That's a lot of code I've "example'd!"

Not to say it isn't useful. I certainly hope it is.

Oh and it's that time of year where I switch out blogger templates. Maybe this time I'll make it more straightforward and automated. Maybe.

Which reminds me: this is the first year that my MUSH will be auto-deploying its Christmas theme. Pretty excited for that!

Anyway, that's all for now.

This Annoying Christmas Theme

Amazing. I've neglected this site so much in the past year that I forgot to take my Christmas theme down and now it's time to put it back up!

Awesome.

A Domain!!

At last!! I tucked in my shirt, tightened my belt and made the plunge. I am now the proud pseudo-owner of ppsstudios.com! For that reason, I've created this Google Sites ...site, and then in addition linked THIS blog to blog.ppsstudios.com (mostly because I wanted to try subdomains, to see how easy they were).

All the other links work as well, as Google doesn't let you delete the original naming conventions for their sites, but we (as in I) now have friendly DNS naming for all this stuff! So excited.

Perhaps I'll even get a bit inspired, install BIND on my personal computer, and route a CNAME to my Apache server there. But that's for another date. For now, hopefully I'll get back into this blog, perhaps add a few family members to the main site and let them have a crack at editting their own pages.

Who knows! We could have created the next big Internet phenomenon!

Merry Christmas

So day after Thanksgiving is when you break out Christmas stuff, right? Well in keeping with my little thing (I won't call it a tradition), last year, I've changed up my blogger template to a Christmast theme. except this year I have a ton more knowledge of CSS, and so I've been able to pull off some pretty funky effects. And besides that I created a new background image (the star), so it isn't so boring now.

I will STILL not break and use cute pastel backgrounds and things, because that's lame. Nor will I upgrade to the new Rails-style templates that they have in the blogger template builder. I'm sticking with the old Minimal Black style by Douglas Bowman, and changing up the css colors and background images. So enjoy! I've got backups of my old style, so that'll be coming back in about a month and a half. ;)

Garfield!!

A long time ago, I discovered that Jim Davis, the author of Garfield comics, syndicates his stuff with uComics. An interesting, and probably well-known, fact is that uComics actually stores the images from a particular cartoon in a fairly friendly directory structure! At least, they do with Garfield comics. So I was able to do some back-door hacks and write a simple little script that would in essence harvest Garfield comics directly from uComics.

Apart from being able to download a year's worth at a time (any more would probably kill my computer and the web host), I also was able to create a script that would grab today's Garfield comic and display it with general navigation buttons to yesterday..or really any day since it was first begun in 1978.

Anyhow, I have been hosting this script on both my personal web server and on Brinkster. Today, I 'upgraded' my script, cloning it to a new page which is embed-friendly:

• Original Garfield Script
• Embed Page

The fun of an embed page is that I can put the proper code into any webpage that accepts HTML and this will display these comics inline!

So, to embed Garfield on YOUR website/blog, simple paste the following into anything that accepts HTML (on Blogger, this is an HTML/Javascript widget).

<iframe src="http://ppsstudios.brinkster.net/TodaysGarfield_Simple.asp" frameborder=0 width=100% height=240px>Your browser does not support iframe.</iframe>

If all goes well, you should see a floating box with the comic and a few links displayed right on your page (such as the one in the footer below)!

Comments.....

As much as I like comments, I really don't like them..here.

A few days ago I decided to change my comments display settings to show below the post, which involved activating post pages and changing a dumb little setting. And it caused all of my comments to disappear! What's up with that?

So anyway, I don't know if I want to complain or something. They say that for some cases, like when you move to a custom domain, the comments are still there, but they're not being displayed and it has to be fixed.. But nobody mentioned when you change display settings for comments.

Commenting...

So since Andrea made HER blog, I gained a few people who were interested in MY blog. But now nobody comments!! I might go and pout or sulk or something.

PLEASE go comment? I really like REAL comments. All I get now-days are junk email-like comments advertising things. Or some foreigner who can't speak a lick of proper English telling me about a school assignment? Now THAT'S a confusing one...no name, no sense in the comment at all, but it isn't junk advertising either, so I don't know what to make of it.

All in all, I don't get worthwhile commenting at all! And I really want to hear what you have to say.

Done!

Bye.

In the Limelight

It seems this blog thing is getting more and more into the limelight. This word, limelight, comes from the 19th century spotlights of directing a flame at a stick of lime (calcium-oxide, the main ingredient in concrete). The stick would glow and they could reflect the high-intensity light at the performer, orator, etc.

Only problem with my blogging, is it takes at least three edits before I finally get a post perfect. Such is the problems: grammar, missing information, improper html formatting, blah blah blah. Once I think I even performed eight edits before I finally said that was good enough. Oh well. It's fun anyways!

And pictures aren't always a necessity either, although I put some of the Wrath of Khan pictures up as a slideshow on the sidebar for your enjoyment. This is actually my Picasa miscellaneous folder, so anything I deem fit will go there and show up on the little slideshow.

Nothing else too extraordinary to report, except that it's a potluck (share-a-dish for the politically correct people) at church, and I'm cooking up a double batch of chili. Probably should post this and go check to see how it's going. Anyhow, just thought I'd drop by. I hope I don't become a daily journalist like my sister. No. I won't. Although this is becoming more and more interesting as it goes on...

Edits this post: had to come back and add these paragraph breaks, since it jammed everything together. I should have checked my post options before I published, but I'm just absent-minded like that y'know.

Design

Merry Christmas! Almost..

Per request for a channel design switch, I've done a bit of CSS editing with borders and background images and transparencies. Enjoy!!

Wasted space now reclaimed

So I'm looking at the page there..probably the one you're looking at right now, and I noticed that there was a big blank space to the left of everything. "Well," I thought, "How can I get the text to stretch that far?" Then I remembered the Edit HTML link in the Layout tab.

Went into the Outer Wrapper of the CSS section and changed the width attribute in the #outer-wrapper from 660px to 860px. Then I changed the width in #main-wrapper from 410px to 610px. There. Now the text shifts over into that blank spot (due to the outer-wrapper) and stretches across to hit the sidebar (due to main-wrapper). I feel so smart now.

Google Follow:All the cool people are doing it!

There! Happy now!? Gah!! It's up already. Google Fallow. And what-not. Actually, my Google Account page is getting more and more cluttered as I go along. And I'm not sure how to UN-subscribe to some of the things I have on there. Right now I have the following Google Services associated with my account:

• Alerts
• Calendar
• Finance
• Maps
• Profiles
• Sketchup
• Web History
• Blogger
• Code
• Google Friend Connect (ugh)
• Notebook
• Reader
• Subscribed Links
• Webmaster Tools
• Bookmarks
• Docs
• iGoogle
• Picasa Web Albums
• Sites
• Talk
• Youtube

So how's THAT for a list? And more than half of those things I don't regularly use. Here's a cool site.."How to delete Google account and services." Interesting. Wonder what would happen if I wiped everything and started from scratch. Not that I ever will. I mean, I have TOO many things I want to keep around. Oh hey! An 'edit services' link..no wait. That's just to delete web history or close the account.

10-31-09

So I felt like making a comment. I've finally noticed that the rest of the family is getting into this whole 'blagging' thing also. Of course, my dad's had one for years, but he never did anything for it until recently when my sister got one also. Seems they're finally getting out there..finally.

Anyhow, I've nothing new to report except that my phone bugged out a few days ago. If you may remember I have an LG Voyager. And it's from Verizon, so all the software including music and things is all Verizon proprietary. This is NOT a good thing, as people have complained about VZNavigator (Verizon's GPS software). Mostly they'll complain about things like, "They disabled the built-in GPS so you'd be forced to pay for their OWN software which is super-horrible quality compared to EVERYTHING else. Well, true to the facts, I'm here to report that Verizon's music player "VCast" is no better.

Reasons I hate VCast:

1) The so-called 'required' installation of Rhapsody to make it work to full capacity (although I got it to work perfectly with Winamp). I've had almost maulware-like performance from Rhapsody/Real Player in the past and won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

2) Meta tag readability is extremely limited. There is absolutely no way to navigate the main menu where everything is laid out according to artist, album, genre, title and whatever else. Actually, my big hang-up is that they've split out each of these items into subsequent sub-menus. If you want to search on artist, they'll list everything in alphabetical order to artist and split each of those items into album categories. Same with album. If you go into one album, then they'll recategorize/group songs there with the artist. This is especially bad when you have things like compilations such as my music history class 6-cd set where each track is by a different composer in a different time period. Of course, I can't just say "Various artists" in the album artist tag and then expect the player to sort by THAT instead of regular artist. They ONLY scan the track, album, artist, title and genre. That's IT. No album artist (kills the compilation ability) and nothing else.

3) Menus change with EVERY screen. If you go into the album sub-menu of the artist listing, the menu is different than that of the song submenu of the album submenu of the artist listing. Figure.

4) The playlist capability (which seems to be my only real workable solution to the compilation problem) is horrible. To build a playlist in-program, you must first create the playlist and then go into a track listing of ALL songs (unsorted by album) and select each one and then OK out. Or you can go into a track listing and Menu/Add to Playlist/Select Playlist. This is a one-at-a-time deal though.

5) Meta-editing within Winamp is impossible for songs already on the phone.

6) Reset and Rescan will erase playlists.

Solutions to the VCast Problems:

1) Rhapsody is bad - Work with Winamp. I tried iTunes, but I couldn't find the menu item to pull in non-iPod devices. Also iTunes is very processor heavy so I only like using it for podcasts.

2) Menus don't read enough meta-data and are unnavigable - Hope LG releases their app-store and has a better player someday.

3) Menus change with every screen - See #2

4) Playlist creation - Winamp will work just fine. Just use their Media Library Playlist tool. Of course, Winamp for some reason adds a .pl extension to the playlist NAME which will show up in the player, but it's a small price to pay for quick creation of them.

5) The only solution I've found (which still doesn't work) is to delete the selected songs off of the phone, edit the originals in Winamp and re-copy them over. But don't expect it to work. I had three or four songs that were missing information (showed up as 'Unknown Album' and such) and when I tried this, they STILL showed up as Unknown Album. Figure that out.

6) Don't do a reset. Ever.

Okay. I'm done ranting. I think. Besides, there are better things to talk about than Verizon's software problems. It's like getting Linux and Windows together to argue about...stuff. Everything. They'll argue about ANYTHING.

Anything else I need to mention? Nah. We got snowed in for a day which messed up my class schedule, but was really fun because we didn't go out the entire day. And yesterday I finally got to the library to look for Dr. Who videos. Now DON'T get me started on BBC and their regional restrictions. No no no..I won't say how much I hate that, because I complained enough already. Besides, I found a video of the Easter Special 2009 and I'm REALLY excited!! Of course, why would I tell anybody where it is? Since BBC's big on cracking down on non-regional copying (and since some BU citizens are nice enough to post the videos on other sites 'for those living outside the Great Britain area' I won't rat on them. I'm all for them. We have things like Mr. Bean and OLD Dr. Who on Channel 6 (or we did up until the big Digital TV schism), so why not the NEW Dr. Who? It's much cooler anyway.

Speaking of Dr. Who, I did research yesterday and it said that they didn't have an official 2009 season, like they were expecting. Instead they did (or will do) 3 David Tennant specials before 2010 when they'll switch over to the....what was it? Chris Smith? Mike Smith? Whatever his name is. The one new kid - Doctor 11 in 2010. The three specials of 2009 are Easter (already out), Nov 11 and Dec 25. Of course, I did NOT see the Christmas 2008 special, and I was really disappointed. But I saw the first half of the Easter 2009 special and it's not yet November 11, so I'm almost fully up-to-date. And I'm really really excited, because when Gregory Smith or whatever his name is takes over as Doctor 11, I'm planning on bowing out maybe. I can't stand TOO young of a Doctor. Well, except that they have his daughter coming back (the one created by his hand in 2008). And THAT was a really cool idea.

Am I done yet, you're asking. Well, I suppose. Besides, I just heard something about a hair-cut. Oh boy. And I got one like three weeks ago and hardly have any to grow back. Besides, it's winter and the more you have, the warmer your head, right?

So I'm done. Take care!!

danipavliashvili2 is getting limelight!

So I did a vanity search today just to see where this site is going and it turns out that my Myst tutorial on FlyMode was published on Technorati.com. Also, the Georgian characters for the title (the phonetic translation in English is "Danieli Pavliashvili") got the attention of Holmes.ge with search results on my Photoshop brushes, Camstudio and Pivot.

So, in my vanity, I think I'll put a list of what I found so far:

• http://tw.youtube.com/Depwl9992


• http://technorati.com/blogs/danipavliashvili2.blogspot.com?reactions


• http://technorati.com/posts/ORzDjllffG%2BGklNjt6mHkQPi7VhFaIe_yXGokLFY%2Bhg%3D


• http://holmes.ge/search.htm?q=brushes&page=15&nocorrection=true


• http://www.holmes.ge/search.htm?q=pivot&page=10&nocorrection=true


• http://www.holmes.ge/search.htm?q=camstudio&page=13&nocorrection=true

So am I pushing this thing far enough to make you want to gag? Sorry, if I am. I'm done now.

Online picture storage

Well I've been storing a few of my online pictures in MSN Groups. But that wasn't very good. It wastes a whole group, and I don't like MSN that much. So I've moved almost all of my web pictures to PicasaWeb. Since Blogger stores all uploaded folders there anyway, I figured I might as well try to consolidate. So, in short, I've created a new album called Webdev. It will contain pixel colors (I already have black and white there) and a few other pictures even you can use for web development.

To use them is a bit confusing. You need to go to My Webdev Album and click on the picture you want to view/link to. The pixel ones are a bit small, so you will have to have good eyesight to find them.

Next, on the right side, you will see a link called "Download photo." Right-click this link and "Copy Shortcut." Go to your source code and Ctrl-V into an <img> tag. Make sure you remove the "?imgdl=1" from the end of the pasted image source code. This will make sure the image shows up on your page rather than prompting the end user to download it. Hit refresh (F5) in your web browser and my image should show up on the web page. Cool, huh?

New Gadgets

You'll notice that I have new gadgets on the sidebar here - links and another RSS feed.