Zwol.org

Just noticed that the forum software I use, phpBB2, has been released in final version 2 this morning- about 1 hour ago, in fact. Since I was using a release candidate, I'll be upgrading my forum as well. This means some work as well, because I've put in several modifications, but since the forum's running OK right now, I'm not going to be doing that right away.

Right now the phpBB site is overloaded with visitors and many pages don't come up unless you refresh a couple times. I'm sure it's as frustrating for them as it is for us, but it's good that they're in demand.

(or Why I'll never get a job as a programmer): I code slowly, even at the best of times, and make lots of stupid mistakes that derail me for up to half an hour at a time. So dispite having worked on the site last night until I was too tired to think, I only accomplished one-half of one of the goals I mentioned yesterday.

I got the weekly archive links bar updated, but not the calendars. The weekly archive links bar is much faster now, though, and I've less actual thinking to do for the calendar.

I did finish out the main archive a bit and added a feature where if you search for a comic on a date that doesn't have one, the archive will tell you that but also offer suggestions of other valid dates in the archives that perhaps you were looking for. This will be necessary because some of the images that are currently in the "zwol" archive will be moved to their own archive- No Contest and Reiterating Comics comics, specifically, and I don't want people who've bookmarked them to not be able to find them again.

I also worked out much of the database model for my improved links system, but once I start working on it, I'm sure I'll find something that I've left out. I usually do.

Not much. Work on the site a LOT, I hope, and take a hike on Saturday. The thing to do, if all goes well, is to take photos with the digital camera while out and then post the photos here to test the new archive scripts. That would be good.

Only time will tell.

Well I got the calendars all done last night, including the fixing of a couple bugs when the current year and the next calendar's year are different. To see the bug in the current system, view any comic in December 2000 with the calendar option on and notice how the calendar shows no links to comics in the first week of January 2001, which it should.

Another new feature is that the archive calendar display will skip over months that have no comics. Not a problem previously, but now that there are large gaps in my archive, a necessary feature. This is not so much a problem moving backward in time as it is forward, but the only example in the current archive can be seen here, where there are no comics for January, but you still click on "Jan" to move backward and wind up unexpectedly in December of the previous year. It's correct, but confusing. The same thing happens moving forward, but until I add a new image, you won't see that problem, and I'm not adding any new images until I've finished the revamp, so you should never see that.

And, incorporating the above fixes, I've improved the multi-calendar display so that you can see an entire year's worth of calendars at a time, or appropriate fraction thereof. Right now it shows all of the calendars from the beginning of the comic to today, which is too many calendars, takes too long to download the page via modem, and is making the server to a lot of work to calculate. I'd always wanted to clean that up and now I have.

So tonight I hope to create the interface for myself to update the comics manually. Don't know if I'll get to the index page and the automatic updating of comics, but the interface has to come first.

To English grammar information- http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/textonly.htm.

Fun for the whole family.

In my limited testing thus far in the live environment, the page creation time seems to be significantly faster. Of course, I frequent my site all the time, so of course I'd notice, but any increase is good, whether or not others notice. Images still load at the speed they normally do, of course- nothing I can do about that- but at least the page itself is mas rapido.

One of the new features is that I can expand to support as many different archives as I want with a minimum of fuss. Witness the fact that I've moved all of the No Contest comics to their own archive. What? You say you've bookmarked the older location of your image? Well that link no longer exists (sorry), BUT! if you went looking for it, you'd see a page like this one, which tries to anticipate what you were looking for and suggests some alternate links. Nifty, huh? Well, I hope so, anyhow. Reiterating Comics comics aren't moved yet, but they will be. And there'll be other stuff, too.

THERE MAY BE BUGS!

I've uploaded the new archive system today and it's running OK, or so it seems. Some things still aren't right and I'm not done with it yet, but I wanted to give it a spin and see how it works. Please bear with me- I know you're not actually champing at the bit anyhow, as there aren't any new comics this week.

But I'm getting closer...

By the way, with all of this development I'm doing, I don't want to forget about a great book that's helped me along. I don't remember where I first got the link, but I'd read that SQL Queries for Mere Mortals was really great for helping to learn more about database queries. Now, I've got the mySQL manual but, like all manuals, it's great for how but a little sparse on the why's and wherefore's. Sure, I knew that using a LEFT JOIN would help me out, but what the Hell is is a left join, why's it called that and how does it differ from a right join? Happy to report that, these days, I know. Great book. How great? It's so great that even though it comes with a CD-ROM, I've never even taken the CD out of its package because I can't imagine what possible benefits it could bestow upon me beyond the text of the book itself.

We knew it was coming- It's a phone, a camera and an internet-surfing, emailing, instant-messaging device all in one. Pretty cool. It's so hip it doesn't even need to be referred to as a hiptop, but they're doing that anyhow, which is pretty lame.

Archive system moving along. The main archive page is 90% complete. Still need to do: Site auto-update (partially working), archive image maintenance interface, bookmarking system revamp. Need to investigate bug in archive where calendar mode doesn't show the calendar. I'm still wanting to make an improved links page system, but once the archive is done, then I can start posting some images. Maybe not comics at first but, as suggested on Friday, probably photos from the digital camera.

The calendars work in the archive again. I'd uploaded the new calendar file, but didn't change the imagebar file. Duh.

I've gone back on my previous statement about ditching all the tables for design purposes because I'm just that sort of waffling kind of guy (today, anyhow- tomorrow may be different). A table exists for the sidebar of the index page because I just couldn't stand the thought of it looking any other way. I know, on the internet there's absolutely NO way to be sure that everybody's seeing your page even remotely the way you intended it to be seen, but I think most browsers will show this in a reasonable fashion. Some uglier than others.

Let me tell you- I was a longtime user of Netscape 4.whatever, but it's long past its prime and is an absolute dog to try to code for. Mozilla is nearing 1.0 release and there's no excuse for not using that, MSIE 6, Opera 6 or any one of a host of other standards-compliant browsers.