Archive of October 2003

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

There’s no place gnome!

‘er home!. But for some unfortunate few gnomes they don’t have happy homes. No, they are in police protective custody after being release by the "Garden Gnome Liberation Front". They’ve gone from being captive to essentially being imprisoned. One can only hope they find their way back to their rightful owner or perhaps be adopted by a loving gardener!
October 28, 2003 @ 12:45 pm | Category:
Thursday, October 23, 2003

Cycling Section Updated

I’ve updated the Cycling section of the site so it now has the same look and feel and the rest of the site. It’s not using the new XHTML and CSS compliant layout at this time, but rather the new templating engine while still incorporating some of the old table based layout elements. This was the quickest way to get there in the short term, which was the goal. As such this section is HTML 4.01 compliant rather than XHTML. I’ve been slowly working on a new search page that will meets my new design requirements as well as addresses a number of short comings in the current system. This change will bring XHTML compliance, full templating and a complete object oriented design to the underpinnings. Once the search section is complete, it should require less effort to update the rest of the application.
October 23, 2003 @ 01:00 pm | Category:
Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Blog Calendar

I’ve spent some time adding an optional calendar function to Personal Weblog, the software that drives this blog. Although I didn’t originally write it I have made small contributions in the past to this project and I guess I can now say I’ve made a reasonably significant contribution. These code changes have been submitted to the developer for inclusion in a future release, but I’ve gotten no response thus far. It appears from his site that he has not been actively developing on PWL for quite some time. I’ve also been contemplating taking on adding a comment system, but that will have to wait a bit. The next thing on the agenda is completing the update of my Cycling section with the site’s new look.

UPDATE: 11/10/03 Okay, so I guess my efforts were not completely in vain or at the very least not completely self-centered. A couple of others who use PWL have written to thank me for this addition and have indicated they will be using it on their sites. Jorge Paulo sent along a nice thank you, but currently is not using it and Dave Holland who implemented it on his site almost immediately after I posted my changes to the PWL mailing list!
October 22, 2003 @ 07:49 am | Category:
Friday, October 17, 2003

New! New! New!

A significant addition regarding the PolarLava Weather section and my involvement with Geo::Weather has been added to the end of this post.
-klp 12/11/2003

A number of changes have been made here at PolarLava.com over the past few weeks.  Starting with this new Blog category to record the happenings around here.  Second would be the new, hopefully fresher look and feel than the old dark theme previously used.  One notable exception to this is the "Cycling" section which not only needs the new face lift, but also a reworking of its underpinnings. That’s going to take a bit of work, thus it is still running with the old look.

After nearly two years it was time for an updated look.  It was also time to move with the technology curve…the old layout was all table based and (almost all) HTML 4.01 Transitional compliant.  The new layout is much lighter as it uses Cascading Style Sheets and is fully compliant.  This should not only make page loads faster, but also makes it much easier to change the look/layout of the site.  I’ve also stepped up to trying to keep as much of the site as possible XHTML Strict compliant.  Besides the Cycling section that has yet to be updated, the only section at this time known not pass XHTML validation, is this Blog!  Another issue which I will be working on, time permitting.

The other big change is the new retrieval mechanism for the "Weather" section.   The previous content found here has been moved to a new blog entry.
October 17, 2003 @ 12:42 pm | Category:
Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Clusters of PocketPC’s

Okay, this seemed really silly when I first heard about it. But after reading the article it may have some practical use in the future. Apparently this isn’t the first of it’s kind as I had thought as learned about this Handhelds.org iPAQ Cluster project. Who knows, maybe someday this may prove to have a practical application.
October 8, 2003 @ 04:06 pm | Category: