I managed to complete two more pages of my England scrapbook (June 6 and 7). This brings me to about the halfway point of the process. Next up is a big one (on June 8, I visited Castle Windsor, Stonehenge, and Bath). I’m actually getting excited about completing this project. If I spend more time on it this week, I should have it completed by the end of the weekend.

I’m really making progress on migrating various things to the new site. I managed to renumber and add all of my soapbox articles, and the technology items will go through the same process. I am also updating the biography pages, and existing photo pages will need to be redone for consistency, so I still have a ways to go.

I plan on taking a different approach to the scrapbook pages, though. Instead of publishing all of the pictures that I can possibly post, I will focus on a very few. This should (hopefully) help make the site easier to load for visitors who use dial-up connections. Pictures of my family and friends will be dispersed through various pages between the biography section (“about me” and “my family”) and the scrapbook section (“trip to India” and “trip to UK”). The scrapbook will be more of a “memories” area (such as trips and special events), whereas other pictures will be related to the topic of the page (so pictures of myself and my family will be in the biography section, hobbies will be in the hobbies section, how-to will be in the particular technology or projects sections, and so on).

One thing I plan to avoid is using JavaScript to make pictures pop-up in separate little windows. They are not very difficult to code, but they are pretty annoying for visitors. Pictures will instead appear in a new page, so you can use your back button to return to the previous page, as is the case with older scrapbook pages. Although I will still have JavaScript on the site, you just won’t notice it as much as before. Fortunately, I’ve learned enough about Cascading Style Sheets to add some other automatic functionality to the site.

I am still debating if I should add some sort of site map to help visitors find specific items. However, a search feature (powered by Google) will also be added. I think the navigation bar is useful enough, but I may add a map of some sort to better define some of the pages.

Regarding the current site, I’ve finally updated and added a new Tech-know article. After dealing with PC security questions, I finally put together a Computer Security write-up. Hopefully I’ve added all of the important information that most home users need to know about protecting themselves from various bad things that can happen. Of course, it doesn’t do any good if you don’t actually implement them, so be safe and protect yourself and others from malicious technology events. Hopefully I’ll have some time this weekend to add another two or three pages to the England section. I also hope that the table of contents and the navigation bar at the top are helpful.

I’ve managed to debug the new site format (thanks to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) HTML validator), so now I’m ready to migrate all of the old material to the new site. I did manage to migrate two soapbox documents over to the new site. Speaking of which, I also updated the Metallica article. I have to admit that I really like the band’s latest album, St. Anger. It’s different, it’s edgy, it’s raw, and it’s very genuine. It’s helped me through some recent rough spots, so I sometimes feel that I can relate to the music. At any rate, I know that the scrapbook will need a lot of cleaning up, so migrating will not be as simple as it sounds. I’m still aiming to finish and release the new site by the end of the year, assuming major events (i.e. moving due to a new job) don’t slow me down.

I’ve managed to republish my web site tonight. If you had any problems visiting it earlier, I really apologize. It should be up and running now. I haven’t spent much time on the other site, though, because I’m helping a friend out on a project.

After about two months of a friend asking me if I’ve posted my desk with the computer on it on the site, I’ve remembered to check. I also apologize for not posting this sooner. See below to view a picture. I also placed a picture of the desk in the projects page, but I haven’t done much with the page since April. Add that to the list of things I need to complete for the new site (yikes!).

I realized that there is a lot of scrolling through the England scrapbook, so I added a table of contents to the opening page. I also added a little number guide to the top of each page so that you can jump to a particular day. Of course, if you need to know what I did on a certain day, you can visit the home page to find out. I hope to add more pages later this week (yeah, wish me luck).

I stumbled across the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) HTML validator, so I submitted my current home page to it. Unfortunately, my site does not meet the criteria. However, I then uploaded a page from my new web site to it, and it also did not pass. So, I made the recommended changes to both that sight and this page (the entire sight would take me forever), and they should now be up to snuff. So, I’m still learning a lot more about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and XHTML (which I may use for the next site). I’ve also realized that FrontPage does not make things easier for those of us who know very little about writing code. The picture below, by the way, is merely a screenshot, and so far the look will remain with the new, “valid” updates.

I’m having some problems with updating this site. So I will probably spend some time this week eliminating the site and republishing it. I apologize for any inconvenience.

I’ve been working on selecting the pictures for the UK scrapbook, but there are just so many pictures! When I took them, I didn’t exactly keep count, so now I’m choosing from almost 500 shots. I didn’t want to add all of them because of limited server space. But there are just so many pictures! Anyway, I’ve been rethinking my approach and limiting the number of pictures that I will post. I managed to complete two more pages, and I managed to clean up one that I missed last week.

I took the time to see M. Night Shymalan’s new movie, The Village. It was very odd, but I really liked it. The acting was very remarkable, and the story was really great. As you would expect, the story did seem a bit slow at times, but watching it to the end put everything into perspective. What else do you expect from Night?

If you saw my site yesterday, you know that I spent some time working on the redesign and completed a new look for it. I will keep it below so people can continue to look at it and provide me feedback.