Well, I just spent the past 15 hours redesigning my site. Or I could say, I just spent my entire Saturday working non-stop to get this new design out. This design is really just a clean up or final version of the previous design. Except, instead of just finishing my previous design, I went ahead and created this one from scratch.

It's that time of year again. Or is it that time of quarter? I don't know. Either way, I'm tired of looking at my current site design and so I'm creating a new one. I've actually been sick of my current design for awhile now. It's just that I haven't had the time or effort for creating a new one. Plus, I needed to update my template system to play nice with any new templates that I create. Anyways, I finally got motivated and you can check out a preview of the new design here:

A little more than six months ago I showed you guys the back end, or administration side of my site. This tool or Administration Panel is where I put together my site. It's where I moderate my visitors' comments, create and edit my articles, create and edit site pages, and edit site or personal settings. You can check out the older preview here and laugh at it's horrible design and amateurish features. I know I do.

So, as some of you might know, there have been a few Photoshop tutorials online that show you how to take a picture and turn it into a Sin City screen cap. I'll tell you right now that most of my Photoshop skills are sub-par, but every now and then I do get lucky and make or edit a really cool picture. This whole Sin City conversion is not one of them. Heh, well sometimes.

In my previous post I stated that for the Fall Reboot I was completely redesigning my site.  This included building a new CSS file from scratch that will help to determine the layout, colors, and overall theme of my site.  Let me tell you right now that building a site completely off CSS is a pain in the ass.

Can't wait!  As you can see, I'm going back in black.  I was originally going to submit the 'light' colored theme for the new reboot, but eh....I guess white isn't really my color.  Well I don't know.  I actually think it depends on what I'm listening to while working on my site.  Lately I've been listening to this new hardcore punk bank called This is Hell.  They fucking rock.  And well, now my site is darker and more reflective of my personality.

Whew.  Well with the May 1st Reboot underway (see my entry here) I've been trying to clean up my site and coding to get it 100% compliant with web standards.  The three main standards I'm working with right now include XHTML, CSS, and RSS.  When coding a site you have to meet certain standards.  Well, you don't have to meet them, but it is good practice and shows your visitors your commitment to non-sloppy coding.

I've submitted my site to CSS Reboot one day before the dead line.  I wasn't going to do it but decided what the hell.  I put a lot of work into this site over the past few days getting ready for the May 1st Reboot.  Though the site's not completely done yet (will it ever be?), I couldn't miss the chance of missing another Reboot this year.

In my continuing effort to successfully make my own blog I completely over looked the use of search friendly URLs.  A search friendly URL is a URL that people, or more importantly, search engines can easily find and index.  An example of a search friendly URL is this:

I was never really a Java fan before.  As a matter of fact I was never really a fan of any web programming that would run client-side (like Flash or Java).  Server-side programming is the way to go with coding like PHP and ASP.  When building a web site using Java or Flash you have to wonder if your client will have Java or Flash installed on their computer.  Because if they don't then they won't be able to see or use any of the Java or Flash on your site.  With server-side programming you don't have to worry about that.  They don't have to have PHP or ASP installed on their computers to see your PHP or ASP web site.  Makes more sense right.

I originally helped create this web site a few years ago (mainly created the scheduler form). 

Right now I'm just working on the most important part of the web site, the scheduler form.  This time the form writes and pull info from a database so it's a lot more functional and well managed.  You can check out the form here >> AutoAppointment Schedule.  The form is mostly done, minus a few cosmedic/informative details.  If any willing people want to try it out, go a head.  I need a good selection of people to fill out this form and try to break it any way possible.  You can just fill it out with fake info and let me know of any issues or suggestions you have.

Recently, Jakob Nielsen reveiled the top ten design mistakes when running a weblog (blog). A weblog is like an online journal that the author publishes for others to view (ie webNV).

Jakob Nielsen has been known for help in creating web design standards. He has also released the top ten web design mistakes of 2005.

Lately Jenny and I have been playing a lot of Guild Wars. Guild Wars is a PC multiplayer game. Pretty much, you create a character and take them through countless quests and missions. The more you do, the better and more skills your character gains.

Half-Life is an incredible PC game that is put together by an incredible story. Unfortunately, though a lot of its story's questions are left unanswered and open.

That's where I come in. For the past year or so, I've been gathering as much info I can about Half-Life and its mystifying sci-fi story. I've put together a web site for people to view and read my thoughts and theories behind the game (all done in CSS of course).

Slowly but surely I'm learning CSS (cascading style sheets). CSS is kind of like HTML in how it's used to create and format web sites.

I like CSS because it's a lot cleaner and easier to work with than HTML. Anyways, check out my practice site if you wish, and who knows, it may become my new site.