Andy Laub

I did this before. Here it goes again:

As January hit Wisconsin, we were running down the middle of the street trying not to fall on our asses. Now that I think about it, that’s a pretty good metaphor for the year.

February took us to Chicago with some friends who used to live there, and we did all kinds of good stuff.

In March I bought a camera and took some pictures.

April was not so great, but in retrospect it was actually not so bad either.

I read a lot of books in May.

In June I loved the iPhone 4. And I still do.

I relaunched this site in July. (Side note: wow, that was only July?)

I rode my first ever half-century in August, which dovetailed nicely with my first ever 500 miles run in July.

On the subject of running, I ran a 10K race (off road!) in September. So much fun!

I accidentally another play in October. Is that bad?

In November, Conan came back and I made a pie. Both were delicious.

December. Miami.

JQuery. I’m pretty sure that’s where this all started. A few months ago I redid my work site in effort to add a little more, well, pop. In doing so I had a little discussion with JQuery and we decided that it would be fun to hang out some more. Since then it’s been finding its way into more and more of my projects, as it’s proven to be remarkably useful.

As I become more familiar with it, it’s easier for me to see what it’s capable of (hint: everything), and as a result I started thinking about a redesign of this blog in an effort to completely and utterly abuse integrate some of those capabilities. As work progressed, I realized there were some other bullet points I’ve been wanting to hit as well. Here’s the laundry list:

JQuery

Like I said. In this case I’m using it mainly for the archive dropdown and the endless scrolling on listing pages. I played with some concepts that involved more horizontal scrolling, but decided to ultimately go a different direction.

Grids

I’ve been basing the various iterations of this blog off of grids for a long time, but this is the first time in awhile where said grid hasn’t been dictated by Flickr. In this case I decided to try a 960 grid system and ended up using a 16 column grid here, with each column equaling 50px with a 10px gutter. I used this CSS generator to develop the initial CSS.

I’m debating whether I’d use this technique if I were to do it all again as I had a couple of hangups with the process:

• I didn’t love the naming conventions for the various classes; I ended up replacing all the underscores with dashes because that’s what I’ve become accustomed to using in my CSS.
• The system falters somewhat if you’re floating multiple blocks inside of a larger block (for example, three .grid-3‘s in a .grid-9. You need to add .omega (to remove the right margin) to the last block in the line, which doesn’t bode particularly well for dynamically-generated content.
• It seems like an excessive amount of markup in general. Then again, I suppose that comes with the territory in a system that’s attempting to be somewhat universal.

Dynamic Stylesheets

I’ve been wanting to experiment with adding constants to my CSS files for some time now. One way of doing this is with LESS, a Ruby gem (also available as a WordPress plugin, thankfully). LESS basically allows you to define constants and nest classes within your stylesheets, which is a tremendously useful concept.

But in short, I hated it. I attribute part of this to the fact that I had already been messing with PHP as a way to dynamicize my CSS, but the LESS system ended up being a little too clunky for me to find useful:

• LESS does math, and that’s great. Except when it tries to divide my shorthand font declarations, and as a result the entire CSS becomes null and void.
• It seems that commas are no less of a hurdle, as I found LESS to stumble when I was trying to define the same set of properties for two different elements.
• As I mentioned, any issue with syntax will cause the entire stylesheet to be totally dysfunctional with no indication of what the problem is.

I ended including the CSS in PHP form, which has functioned in a much more predictable manner.

Color Editing

This is the third version of mine to feature theme-editable colors. In this case, though, I ended up going a slightly different route. I had been using a variation of the functions.php file from the old default Kubrick theme, which writes custom CSS in the header of the HTML to define the chosen color. Instead of that, I decided to make use of my newly-created PHP CSS and pass that new color to the CSS via a URL variable. Much cleaner.

In addition, I decided to make light and dark stylesheets from the get-go, which I can also switch from the admin.

Mobile Friendly(ish)

I’ve been watching with interest the recent developments in “responsive web design”. As such I decided to define an alternate version of the site for mobile devices and viewports smaller than the width of the normal site. It’s an early effort, but I’m pleased with it for now and like the rest of these points, it’s experience that I can carry forward to future projects.

And More Less

From a content standpoint, I really wanted to simplify my own presentation of myself. I decided to eliminate the “about” page for the first time in basically ever, opting instead to let my various (side) projects and social networks do the talking.

From a contact standpoint, you may notice that the comment form is no more. Existing comments have been preserved, but the ability to comment has been disabled (for now, at least). Same goes for the contact form, for similar reasons: anybody who wants to discuss an article or get in touch is someone I likely already talk to on a regular basis (or someone I would talk to). I get the whole public discourse thing, believe me, but that happens so rarely here that I felt it was no longer worth the inclusion.

So that’s it! Let me know what you think OH WAIT YOU CAN’T.

Hey, remember when this used to be a photoblog? Back then I shot everyday with my then-newly-acquired Canon SD400.

After updating daily for six or seven months, I started to realize that I wanted this site to be something other than a daily photoblog. I’ve long been aware that I go though phases of creative output; sometimes it’s writing, sometimes it’s photography, and sometimes it’s just redesigning stuff. But as time wore on, my familiarity with the little Canon increased, as did my frustrations with its limits. I’d long since acknowledged that snapping off a few noise-free photos in less than ideal lighting was something of a pipe-dream; an acceptable sacrifice in lieu of the camera’s petite stature, but the image quality in general seems to be degrading as the camera approaches its fifth birthday.

Now What?

This left me in a sort of quandary; time for a new camera? Probably; but what to get? I’d long since had my eye on a digital SLR (also of the Canon variety) and even came close to pulling the trigger a couple of times, but could never go through with it. I had also been considering the Canon SX200/SX210, another point-n’-shoot. It was hard to argue with 14x optical zoom and HD video, but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend the money on that either. Another ELPH? None of them really got me excited like the SD400 did when I first saw it.

So I waited, and watched. And then I saw a Canon EOS 30D on Craigslist. And then I forgot about it for awhile.

Then I was driving and thinking that I really don’t have any good photos of my car, and that 30D popped back into my head. I scoured Craigslist and it was nowhere to be found. Defeated, I decided it wasn’t meant to be, and started looking at new Canons on Amazon. There were some alright deals, but I kept falling back to the same thought that has always kept me from buying an SLR: what if I don’t use it?

That’s why this 30D was so attractive to me: it was a minimal investment to dip my toes in the waters of more advanced digital photography. So imagine my excitement when it was relisted that same day. After some Twitter hemming and hawing, I decided that the extra cost of the XSi simply wasn’t worth it to me, and sealed the deal.

The Setup

Photo-nerds are probably wondering what I’m shooting with so far, so here’s the list:

• Canon EOS 30D
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8
• Canon EF 18-55mm f/3.5 IS (soon)

It’s a short list, but a solid start. The first time I looked through the viewfinder on the 50mm, I was amazed at how narrow the viewing angle is, and it made me immensely glad to have won the 18-55mm on eBay that morning. Even so, I’m very pleased with the purchase, especially taking into account that what I’ve spent so far on everything is only slightly more than a new XSi body.

Last year I introduced the new year by participating in what had to have been one of the lamest questionnaires ever. This year I feel the need to again look back on the year that has just passed, but I want to do something that’s a little more original. Instead of a bunch of arbitrary questions, I’m choosing one event or experience from each month that has held the most significance in my mind.

The year started strong. January didn’t bring the same drama this year that it brought in 2008 (thankfully). Instead, I get to point out that that was the birth of the current iteration of this website.

February was relatively uneventful as well, aside from preparing for shows. But I did put together some awesome LEGO.

I spent a lot of time complaining about the weather this year, as I was already raring to get back on two wheels when March rolled around. That was only exacerbated by the new toy. The day trip to Minneapolis to pick it up was awfully fun too.

In April I put new wheels on my car. No, I mean I put them on. By myself.

May brought the first of a number of shows last year: The Last 5 Years, in which I was approximately 50% of the cast. It was a great experience and the theatrical accomplishment that I continue to be most proud of.

Then Godspell happened in June, and that was awesome too! Great cast, great technical staff, great venue, and a great show. Probably one of WCT‘s best, ever.

Things wound down a bit in July, but we had the official Godspell reunion / cast party up in Tomahawk. AKA Real World: Godspell. TEXT MESSAGES!

August was a quiet month, so I spent a lot of time on the bike, and did my first (and second!) 40-mile ride(s).

After years of planning and months of labor, Citizen Wausau 2.0 was finally launched in September, much to the excitement of those involved.

In October, I ran.

The only potentially negative item on the list happened in November, when I passed out on stage. Even then, it’s just something that happened, but I don’t think of it as being decidedly “bad”.

I had such a great vacation in December, you guys. Seriously, it was wonderful. Plus it was my birthday!

In the last week or so, I’ve found myself facing a bit of a dilemma with regards to the various bits of content that I’ve created/found/shared online. The problem with the social Internet is the it inevitably results in massive stacks of content distributed widely throughout the various services; in my case what began with a handcoded blog gradually turned into WordPress, and soon was joined by links (fed initially by del.icio.us) and then Flickr. Then Twitter joined the party.

Through this point everything remained fairly manageable. Thanks to the terriffic Twitter Tools plugin I was able to easily turn those tweets into “real” posts. But recently I’ve become smitten with a new (to me) service that leaves me wondering where to go from here: Tumblr.

I’ve been playing with Tumblr for a week or so, and I’ve found it to be a neat bridge between WP’s long-form posting and Twitter’s extreme short form, text-only entries. I like Tumblr’s versatility when it comes to handling a large variety of content types, and it seems to have just the right amonunt of meta for such things.

The problem is, I still like WordPress. I’ve built a nice little home with it over the years, and for longer pieces (like this one), it’s pretty darn great. Plus it has comments, although I’m just not sure how important that is to me anymore.

So given my current situation, it seems I have some figurin’ to do with regards to what andylaub.com actually is. The ideal for me would be to treat posts from Tumblr similar to how posts from Twitter are handled in that they’re imported into the actual WP database and join the archive. From there it’s safe to assume I could use the associated meta to manipulate the various sorts of posts as needed. Honestly I would love to see the same behavior with Flickr.

Currently, though, it doesn’t seem that such a plugin exists. I’m about 99% positive that I’d prefer to avoid the opposite approach (RSSing WP into Tumblr). The other option is to break everything apart completely and then reaggregate it into one central location, but that too seems like a huge compromise.

You’ll probably see me messing with this issue over the coming weeks; alternatively I may lose hope completely or go completely crazy and try to replicate some of Tumblr’s functionality within WP. Time will tell, but ’till then I’m certainly open to suggestions.

I launched version 14 of this site, officially, on May 1, 2007. That seems like a really long time ago, especially by my standards. I’m not sure how long I expected it to last back then, but I knew that I was pretty happy with it, especially considering how quickly it all went together.

Comparing the launch version to version 13 before it, it’s not hard to see what I felt was working and what wasn’t. A good portion of the content styles and graphic elements made it to the new site unscathed, while dropping the heavy-handed and overly divided feel of the previous design.

The Grid

Version 14’s major defining element was the grid based entirely on the Flickr photos at the top. Initial versions had nine 75px columns separated by 5px alleys, and in November 2008 I added a tenth. While it’s not a new thing for me to have grids defined by the size of my images (as evident in all of my site designs back when this was purely a photoblog), this was the first time I gave myself more than four columns to play with, and I really enjoyed that flexibility. I think the layout worked even better on pages where the Flickr photos weren’t visible; there was still a strong sense of grid and organization, but without the obvious indication of where it was all coming from.

Content Separation

The other major stylistic decision was the way status/blip/link posts were presented when compared to the regular journal entries. After experimenting with different options I ended up with the meta for the posts in the center column, while short posts would live on the right and full posts on the left. It worked best when it was populated evenly, but there were many times where compulsive Twittering would leave the home page entirely empty on the left column.

Then & Now

So how does this newest version compare to the outgoing iteration? You can see that while I haven’t done much with it yet, the grid concept remains intact.

In terms of visual carryover, though, that’s about it. The overall look of the new site was influenced heavily by those wallpapers I just did and my portfolio. I continue to use Helvetica for the headers, but I’ve moved back to Lucida for the body copy, which harkens all the way back to Version 8.x, as ever since then I’d pretty much used Helvetica for everything.

The dotted lines, which I have dearly loved for a very long time, are hanging on by a thread. Because I’m not using a white on white on white layout this time around, everything is divided by blocks of color and shading, which means borders as a whole just aren’t necessary.

Finally, the Status/Twitter posts have become the foremost bit of information on the new site, with Flickr taking the slot below that and the Journal even further down. This just seemed like the only way it could work, organizationally. I didn’t feel that the Flickr content was deserving of the most prominent spot on the page, and the Journal couldn’t be at the top simply because of length. As-is, most visitors should see all three sections when they visit and be inclined to scroll down. Or everybody reads this in RSS, in which case it doesn’t matter anyway.

All that said, I’m quite happy with this latest version, and I’m most interested to see what it evolves into as time progresses.

So at some point this week I apparently lost my mind, because I signed up for Twitter. If you don’t know what that is, then you’re probably not reading this because you haven’t yet gotten on the internet or maybe even a computer. But that’s beside the point. The point is, I’m on yet another social internet thing.

But why Twitter? The other day I went to post a blip. But it was not a link, as they traditionally have been; more of just a state of mind sort of thing. And I thought “this would be apropos for Twitter.”

Of course, nothing ever comes easy. It wasn’t hard finding a plugin that suited my needs, but my laziness in keeping my WP install up to date came back to bite me in the ass. I’ve been running 2.0 since, well, too long; because it worked for me, I never bothered to follow the updates. Which meant that to make the little birdie happy, I had to set aside a larger chunk of time to get WP up to snuff. And by up to snuff, I mean, WP 2.1 (they’re now at 2.3). So I did that and fixed the custom field junk that had changed between 2.0 and 2.1 (fortunately I had dealt with it on another site months ago).

Having done that, it was time to actually install the plugin. Doing so turned out to be hassle-free, once I had the right version, but the output wasn’t quite to my liking. The default is to truncate the Twitter post and make that the title; I wasn’t thrilled with the post slugs that resulted in, since my general blip posts don’t have titles at all and therefore are just assigned numbers. I can’t fault the logic in this design, though; it’s easier to figure out how to get rid of it than it is to implement it. Case in point: line 196 of twitter-tools.php

, 'post_title' => ''

Now that Twitter was producing title-free posts, I turned my attention to the other hurdle; creating a link back to the original Tweet. I did some searching and came up empty-handed; fortunately I had the good sense to see that Twitter Tools adds the post ID as post meta, and from there it can easily be called from the WP templates themselves. Fortunately, that solved my other problem as well: how to get the Twitter link to only show up on Tweet posts.

I’m pleased with the entire result, as it’s exactly what I was looking for, now the question becomes whether or not I will continue to use Twitter in the first place.

That’s what I was told during a recent discussion with a colleague as he was “blogging on his blog“. It’s common sense, yeah. I have a blog, why not use it?

The thing here is, as soon as I start to break out of my average posting time (say, every three days), the harder it is to come back. And when I do come back, the tendency is to start out with a “boy, it’s been awhile” sort of post instead of diving into real content, assuming there was any in the first place.

My problem lately is that my creative “pie chart” is currently overtaken by three things:

1. Design
2. Coding
3. Acting

The first two are pretty standard considering the recent freelance decision, but the third is unexpected. As much as I enjoyed West Side Story, it took a lot out of me and with freelance calling my name, I was looking forward to a lack of rehearsals. Suffice it to say, the lull didn’t last as long as I would’ve liked.

Obviously, both writing and photography are excluded from the list, which means this blog suffers. But here’s me, blogging more.

Info and Contact have returned.

Still no archive, since that seems to be what the cool kids are doing.

Also, I’m lazy.

So here’s a new look, and it just happens to be May 1st. I’m getting better at this “every six months” thing.

Questions? Comments?

So it comes to my attention that my site is looking notoriously run-down, as though the occupant has moved on and left nothing but memories. I can assure you this is not the case. Spring is here, finally, and that means more and more distractions, but hey, what’s a journal for if you can’t make excuses for slacking off?

First of all, my Xbox: still dead. Well, maybe not. It’s somewhere in Louisville, Kentucky according to UPS, but get this: it’s on the return trip. I sent it to them last Friday, they got it Wednesday and it was reshipped on Thursday. So I should be seeing it Tuesday and we’ll find out if it’s really fixed.

In the meantime, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (not the new one) continues to entertain. In fact, you’re lucky I’m here writing this at all, since I’d much rather be playing that.

We are all moved in, pretty much, mostly. There are some still-packed boxes, but who cares? The garage is clean.

Last year I mentioned a niggling desire to own a single speed bike, and so instead of spending billions of money to buy some kind of deathtrap car or motorcycle, I decided instead to make good on that. Oddly enough, the bike I chose is the one mentioned in that post: a 2006 Bianchi M.U.S.S. that was stupid cheap. It too is going to be here soon, as I ordered it online instead of going through the local shop, a decision I’ll elaborate on later.

Speaking of biking, the ride to work is obviously farther than it used to be, but I can still make it in about 10 minutes. So suck it, Grand Ave.

Finally, this site looks like crap, I know. I’m working on a new one, which may be what you’re seeing right now or it may not. It looks bad regardless because one site is decaying and the other isn’t done.

There is no time during the week that I’m more likely to be working on this site (from a coding standpoint) than Saturday morning; the earlier the better. I don’t know why that is, but it’s just proven itself yet again.

There was an issue with the archive page; turns out that the way I had written it told it to display monthly archives differently depending on whether a real post or a mini-post was last posted in that month. So I fixed it.

Not really an exciting story, I’m afraid, but still, the motivation just wasn’t there until I woke up at 7:30 this morning. If I were to venture a guess, I’d say that it’s probably because I know that if I start a project on Saturday morning, especially if it’s before everybody is awake or active, then I know I’ll be able to finish it.

• Elsewhere posts now get their own permalink pages, including comments. This is joined by new fancy little icons for comments, permalinks, and the “via” link.
• Following that trend, I made some slight updates to the archive page for the Elsewhere posts.
• There was also the issue of the too-small comment box. If you haven’t already noticed, clicking the + next to “Speak” will enlarge it so there’s more space (for bitching).
• And of course, what series of updates would be complete without design changes made when I should be in bed already?

It’s been over a month in the making, but version 13 of this site is finally done and fully functional. This is the most comprehensive update since the first WordPress-driven version from June of 2005.

New

My biggest goal with this new site was to really start taking advantage of the power WordPress has, and that meant a switch to themes. Once I figured out the basics I was very impressed with the options that are available and how easily they can be configured. Versions 9 through 12 of the site ran off of a clump of PHP files that pretty much sat outside of the WordPress umbrella. It really worked in spite of itself, which I think sums up my feelings about it.

In contrast, I was surprised by all the options the theme system has to offer. The search function worked right out of the box (except for one day when it mysteriously didn’t), and now I have a 404 page and real category pages.

The other big reason for the switch is the fact that almost all the good WordPress plugins rely on the theme to do what they do. The contact form is a good example of this; it’s generated using a quicktag and therefore had to be set up as a WordPress page. And thanks to pages, my menus no longer have to be hard-coded.

Improved

Usability was next on my list of priorities. I’ve already mentioned the 404 and Search pages, but I also added PHP redirects on the old _____.php pages that push the user to the current page rather than a 404. Also, thanks again to the themes, all category listings are now clickable.

You’ll also notice the wider comment display area on the single pages, and, just for jb, clicking the header now takes you home.

Just Plain Different

Aside from this pretty new design (I swear, I DID NOT steal the banner idea from Jonathan Snook!), there are two more notable changes. The first is that I’m done with del.icio.us. It worked fine for links, yes, but since installing WordPress 2.0 back in February, I haven’t been able to make it play nice with Magpie RSS. Rather, I mentioned using a Javascript approach but that didn’t please me either, partially because it wasn’t searchable and partially because something in the way it was set up never displayed properly in Internet Exploere (not even 7!).

This time out I’m going mainstream and integrating the links right into the main body. They’re pretty easy to pick out, since they don’t have titles and have a cute little border thing applied to them. More importantly, they now have times and dates applied to them, and it’s one less service to rely on.

The other big step is a brand new logo, as you may have already noticed in a number of places. For now, suffice it to say that I like it much better than the old one and I’ll write more later.

That about wraps it up. What do you think?

Way back in February, shortly after launching this version of the site, I made a commitment. Essentially I resolved that this iteration of the site would remain live and largely unchanged for 6 months.

Today marks the date, and though DOCADD still has me in its clutches, but its grip is loosening. Minor bits and pieces have been altered along the way, along with a slight refresh last month, but nothing extensive has been altered and so I consider the effort largely successful.

Furthermore, I’m happy enough with the site in its current form, that barring another minor update or two, it will continue in this state for a couple more months. Instead of arbitrarily redesigning again, I want to hold out for the next CSS Reboot on November 1.

This decision holds a couple of advantages:

• It keeps me from rushing into things. No matter what happens, I cannot show a finished product before November 1. Plenty of time to refine a design (this should be the long part) and CSS-ify it.
• It generates more interest as part of a larger event. I’m still getting hits from the one I did back in Spring of 2005. And I’m a sucker for publicity.

Now it’s just a matter of working the design magic. I’ve got a general wireframe in mind but nothing solid yet. I want it to be nice. Really nice. I just have to figure out how to make it really nice without resorting to the Web 2.0 trendiness.

There are also a couple of features I’m wanting to try out, though I can’t say with certainty what will work and what won’t. Following in jb‘s and more recently majafa‘s footsteps, there’s a good chance you’ll see a “recent comments” section on the homepage.

That’s really all I know.

I got Airbagged, or rather Longboarded last week.

The result? Airbagindustries.com is now my top referrer of all time, narrowly eclipsing a Google Images search for “CHICKEN FIGHT”.

Now, how do I make those people come back?

One year ago today, PDF and I were sitting and staring at my monitor, making WordPress go. The result was this post, the first of 6 months worth of daily images. Many of those images were terrible. Some were OK.

Regardless, it’s been a good time so far, and even though the images have migrated, I have every intention of continuing to chronicle my various thoughts. But for now, let’s look at some facts and figures, yes?

Shortstat info since October 25, 2005

Total hits: 48,806
Unique hits: 4,250

Top browser: IE 6.0

Top 5 repeat referrers:

1. images.google.com: 368
2. forums.vwvortex.com: 330
3. bloglines.com: 191
4. spring2005.cssreboot.com: 97
5. google.com: 74

Top 5 search terms:

1. andy laub: 38
2. swedish models: 17
3. macbook: 5
4. Andy Laub: 4
5. You may want to consider using a third-party utility to convert the
   muxed file to a format that does allow you to edit or export: 4

Overall info since inception

Posts: 244
Average posts per day: .67
Average time between posts: 1.50 days

Comments: 273
Average comments per post: 1.12
Average comments per day: .75

Internal images: 257
Average images per post: 1.05
Average images per day: .70

Videos: 2

Flickr images: 203
Average Flickr images per day: .56

del.icio.us bookmarks: 235
Average bookmarks per day: .64

Change in regular readership: 400%, up to four now! Way to go, guys!

I’ve made a couple changes to the site this past week for usability’s sake and to keep myself satisfied with it. You’ll notice on the singular post pages that the format has shifted from two columns to three which mimics both the home page and the archive while making better use of the space alloted.

This is easier said than done because I still have a bunch of posts with images to account for and they all need a two-column layout to be happy and healthy. Fortunately, a few strategically distributed if/else statements were enough to take care of this and now I have a layout that makes me much happier.

The second change really doesn’t benefit anyone in particular but I decided to rewrite my info page because I was sick of just having lists of stuff and because this new one fits with the three-column philosophy.

The final change I made after I wrote this because I realized how many times I tend to make changes to posts. Take note of the small grey number next to the title; from now on that’s your reference to the version of this particular post. Minor things like adding links to existing content will result in a .1 addition, while major things like adding this paragraph you’re reading are good for a whole new version.

Last month I wrote briefly about the music of SxSW, where I mentioned Happy Flowers and a song of theirs that I didn’t much care for. What I forgot when writing that was that everyone succumbs to that inevitable temptation to Google themselves, which I’m assuming is how I ended up with a comment from one of the band members on my post.

So suffice it to say, I feel bad. The difference between insulting a company and insulting a band is that bands aren’t necessarily in it for the money. It’s a creative expression and any comments made can be taken very personally. With that said, I apologize to the band since the my commentary could be considered rather harsh and possibly over the top. While the style of music is not one that I particularly care for the band’s talent for improvisation is one to be respected.

Hopefully this will serve as a reminder to me to rethink what I write in the future.

The developer side of me gets a little giddy when I get to add new gizmos to the site, and so it’s that side of me that’s happy to announce the addition of a Rollyo search box on the archive page. I’ve been toying with the idea of adding some kind of search function to the site for some time and just never did, partially because the plugins I was trying didn’t work. I think has to do mainly with this site not playing with the WordPress templates.

Regardless, Rollyo offered a simple to implement and unobtrusive solution to my dilemma. Once you’ve signed up they have an area where you can fill in a simple form and have the appropriate code generated. While the pre-made ones look nice enough (example here, kind of), the dropdown menu (for site selection) bothered me as it really doesn’t serve a purpose. Rather than try to figure this out on my own, I looked to a site that uses a version similar to what I wanted: Airbag.

It took me a minute to figure out what data the form was using to tell it what site to search, and it turns out it’s this:

<select name='sid' style='display: none;'><option value='65987'>andylaub.com...

The highlighted number is basically the ID assigned to the site that you’ve added (for some perspective, Airbag’s number is 7080). In the standard dropdown menu it can handle multiple user-defined sites, each with its own number but in this usage only the one for andylaub.com is necessary. Also of note is the style attribute in the select tag which keeps the list from being shown at all; with only one option there’s no point in having it visible.

That’s it in a nutshell. I’m pleased with the result for now, at least as a stopgap, as it makes older stuff easier to find until I can create a more comprehensive and organized archive. The only issue I’ve noticed is the time it takes to index new pages, so putting in “Madonna,” for example, wouldn’t turn up the post I wrote Saturday (yet).

Quote:

I find myself overthinking my more recent, WordPressed stuff when compared to my ancient handcoded site as well. One of the things I’ve noticed is that if I go off on a subject that’s too specific and in-depth nobody comments, and it’s just kind of too much. I need to remember that my site is not a resource – it’s just there for interest. Not reviews, or how-to’s, just rambling incoherence.

I should definitely, definitely not forget this (again). Remember that time I hurt Jason’s head?

It’s probably not gone unnoticed that this site was overhauled just two months after its previous incarnation, and I feel an explanation is in order.

The Problem

I’m going to coin another phrase, and I call it Designer’s Obsessive-Compulsive Attention Deficit Disorder; DOCADD for short. But I’m not just the discoverer of DOCADD, I’m also a victim.

Since its launch in December of 2000, this site has gone through 16 significant structural and/or aesthetic revisions, which averages out to about 3 per year. Which, in the designer world, isn’t totally unheard of until you consider that nearly half of them occurred in 2005 alone. I could make excuses by claiming that 8.0 (01/05) was when the CSS conversion happened, and then 8.5 (05/05) was for the Reboot, and then 9.0 (06/05) was the short-lived WordPress test site. Then we’ve got the three different versions of 10 (the white one, the brown one, and the black one) and the recently deceased (good riddance) version 11. That’s a total of seven.

I relaunched my site seven times last year.

That is obsession verging on the edge of insanity. Then let’s consider all the tiny updates that happened in between the major relaunches, like the color and sizing adjustments and just general code modifications and you’re up to probably close to a hundred different versions of the site over a year which works out, amazingly, to a new release almost every three days.

So the question is, why? Why do I put so much time into this website? I don’t know. I know when I’m updating why I’m doing it but I think part of it goes back to DOCADD. I can almost guarantee that I have ADD when it comes to things like this, and I start thinking about ways to make it better because after seeing it day after day it starts to bore me, something that indicates bad design. And that spurs me to start thinking about the next version. The OCD kicks in when I notice little niggling details, like incorrect spacing or inconsistent date formats, or when I think of things that could just be displayed better.

The Resolution

Because I think I have (finally, though I say that all every time) arrived at a design that I think has some staying power, I’m making the resolution to keep this site in its current iteration for six months. 180 days. That means that yellow header will be my best friend until August 22, at least. It probably won’t happen, but we’ll see. I can’t shouldn’t keep this up.

After a slew of mockups and sketches varying from wicked worn to ultra-clean and from 3 columns to 5 columns, the new site has launched and remains true to its four-column, no-real-look-or-concept roots. But I like it. I like it alot — way more than the last site and arguably the most of pretty much all of my sites ever. I just wanted a back-to-basics, minimal, information-first type of deal and I think that’s what I got. In honor of this launch I wanted to provide a rundown of sorts.

Posts

As you may have noticed, beginning with Chicago, pt 2 posts will no longer have an image associated with them by default. I made this decision for a number of reasons. First of all, having an image to go with the post was keeping me from posting as frequently as I’d like; there are certain days, as evidenced in the archives, that the image and the words have nothing to do with one another anyway so why associate the two? Secondly, flickr has way more power and capacity than I could ever hope to match, and so they are my new choice for hosting images. They will make organization and sharing easier, and they have a number of nifty features that I wanted to try out.

Images

Like I said, I’m now using flickr for these. I use the flickrRSS plugin to wrap the images in the appropriate elements and display them onsite; it’s minimalist in its options but it does what I need and does it well. Over the weekend I also experimented with a variety of image uploading techniques. Flickr’s web uploader is quite nice and I prefer it over Flidget, a Dashboard widget that, while convenient, only lets you tag and upload one image at a time. The cream of the crop is flickr’s own Flickr Uploadr which gives you about 95% of the capabilities of the web admin panel without ever having to open your browser.

Links

I continue to use del.icio.us for links because it’s just so damn easy, but upon discovering that they provide a JavaScript alternative to Magpie (my old PHP method of fetching the links) I decided to try that out. Implementation is fairly basic, though I was challenged by the code because I wanted the link to include not just the headline but the description as well (and all function as a link). This is what I came up with:

function showImage(img){ return (function(){ img.style.display='inline' }) }
var span =document.createElement('span')
for (var i=0, post; post = Delicious.posts[i]; i++) {
    var a = document.createElement('a')
    a.setAttribute('href', post.u)
    a.setAttribute('class', "entry")
    var h3 = document.createElement('h3')
    var p = document.createElement('p')
    h3.appendChild(document.createTextNode(post.d))
    p.appendChild(document.createTextNode(post.n))
    a.appendChild(h3)
    a.appendChild(p)
    span.appendChild(a)
}
document.getElementById('delish').appendChild(span)

The result is exactly what I was aiming for. The del.icio.us method seems more capable than the Magpie route with its ability to show favicons and tags in addition to just the title and description.

Feeds

If you wander down to the footer, which you should be able to see by the time you’re reading this, you’ll notice that I’ve finally added a feed link to more easily obtain the RSS for this site. If you’re interested, here’s the master list of feeds in case you want to follow my photos or links as well as the words:

• Journal
• Images
• Elsewhere

So you may have noticed some delays in between the first and second parts of the series, and hopefully now you see why (if you’re RSSing, give it a break and visit the actual site). One of my main goals was to begin posting images and text independently, so if you’re wondering where all the images are, you’re going to need to look at Flickr. If you’re interested in more text-oriented exploits, then look no further.

America

I have to admit, the US put on a good show this year. Dodge probably had the most awe-inducing displays; not only were they showing the Challenger and the entire SRT gang; they also had test tracks (an off-road setup for Jeep and a series of on-road obstacles for the SRT vehicles) which really showed off the potential of some of their rides. The singular most impressive and beautiful American vehicle, however, belongs to Chevrolet in the form of the new Camaro. I thought the Challenger was quite nice when I saw it but the Camaro’s design makes it look like an old Volvo 240 — not ugly, but not exciting either. The Challenger, like the Musting, also seems to be a rather chunky version of the original while the Camaro looks leaner and more defined, something that I think will help it in the long run assuming it sees production.

The Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice were there as well, of course, and I had the opportunity to try a Solstice on for size. It’s not uncomfortable physically, but with the top up you’re left with what seems like a gun-slit of a windshield. What they lacked in practicality and ergonomics they more than made up for in attractiveness. I can’t help thinking that there should be a happy medium between the overly smooth and simple Solstice and the overly angular and decorated Sky, though. Knowing GM’s history with platform sharing, there probably will be, too.

Europe

I was disappointed in the overall European showing for a couple of reasons, the main being a couple of brands that apparently didn’t feel that the largest auto show in America in terms of floor space was a necessary event to show up to. Lamborghini and Lotus, I’m looking at you. Rolls Royce wasn’t around either, which would have really irritated me had I not had the good fortune to see a Phantom the previous night (they are wonderful!). Ferrari had a respectable showing (no Enzo, but it’s not in production any more so that’s not a shock) with a matching F430 Spyder and 612 Scaglietti. Porsche, understandably, didn’t have a Carrera GT on display which was disappointing but not surprising. Mercedes saved the day by bringing both the new Maybach 57S and an SLR McLaren, both of which were quite impressive.

One of the things Europe seems to be fond of is their retractable hard top convertibles, evidenced by M-B’s SL and SLK, Volvo’s new C70 and VW’s new Eos. I played around with the burst mode on my camera and after some iMovie massaging ended up with a neat little video of the Volvo’s top in action.

Also of note was the new Saab 9-3 SportCombi, not because of spectacular design or performance, but because the spare tire cover has a handle shaped like an airplane! I liked this so much I made a desktop out of it: 1600, 1280, 1024.

Asia

Asia’s brands didn’t have anywhere near the metal that some of the Europeans had on display but they made an effort nonetheless. Infiniti’s entire model line continues to cause salivation at its beauty, and Lexus certainly seems to be getting there as well. Acura is off in their own little world where V6’s are competitive with V8’s and everybody wants a performance car with front wheel drive, but I’m sure they’ll get it soon enough.

Mazda had the wonderful new Miata MX-5 which I found to be much nicer than the Solstice and easily where my $20,000 roadster fund would be put to use. Subaru didn’t really have anything new or special aside from the reskinned WRX and STI, both of which I like very much. If you like them as much as I do, perhaps another desktop? Here: 1600, 1280, 1024.

Then we get to Honda, who did not disappoint. The Civic Si sedan has me looking for my wallet. I was equally impressed with the new Fit, which I can see blowing everything else in its price range out of the water with its quality and versatility.

It’s just two days past the anniversary of andylaub dot com v.8. It was the first full site design I did in CSS, and I still really like it. It took me probably a week or two of work from inception to launch, and it makes me wonder what has happened to my design skills when I return to this newest version.

It seems that the more I learn about CSS the more inclined I am to use that instead of any kind of actual layout program, and while it seems to be working OK, suddenly the site launches and I hate it. Part of that is a result of general frustration with every site implementation since 8.5, the version I did for the Reboot. I didn’t really like that one all that much and I haven’t been a huge fan of any of the WordPress-enabled versions.

With 8.5 it was just too bizarre a concept, and a result of being chained to the HTML that was already there. With the others the mistake I made was jumping straight from concept sketches to a final version without mocking anything up beforehand. That left CSS responsible for most of the elements and that resulted in sites that didn’t sit well with me for long (hence the jump through 4 versions in half a year). You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now, but current evidence shows that I certainly haven’t.

That might sound fickle, but what’s strange is that I can go back and look at all the microsites I did at work and be quite happy with most of them. The reason? Every single one originated in ImageReady (Photoshop’s web-oriented sister) and was then translated to HTML. Almost none use CSS. It’s totally opposite from what I have here, and maybe that’s why I have what I have here.

What I need to do then, is literally go back to the drawing board, and not rely on CSS for (all) my design elements.