Category: Programming

HTML, CSS, Drupal, Wordpress, PHP–anything I have to say or question about coding

Categories
News Programming

For better? Or for worse?

In helping my sister set up her new website/blog, I’m learning some new stuff to help my own site. Or is it hindering? As you can see, my latest “improvement” is changing the homepage so it shows excerpts of new posts instead of the full content of each. I thought it would make the page more manageable and less like a 12 story building, but I’m not sure the execution works like I pictured it. I don’t know if the images are to small, or the excerpts are too short, but there seems to be too much space everywhere. Unfortunately my PHP skills are still in the baby-steps stage, so I’m not sure I can change it to the way I want. Phoo.

This place definitely needs an overhaul, regardless. The design, the content, the architectural structure (or lack thereof)…. Sadly there are at least three other websites in line for my spare time before this one, and two of them are paying gigs.

Categories
Miscellaneous News Programming

Less knitting, more variety

I’m thinking of changing the name/focus of this blog. Sadly I’m not longer as obsessed with needlework as I was when I first started Polgara Knits. I still knit and crochet, but not nearly as often, and yarn purchasing is no longer an irresistable force for me.

Right now my focus is more on two other things–JuNoWriMo and learning PHP/MySQL.

The JuNoWriMo is my mid-life crisis, I think. I’m turning 40 in three months, and want to have something tangible to show that I’ve accomplished something. I don’t have a family (and have never really wanted one), I don’t own anything (except debt) and while I have wonderful friends and a wonderful job and two wonderful cats, I feel I’ve lived a life of stasis. A 50,000 word novel, crappy though I promise it’ll be, is at least something I can hold forth and say, I made this. It’ll probably take me longer than the month of June, unfortunately (see next paragraph), but I should be able to do it in three months.

The PHP (and the sudden division of my focus from must JuNoWriMo) is due to two opportunities that look to be headed my way (one more likely than the other) for freelance web development this summer. Both projects will pay well, and both will require back-end database management, so I’m studying up on the PHP so I’ll be ready to hit the ground running when things are more definite.

So yes, knitting and crocheting is no longer all I think about or all I do with my spare time. I’m a little sad about it, but new things are good (and are the opposite of static!), so I’m choosing to think positively. And I haven’t turned my back on the needles and hooks, they’re just no longer the center of my life. It’s all good.

Now if only I had time for a site redesign…

Categories
Programming

This has absolutely nothing to do with knitting

Flash has been my life lately, specifically learning Actionscript 3.0 from a class at Otis. Tomorrow is the last one, and I must say, I wasn’t sure at first that it was a good idea, but now, nine classes later, I’m glad I did it. I’ve learned a lot, not least of which is that a) I’m not stupid, and b) there is usually no magic recipe for my task and I just have to do it on my own.

Two important things I’ve learned that either took much googling, or wasn’t on google at all:

1) .text and .htmlText are two different things. The second one will insure that your text field renders in html. (Learned this from a colleague, as google gave me no joy.)

2) MouseEvent.ROLL_OUT and MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT are also two different things, and this is very important: The former works on the parent movieclip, while the latter is more likely to work on whatever child object is contained within the movieclip (so!frustrating!).

I have put them here so I will always remember them, and hopefully to make them easier for others to find, should they need them.

Now it’s time to conquer the checkboxes nested in a drop-down menu. Yay?