Back in July of last year, I announced a Website Facelift. I'd decided that my static pages were looking a little old fashioned, and that a fresh look was in order. I said that the updates would be completed as time permits, and didn't make any promises on how soon it would all be done, but I got off to a lot slower start than I'd expected. Anyway, I'm now making some decent progress. There are 317 html files in my backup root folder of the website. Some of those may be copies or other files that aren't being used, but that's a decent estimate of the size of the static portion of the site. As of this post, I've updated 107 html files to the new format in the root directory. And a good chunk of those were my photo pages, which took more time to update because of the way I do it (I use a VB program I wrote to automatically generate code given an input list of pictures, but I changed the format of those pages fairly extensively, so I had to update the VB code and the picture lists. That code also generates an html page for each picture itself, so in reality I've updated 608 html files in addition to the ones in the root). I also made sure that each photo page had a slideshow, which not all of them had, before.

So, I'll continue with the updates until all the pages on the static portion of the site have been completed. I still make no promises on the time frame, but hopefully it'll all be done in less than a year.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Sep 25 | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

In the course of putting my Hawaii 2012 Photos online, I found that I'd already sorted through all the photos from our D.C. trip from a few years ago, but had never followed through and put them online. So, I did now. The pictures can be found at:
Washington, D.C. & Maryland 2009 Photos

And of course, I added the appropriate link on the Photos Index page.

I lived inside the beltway for a few years, and within easy driving distance of D.C. practically my whole life before I moved to Texas, but before that trip, Irma had never been to D.C. except for a day trip. And I can't remember, but I don't think Alex had ever been to D.C. at all. My mother in law also went with us, and she'd never been to D.C. before, either. We got to tour the White House (no cameras allowed), which was something I'd never done the whole time I lived there. We were also lucky enough to have a friend working at the Smithsonian at the time, so we got a backstage tour of the Natural History Museum. He and his wife lived in Baltimore, so we spent some time there, as well. We also spent a little bit of time up near Frederick, Maryland, visiting my parents.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Sep 11 | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

The end of August means that it's time for me to check the server logs and see how the site is doing. Nothing too spectacular this month. The top 9 were all pages that had made the list before, and all made it in spots that were fairly typical. There was one surprise, though. An old blog entry, Moral Absolutism vs. Relativism squeaked in at number 10, for its first time on the list. I'm not sure why it got a sudden surge in popularity after 5 years, but reading over it again, it's not bad.

Top 10 for August 2012

1. Autogyro History & Theory
2. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
3. Blog - Origin of Arabic Numerals - Was It Really for Counting Angles?
4. Blog - Casio EX-F1 - First Impression of the High Speed Video
5. Blog - Running AutoCAD R14 in XP Pro 64
6. Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II
7. Blog - Response to an Editorial by Ken Huber
8. Factoids Debunked & Verified
9. Programming
10. Blog - Moral Absolutism vs. Relativism

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Sep 7 | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

I've finally had a chance to sort through our vacation pictures & videos to put on the site. Go take a look at:
Hawaii 2012 Photos

Of course, I've also updated the Photos Index page to include a link to the Hawaii photos. While I was at it, I reorganized that page a bit. The previous order was kind of arbitrary, so I made it alphabetical. I also made a few slight formatting changes to that page to make it look a little better. I also had to modify my photo page generator software to accomodate my new site layout (sorry - the updates are only on my computer, I haven't yet updated that programming page). I figured that since I've switched over to a fixed width layout, there was no sense keeping the thumbnails in a format that would wrap as the user changed their window size. As part of my ongoing website facelift (now over a year old), I'll go back and update the old photo pages as I get a chance. For now, you can still go look at one of them to compare to the new Hawaii page.

I included more personal photos in this collection that I have previously for other trips. I figured that most of the traffic I get to these photo collections is from people I know personally, and they might actually want to see pictures of us. But I still tried to keep the majority of pictures those that would be interesting even to strangers, so there should be something for everyone to enjoy.

Anyway, go take a look. There are a bunch of good pictures, and even some video from our snorkeling.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Sep 5 | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

Another month, another chance to look at the server logs. There were no big surprises for the top 10 list this month. The top 5 spots remained completely unchanged from last month, and the next 5 had all made the list at some point in the past.

I actually checked the server logs a few days ago, and there was some last minute jostling for the last couple spots on the list. A few pages just missed making the list that might have made it had the month been a few days shorter - Programming, Ray Comfort: Quote Miner Extraordinaire, and Book Review - God- or Gorilla?, Chapter 12. The first two of those have made the top 10 before, but it would have been the first time one of my God- or Gorilla posts would have made it.

Top 10 for July 2012

1. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
2. Autogyro History & Theory
3. Blog - Origin of Arabic Numerals - Was It Really for Counting Angles?
4. Blog - Response to an Editorial by Ken Huber
5. Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part II
6. Blog - Email Debunking - Tips on Pumping Gas
7. Factoids Debunked & Verified
8. Blog - Running AutoCAD R14 in XP Pro 64
9. Blog - Casio EX-F1 - First Impression of the High Speed Video
10. Blog - Creation Museum/2nd Law of Thermodynamics

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Aug 1 | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)