Dave Kellam

Man, it’s not easy to do 3-column css layouts. There are a bunch of guides and stuff around, I decided to go for the hack method. Basically, I just created a second el-sidebar-grande div, through the old sidebar and the flick bar as floats into that. Anyway, that’s my solution for now.

Did a little hackjob on the site, although it’ll change again soon enough. It seems like all I do is post saying I’m working on the site design. That and quicklinks. Quicklinks are my crutch right now, I should break them off onto the sidebar again. Or not. Blah.

On a separate note, I must express my utter disdain for web-based educational software packages. Namely Knowledge Forum and WebCT. For now, I leave you with this WebCT screenshot. Learning without Limits provided you’re using the right software.

This is a hacked-up version of the Kubrick theme that meshed with my old layout. I need to change things up a bit and implement some of the neato things in WordPress. I was getting a lot of comment-spam, so I installed a plugin called Trencaspammers that generates a code that you have to enter (prevents a lot of the robots).

Now I just have to get rid of the spam in my referer logs, riz has provided me with his hacked together script, i just haven’t tried running it yet.

Well, Drupal didn’t happen. But WordPress did.

I didn’t have a whole lot of trouble installing Drupal, it actually went fairly smoothly, despite some comments that indicate otherwise. My biggest problem was that I had about 1700 main log and quicklink entries that needed to be imported into the new system. It became a pain-in-the-ass with Drupal, but was pretty simple with [WordPress][3].

And I respected Riz’s comment, eightface forever! I’m thinking that davekellam.com will just be a portal for now, it’s kind of dumb to have it mirroring everything on eightface. They’re on the save physical server, so it’s not acting as a redundant backup.

Some notes, I decided to go with a CVS build, rather than the default install. So, I’m currently running 1.5-beta1, which has some nice aspects to it. The theming is pretty cool and it was pretty simple to get an asides/quicklinks style thing going. I ran into a problem with the quicklinks, mostly in relation to how I set them up in MT and imported them into WordPress. I could have come up with some sort of hack or legacy thing, but I didn’t. I’m going back and formatting each post with Markdown.

Markdown is pretty handy if you like working with text/text-editors. Basically, it saves a bunch of time by avoiding having to type out the same code over and over again. Some people like the mouse and clicking on a button to insert tags, this is easier (hands don’t have to leave keyboard).

Things might look a bit ugly around here as I switch over to the new system and templates.

It’s transition time here at eightface.com, one of those antsy times when I need to change the functionality of my site(s). Anyway, eightface.com will still be around, but it’s likely to become more of personal gallery/artsy-web-playground sort of thing. The log and associated crap will be migrating to davekellam.com.

I’ll also be changing content management systems. Moveable Type has suited me well for the last few years, but it’s time to move on. I’d still recommend it to anyone who is willing to pay for it (or sign-up for the developers network). For anyone using Dreamhost, i’m more likely to suggest WordPress, as it can be installed from the WebPanel with one click (and a bit of typing).

And what will I be moving to? That would be Drupal. Why Drupal? Because I want to make my life difficult. We’ll see if I come crawling back with my tail between my legs.

Happy Holidays. One of my big presents for the season is a Flickr Pro account, courtesy of Alanah. There probably won’t be too many pics appearing yet, as most of my archives are sitting on my computer in Kingston.

I added a Flickr badge to the sidebar of my site, so you should be able to see the most recent photos that I’ve uploaded.

I’m back in Brockville for the week, staying at home. I left my mac at home, but brought my xbox back. My mom and brother now know how to launch the Xbox Media Center and watch DivX/Xvid movies. Not having my computer around hurts though, it’s one of those times that you wish for a laptop.

I brought home a Ubuntu and a Gnoppix liveCD, so I could avoid using Windows. It’s working fine, but neither of them seems cable of saving my settings to my USB key. They also seem to have trouble creating a persistent home directory right now. Long and short of it is that I have to resetup my computer everytime I boot it up. I could use Knoppix or some other liveCD, but I prefer the Gnome desktop to KDE. The liveCDs also seem incapable of booting on the family’s old pIII 450, it’s not worth struggling over.

I’ll be home for a week or so, then back to Kingston and on to Toronto/Missassauga for a few days. School starts again for me on the 3rd, yea!