Normal America

Well it was bound to happen, spammers eventually hunted this site down. 10 Comments all within the same hour, same minute even. Ok little tip to spammers if you wanna at least be believable as actual comments, post comments spaced out timewise, or better yet in your web site address don't put a freaking ad. Ugh. Other then having to delete these annoying comments. I got jack for the site. I was designing some stuff on pad and paper last night and I guess that's a work in progress so far. Anyway hope everybody's weekend is going great. Hasta.

E3 coverage is going on, so for the next couple of days I am not gonna post anything. Too many goodies to watch. Though so far the Sony Pre-E3 conference sucked and Nintendo's Pre E3 conference was rocking. Legend of Zelda, the new Super Mario Brothers, Super Metroid, and a game called Project H.A.M.M.E.R that looked very cool. Can't wait to see what Microsoft is gonna have showcased.

Ok so the site of the month is......

W3Schools

Ok so why is this site SOO great? Essentially it is a great resource for code and the like. It has tutorials and all that cool jazz on it. So say you can't remember some html code that you need to use for frames. You click on Learn HTML an then HTML Frames, BAM, your gonna find it somewhere. This site is good for a lot of the general stuff as far as web coding goes. On a side plug though, my friend meg also has a site:

http://www.meganday.com

It's nothing real fancy but, hey what use is paying for webhosting and posting a blog if you can't plug your friends websites', lol.

Well I sketched out a design or two for the comicoverload.com site. So far it looks pretty good. I will probably start actually building it this weekend. None of it will be up officially though until I get the cash for hosting, although I think the web hosting company I am with currently will upgrade their systems to fit what I need, and enable me not to have to pay more for the hosting of another site. Right now it's all kinda preliminary. In truth I need to get the colors right, and get a couple of comic geeks' opinion on which site design is better looking.

I blame myself, I went outside on a Saturday. I won't get into the nitty gritty but a decen't portion of the last couple of hours today have sucked, part of the suckitude being likely two flat tires and the last of it ending with my shower drain apparently still being clogged after having poured drain unclogger a couple of days ago down into it.

Ok, so while puttering about one day I found this neat script/app called Lightbox. I mentioned it briefy awhile back

Example:

image #1
image #2
image #3

http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

for support go to:
http://www.huddletogether.com/

or you can email the coder, their email should be on both sites I believe.

Originally I had a tutorial but, it just seemed a bit convulted, and the basic instructions are on the actual lightbox2 site. The only thing I suggest is to insert the code not only in your main index template but also in your category archive/single-entry archive/and date archive.

Click on the picture to view all 15 pictures.

Ok so awhile back you may have noticed the webcam module I added to this site, and the whole, " Webcam 1" caption. Well you can't really have Webcam 1 unless you have a Webcam 2, otherwise why even call it that. Pretty much I am gonna set up a second webcam here in a couple of weeks. Webcam 2, I was originally thinking of installing here at work but, there are WAY to many possible issues that could come up and policy wise it just doesn't seem all that safe or smart. I pretty much know where I want to install the other webcam in my apartment but, the issue comes in running wires for it to get connected to the internet. I think I might have it figured out, using some wireless technology. I'll probably have it on for a couple of weeks and then shut it off, if only to test it out and what I can do with it via the web & my webhosting. As far as comicoverload.com is going I have had the sketches done for awhile now, I just need to take the time to recreate them in Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, add some color and get a sort of real, web representation, of what I want the actual site to look like. I am not gonna put a time frame on it though. Webcams are easy to set up, websites take time, sometimes. I really wanna put some cool flash effects on comicoverload but, I am struggling with whether or not I should. One of the key things in building websites is compatiability, and believe it or not, not everybody has Macromedia Flash Player plug-ins for their browsers. Also certain flash animations might slow down load times, which is even more important. Anything that takes longer then 3 or 4 seconds to come up as a webpage, a normal user won't look at. Websurfers have little patience when it comes to webpage loading, and I can agree with this being a websurfer.3 or 4 seconds seem like minutes in "web time".

Ok so I have been mentioning comicoverload.com a lot but, what is it? Essentially its gonna be a repository of scanned images/reviews/thoughts/etc. about comics. I tend to forget some comic stuff sometimes and it'd just be a good way for me to keep track of things. About Heroes does sorta the same thing, though they include toys in the mix. Also at About Heroes they are very analytical in their reviews to where I just am overly blunt with little analysis, aka I write somewhat simplistic reviews, a good way to think of it, is if the Incredible Hulk wrote a comic review. "HULK LIKE ACTION COMICS ISSUE. IT GOOD. COLORS PRETTY. SUPERMAN SMASH STUFF. GOOD"....ok maybe not that simplistic but, you get the idea. Well I better wrap this up but, that's what's going on for now.

Started working on that other website at around 5pm. The site thus far isn't looking too bad, I am gonna have to dig a little deeper in trying to understand CSS to figure out how to create txt boxes that'll have the background img, show through, sort of a semi-transparent box storing the text. So far there are about 3 or so ways to do it but, they are a bit involved, I am gonna see if I can find a simplier solution before I go to those other solutions. Haven't been updating this site too much, and to be honest until I figure all of this CSS out well, there probably won't be a whole lot of site updates to here for awhile. I am gonna try to get some books ordered down at the library on CSS, then check them out, try to get read up on whatever I can't find via the web. If anybody knows of any good tutorial sites for those beginning to work in CSS let me know. Well it's getting late and I gotta get up for work tommorrow, hasta.

I have come to the conclusion that the Firefox internet browser rules and the Internet Explorer browser blows. Mind you Firefox isn't without an issue or two (i.e plug-ins) but, design wise it actually understands the code better then Internet Explorer. This website is best viewed with Firefox. In short if you haven't started using Firefox yet, click on the Get Firefox link I have near the upper-right corner there and download that sucker. Ditch IE, what good has it done you lately...other then maybe crashing. To put a Firefox button on your site go to:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates/homepage