1993

Do you ever wander what happened to geocities? It’s still there…just waiting for you to come back.

I can’t think of any circumstance in which blink tags should be used.

Pligggggggg?

The past couple of days, Pligg has been plaguing me. To answer your question, Pligg is not a very fat and jolly boar, but instead a content management system similar to digg. Basically, content is posted and people vote on the most popular item to raise it to the top of the heap. Pligg is currently a freeware version of this as it’s still in beta. And what that means for Pligg is that it doesn’t have the most user friendly method of customizing things. This is mainly because I am no PHP expert by any means (though I just might be after finishing up with ol’ pliggy).

Round 1- I create a MySQL database, upload files, and change the CHMOD according to Pligg’s install instructions. There’s a little bit of guess work as they don’t spell it out and have neglected to update the instructions for the 9.9 version. It’s a little bit difficult mainly due to my inexperience with installing databases, but eventually it’s complete. I log in, everything looks great, I change the password, and Pligg promptly locks me out of my own website for no particular reason that I can figure out (Yes, yes, I’m one of those irrational people that tend to blame the technology and not my brain-but I’m working on it. And seriously, Pligg had it in for me). So I uninstall, reinstall, and swiftly establish an account. All is well.

Round 2-The person I’m working for wants some modifications. Should be pretty simple, right? No. The optimist inside my head keeps saying, “Well, there’s got to be a simpler way….” and the pessimist tells her to shut up and help her surf the Pligg forums. Though there’s some great people on there that offer a variety of solutions, they are winding and not very awesome when you do random searches. So it takes me a little while to find some tutorials/modifications/hacks for the system. I implement a few. Pligg breaks and gives me an error message that I cannot decipher, despite surfing the forums. After putting the default settings back one by one, testing and still having a broken site, the pessimist wins. I’ll reinstall tomorrow.

Round 3- Reinstall, carefully do the most necessary changes, find solutions in random places (who would’ve thought you change tab text by going into the languages section?), and finally start putting content up on my functioning site, relieved to be done with customization.

In short, unless you know php, Pligg is rather difficult. Or maybe you just have more patience than me. If you want a free CMS, have at it, but if you can, wait until they release the 1.0 version that I can only hope is less buggy and more user friendly. Then again, Pligg 1.0 may not be free, so I guess it all depends on how much you value your time versus your money.

Falling from the Sky

While at the same time constructing my portfolio (carefully, carefully- genius can’t be rushed!), I’m working on a few ideas for some flash cartoons. As I’ve said before, Psyop has certainly inspired me in a lot of ways, and I like how they animate abstract ideas. I’d love to do that, and have been brainstorming a few fun cartoons of my own that I’d like to make while building my portfolio.

And though it’s not necessary, I’m considering purchasing a wacom tablet. Looks fun, eh? Plus it eliminates the slight weirdness that is drawing things with a mouse. I don’t know. It needs a bit more research (I am an absolute research fanatic when it comes to *gasp* investing in something).

The Fun and Perils of ActionScript

I’m trying to get better acquainted with ActionScript, because although I can do some really fun stuff with it, I’m not yet able to say, Alright, I want to do this- this is how I’ll write out my code. Basically, I can’t hand-code it, and I think it’s a given that before you can claim you know how to do something in the world of coding, you should be able to hand-code an impressive amount.

Another peril of never hand-coding is that you lose it- you become reliant on a program to prompt you or write it for you. That’s how I feel about Dreamweaver. Convenient yes, a time-saver, yes. But it’s shouldn’t become a crutch. Maybe I’m just full of false pride, but I can’t let a program write it for me (as in using Dreamweaver’s CSS wizard).

But back to ActionScript. It’s pretty amazing what it can do. When you make things move with ActionScript, the first thing that pops into your head is ‘I’m a genius’ or that you’ve discovered some new breed of technological magic. I never really understood what people meant when they said it was ‘powerful’ until I started using it myself to make things float around by using mathematical formulas in the code.

Naturally, I got ahead of myself and accidentally started working my way through a book entitled “ActionScript Animation” instead of a basic ActionScript book. I was wondering why I was so far in over my head when I realized that I was basically working through intermediate to advanced programming with no basis for how a programming language works. Luckily Tim was helping me through it, but I stopped and decided to take a step back when I realized that I had completely jumped over the basics.

So, right now I’m working on a) ActionScript b) my Portfolio and c) reading The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett (pretty awesome name, eh?). I’ll have to talk about that book another time. For now, I’m sure your head is lolling on the keyboard and you’re praying for an easy and quick death. Scurry away from mine blog, and be free.