PolarLava::Blog

I've killed off the PolarBlog Users page.  It seemed like a neat idea when I created it, but it just became more of a maintenance headache as it was rarely up-to-date.  Thus I've opted to get rid of it.  Besides, does anyone really care besides me?

For some unknown reason I was looking up random domain names when I came across something interesting.  The Papendick.us domain was still available.  I guess I knew this as I've looked up numerous Papendick domains in the past.  Apparently today was the day that it became important for me as I now own it!  Nothing too exciting at this point as it's currently parked to the PolarLava site.  Maybe at some point I'll do something useful with it.

—2/5/2007—
OK, it's no longer parked here.  But then again, it's still nothing special.  Over the weekend I built it into its own site, that is basically a clone of my wife's site.  I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it, although I have considered splitting off the personal aspects of this site and putting them there.

—10/23/2007—
Part of me still wants to split my site, but I just don't have the time to dedicate to it as I have a lot of other things I'd also like to do.  So it's either going to expire and get gobbled up by a squatter, wallow in it's current sad state, or I may keep it and point it to PolarLava.  I guess I'm leaning toward the first or possibly the third option if I feel like paying for it again.

— 2/2/2008—
Alright, I couldn't let it go.  I've opted to switch registrars which allowed me to get 2 years for what it would have cost me for one at the previous one.  And being I don't see doing much with this for the foreseeable future I've now parked it to point to PolarLava.

I've pared down the base CSS file to no longer include the section specific (Cycling, Weather, etc.) CSS data.  These sections now load the base file and a section specific CSS file.  So pages that don't require the section specific CSS no longer download this unnecessary data.  The net result being that things should be microscopically faster and less bandwidth will be utilized.  It also makes managing the site layout a bit simpler.

Getting a jump on the changes for PolarLava 2007, I've upgraded my photo gallery to Gallery2.  Can't say the integration is 100% yet, but it's reasonable at this point.  For the foreseeable future the gallery will only have the PolarLava header but no navigation links.  I'm not sure if I will change that or not as real estate is at a premium.  If you see something quirky, let me know.  The upgrade was fairly painless, but updating the PhotoBlog links was a PIA, but done nonetheless.  One task down, many more to go…

Being there is only a couple of weeks left in the year, I don't see any further major progress being made on any of these.  Therefore, let's review how we did.

The following are some of the things (generally not in any particular order) I'd like to do and/or complete here at PolarLava in 2007…

• Upgrade my photo gallery to Gallery2.  Done.  I'm very happy with how well it went and the features of this new version.
• Get the backlog of all my writing online.  Partially Done.  I got a lot of these online in the first half of the year, but I've got a long way to go.
• Post even more photos to my PhotoBlog.  Done.  This is probably one of the things that you can count on continuing around here.
• Add photo EXIF data to the "Read more" section on postings to my PhotoBlog.  Not Done.  Never even looked into this.  Maybe I really don't want or need it.
• Add a "Bikes" page to my Cycling Log.  Done.  Now if I could just add a new bike to it!
• Add "Previous" and "Next" navigation to individual entries on my Cycling Log.  Done.  And I do use it often.
• Add a route mapping feature to my Cycling Log.  Not Done.  I played around with some things, but I still don't have a solution I'm happy with.  I'm likely going to integrate with some third-party mapping because I just don't see having the time to do anything else.
• Start playing around with using PostgreSQL now that I've learned a bit about it.  Not Done.  Still have yet to even create a database to play with.
• Start learning a little Ruby.  Not Done.  Largely a time issue.  I've just got way too many PHP projects already to really spend any time doing something new even though I know I should.
• Setup a Subversion code repository for my projects.  Done.  And now I'm left wondering why I didn't do this way sooner!
• Try out PHPUserTrack.  Not Done.  Another case of "I guess I don't really need it".  Maybe some day as I'm still interested in it.
• Implement a PHP Session database.  Partially Done.  I've got the bulk of this done, but just haven't completed it.  Done.  A couple hours work, and now it's done and working.  :)  12/22/2007
• Create project pages for my current or future Weather, NetVibes weather module and PolarLink projects.  Partially Done.  I actually made good progress with this although some of my projects have changed and this is very much in a state of flux.  Projects that are well established are there, but as you move down the size scale the completeness drops.