Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Tue
10
Oct
2006

I’m Still Here (Now With Audio)

Hey everybody.

I'm still here, just haven't felt like posting. The change in weather coupled with not hearing from the guy I interviewed with on Friday and realizing my unemployment runs out on the 21st triggered major blahs yesterday. It's starting to feel like I'm never going to find another job. The feelings of worthlessness set in. I started feeling the weight of another crappy Christmas coming. It's only 2½ months away. I had a little pity party for myself. I'm feeling a little better today, though, but not much.

I wanted to post about the little project I had Marcus working on for me. During the Blogathon, I noticed several sites that had audio links in their posts. A lot of people were using a service called hipcast, but that costs $$. People using Wordpress have a customizable flash audio plugin that is really cool and requires just a tiny bit of code in your post. I used Radio Blog Club to put the audio link for my Thursday Thirteen Favorite Songs post, but that only works if they have the song you're looking for in their database and the site is down alot. I know I could just use Object to embed audio, but I like the look of the Wordpress player and the tiny bit of code in the post.

There was a thread on the EE forums where somebody was asking if anybody could make a plugin for EE based on the Wordpress plugin. Stale Betty came up with a solution, but it requires a lot of code in the post and a custom field, so only one audio thing per post. I wanted the ability to have many. Anyway, I put the challenge to Marcus and he wrote me one, using both the wordpress plugin and stale betty's code. The only problem is I also have to use the Allow EE Code plugin in order to use it, but that's OK. Anyway, here's the little bit of code (I assigned it to a custom html button, so I only need to click one button to put it in my post):
{ exp:my_stream name="songtitle.mp3" id="1" }
Neat, huh?

MacDude iPod PumpkinAll it cost me was making Marcus a Halloween graphic for his site! Isn't it cool?

I need to do a little more testing by going back and replacing all the songs in my Thursday 13 post. That'll test the "id" function of it. If every song has a different id, then they can't play at the same time. I realy need to get my head straight and figure out how to do these things. I've always wanted to learn php and I like tinkering with code, but this underemployment and depression is kicking my ass.

I've got a final rant I need to make. We get East and West coast stations on our Dish. I've been using the East coast to get the shows I like on CBS. Last Friday, I missed the last 10 minutes of Ghost Whisperer and two weeks in a row I haven't gotten the whole Without A Trace. Pisses me off. I'm trying to bit torrent them as we speak. I've switched to taping the West coast ones. We'll see if that solves this stupid problem. I'm also mad at CBS, the network. Your The Class show is stupid and nobody is watching it. Thanks for switching your line up to put it in between How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men in a lame attempt to gain viewership. You're lucky I was looking for something else in the program guide and noticed your switch. If I had sat down to watch How I Met Your Mother on my PVR and found out then that I had The Class instead, I would've been pissed instead of mildly irritated. Jerks.

OK, enough posting for now. I've got housework and template fixing to do (I have got to get the comments template DONE!). Have a good Tuesday everybody.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Sat
7
Oct
2006

It’s Coming Along

Well, the site is coming along. I've been meaning to clean this template's code up since I originally installed it. Man, that's been years ago. Hopefully this will make it much easier to change the look next time (like after October). I've always wanted to get skinning set up. Sorry to those of you that still have an 800x600 screen resolution. I made sure that the main blog entries still show nicely on your screen without having to scroll sideways. My stats show the majority of readers are using 1024x768, so I decided it was time to start designing to that.

I had high hopes of making it xhtml compliant and valid css, but poo on that. There are too many things that make it not valid (The dynamic headers, the missing alt tags on many images, etc.). It's my personal site. Who really cares? I took the links out of the footer and that's the end of that.

Mmm, I smell Marcus making coffee beverages. I need a break.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Fri
6
Oct
2006

Work In Progress

OK, everybody. It's not done, but it's close. I am really out of practice with this web coding stuff. I haven't done any serious coding in almost two years. Use it or lose it—I guess I've lost it. I've got some things I need to mess with with the sidebar and other templates, but it's pretty close. I've actually GOT AN INTERVIEW today at 11 am, so I'll work on tweaking this thing after that. I was going to stay offline until it was finished, but I totally forgot about the paid blogging posts still needing to be approved. Please don't alert me to problems just yet...I know there are many. Thanks for your patience.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Wed
4
Oct
2006

Things Will Be Wonky

I'm going to try and update this site's template today. Things may go wonky here and there or it may be down for extended periods of time. Bear with me. I'll let you know when I'm finished and then please let me know if you come across anything that doesn't work then. Have a great day, everybody!

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Sat
30
Sep
2006

New Pink Layout Will Be Late

Sorry, the new pink layout for Breast Cancer Awaresness month is going to be a little late. I think you'll like it, though, I do. I'm going to take the time to really fix my EE code. It's so jacked up. All I did was take an existing template and screw with it here and there and it's a mess. There's unnecessary css, old straggling bits of code, etc. I want to be able to skin this thing, so I'd better just get it fixed now.

OK, I'm tired and I'm off to try out the new bed. G'night!