I finally — after the debacle in January — went back to Michael Heilemann’s Binary Bonsai, downloaded the 167 build of K2, unzipped it — backed up the MySQL databases and transformed Churbuck.com into a better looking place than the old 1.5 Kubrick which has held me together since 2003.
Then I decided to be done with the perpetual act of trashing my sidebar and converted to Widgets — which I still haven’t mastered but which at the very least give me some control in an Ajaxy way over what elements get displayed and which don’t. The header image I talked about late last week when I went scanner crazy on some old Cotuit photographs. I wish I had the time to get serious about CSS, but I know from keeping my HTML chops sharp in the 90s that such knowledge is wasted unless its practiced daily. Even so, the nerd manque within demands that I start getting dirty with code, be it page description, BASH shell commands, MySQL db structures …..
I think I need to set up a sandbox server and get really serious. This recent convalescence has given me a little time to steel wool the rust off of my techie talents, but nothing to the extent of the early 90s when I was beta-testing HotMetal Pro and Vermeer and turning down offers to write books about SGML …. sigh, now I worry about banner ROI and search engine optimization and other generic online marketing challenges.
I am further convinced that within 5 years we’ll see another revolution in site construction, management and display when the next Vermeer arrives to build a full WYSIWIG LAMP implementation out of the box. Do I think the average joe will become his own sysadmin? Never, but we’re still a very long way from having a content management system for the masses.
Bugs I’m detecting in K2– I can’t blog photos from within Flickr that will appear in Firefox. They are fine in IE but I am not fine in IE and I can’t figure out how to tailor the del.icio.us and Bloglines widgets to display my tags and blog roll. Time to move on to work related stuff. Migraines are gone. I don’t feel like I have morning sickness all day long, and I want to get back on the bike. More on that saga of how to convince an insurance company adjuster accustomed to pricing dented fenders on a Camry that yes, indeed, a person can be foolish enough to invest over $5,000 in a bicycle. The company thought they were dealing with a Huffy rider. Bah.
Hola!
Looking good, senor David. I solved the “how to adjust a bait casting reel concundrum late last night after only losing 10 yards of 18 pound test to an ugly bird’s nest. i’ve gotabout 10025 yards of line loaded on a WalMart ambassedeur locked on a 7 foot medjum tipped rod. I’ll try it out as my new fish lip ripper outer Friday and Saturday out at nine mile banks off San Diego in Panga.
You rule comma dude.
Jim
K2 is very nice … adds a nice new dimension to your site …
I do think Ubuntu is close to what you are talking about with the out-of-the-box LAMP implementation. The install is remarkably easy … about 20 minutes and you’re sitting at the desktop. Another five minutes and you’ve not only installed and pre-configured Apache, MySQL, and PHP to play nice together, they already are up and running. Pretty amazing stuff.