Browsing Options Clear Filters
Top 5 Tags: site features[6] apollo[3] photos[3] aradia[2] slurl[2]
Summarized 2 of 6 Categories:
· thearidians.org (11) newest: We\'re Back apollo 18th Feb @ 15:32 EST
· quicklinks (3) newest: Snowball Combat apollo 1st Jan @ 18:34 EST
February 2008
We're Back
apollo [thearidians.org] Mon 18th @ 15:32 EST
downtime
Generally it seems like we're back, although there might be some outstanding little quirks I need to investigate.
August 2007
H4X0ring Around With Postcards & IMAP
apollo [thearidians.org] Tue 7th @ 06:14 EDT
coding, photos, postcards
By the gracious, or possibly tenacious bug triage efforts of Torley Linden, the bug that forced all SL Postcards into 640x480 with a fairly aggressive JPEG compression setting has now been fixed, as demonstrated in the original size version of this delightful photo from the IoW.
It's kind of interesting that along with Torley's championing of the issue, it also required the efforts of Zen, Jose, Milo, Beast and Joshua Linden to push the fix through programming, QA and onto the main grid. That's a lot of Linden involvement, but well worth it from my perspective.
In any case, the "H4X0ring" mentioned in the title of this post involved some minor changes to my photo gallery script to take into account a change to the postcard e-mail format. That's all taken care of now, so Aradia and I can get back to sharing still captures of our journey through SL. Thanks go out to Torley and all the other Lindens involved.
January 2007
Yummy Photos
apollo [thearidians.org] Thu 25th @ 20:25 EST
apollo, aradia, photos, snapshots
My sweet Aradia has been adding some really cool photos to our gallery lately, which I think show off how cute and hot her lovely avatar is. Aradia always pays such wonderful attention to detail and finds the loveliest skins and outfits. She has a great eye for a photo too. I've been adding some photos myself, and one of them even reminded me to talk about how hard it can be to take thematic photos in SL. That's a topic for another post though.
Really Simple Archival
apollo [thearidians.org] Mon 22nd @ 16:16 EST
archive, site features
I added a really simple archive page to the site today. I intend to expand it further at a later date with a search function of some sort and a real tag cloud, but at least it's now possible to see everything that's been written here. Note that if you scroll down to the bottom of the journal there is a link "View Previous Content..." which points to the archive. Eventually there will be a navigation menu link for it, once it has better features.
SL Web Profiles and Feature List
apollo [thearidians.org] Thu 18th @ 12:26 EST
site features
I mentioned previously that I changed the way the site markup and CSS works in order to enable a mysterious feature. That feature is the ability for Aradia and I to have SL Web Profiles sized to fit in the browser frame in the SL profile panel. Of course being web-based content you can read them here too. I also want to throw out a shortlist of features I'll be adding that will benefit everyone:
- RSS feeds are still being considered
- A Blog Archive
- Full list of Blog Tags
- Neater presentation of existing Photo Tag Cloud
There's no specific ETA on any of these.
Subtle Redesign
apollo [thearidians.org] Tue 16th @ 18:49 EST
refactoring, site features
I took the liberty of redesigning the site, although I doubt anyone would have noticed because this restructuring has happened on the code level. I originally tossed the site together quickly using several full width images to bypass any potential CSS headaches early on, my reasoning being that I would be more likely to work on this project if it was fun for me.
Now that I have established some content here, I felt it was time to return to this basic design no-no and rectify it. The site now makes use of background colors where possible and should generally have a reduced image footprint. The CSS changes seem to display correctly in [the Windows XP versions of] Internet Explorer 6 and 7, in Firefox 1.5.0.9 and 2.0.0.1 as well as Opera 9.10 so I think I have a fair chance of it working correctly in other browsers that I have no way of checking, such as MacOS [versions of IE and Firefox/Mozilla], Safari and KDE's built in browser for example. I'd say "do let me know if there are any problems with these browers, however" but I realise that there is a certain lack of contact information here.
All this has a point beyond mere competency vanity; I can now implement a cute little feature I have been thinking of, which will debut sometime this week.
Photos: The Thin Code Line
apollo [thearidians.org] Sun 7th @ 12:13 EST
apollo, photos, site features
As alluded to recently, I have been working on a super secret feature for this website, one that I think will really make it come alive. Work on this new feature has consumed essentially every possible moment of my free time for the entirety of this week up to and including the weekend until about five minutes before this post, but I feel that every moment was well spent.
May I present you with our Photos page. This, as you might have guessed, is an entirely home-rolled image gallery system with most of the expected features present: photo metadata in the form of names and descriptions, tags, and the ability to package up photos into sets. I think it's a cool system and I know it will only encourage me to take more snapshots now that I have somewhere to put them.
The system may change in subtle ways, for example as [Aradia and I] upload more photos and the tag density increases, each tag's percentage distribution number will probably disappear in favour of the more aesthetically pleasing "font size representation" method employed in other tag cloud rendering systems. I may add "infinite share grouping" if the current Photo Set system proves too limiting; sets are greedy and photos are loyal in my world you see.
But enough of this wordy rambling: go enjoy the photos! I will be uploading more soon and I'm sure Aradia will too.
A Toolbox of Sorts
apollo [thearidians.org] Mon 1st @ 16:48 EST
slurl, toolbox
One of the major reasons why I became interested in computer programming is my desire to remove the drudgery from common tasks. Computers are very good at performing the most mundane sequence of events time after time with exacting precision, provided of course that you are able to define that sequence in terms they can comprehend. Frequently this process results in vast systems of varying complexity, but occasionally the result is a simple tool which is probably unlikely to revolutionize the world, but is never-the-less useful.
I have decided to create a Toolbox of these useful scripts so that I may also remove some of the drudgery from your life. The first such tool is a simple SLurl maker, which, rather than expecting you to type the sim name and x/y/z coordinates in separately is able to parse them from the standard formatting returned in the location information box of the "Places" search window in SL. This makes the process of generating SLurls much less bothersome and should prove useful until Linden Lab implement their "copy location to SLurl" feature that was recently discussed.
Category Summaries
apollo [thearidians.org] Mon 1st @ 10:01 EST
quicklinks, rss, site features
One feature I added to the site backend a long time ago, before using it here even, is the concept of hiding certain posts so they don't appear on the front page while still allowing access to them. This allows us to post up quickfire entries without drowning out the more in-depth blog posts. One area where this is useful is the sharing of Quick Hyperlinks, where in most cases a short description and a SLurl is all you need. I mention this mostly to explain the "Summarized 1 of 6 Categories" banner that appeared near the top of the site yesterday.
Another feature that I've been meaning to add for a long time but haven't managed yet is configurable RSS, so you can get a feed of the "blog" category on its own, or grab the whole front page or just pick up on quicklinks or whatever you want. I think this would be cool and it's on my TODO list.
December 2006
Slurl It
apollo [thearidians.org] Sun 17th @ 09:22 EST
site features, slurl
While working on the site yesterday I came upon the idea of adding a small graphic to Slurled Links in order to make them more visually descriptive. I was engaged at the time, however, in disembowelling the innards of the scripts that make this website tick and so I noted it as a future feature to implement at a later date.
By some strange coincidence then, between the time of inspiration striking and the possible point in the future where I would have eventually implemented this myself, I happened upon the website of the sublime Ordinal Malaprop and in perusing her archives I happened across the very thing I had imagined moments prior!
Therefore this website is proud to use Ms Malaprop's Slurl visual aids with but a tiny change: I prefer the icon to be to the right of the URL and the background of my website is not white. I also brought the SL Hand icon into the bosom of my webserver and converted it to my preferred PNG format, but the essential principal is as described in that referenced article. A hearty thank you to Ms Malaprop.
Site Launch
apollo [thearidians.org] Sat 16th @ 20:38 EST
apollo, aradia, site launch
I, Apollo Aridian, Second Life resident, landowner, explorer, dragon and writer, am pleased to welcome you to this portal into in my SL world. Actually technically this is a portal into our SL world, a website for my real life and second life wife and I to write about our SL experiences, but since this is going to be a holiday surprise for Aradia she hasn't written anything here yet because right now she doesn't know that the site exists.
I know what you're thinking: if this is the site launch then why are there several posts before this one? Well, in order to add some meat to the bones of this site launch I have been making notes as events happened in SL and as soon as the site hosting went live I retroactively backdated them to their respective time periods.
This website will be infinitely more interesting once the surprise is revealed to my wonderful Aradia. She has some thoughtful insights and perspectives on the SL world and has a beautiful writing style to express them with. You can read back over the things I've written to get an idea of the way I write, but do please come and visit again to pick up on some Aradia magic.