and a Huge guy. Spike doesn't care for road trips. He was doggone bored. Poor puppy. Tomorrow, we're reading about CSS all day long. Woo hoo!...
Well, it's getting there...
I was able to upload all my big things pictures, but now I'm discovering other stuff that's missing. I configured a new guestbook, but it doesn't look like my site, so I have to tweak it. And I'm starting a redesign that will hopefully allow me to redo the site using cascading style sheets and web standards design, so I...
Technical Difficulties -- Please Stand By...
I just transferred webhosting to a cheaper service, so there are some aspects of my site that aren't currently functioning, like the guestbook, and unfortunately, my big things photos. Give me a day or two to get everything set up, and hopefully, everything will be back to normal....
Crap. I hate that.
I hate it when some people are much funnier than I am. Miscellaneous, etc. does their version of the friday five, and it's much better than mine. As if I needed to be reminded that I suck after getting stood up Sunday. Thanks. Plus, for more things that make me feel inadequate, check out the site Damn Ass Hell Kings....
If Andrew Sullivan can do it, so can I...
PLEDGE DRIVE 2003 PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG! Click on the PayPal or Amazon graphic on the left to give a tip....
New "links" on my blog
Check it out -- I added a link to the bottom of each post, which you can use to link to a specific blog entry if you wish. I probably could have done that a long time ago, but this is the first time I've actually taken the time to look up how to change my template settings to create...
Site Related News
I'm messing around right now with cascading stylesheets, testing how they work with the navigation links on the left of this page. So far, it's working well. Now I'm looking at different sections of the site, and how to streamline using stylesheets so the pages will load faster and be lighter. The basic design will be the same, though. I'm...
Thank God
They finally got Blogger back online. I was starting to go crazy without being able to post....
Shamless Self-Promotion
Download the Alexa toolbar: http://www.alexa.com/. (PC users only; there's no Mac toolbar at this time. Dammit!) Then spend some time clicking around my site looking at all the stuff on it. This will boost my traffic ratings. Update: Lori e-mailed me to tell me that Alexa is considered to be spyware. Technically, it's not. Spyware are hidden programs that are...
Change of Scenery
It's been pointed out to me, and probably rightly so, that I write a lot about our Stupid President. Well yes. And I write a lot of mean things. Well yes. And the person pointing this out mentioned it not because she likes the Stupid President (she doesn't) but because she was concerned about how upset I am all the...
Photos of My House
Reorganizing my photos is taking longer than I thought. I'm trying to organize them by room/area of the house, so you can see a progression of the work I've done in each room, but there are a lot of photos. I've got them all sorted out, but I threw away the original thumbnails, not wanting to risk sorting those too,...
Where in the World Are You?
Find your exact latitude and longitude. Also, check out what websites are near you. We all hope you find yourself to be nowhere near Iraq. Although there are quite a few who wouldn't be thrilled to be near the US, either....
I'll be a fireman when the floods roll back
I've been going through my web links and bookmarks and compiling everything/weeding it all out to just the sites I think are really cool. It's gonna be a long process. I also have some ideas for redesigning the entire site. Yikes. Wonder when I'll have time to do that? (update: march 2005) Hmmm. I keep reminding myself I have to...
Streaming Audio
A link I need for later... never mind it, unless you're streaming audio from the net on a mac....
Interesting web host packages
Interesting web host packages: Dream Host PHP Web Hosting...
weekend update
It wasn't the best weekend I've ever had. My sister's going back to England to live, and I had to say goodbye to her Saturday. I'm happy for her that's she's going back, because she really likes it there, but I'll miss her. On Sunday, I went to Kokomo and Peru Indiana to photograph big things, which was cool, but...
House Photos
I just finished updating all of my photo galleries: both the regular gallery , and the house photos. I finished the thumbnail pages so you can see all the photos in a section at once, then click for the large photo. I was a bit behind (6 months) on doing that! UPDATE: I later took these photos down because someone...
Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday, dear me. Happy Birthday to me. In case I hadn't mentioned it, today is my birthday. Yesterday, I had someone come up to me and say "I recognize you from somewhere." And after we went through a big list of places (work, college, high school, friends, etc.) it turns out...
Webby Awards
Hey, write me in as a candidate in the "personal website" award section of the Webby Awards....
I can't tell an anecdote anymore
Okay it's creeping me out a bit the number of people who I've started to tell a story to, and they say, "yeah, I read that on your site." First because I'm scared that my friends actually check my journal regularly, and second, that I'm ruining all my small talk. I can't tell the same story over and over just...
I'm Going To Be on TV
So, yes, I'm going to be on television at 5:50 am tomorrow morning, on channel 8 Daybreak news, with Dick Wolfsie and Barney the Dog. He's interviewing me about my Big Things Photo Gallery from the Ralph's Muffler shop on 16th street where Mr. Bendo is located. Set your VCR!!!...
My Photos
I've been updating and posting my entire photo galleries over the last few days. With the exception of three new galleries (work, places I've lived, around Indy) everything is out there and everything is new. Check them out....
Stupid Spam
Here's some great spam of the sort I get all the time: Subject: Hello Steph. Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 01:23:07 -0400 (EDT) From: ETM Dear Steph, My name is John Barister and I work for a company called Electronic Traffic Management. Our Company has done a large amount of market research that has brought back some very interesting results....
Site News
I know the photo galleries on the left column of this page are getting old. New galleries are on their way; I promise....
blogger is set up
Okay. Blogger is set up and I finally got it working the way I want it to. I only hope that I can figure out how to archive stuff the way I want. Tonight is the big Buca de Beppo Xmas bash/White Elephant party. Should be very interesting. UPDATE: Prior to this, I had been building my journal entries by...
Entertaining Hate Mail I've Received
Posted on Here Is The Big Gay Agenda: Hate to say it, but your [sic] wrong. If the homosexual community wanted to be left alone then they should have just shut up years ago. People in general dont [sic] hate gays, we hate the fact that gays are trying to force their lifestyle on to everyone else. Sorry, but im...