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March 18th, 2009
05:01 pm - Writer's Block: Divided Self
I used to be someone very different online, but then I was into ActiveWorlds (forerunner to Second Life). I didn't do too much roleplay, but tried some things I'd rather not admit to. I also had a different work personality from my home personality from my church personality, etc.
Then I realized how stupid that was, and how embarrassing it would be if someone from one of my "worlds" were to see me in another. I had to decide what was real, then I became that everywhere. The transition was interesting.
That was back in 2000 or so.
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February 10th, 2009
03:58 am - Writer's Block: Peevish
The seeming trend to use "an" as the indefinite article instead of "a" in front of "historic". THIS IS WRONG, DAMMIT!
And I've checked several style guides (okay, two), even modern ones (both published this century). Every one I checked (both) use "historic" as the noun in examples and they all (both) say to use "a", since the "h" in "historic" is sounded out. The "a"/"an" issue is based on the sound of the word. However one (published in 2008) did say if you pronounce "historic" as Eliza Doolittle might, as in: "It'll be an 'istoric day, gov'ner!" then it's proper to use "an".
I think some management droid at NBC news is responsible.
Current Location: my cave
Current Mood:  aggravated
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February 16th, 2006
02:58 am - Fun with PHP, but Less than Fun with Art
Fun with PHP
 I've been wanting to redo the SkunkWks website for the past few months. First, I'm feeling the limitations of the simple horizontal nav-bars I have now. Second, I want to spice things up a bit visually.
The last couple of evenings I've been mucking about with a new page layout and server-side coding for a new vertical nav-bar. You can see my results on the left side of this page. Did you try to click it? ;-)
The basic flow on the server is: #1 I have a content file which is directly accessed via the URL. This file is a pure PHP file that sets a few variables such as the page title, date when the page was modified, etc. It also sets a large string variable that is the block of raw HTML that represents only the content of the page. #2 That file calls the generator file, which in turn calls smaller generator files that build the HTML header, the footer, or (surprise!) the nav-bar, etc. These generator files are a mix of PHP and HTML and they eventually build an HTML page with the same filename as the original content file. #3 The server passes this finished HTML file to the visitor's web browser.
The past two evenings, most of my time has gone into the nav-bar generator file. I'm new to PHP, but once I figured out I could embed this snippet of code into each content file: $where = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; to get the path and file name of the content file, I had a clean approach. In the main generator file I turn that string into an array where each element is either a directory name or a file name. So the nav-bar generator only needs to look at a particular element in the array to figure out if it needs to generate links or not.
My nav-bar dynamically changes so that it always shows every file that is directly reachable from the page it appears on. For the example shown to the upper-left, the URL is: http://www.skunkwks.com/web/stories/life_for_rent/index.php The contents of $where becomes "/web/stories/life_for_rent/index.php" and after I fiddle with it, I get an array that looks like: "web/", "stories/", "life_for_rent/", "index.php" Because of the structure of my site, I ignore the first (zeroth) element. Also, I'm in the process of changing the name of a story from A Life For Rent to Instinct and Intellect, so the directory name is old, but the link text (in the screen shot, upper left) is new.
Hoo ha! That's some cool beans. I don't really have to do anything on the content pages, just remember to include that snippet of PHP code (which is identical for all pages). The painful bit is coding up the nav-bar generator file. I presently have a total of 80 links in my nav-bar file, all wrapped with if statements and lovingly hand-coded. This is okay for my site, as I won't be adding all that many new pages all at once, or shuffling things around often enough to make the nav-bar file too difficult to maintain. However, it would be awesome to come up with some automated way to create that file--maybe by having a program parse the directory structure of the website, find all the web pages, look inside the pages for links, then figure out the hierarchy by itself.
 To the left is another example, but this time it would be what appears on World History default page. Since there are no other pages in World History, there was no expansion on the nav-bar for World History.
So, I've got my basic page layout complete with maybe only a bit of minor tweaking left to do; I've got the other (sub) generator files done; and I have very little work to patch up the 80 plus content files to work with the new system (change the way $where is generated and delete some now obsolete junk). But if you go to my site now, you'll see the old page design, not the new. The holdup is the graphics files
Less than Fun with Art
The new look is to make that parchment rectangle look like a scroll of parchment; put some cool Celtic knot geegaws along the left side, which will go under the nav-bar (a sort of entwined vine pattern); put some narrower Celtic knot geegaws on the right side to balance the left (more vines); put a cool header graphic with Celtic knots as a frame, a star field, and the site name; and do some graphics for the bottom of the scroll so it gives a visual break to the side knots and becomes a frame for the footer info.
The problem is that I'm not much of an artist.
I've got a pattern for the running-vine Celtic knot patterns for the sides and ideas for the rest. One of the things I like is the entwining of animals into the knots. On the left I have a pattern for four vines that run continuously from bottom to top, with four different bent figure-eight patterns. The vines will be: oak (twice), ash, and thorn. Two of the bent eights are horizontal and make a sort of diamond, the other two are vertical and make a similar diamond. I'm thinking of one eight being a pair of tigers (male and female), and they will be paired with five big ferrets and two baby ferrets on the other eight. The third eight would be a pair of fauns (goat/human fauns, male and female), and they would be paired my bachelors: Bluto (a huge hellbender) and his roomie Edgar Egret (equally huge). On the right side would be a much simpler pattern of two entwined vines, but I've not nailed down the tree type.
The top will be a large square knot on either side, with the skunk Milliscent on the left and a smallish dragon on the right. I've not generated the necessary pattern yet, or thought it all the way through.
The bottom will be the bottom of the scroll, rolled up toward the viewer and with the backside of the parchment visible. There probably won't be a strong pattern on the back, but just a broad darkening to simulate the curve of the parchment and in the middle will be the page footer text.
I've been messing about with a pencil on graph paper, thinking I can scan it and clean it up later. After the pencil work I was thinking of going over the lines with a Sharpie. I'm not real pleased with the result. I've also been messing about with Paint Shop Pro and vector-based shapes, which is a bit better. However, I had an idea as I was writing this: I can draw the vines in my CAD program, (and perhaps some other regular shapes too, like clusters of leaves), then print it on the laser printer with a very skinny line width. I could go over the skinny lines with the Sharpie and give it a hand drawn look. Finally scan it into the computer and do some color fills and other work in PSP.
Maybe. I'll have to see how it goes.
Scotty
Current Mood: by LJ's dumb input
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February 10th, 2006
02:36 am - New LJ User--First Post
This is my first LJ post. I'm making it as a place holder so I know the date and time I joined.
I am ScottyDM, although I signed up as SkunkWks, which is the name of my website. My plan is to move the static blog-like comments from my SkunkWks website and start using LJ for such comments. I feel that blogging is more about the community and the feedback than it is about what I think. In other words, I value what you think.
Oh, I have a low tolerance for link spam. Ahh, if you don't know what that is, you're probably not doing it.
See you later.
Scotty
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