I noticed last week that I was unable to login in to Intones (here’s my user’s page to give you an idea how I use the site) because I’d inadvertently updated to a version of Django that had some changes to how forms are handled. This got me to thinking that I should update the look and feel to be a little bit nicer, and so I did. There are still a few issues I believe with IE8, but I’ll work on those over time. One cool new thing is that the site should look quite nice on most smart phones. I’ve started using the 1140 CSS Grid framework to help out with making my projects more accessible to phones (Ankh got this treatment earlier this year as well). Under the hood Intones remains the same, though with this fresh coat of paint, I am feeling motivated to refine the search process and hopefully make it be a little more graceful about certain things. Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know!
Get your spandex out!
I have to say, all in all, 2010 was a pretty good year. I accomplished some of the goals I had set out at the beginning of last year (released Intones, have Vimes at 90% complete and Ankh has been working perfectly for me), I also had many pleasant surprises along the way (re: everything Sera has done last year has been wonderful and fun to watch unfold) . I have actually been thinking about new year’s resolutions since the middle of December. Part of me thinks there is no point, I can make a resolution any time, but there is something to be said about the new year. Mentally it is a fresh start, and on the off chance (given most resolutions are broken) something becomes a life long habit I think it is worth it to make resolutions at the beginning of the year.
So here are some of mine for this year:
- Write Daily, Post Weekly
- Complete 3 personal projects (at least one not relating to the web)
- Exercise more and teach Zelda (our stray dog we found in August) to be a good running companion
- Be more positive than negative (not a new resolution, just a renewal)
- Consume less and create more.
I’m not sure why but seeing my goals and plans for the new year always makes me a little a excited for what is upcoming, and I am quite excited for all the things that are going to take place this year. I hope everyone else is looking forward to the new year, and stay tuned because I think things will get interesting in these parts…
Making things simpler
Things have been pretty quiet here on the front page, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been ignoring this little site. I have created a new, minimal theme, and I’ve removed the life-stream plugin that I was using. That plugin has been replaced by Ankh, a little python script to generate life-stream type pages. You can see what I’m using it for on my Webstream Page, which is a mix of feeds created by my actions and a list of some of my favorite sites displayed in a fashion similar to Alltop.
For a long while I’ve been thinking about creating a little application to handle easily creating lists and pages of lists. I actually started on it earlier this summer, but at the time I was pretty unhappy with the direction it was heading. Recently however, I had a few ideas on what I should do differently, and now it seems to be what I had originally envisioned. I haven’t come up with a great name yet and have instead simply decided to call it Vimes after the character from Discworld (for no reason other than I like the name and Discworld is awesome!). What I have up right now is merely a demo of how it will work, and it is missing some of the larger features that will make it be really useful. But editing and arranging lists is working quite well (especially if you use Chrome).
I’m going to keep this post short, with the plan to update again soon. I’ve made a goal to have 50 posts this year and this is #7! So I’ll be back pretty soon, I believe!
Woo, as in I made a website, woo.
TL:DR version: Visit Intones!
So remember a while ago I mentioned something about a new project that was nearly finished and was going to be ready soon(I am quickly learning soon for means up to several months )? Well today it’s officially out. And while I still have some tweaking and fiddling left to do I’m proud to announce that Intones has been made live!
I remember a long time ago being frustrated that I missed some new releases from some band I was in to at the time. At that time I thought it’d be nice to have someway to be notified when new cd releases were made by bands that I liked. I wasn’t quite sure how to do it then, and so I sort of left the problem at that. Last year I decided I wanted to learn python and use Django to make something cool when I was reminded of this problem. I thought that surely there was someway I could get new cd release information without trying too hard (ie researching/inputting new releases automatically.) Sure, enough there are several ways to go about it. I finally settled upon using Amazon and their store APIs to figure out what new information is and thus a site was born.
Of course, it took longer than expected. Not because of any difficulty, but the birth of my first child, holidays, and etc all means I’ve been pretty busy these days. It’s been fun though. Now on to some bug fixing, and planning out the next project 
Now with extra green!
I never seem to find a theme that I like 100%. And since I have some modest HTML and web design skills I took it upon myself to create this theme. It is very green, and reminds me a lot of the Django web site’s color scheme. I have decided however, that this is just the beginning. Over the course of this year I will incrementally improve this theme until, hopefully, it is one that I really like.
I’ve been playing with the Lifestream plugin for wordpress lately, and I’ve found that it is okay. Of the three feeds I’m using, I only had to modify the code for 2 of them to get it to display as I wished. I think I may end up writing my own feed parser to handle this. Anyway the goal of this plugin is to inject a little bit of life to this site. Hopefully everyone will find some interesting things on it when they visit.
Alright, time to work on web project number 2. Also say “Hello” to Brad over at http://plasma.notsoevil.net!