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My Daunting Task

I've made some massive progress in getting my effect pedals (and their site) up and running over the last few days, and one big item was my selection of a PCB manufacturer. Rather than me making the boards one at a time by hand, I can have a box of them mass-produced and ready to have parts dropped in. Not only with this save me money (after the setup investment), it will save my most precious commodity: time. Of course, I won't need fancy boards for all my stuff, but for effects with lots of components and traces, it'll be nice to have machined boards.

This then, brings me to my Daunting Task of the Week: converting my "io Super-Distortion's" Photoshop-drawn PCB trace into an Eagle CAD file. Only when I've done that, can a PCB manufacturer machine boards. Ugh.

As you can see in the above pic, I have 38 components and LOTS of crazy traces to place, and I am TOTALLY not look forward to it. For starters, I have to create the schematic from scratch in Eagle — and that'll totally stink. And by the time I finish this conversion, I could have probably made a dozen boards by hand. But, once I get it done, it will be done forever — so I just have to buck-up and take the lumps for now.

You can also tell I'm procrastinating by whining about it here...

Posted at 2:24pm CDT | Permalink | Comments (1)

STP Tickets! w00t!

I don't get excited about much of anything since I'm a pretty low-key kind of guy, but I am most DEFINITELY excited about going to see one of my all-time favorite bands, Stone Temple Pilots, in June.

I was able to grab 4 tickets pre-sale, before the general public sale, so I got really good seats (considering I wanted 4 in a row). And as you can see, they arrived in the mail yesterday.

Posted at 10:09am CDT | Permalink | Comments (4)

Switcha-Rooski Prototype Artwork Finalized

Now that I have this site setup and running — and my wife's schedule is more open — I can get back to work on my guitar effects (over at RAILhead Effects) more steadily. Part of the downtime was due to me waiting on CE certification and other fun compliance paperwork to process, but that's all done now. I was also fighting to get my low-gain overdrive to sound just how I want it — and I'm almost there.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. A while back we finalized the design for my hand-painted A/B channel switcher, the Switcha-Rooski. The short version of the art's story is this: I handed my wife a drilled enclosure and told her to do whatever the heck she felt like doing to it. Boom — she went to town and come up with a wonderfully bright and colorful design. Here's the final result, fully assembled:

Posted at 9:43am CDT | Permalink | Comments (6)

Monday Miscellany

Too add insult to injury, as I started typing this, "No Aloha" popped-up in my iTunes random playlist. Since no one but maybe Jim knows what I'm talking about, "No Aloha" is a song by The Breeders from their 1993 album, Last Splash — and I'm massively wanting to go see them this Wednesday night. But, alas, no one but me can give the punk rock icon gals the R-E-S-P-E-C-T they deserve, and I don't want to go stag. *sigh*

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I really should come up with a better post section divider than 10 bullets, eh?

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I'm love with a new coffee, and it has a cool name to boot: The Roasterie's "The Ghost of Machu Picchu." I like that it has "ghost" in the name, but I really like saying "Machu Picchu" more than anything. But of course, it has a great, smooth flavor. No bitterness, a clean finish, and an all-around refreshing taste.

Buy some, you should.

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I'm hungry, but nothing sounds good. What are you having for dinner?

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Holy crapola — I've already snagged over 14,000 hits since I opened this new site up April 27th. Don't all you people have better things to do?

Just kidding. Kind of.

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I added a Links page to the site over the weekend, but I'm not quite finished. There's already eleventy-billion links on it, so browse thoroughly — and check it often.

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Man, this was a lame post. That's what I get for trying to think when I feel like crap.

Posted at 2:55pm CDT | Permalink | Comments (1)

Setup an AirPort Express to Extend Your Network

I finally got around to buying an AirPort Express so that I could extend the range of my AirPort Extreme wireless network, and I had quite a hard time getting things up and running. Of course, when I say "quite a hard time," I'm speaking in Apple terms, as I rarely have any issues with any Apple hardware or software. Evangelism aside, searching Apple's support forums let me know that I wasn't the only person that had issues setting up an extended network, so I thought I'd post a quick how-to, now that I have everything working.

STEP 1. We'll start out with the assumption that you have your main AirPort network running properly, and that your AirPort Express is at its factory, hard reset status — and plugged-in. I'd recommend plugging-in the Express in the same room as the Extreme during setup, just to ensure both devices can clearly communicate with one another.

The first thing you need to do is note the AirPort Express's AirPort ID, which is found on the outside of the AirPort, and when you open up AirPort Utility. Looking at the screen shot below, you can see where the AirPort utility displays the ID number — and I'd recommend highlighting the text and pasting it into a text file.

STEP 2: The next step is to setup your main Base Station to work as a WDS (Wireless Distribution System) network. To do this, select your main Base Station in the AirPort list on the left, click the "Manual Setup" button to open the configuration settings, and go to the "Wireless" tab. You will see a popup menu labeled "Wireless Mode," and you need to select "Participate in a WDS network" from the list of options. Make sure the Channel sets itself to 1, make sure "Allow this network to be extended" is checked, and take note of your network name and wireless security settings. Your AirPort Utility page should now look something like this:

STEP 3: When you set your network to participate in a WDS network, you probably noticed a new tab appeared in the AirPort Utility window: a tab labeled "WDS." Click the WDS tab heading, and make sure "WDS Main" is selected from the "WDS Mode" popup menu — this lets the network know which AirPort is the the one connected to your internet source (cable, DSL, etc.). What we need to do now is add the AirPort Express to the network, and the first step in doing so is to click the "+" button under the "WDS Remotes" listbox. In the window that appears, you need to paste-in the AirPort Express's AirPort ID number, giving it a description if you feel so inclined (it's not necessary to). Your AirPort Utility page should now look something like this:

Click the "Update" button, and the new configuration will be loaded to your AirPort Extreme. After the AirPort Extreme restarts, you may see a couple of errors — but ignore them for now.

STEP 4: Now we need to get the AirPort Express up and running, and to do that, we need to note the AirPort Extreme's AirPort ID — just like we needed the Express's in Step 1. So simply select the Extreme from the AirPort list and copy its AirPort ID. Now select the AirPort Express from the AirPort list, and click the "Manual Setup" button to open the Express's configuration settings.

Go to the "Wireless" tab and set the Express to "Participate in a WDS network" from the "Wireless Mode" popup menu, making sure "Allow this network to be extended" is checked, and that the Express is set to Channel 1. Make sure you enter your network name in the "Network Name" field, too — this is a critical step that Apple's documentation fails to make the user aware of. You also need to make sure your security settings are setup exactly as they are on your Extreme Base Station — exactly. Your AirPort Utility page should look something like this:

Once you've done that, click the "WDS" tab, and select "WDS Remote" from the "Wireless Mode" popup menu. This will allow your Express to share your Extreme's internet connection as well as act as another "hotspot," thus increasing the overall range of your network. Make sure "Allow wireless clients" is checked, and paste the Extreme's AirPort ID (which we copied earlier in this step) into the "WDS Main" field, like so:

Click the "Update" button, and the new settings will be sent to the Express. It may take it a while to restart, but eventually it will come back online, and you should see the status light (on the Express itself) glowing solid green. If you never get a solid green light, go back to the AirPort Utility and see what errors it lists, then check the associated settings.

That's pretty much all there is to setting up an AirPort Express to extend your wireless network. For whatever reason, Apple's documentation fails to explicitly state that both devices have to have the same network name entered, that both devices have to be set to Channel 1, and that both devices have to have identical security settings. Using the same network name makes sense if you think of it from the perspective of the Express merely being an extension of your main network — but the other side of the coin is worrying that doing so could also lead to conflicts, as wireless devices could potentially get confused, not knowing which AirPort network is the "real" one. The "fix" for that worry is to setup the Extreme and Express in the proper order, as I detail here. The channel and security settings follow this same logic — but it would have been nice of Apple to detail such things.

Hopefully this little write-up will help someone setup their extended network. The Express is a great little piece of hardware — once you get it working. It took me a while, but it's working flawlessly now, and I couldn't be more pleased with the little guy.

Posted at 8:23am CDT | Permalink | Comments (0)

WIN! TC Helicon VoiceTone Correct!

Could this be the start of my winning streak coming back? Maybe? You see, back in the day, I had masterful luck at winning all kinds of stuff, from computer components to music gear. But for years now, I haven't won jack-squat worth mentioning — until today.

Soon, I will be the owner of TC Helicon's VoiceTone Correct, a little pedal that TC Helicon describes as follows:

The nicest and most simpatico sound engineer you will ever meet is inside VoiceTone Correct. It combines pitch correction with tone and dynamic shaping that put a recorded gloss on live singing. Sensing algorithms developed at TC-Helicon automatically adjust the recording industry techniques of multiband EQ, compression and de-essing for you, so you get the best sound with the least amount of effort. Partner your new sound with auto-chromatic pitch correction which helps you sing more in tune, much like a metronome helps for playing in time. The miniaturization of sound engineers and vocal coaches was a challenge, but the results will surely impress you and your audience!

• Auto-chromatic pitch correction improves your pitch
• Adjustable auto-smooth compression
• Multiband auto-shape EQ dynamically sweetens raw mic sound
• Sibilance-smoothing de-ess algorithm
• Add rich lows on deep voices with the Warmth button
• Accurate input pitch and correction display
• XLR mic level I/O: Correction can go to monitors, mains or both
• Clean, studio quality mic preamp with phantom power

After the win, I did some reading-up on this little bugger, and it's actually supposed to be really great — especially for making one's voice sound more "live" and balanced. Supposedly, the pitch correction can be fined-tuned and dialed-out enough to where your voice still sounds totally natural — assuming you can sing pretty well on pitch to begin with. If you totally stink, a rack of these can't help you much. I wish I would have won it before today since I'm doing a song at church this weekend, because it would have been cool to try it out. Oh well.

I'll let you all know how I like once I get it, so stay tuned...

Posted at 4:10pm CDT | Permalink | Comments (2)

Updated Pedalboard Pic and Gear Page

I finally got around to taking a shot of my current guitar pedalboard layout. My fascination with Barber effects has waned dramatically, which is why so many of his pedals are no longer on my board. Pretty soon, I'll be replacing his Launch Pad with my own boost, PURE, which has a much better bite (in my opinion). The big empty spot is where I'll slap my still-in-progress low-gain pedal.

The effects chain is:

Goodrich L120 Volume Pedal > Teese Wizard Wah > Peterson StroboStomp Tuner > Barber Tone Press > Z.VEX Box of Rock > RAILhead Effects io > Paul Cochrane's Timmy Overdrive > Empress Tremolo > Maxon FL-9 Flanger > BOSS DD-20 Giga Delay > Barber Electronics Launch Pad > RAILhead Effects Switcha Rooski > LR Baggs Para Acoustic DI (when needed).

You can get more details about my whole gear entourage by checking out My Guitar Gear page in the Music section. You can see the full-size version of the pic by clicking to the photo's Flickr page.

Posted at 5:48pm CDT | Permalink | Comments (0)

We’re Counting On You, Scott…

PURCHASED!

June 28, me and 3 friends (currently Phillip and Greg and maybe Ben) will be checking out one of the best dadgum rock bands to ever make music: Stone Temple PIlots! I snagged 4 presale tickets this morning (general public tickets go on sale this Saturday), and we have reserved seating in the highlighted, uncovered section of the Woodlands Pavilion:

We'll be about midway back and on the right side near the aisle, so those are pretty dadgum good seats considering I wanted 4 right by each other. Now all we have to do is hope Scott can stay on the straight and narrow for the summer (at least)...

Posted at 10:29am CDT | Permalink | Comments (1)

Eyes, STP, and Hunting

First off, today was my 3 month post-LASIK/ASA checkup, and the Doc said everything is going perfectly. He was well pleased with how "aggressively [my] eyes were healing," and I was nailing 20/20 like there was no tomorrow. I'm now off all medicated drops and "special" tears drops, so that's nice. Now I can look forward to things getting more and more clear as time goes on, and I'll have another visit in 4 months.

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STONE TEMPLE PILOTS are back! w00t! They'll be playing at the Woodlands June 28 — assuming Scott doesn't get thrown back in jail — and I will be there. This is one of my all-time favorite bands, and one of the best dadgum bands to ever exist in my opinion, and it's awesome that they're touring again.

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The hunt is over: in roughly 3 months, I will be the proud owner of a Gretsch G6196T Country Club (the guitar in yesterday's post). SWEET. No one — and I mean no one — has these puppies in stock, so I had to special order it through my secret source. Now I just have to wait patiently, because as great as my source is, he still hasn't figured out how to travel in time... =(

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After the eye appointment, my Dad and I went to Golfsmith, and we grabbed some clubs we've both been eyeing. He stocked-up on some Callaways, and I bought a new Ping driver and a hybrid: a 10.5° G10 and a 21° G10, respectively. I can't wait to try these guys out in our tournament Friday. I love my Ping irons, and I really, really love the new driver — at Golfsmith's indoor range, at least. Hopefully they'll play as well in real life, but we'll see. At least I have 90 days to get 90% of my money back if I don't like them.

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Did I mention I'll be seeing Stone Temple Pilots in a couple of months?

Posted at 3:53pm CDT | Permalink | Comments (1)

Monday: New Site, New Guitar, and More

Well, I decided to fully jump over here and put my old Blogger blog into suspension. I still have a lot of background work to do here, but all the main "bones" are in place how I want them. Having said that, some things that are still on my to-do list are:

• Setup blog post archives.
• Rebuild my various tutorials, moving them to this site and off of Blogger.
• Build my Gallery backend.
• Add all my subpages from Blogger.

There are other tidbits, I'm sure — but that's the main gist of everything remaining.

As I've mentioned before, I'm making sure that all my pages adhere to XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS3 validation standards, and so far it's been a breeze. I'm still adjusting to not having links automatically open in a new window, but oh well. Another thing I'm pleased with is that I'm no longer bogging-down the front page with a bunch of embedded Flash or JavaScript badges and banners. I think, as a designer and coder (and a web user), I'm getting tired of the slow-loading glitter and glamor — so I'm doing away with most of it on my site.

Anyway, it's nice to be working with such a dynamic and scalable content management solution again. I loved ExpressionEngine back when I was doing RAILhead Design, and the new version of EE is even better. Oh, and it'll also be nice to open the comments to non-Blogger users — I just hope I don't have to start policing them...

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I'm having hollowbody withdrawals. =/

With as many guitars as I have and I've gone through, I still haven't found the one that gives me the specific tone and flexibility I want when it comes to going from clean to overdrive/distortion. Currently, when I need that combo, I grab my Reverend Manta Ray — and don't hear what I'm not saying: I love my Manta Ray. But it still has a really electric tone to it when it's clean, and that's mainly due to the size of the body, the internal chambering, and the material it's made of.

I used to own an Epiphone Dot Archtop — and it was a great guitar, but it would never stay in tune. Back when I had it, I didn't feel like going through the trouble of replacing machine heads, pickups, etc., and since it was such and inexpensive guitar, I just sold it. But now I want another true hollowbody, so the search is on.

Right now, I'm quite intrigued with Gretsch's Filter'Tron pickups, and I love the idea of having a solid spruce top and a 2.75" laminated maple body like the Gretsch Country Club G6196T sports. I also like the Cadillac Green paint job.

Unfortunately, I can't find one in stock at any of my usual sources until September or later. Ugh. I haven't fully begun my hunt, though, so I may turn up something this evening...

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We had a really great service at church this weekend. For starters, I was really pleased with the music. At first, I wasn't too keen on the set list since some of the songs were ones we've played to death, but our Worship Paster knew what he was doing when he picked them, and in the end, they synced perfectly with the message. We didn't have any technical issues to speak of, we pretty much hit every cue on time, etc. One of the benefits of doing songs we've played to death, of course, is that we know them like the backs of our hands — and that allows us to not have to follow a chord chart as much, which in turn allows us to play more freely and be a more active participant in the worship. That's always nice.

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Posted at 11:45am CDT | Permalink | Comments (1)

Slowly But Surely

If you're reading his, you're checking the status on my new site — which is a good thing! I still have loads of sub pages to add, but the basic site is up and running in full. I'm going to be waiting a bit longer to totally move out of Blogger, though — I just want to clean up a few things around here, first. If all goes as planned, I'll be out of the limiting (and ugly) Blogger interface and fully here within a week's time.

So, browse around and see what I've done with the place — just be sure you keep checking back to see any new content I sneak into place!

Posted at 6:38am CDT | Permalink | Comments (2)

More Geek: Validation, XHTML, and More

I'm getting really close to being 100% complete with my new (old) site, maurymccown.com, and I've been enjoying building everything to Standards. (If you follow the above link, be aware you may see radical changes here and there as I tweak the back end.)

I use ExpressionEngine as my content management software, and the latest releases default to XHTML 1.0 Strict, so that's what I've been coding toward. With the onset of more and more people using handheld devices for full web browsing (and loads of other reasons), getting one's site to adhere to Strict standards is a good move to make. This, however, required me to change some of my old ways — and I'm still getting used to those changes. Namely...

The "target" attribute is fully deprecated.
I always — always — used "target="_blank"" when adding links, mainly because I never wanted a reader to navigate away from my site and never return. No can do with XHTML 1.0 Strict. The reason is simple: opening a link in a new window assumes the device reading the site has a windowed interface — and that can't be guaranteed, so there's no reason to include it as a standard. Furthermore, my forcing a link to open a new window overrides the user's desire — if a user really wants a new window, they can open the link via contextual menu.

Border specifications are deprecated.
Since I'm an old dog hand coder, it's become second nature to include "border=0" around all my images, but that's no longer valid. To get around this, you simply specify a CSS class for your img tags, saying "border-style: none." Done deal.

Going back to H1, H2, etc.
Since I began migrating to CSS back in 2002, I started ignoring the long-standing heading tags like H1, H2, H3, etc. For my headings, I'd just create a style in CSS and apply it — but it really is better to use heading tags. First off, it helps those with disabilities read your site, because those specific heading tags are looked for when a page is read. Also, most indexing spiders look for content in your heading tags, so that can help with page ranking in search engines. Lastly, it's just good form to use them, so that's what I'm doing.

The death of tables as a crutch.
I'm also having to get over the ease of using tables for navigation bars and the like. Tables are meant for tabular data, and a lot of us old hats use the for all kinds of non-tabular stuff — but CSS can do anything a table can. Instead of specifying cell size to make all your button equidistant, just wrap them is a CSS style. A lot of the alignment attributes aren't allowed in tables any longer, either, so that puts the load back onto using CSS.

And the list could go on. Being the dork that I am, I must admit how nice it is to know all of my pages validate 100% with XHTML 1.0 Strict — and they look exactly the way I want them to on all browsers, in all platforms. That last bit is the kicker. Sticking with Standards sometimes requires a bit more thought and planning — and it can sometimes mean letting go of something you've been doing for years — but in the end, it's the best practice any web designer/coder can go with.

So how does your site stand up against validation? Head over to W3C's Validator page, put in your site address, and see if you, too, can get the "Passed" badge, too.

Posted at 5:36pm CDT | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday Ramblings, CSS, Etc.

Okay, I'm officially giving Internet Explorer the finger over its handling of text size. *waves fist*

I wanted to play nice and everything, but dadgummit, Internet Explorer makes you jump through so many hurdles to make your site look consistent between it and every other bloody browser out there, and I'm tired of playing with it. So, while I had plans to go with em units for my web fonts, I'm sticking with good ol' pixels.

What does this mean to you? It means that if you think the text on my new site is too small — or too big — you can resize it in every browser available except for Internet Explorer.

Microsoft's "logic" in this is that using pixels for sizing means the pixel size is the size the item should be — therefore you shouldn't be able to scale said item up or down. I agree with this logically, but Explorer is the only browser that adheres to that thinking, and in the Democracy of Browsers, I think they need to get over it (though they kind of did with IE7's Screen Scaling).

So, I'm back to pixels. Windows users should be using Firefox or Safari, anyway.

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You know you're a d0rk when you enjoy unnecessarily commenting your CSS.

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I am oh so very sick of David Cook. I'm wagering the Irish gal or Brooke will be going home tonight. (I'm talking about American Idol, just in case you were wondering.)

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I think I figured out how the wasps were getting into our house. The little twerps were, I think, getting into the attic via the soffit vents, then crawling their way out of the attic door — which doesn't close all the way. Methinks they saw the available light and followed it out. I have reached this determination after taping the aforementioned attic door crack, and since taping (a couple of weeks ago), nary a wasp has been found inside.

Now I just need to buy (and install) a new attic door/ladder thingie. Yay for that.

Posted at 3:37pm CDT | Permalink | Comments (1)

Random, Quickly

I didn't have much time to work on my site over the weekend, so I'm still using Blogger for my posts — no biggie, though.

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Speaking of web sites, I'm also rebuilding our company site to more modern standards, and I thought I'd take a second to once more state how much I love CSS.

This new designing has led me to another crossroads, though: specifying font size. I've bounced back and forth between using point and pixels to specify size, and out of those two, point declarations are deprecated and should be avoided at all costs. Point size is fine for typography, but not for screen resolution.

This leaves pixels, which I like horribly — but they also prevent users from increasing point size if they think my text is too small. At the same time, though, I'm able to absolutely control the look of my content — but again, it's controlled at the reader's expense.

This leaves me with the em, which is something I've never really used on my own design code. But, the em is really "where it's at" at this point in time, because it allows a relatively decent amount of control over layout while allowing the user to increase text size to suit their eyes.

So, I guess I'll be making the transition to the em like a good coder should.

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Having a patch cord crap-out right before you're supposed to play one of the most emotional and personable songs during the church service really sucks. It was pretty much just me on the acoustic and the singer, but I was dead in the water. Thankfully we had our keyboard gal playing, so she was able to fill the position.

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I was asked four times this weekend about why I don't have the images I have in my client portfolio online anywhere. The answer is simple: I rarely request that a person sign a model or subject release.

Since any Bob or Sally with a camera can be "A Photographer" nowadays, the market is flooded with people that just don't know the law or the rules. I'm amazed at some of the sites I visit where people are posting images of other people, using those shots in their online portfolios, posting them on Flickr, etc., all without having those people sign a release. At least in Texas, it hasn't been written into law that photographer must have a signed release — but that day is coming soon. Nevertheless, it's always better to err on the side of caution if you're not dealing with a close friends or family — or if you're taking shots of someone you asked permission to take shots of (as opposed to them asking you for pictures).

So there you go: I don't post some of my portfolio images because I didn't get the client to sign a release — and when you get bit by not having a release, you'll hold onto your pics, too. =)

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Either Doc Cottle or Tom Zarek is the final, unrevealed Cylon. Just wait...

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Metallica is back in the studio. Let's all cross our fingers and hope they get back to their Justice and Black album days.

Posted at 10:50am CDT | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday Already?

My wife and I are back on our Frasier kick, and we're buying the DVDs of all the seasons as we get to them. Every single episode is funny.

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I fully moved maurymccown.com to the new grid server yesterday, so now I have access to all kinds of neato techie coolness and backends for my site. The first thing I did was install ExpressionEngine — the best dadgum content manager known to Mankind.

I'm now in the process of building my site pages for use with EE's template system, so for now, when you visit maurymccown.com, you're still viewing plain ol' HTML. I have most of it done, and I'm hoping to have it 100% complete this weekend.

After that, I begin the process of transitioning my weblog from here to there, so stay tuned.

I must say, also, how much I love using ExpressionEngine. It works beautifully with CSS, and the ability to assemble parts of a page with any number of code snippets is pure magic. For example, my page title, navigation, post area, background image, META, JavaScript calls — all of that info is reused on every one of my pages. So, instead of having to add that code to every page, I simply build a "header" page that stores and info, then when I build a new page, I just call "embed=site/header" and boom — all of the above is automagically inserted in the final page.

This makes it painfully simple to modify stuff like navigation bars, etc., because I only have to modify one page — and all my other pages get updated.

I love technology. =)

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Something is happening Monday that I'm totally looking forward to — but I can't say what it is just yet. Anyway, it's been almost 10 years in the waiting, and I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl with anticipation.

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I need to sell my Dual 2.0GHZ G5 tower. Any buyers?

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I can't decide if I want to have a cigar before practice, or my pipe with some Finck's Golden Cavendish. Decisions, decisions...

Posted at 1:37pm CDT | Permalink | Comments (0)