2010-10-19 16:39:00
ORLY?! Come the feck on! Not again with this stuff DreamHost! The last time was less than a month ago! Just got this wonderful email from Dreamhost.com's tech support team:
"Hey Thomas! This is just a note to let you know that we will be moving your account to a new server some time within the next 7 days!"
And again I will need to fix my DNS settings. Meh! :(
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2010-10-18 10:04:00
| URL: | www.diva.nl/~thomas |
| Hosted at: | DiVa and XS4all |
| Mode: | Static |
| CSS: | No |
Unfortunately I have nothing left from this era. All images I created are gone, or stuck on backup tapes that I have no drive for. I'd started the site because I wanted to keep a diary and to tell my friends about the dutch anime community.
The theme to the site was neon blue on a black background. The main logo was a neon blue wolf's head, copied from the Space Wolves banner. You can still marvel at the eye-popping colour scheme, thanks to the Internet way-way back machine! See it over here.
Aside from a very few blog posts, this site contained scans of drawings I was doing at the time. Both manga and fantasy stuff. It wasn't much, but I was proud of it nonetheless. If I recall correctly, most of the layout was created using the HTML editor that used to come with Netscape Navigator.
| URL: | www.xs4all.nl/~tsluyter |
| Hosted at: | xs4all |
| Mode: | Static |
| CSS: | Partial |
I quickly switched to a brighter layout, based on whites, greys and blues. This layout has been the basis is my website ever since and it hasn't changed much since. On the evolution schale, version 2 is the Cro-Magnon to version 7's homo sapiens ^_^
At the time I was heavily into drawing my own comics, so it was only natural that I'd also design all the section logos. That's also stuck until version 6 did away with per-section logos. As you can see above, my drawing was still rather crude, as were my Gimp skills.
The banner reads the Japanese approximation of Cailin Coilleach, spoken as Kay-rin Ku-ee-rek. An acquaintance of mine "translated" my nickname into kana for me.
| URL: | cailin.tweakdsl.nl |
| Hosted at: | TweakDSL |
| Mode: | Static |
| CSS: | Partial |
Nothing much changed. I improved my static code a little bit and created new section logos. They were getting a lot better :)
This website was the first time I'd started using web statistics, to learn something about my visitors. I started out with NedStat, when their free products were still decent.
| URL: | cailin.tweakdsl.nl |
| Hosted at: | TweakDSL |
| Mode: | Static |
| CSS: | Partial |
Again, not many changes. Just more tweaking of the code, with various expansions to new sections. And naturally new section logos.
The static code was getting rather long in the tooth though. Upkeep to my website was becoming a serious pain, as were code changes. I put up with this setup for a little while, but soon decided it was about time to get my ass in gear. I desperately needed dynamic content.
I switched to StatCounter for my web statistics needs.
| URL: | www.kilala.nl |
| Hosted at: | TransIP |
| Mode: | Semi-dynamic + PHP skeleton |
| CSS: | Full |
And there we are! Right after New Year's in 2006 I opened up the new version of Kilala.nl. This incarnation of the site made heavy use of PHP to tie everything together.
All blog posts were stored in a MySQL database, with PHP building the front and archive pages. All other content was still stored in static HTML files that were included into the PHP framework. This made things a lot easier, especially once I started gathering reused code into a central library.
What's also cool, is the fact that this is the first site under the www.kilala.nl flag. I was fed up with all the hassle that switching ISPs caused us, so I decided to get proper hosting. From now on I wouldn't host our site at our ISP anymore. TransIP came highly recommended, so I signed up with them.
I switched to Google Analytics for my web statistics needs.
| URL: | www.kilala.nl |
| Hosted at: | DreamHost |
| Mode: | Fully dynamic |
| CSS: | Full |
The current version of Kilala.nl. It sports a completely revamped theme, finally departing from the whites and blues. The theme's still down to earth, but I really enjoy the new look.
The code behind the site has been thoroughly cleaned up and now relies heavily on the central library. All content is stored in a MySQL database and is extracted through PHP. There is no longer any static content, with the exception of the CSS markup and the HTML layout.
My TransIP webspace had gotten rather cramped, so I switched to DreamHost.
| URL: | www.kilala.nl |
| Hosted at: | DreamHost |
| Mode: | Fully dynamic |
| CSS: | Full |
As you can read in the change log of version 7 there are absolutely no visual changes. All the improvements were made to the CSS and PHP code behind the website. I've cleaned up a lot of redundant and unused code and I've consolidated a number of functions into the basic index.php and functions.php files.
| URL: | www.kilala.nl |
| Hosted at: | DreamHost |
| Mode: | Fully dynamic, with CMS backend |
| CSS: | Full |
In October of 2010 I was forced to get off my ass and to actually get the CMS backend software of my website working. Up to then I'd been (ab)using the PHPMyAdmin software on my MySQL server to edit content directly inside the database, which is messy and a kludge. But in October DreamHost shut down PHPMyAdmin due to vulnerabilities. This meant that I was left scrambling to get my CMS code working, because else I couldn't do any maintenance.
So far it works pretty nicely! It's taken me about six hours to get my original CMS code in working order. I'd already spent about ten hours on it up to that point. I'm guessing I'll need another five to ten hours to get it to support every function I'd like it to perform. In the mean time I'm -really- enjoying the use of TinyMCE as a text editor, as opposed to typing all the code myself.
kilala.nl tags: website, creative,
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2010-10-17 22:08:00
Or to put it more honestly: "I have finally implemented my website's backend code". Ever since I'd moved my website to DreamHost, I've been (ab)using PHPMyAdmin to edit blog posts and articles directly inside the database. Messy and potentially dangerous, but I never got round to doing it The Right Way(tm).
Today DreamHost.com decided to kill access to the PHPMyAdmin database management software. They'd encountered some critical vulnerabilities and decided that it would be better not to run it anymore. This of course left me without access to my blog :)
So I finally got off my ass and coded like mad for about six hours. The -basic- parts of the backend are now operational, though I still need to iron out some bugs. Then, a little later, I can add some more much needed functionality.
All in all I'm quite pleased! The change log for version 8 (or versions 3.1 and 3.2 of the functions library) is as follows:
kilala.nl tags: website, programming,
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2010-09-14 09:41:00
This morning I found a disconcerting email on my iPhone, which I'd only received because of the phone's always-on IMAP connection to our mail server. In the email our hosting company Dreamhost.com informed us after-the-fact that they'd moved all of our mail boxes and activities to another server.
Their email also forgot to mention one very important aspect. While bringing to light that people with their own DNS servers would need to update their MX records, they forget to mention that the A record for mail.$DOMAIN has also changed. Great!
Right now we're in limbo insofar that the new server hasn't started accepted logins yet and the old server still appears to be receiving email. *grr* This sucks.
When I moved everything to Dreamhost I knew what I was getting into. I was forewarned that they're fast, that they provide a lot of value for your money but also that outages with Dreamhost come hard and unexpected. In our case the MTBF appears to a somewhere around 1.5 years, seeing how our last 24 hour outage was back in April of '09.
For the next 48 hours we'll probably lose all incoming mail. Thank $DEITY we're not running any commercial websites on there!
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2010-01-18 06:22:00
Ever since I started our online photo gallery I've used Gallery2. It came as a "one-click install" with Dreamhost and seemed nice enough. Unfortunately over the past few months we've learnt that it actually does NOT work as nice as we'd hoped, frequently showing blank screens or nothing at all.
Last night and this morning I removed Gallery2 and replaced it with the nicer and easier ZenPhoto. Looking good! The migration was pretty easy, once I figured out how and what.
Proper instructions on using ZP with Dreamhost. It boils down to:
1. Don't use the easy one-click install.
2. Download the package from ZenPhoto.org.
3. Setup an empty database.
4. Take your folders of pictures and place them under the albums/ directory.
5. Done :)
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2010-01-09 22:33:00
We often operate as a sort of DVD library / videotheque for our close friends and family. As a "service" to them and ourselves I've added a DVD search bar in the menu on the left. It'll let them search for (parts of) movie titles, to see if we happen to have that film in stock.
Unfortunately, the tiny amount of movies whose name is shorter than four letters will not be shown, because that's the cut-off for my website's search function. Then again, I think only Pi qualifies as such.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2009-12-26 11:04:00
After a fellow forum member recently got hacked I decided to quickly check the status of my own website's PHP security. Thankfully, using the free PHPsecinfo tool this becomes trivial. The resulting output quickly gives you an overview of quick wins you can implement to greatly improve your site's security.
All of these fixes require changes to your server's php.ini file, which can be troublesome if you're in a shared server situation. However, Dreamhost have gracefully provided a way of loading your custom php.ini file on their servers.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2009-08-12 22:04:00
As I mentioned before I'm putting together a proper web interface backend for my ramshackle CMS. So far I've come a long way in building the basic interface, after which I'll proceed with the SQL code and database connections.
Things are going to get a bit tricky because of a decision I made today: I will implement the wonderful TinyMCE text editor in my CMS. This will allow me much greater flexibility in editing my articles and blog posts and will make things virtually painless for Marli to operate.
Unfortunately there's one thing that's going to hurt: all my blog posts so far are in a different code format than what TinyMCE produces. This would mean I'd have to convert and re-import all my current posts if I want everything to be perfect. Of course I -could- technically work around this situation in a very nasty way, but I'm trying to -improve- my code, not make it worse.
So yeah, before I can actually start using the back end software, I will first need to convert both all my current content and my front end (presentation) software. "No pain, no gain", as they say...
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2009-08-06 07:27:00
Lately I've been learning more and more about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and about online advertising. It's been an interesting ride and so far I'm loving it: there's always something new to learn and I am brimming with new ideas!
First off, I am now subscribed not only to Google's webmaster tools, but also to those of Yahoo and of Microsoft's Bing. The latter two show me that, while I've been pandering to Google, my current status for non-Google search engines sucks. In both cases I've now spent a few hours making sure that they both know what and what not to crawl and what to expect when doing so.
Then I've also re-learnt a few lessons that my buddy Dirk had already taught me years ago, but which I'd sort of forgotten :) I've gone over the PHP code that generates the <head> section of each page and made a lot of improvements.
* Title tags are now unique for every page.
* Description meta tags will be unique for every article, but not for blog posts.
* Keyword meta tags will not be unique, but -are- dynamic and based on the article/post tags.
* Robot meta tags will prevent indexing and archiving of duplicate content (archive & search pages).
Now all I need to do is to go over the hundred or so articles I've put up and fill out a proper summary for the description meta tag. That ought to help my standing with Bing a bit.
Finally, I recently got a fifty euros coupon in the mail from Google to try out their AdWords (advertising) service. I should've checked out my Gmail before registering, because there I'd received a hundred euros coupon (and you're only allowed one) ^_^; I've set up a few ads pertaining to BoKS that'll point viewers to my consulting page(s). I'm not expecting business to come from it, but it might spread some word of mouth.
kilala.nl tags: website, sysadmin,
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2009-07-20 18:40:00
That's a few more quiet days than usual. Since we've moved into the new house I've been spending less and less time behind the laptop and more with Marlijne and Dana. Seeing how my office is way in the attic and they're usually downstairs, I've been less "involved" with computers. Especially since I finished work on the website update.
Life is coming along nicely. We broke our speed record by moving in and unpacking -everything- within three weeks. All 140 boxes were flat and gone almost exactly a month after the 18th of June, which is pretty damn impressive. Last time we still had untouched boxes after half a year! The bathroom's also 99.9% complete, with only three tiles that need to be installed (back order from Spain) and a faucet that needs to be replaced (DOA).
Work's been quiet, what with the season and all. The boys and I finally have enough time to handle projects that usually wouldn't get to see the light of day. Unfortunately I find it hard to focus on the task at hand, due to a lack of real deadlines (and thus pressure). That's pretty ironic: I finally have time to do what I want and now I can't get enthused by the idea. *shrug*
Dana's doing fine, though we're going to see our GP in a few days. She's recently started making this bronchial wheeze that we want to get checked out.
kilala.nl tags: life, website,
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2009-07-10 15:30:00
It's been a long while in coming, but it's finally here. I started work on version 7.0 of Kilala.nl back in December and have since then spent about 40 hours on the new code (I kept on getting interrupted). Any which way, the new code's now gone into production and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. There are absolutely no visual differences, so everything will look the same. The back end however is completely different.
If you happen to run into any weirdness, please contact me (see here) or leave a comment describing your problem.
Here's the changelog:
* Improved file-level security (Unix file permissions).
* Cleanup of unused functions, grammar and redundant code.
* Cleanup of variables, global and otherwise.
* New, CSS-based dynamic menubar (IE5 and 6 fall back to the old style).
* Added new "article title" field for menus, instead of using the first tag.
* Consolidated all tags to one field, as opposed to "tag1", "tag2", ..., "tagN".
* Improved input validation for security reasons.
* Removed reliance on old "top sections" like Work and Play from code.
* Removed old "top section" directories and secured through 301 redirects.
* Integrated the search functionality into index.php.
* Integrated the tags functionality into index.php.
* Finally fixed the automatic refresh/redirect after posting a comment :D
* Consolidated four RSS PHP scripts into the one rss.php file.
The next round of improvements will focus solely on more coding grammar and optimization of CSS and PHP code. That'll be version 7.1 or something.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2009-04-20 17:17:00
Hey everyone... Marli and I are currently, temporarily unreachable through email. It seems that our hosting provider is having some problems with their spam filters. See here.
Any messages you send us will be bounced back telling you that they could not be delivered because "you do not have permission to send to this recipient" or because "relay access denied". This is not a problem on your side, do not worry.
Please re-send your email in a few hours.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2009-03-01 14:33:00
Since November of 2006 this website has offered a basic RSS feed. This feed carried all new blog posts to subscribers, but was also limited to just that: the web log. However, since the grand remodeling of August 2007, a number of feeds have been added. You can subscribe to the various feeds by selecting their links below.
Feed 1: Basic blog post feed.
The original, the classic. This feed delivers all the new blog posts right to your doorstep.
Feed 2: Sysadmin blog post feed.
For all the Unix Sysadmins who care not for my life's trifles I've created a feed that only carries Sysadmin posts.
Feed 3: New articles feed
From time to time I'll add new articles to this website. I may discover something interesting about Mac OS. I might write something new about Unix, or being a sysadmin in general. I'll definitely write loads of stuff about going to college! All of those new articles will be carried by this feed.
Feed 4: Comments feed.
Tired of checking back here every time after you've left a comment? This feed brings you all the comments left at my blog. That way you'll instantly know when someone's replied to your comment! I'm actually using this feed myself!
Also! There are a number of alternatives if you don't feel much like subscribing to my RSS feeds directly. Maybe you don't want to install new software on your system. Maybe you don't like the way Firefox shows RSS feeds whatever the reason, here are some other ways of reading Feed 1 (see above). Each link will automatically add my feed to your reading list.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2009-03-01 09:35:00
This weekend I spent an hour or five re-tagging all of my blog posts. As I mentioned back in November I'd never standardized these tags, so it was one huge hodge-podge. It was impossible to find posts that went together. I've now gone from 800+ tags to a little over 50. That sounds like an improvement to me :)
I still need to go over the list a second time, to make some more fixes, but that shouldn't take too much time. For example a category like other tech really isn't that useful, so I'm going to split that up into more descriptive labels.
The other stuff I'd talked about in that post are on the back burner. I've made a number of fixes to the site's code, but that's still running in the staging area. I still need to move that stuff to the production area.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2008-11-25 08:58:00
It's been a while since I worked on the backend of this website. There are a few things I've been meaning to work on, so I may end up doing them sooner or later.
* Code cleanup. Currently, things work fine but the code is verging on becoming a mess. In light of future management it's best if I start cleaning up things.
* Minor debugging. There are one or two small things which don't work properly that I still want to fix, like the page reload after leaving a comment.
* Standardization of tags. Up until now I've been using new and random tags for just about every post I make, except for the articles or recuring subjects. This has made the tagging of my posts rather useless. It'll be a hell of a job, but I want to go over all the tags I have and rewrite them to a standardized set.
* Speaking of tagging, I'd like to learn how to make a tag cloud. That should be an interesting experience and it might be a nice addition to the site.
Time to setup my staging area again! I'm not doing all this stuff on the production server ^_^
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2008-05-30 20:56:00
Today (or for the USAdians: tonight) my website was down for at least ten hours. The webserver itself was up and running, but the comms with the MySQL backend weren't working at all. Originally I'd assumed that the Dreamhost box my database runs on was dead, but oddly enough it was alive all day.
After some troubleshooting together with the DH team (who took their sweet time in answering my first e-mail), we found out that there were DNS issues. Apparently the requests regarding my database server were -very- slow, causing MySQL and such to time-out. Maybe it was related to the SIDN snafu last night?
Anywho... I'm up and running again, with a few improvements under the hood. This downtime has forced me to add some error reporting and few other niceties that ought to make my site a little more secure.
Now... Homework... ^_^
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2008-05-06 22:27:00
For a few years now I've been using Technorati tags on my website.
At first I thought it was cool that my blog posts were joined with millions of other posts and that they'd be easily searchable through one common website. Back then Technorati was still rather cool and new and it actually worked rather well. However, once the novelty wore off I stopped browsing for blog posts about subjects that I'd covered as well.
I've kept the Technorati tags around, partially because I still like the idea of tagging and partially because I was too lazy to do something about it. Well, no longer! Tonight I hacked together some code that would make the tags searchable on my own site. From now on, clicking on a tag will show you all blog posts (and articles) that share that tag. I'd been wanting something like this for a while now and I've finally built it :)
So, goodbye to you Technorati. You were fun while you lasted, but now you're just a spam-ridden pile of... well... spam!
kilala.nl tags: internet, geeky, website,
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2008-03-03 15:42:00
Today I've spent way too many hours on researching Arrow Emblem - Grand Prix no taka, instead of doing my homework. Still, it's all good since I'll finish my report in time (the one that was lost, yes) and this has cheered me up a great deal!
My search this morning rendered a whopping total of 59 new photographs of Arrow Emblem merchandise and toys, including some stuff that I'd never seen before. Awesome!
If you're interested in Takaya's adventures and would love to see all the merch that was put out in the seventies, visit the Manga/Anime section of my site.
EDIT (2008-03-05):
Make that over a hundredfifty new photographs! I've hit the jackpot over at Yahoo Auctions, which resulted in a boatload of new pics. I've also redone the galleries in such a way that they are very easy to browse, although loading each page takes long because of all of the pictures.
Besides that, I've also added separate pages for computer graphics and shopping advice. It turns out that an Italian webshop carries all DVDs for nine euros apiece! o_O
kilala.nl tags: arrow emblem, toys, anime, website,
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2007-10-30 21:02:00
DreamHost.com have always had a referral program in place for their members. For every customer that you refer to them, you'll get a bit of money deducted from your bill. I always thought it was a neat little feature and I know that at least Clint has been racking in the rewards. However, I never expected to even refer one person.
Imagine my surprise when I checked my control panel and found that I had one active referral! ^_^ I have no clue who user petbos3, but I'd like to thank him/her for using my referral link when they signed up for DreamHost. That'll be $47 dollars I can deduct from my next bill /o/
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-08-26 23:21:00
This is it! I've just told TransIP to switch the DNS servers for Kilala.nl over to the DreamHost boxen. In a few hours most of you should be noticing the transition to the new website. I hope you guys'll like the new look and feel of the site.
There's only bug small bug left and that concerns commenting. Leaving comments works as it should, it's just that the automatic reload of the original page isn't working yet. So instead, you'll have to press "back" and "refresh" on your browsers. Sorry ^_^; I should have that fixed momentarily.
In the meantime I'll go to bed, while the DNS servers do their work. Catch up a little sleep after the long birthday-day we had today. I'll tell you about all of that tomorrow :)
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-08-25 18:54:00
In July of 2007 I found that I'd outgrown my web space at TransIP. While their service is impeccable, as is their uptime, their pricing isn't that great. I'd already entered the order to upgrade my package, when I decided to go look for another company entirely.
It took much deliberation, but in the end I settled on DreamHost. Mind you, that's -NOT- the dutch company Dreamhost.nl, who seem to be a cheap knock-off.
The $140 bill was a bit hard to cough up, but it was worth it! By paying that one sum I've secured myself a good web spot for the next two years. And thanks to a coupon donated by Clint I even got some extra disk space out of the deal!
The graphic above provides most of the marketing already, but let me reiterate what you get for your $7,95 a month. Or go read the full details over here.
Since I like DreamHost so much and since I'm happy that you read this far, I'm giving out some discounts.
By entering the coupon CAILINSENTME, or by clicking this link, you will get a $50 discount off your first order.
If you'd like to move your website to DreamHost I would recommend that you first spend a little time getting to know their toolset. DreamHost's web panel is impressive and versatile, but it does take a little getting used to. You should probably fumble around a little before you give the order to switch your DNS records.
The steps to get your site up and running are pretty easy.
If you do not own a domain name yet, register one through DreamHost. Then, put up all of your site's files in the directory on your file server. DreamHost will tell you which server it is. They provide both FTP (boo!) and SFTP (yay!) access, so you shouldn't have any problems getting your files there. Distributing the DNS changes for your new domain will take a day, maybe two. Once it's done, you're up and running.
If you -do- have a domain of your own, you'll have to take a different approach. The guys at DreamHost have written good documentation on the subject. However, here's the short version.
It's pretty painless, though you'll have to know what you're doing :)
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-08-24 22:49:00
Since recently I've supported multimedia files on my weblog. This started out with audio, so I could let my readers listen to some music I enjoy. And it was later expanded with video capabilities, so I could show some teasers for movies and series that I love.
For my MP3 needs I've used Martin Laine's Audio Player Wordpress plugin. I'd seen this plugin featured at other blogs and had marveled at its simplicity and sleek looks.
The software was written as a plugin for the Wordpress blogging software. However, with a little tweaking here and there it's easily adapted for use on any other kind of website. In that case you'll have to insert the player's code snippet into the blog post itself. I've created some PHP code that takes care of this for me in a rather clever way. Sorry for tooting my own horn there.
In essence what my code does is search for the string "playtrack" (in capitals). If I want to include a song I append its filename immediately after said string, without leading whitespace. This is also why you can track down -all- audio blog posts on my site by typing "playtrack" into the search bar ~_^
For my video needs I use the less-flashy, yet still effective Anarchy Media Player, by An-Archos. This player supports common file types such as .FLV .MOV, .MP4 and .WMV.
It comes in the shape of a Javascript that needs some code inserted into the HTML header of the page you want to show video on. After that, -any- link to a supported video file is automatically converted into a video player. I know, it's less than optimal. You're just going to have to pay attention when implementing it on your site ;)
kilala.nl tags: website, programming,
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2007-08-24 22:27:00
As you may have already read, the code behind Kilala.nl has evolved throughout the years. What started out as static pages, progressed through CSS and PHP includes, through partial dynamism into the final stage of full dynamism. It's taken a long while, but here we are :)
The PHP code itself isn't very special. Most of the pages are built using a number of database lookups, combined together into a greater whole. In its current incarnation each and every section uses one and the same index.php file. Or actually, each index.php is a sym-link to a central file. The only exception to this rule is the front page index.php, but even that one will have to succumb RSN(tm).
The brunt of all my PHP code has been gathered into one single include-file: functions.php. This file is currently at version 2.2 and is approximately 1400 lines long (including comments). Literally -all- code that gets reused among all the other PHP files is in here. Seriously, if you're thinking of writing a semi-large program or website: using a central library / include file is a Good Thing(tm). It may take more work to write and get right, but upkeep will be -much- easier.
The less said about this, the better. I've no great comprehension of CSS and it shows from my code. I learnt what I needed to know by borrowing from all over the web and I know just enough to be dangerous :) As far as I know there's still a lot of unused code in my main CSS file, but for the time being I'm just happy it works :)
I will not claim that I've thought up all of my code myself. Parts of it were found as snippets on fora and adjusted to my needs. Other parts however were borrowed or donated in whole and these deserve mention.
Most notable is the function MakeSafe(), provided in whole by my buddy Dirk. He's been writing PHP for ages now and had just the piece of code needed to kill my SQL insertion vulnerability.
Dirk is also the one who explained to me all the tweaks I'd have to make to my website, in light of SEO. That's Search Engine Optimization for those non-buzzword-compliant reading this. He's also the one who told me to stop relying on global variables and to just pass arrays between functions. So you could say I owe a lot to Dirk :)
kilala.nl tags: website, programming,
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2007-08-24 22:10:00
The well known Verdana font is used throughout this website. In my years of writing technical documentation I've found Verdana to be a pleasant and easy to read font. I've stuck with it for years :) Because I'm a lazy git I've defined all font sizes in PT as opposed to PX in the CSS. I couldn't get the pixel sizes to work properly as quickly as I wanted them to, so hey... Bugger them :D
On to the more interesting stuff!
The main Kilala.nl banner was created using the Aerosol font. The font creates "empty" letters and thus only created the outline forms. In order to fill them with a certain colour, you're going to have to create an underlying layer with an appropriate mask.
The section buttons use two fonts: Bring tha noize for the top sections and Grand Stylus for the sub sections. The titles were simply typed on top of a background in the same colour as my site's BGColor.
All three of these fonts were downloaded for free at Fonts 500. You may as well get them from their Dafont links above.
kilala.nl tags: website, creative,
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2007-08-23 20:10:00
Recently we've been getting a shit-storm of spam in our e-mail boxes, thanks to various bots grabbing our mail addresses from our contact pages. That's why we decided to put all the info in a .JPG instead. Sorry for any inconvenience.
kilala.nl tags: internet, website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2007-08-23 08:49:00
The design and code behind the new site is about 98% done, but there's still one thing that irks me. Apparently fonts are rendered very differently when you compare OS X and Windows.
The new design looks wonderful in Safari and Firefox on OS X, but some of the DIVs are not wide enough on Windows. Why the heck is it that "verdana 10pt" isn't the same size everywhere?! On OS X the menus look neat and tidy. On Windows the characters get huge and start wrapping around to a new line. Meh...
I'll have to bang on that a little bit more :/
kilala.nl tags: apple, website, windows,
View or add comments (curr. 17)
2007-08-19 21:20:00
I've no clue what's going on and I don't like it. No sir, I don't like it at all.
I've almost finished the programming work on the new version of my website. Most of it seems to be working rather nicely and I've hammered out most bugs. Most of the code has been greatly improved and I've taken away a lot of the extraneous PHP files. For instance, no longer will I need six separate PHP files to display blog posts and the archives, nor to add or view comments. All of that is now handled by two site-wide scripts. Nice.
Of course now that things are wrapping up it's time for the weird bugs to show up. I should've learnt my lesson from The soul of a new machine. I mean, I've only read that book three times. :/
Anywho... This morning I added three articles to the database, through Firefox on my Powermac. All three of these articles show up with completely screwed make-up. The CSS is completely ignored, as is the HTML and some parts of the text itself. Two articles that were added after that show no problems whatsoever. The problems are independent of which index.php file I use to view them as each of these shows A) the buggy posts incorrectly and B) normal posts correctly.
So there's -something- in these three posts that's interfering with the post displaying code that I've written, that doesn't show up with any of the other posts. Remarkable. At first I thought this might be due to these posts having been written on my Powermac, as opposed to my Macbook. Who knows, maybe there's some difference in character encoding or whatever between the two. But no dice. I replicated one of those posts using my Macbook and the same problem pops up.
Weird.
I'm gonna have to spend some midnight oil on this =_=
EDIT:
Nevermind. I'd made a braino. I'd forgotten some of the make-up rules I'd enforced on myself =_=; It's fixed now. Only one, really weird bug left!
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2007-08-19 19:35:00
Recently we've been getting a shit-storm of spam in our e-mail boxes, thanks to various bots grabbing our mail addresses from our contact pages. That's why we decided to put all the info in a .JPG instead. Sorry for any inconvenience.
If you feel the need to communicate in an extra-secure fashion, feel free to use my public PGP key.
kilala.nl tags: internet, website,
View or add comments (curr. 13)
2007-08-19 11:48:00
The story features a village of demon hunters, chief among them being a young woman named Sango. Sango's pet and fellow combatant is Kilala, a Nekomata (two-tailed cat demon). Kilala usually walks about in the shape and size of a kitten, but when angered transforms into a saber toothed hellcat.
So why pick Kilala for our website's name?
To be honest it was a compromise. We decided to move our e-mail and web hosting to our own domain back in 2005. Back then we needed a domain name that:
After going over the long list of cool names and objects we finally settled on Kilala. We love cats, Kilala is cool and passionate and it's a damn easy name to remember.
As an aside, all of our computers are named after Inu Yasha characters, IY-geeks that we are. So far we have Kagome, Shippo, Sango, Kilala and Yura.
kilala.nl tags: website, manga, creative,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2007-08-19 11:33:00
kilala.nl tags: website, creative,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2007-08-09 13:42:00
The past few weeks I've been working hard on the code behind the new version of this website. I'm quite proud of how things are turning out so far, though there are still loads of bugs to squash.
I've decided to implement one of the features for the new site in the current build as well. Let's call it a sneak preview ^_^
By subscribing to this RSS feed you will automatically get all comments left at my blog. That way, if you've left a comment or two, you won't have to come back repeatedly, just to check if someone answered your comment.
I'll be using this feed myself too. I favour it above the current scheme which sends me an e-mail every time someone leaves a comment.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2007-08-09 13:27:00
Hey guys... This is just a temporary blog post, put here for my Bloglines verification. Pay it no heed, it'll probably disappear soon.
Feel free to leave nonsensical comments :P
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 9)
2007-08-03 21:40:00
Finally! I've found the clue that'll help me use transparent PNGs as part of my website without Internet Explorer screwing them up!
I've been using PNGs for quite some time now, deeming it a rather worthy successor to the aging (and proprietary) GIF. To make webdesign easier for myself I've also started using transparency in logos and such. Unfortunately I've always run into problems with Internet Explorer. For some reason it could never handle transparency in a "normal" way, turning it into moss green, purple or white.
Thankfully, thanks to the Wikipedia page on the PNG format I've found the solution. The fact that Internet Explorer 4.0 - 6.0 did not support alpha-channel transparency has led some people to erroneously believe that Internet Explorer 6 does not support transparency at all. However, colormapped (palette) PNGs can be given a single transparent background color, which works on IE and is equivalent to the transparency available with GIF images. (In the GIMP, suitable PNGs can be generated or converted by setting the Mode to 'Indexed' rather than 'RGB'.)
I'm a happy camper!
kilala.nl tags: website, other tech,
View or add comments (curr. 3)
2007-07-26 10:55:00
One of the benefits I reap from my move to DreamHost is the fact that I can now host multiple websites in parallel. This allows me to run both the production website and the work in progress on the same system, without one affecting the other.
For this overhaul of the site I've got two major changes planned:
1. The whole look and feel of the website.
2. Programming like I should, not like I can.
The first goal is easy to describe. My website has had the same look for over four years now, with only minor changes being made to banners and logos. This may make it recognizable, but it's also become a bit boring. Understated may be good, but dull never is. I'll still be using the same basic elelments, but they'll be arranged differently. The menu structure is going to change quite a lot and hopefully things will look just a bit more spiffy(tm).
The second goal is going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of deep thought. I recently read an article that suggested that one should keep all content in the backend database, as opposed to in the code. This may sound logical, but how many people fall for same trap?
For example, the menu in the Archives contains a list of months for each year with a month being a link to the list of relevant posts. If there aren't any posts for that month, there are no links. In theory that sounds great, but in reality it's all hard coded :( While it would be relatively simple to write the code to automatically generate the menu structure, I've written out all <a href> lines by hand. Yuck!
The menus in general are a good example as well! Instead of generating the contents of the menu automatically, I've created a bunch of HTML files with all the links that get included by PHP. Nasty. The same goes for all the articles I've written so far: all included HTML files.
But all of that is going to change! I've already redesigned the database backend and implemented the requisite changes. The picture above is a model of how things connect. When compared to other websites it's definitely not rocket science, but it's still a nice learning experience for me. For example, all the yellow tables are supporting tables that contain lists of types. Types of items, types of wishes, types of beliefs, types of links. E.g. wish X is of type 3, which in table wishtypes relates to the type book. I'm sill pondering whether I should just pile all types into one big table, thus saving a bit on complexity...
Some of the more intricate stuff that I'm looking at regards the sections of my site. Currently the division is made with file system directories. With my new approach I'll be using a new database table (sections) for the same purpose, although I'm not entirely sure if I'll completely drop the use of directories. The sections also have a great impact on the menus, since this time around I'll be using the titles and section numbers for articles to build the menus. This left me with one quandary: how to properly sort the menu listings. For now I've opted for an approach similar to a tree (the programming structure, not the foliage) where each article has the below characteristic that contains the ID number for the article above it.
Ah well... Loads of work to be done! :) Let's get crackin'!
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2007-07-24 06:39:00
Let's hope this isn't indicative of what is to come in the next two years... Today I've run into my first major downtime with DreamHost. My site's down, the discussions fora are down and because my Web Panel is also down I cannot send in a service request. Great... Let's hope they fix things quickly. Unfortunately I think they've all gone home, since their DreamHost Status blog isn't showing anything either.
I really hope this won't be happening too often. I -want- to stick with DreamHost, but I wont if things get too hairy.
View or add comments (curr. 12)
2007-07-18 22:53:00
Finally! Thank $DEITY. All of the archived blog posts are now in the MySQL database. I've entered the full years 2002 and 2003 in one blow tonight. *phew*
That should help me settle into the Dreamhost account.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2007-07-18 15:53:00
I've finally decided which web hoster I'll be moving my site and domain to. In the end all of DreamHost's features have tipped the scales and I just signed up with them this afternoon. I used Clint's coupon code, since I'm rather grateful for him hosting the Ars Lounge.
The money I paid got me:
* 200 GB web space
* 1.4 TB bandwidth each month
* Unlimited amount of mailboxen
* 75 UNIX shell accounts
* Access via SSH and SCP/SFTP (I like encryption!)
Speaking of... If you're interested in signing up with DreamHost, there are two nice discounts waiting for you! You can enter "COUPONS" to get a $97 discount. Or you can click this link (or enter "CAILINSENTME") to get a $50 discount. The difference being that with the second option I get a bit of discount on my hosting plan as a kick-back.
Let's see how this works out! I'll keep you guys posted about my experiences with DreamHost and with moving my website and e-mail.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 9)
2007-07-11 13:26:00
My apologies to the folks on Ars Lounge and the subscribers to my RSS feed. I didn't mean to unleash so many updates on you in one blow ^_^
I had a need to keep on writing about the whole "career change" matter, but didn't want everything out in the open just yet (what with me only telling my boss an hour ago). Now that the cat's out of the bag I've opened up all the relevant posts though. No longer do I need to hide my motivations ;)
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 13)
2007-06-18 16:40:00
I've been toying with an idea for a while now. And this morning I had a visit from my field manager Raimond, who helped me on my way.
While TransIP is a great hosting company with great tech support I've always felt that I could be getting more bang for my buck. I'd see glimpses of other providers' offers on the web, but I chose to ignore them. Recently though, I've been running into the limits of my site's storage space. This leaves me with three choices:
* Make my site smaller by removing video and/or audio.
* Upgrade my hosting plan with TransIP.
* Move to a new hosting company.
I'd originally chosen the second option because I felt some form of loyalty towards TransIP. They're a great company after all. But after talking to Raimond about Servage I'm not so sure anymore.
Over lunch I decided for myself to go with the third option: moving my site and domain to a new provider. This would involve some work and preparations, but would save me money while giving me much more storage space and other nice features. Right now I'm split between three different companies.
A few of my colleagues seem enthousiastic about these guys. They offer huge storage space (>300GB) and bandwidth that I'll never use up anyway. The neat thing about their hosting is that they provide you with various software installations at the click of a button. Need a CMS? Pick one out of six and install with one click. Need a forum? Need a blog? The same thing. Unfortunately their connectivity options seem a bit limited though, with FTP and FTPS.
Besides, since I roll my own code and CMS I don't need all the software they offer.
These guys are really cool, with a beautiful house style and good web applications for groups of people working together. They also provide a lot of help to the (Open) Solaris community, which counts for me. The downside to Joyent is that their plans are quite expensive for my needs. I have no need for collaboration tools as I'll only be hosting my website there. At $15 a month this is targeted at companies, not private individuals.
I've heard good things from a few of my friends and fellow bloggers about Dreamhost. Their plans are a bit more expensive than what Servage has on offer, but I also like a few of their additional features. SSH shell access, SCP connectivity and such are great options in my book. Besides, their pricing isn't that bad either.
I'll be mulling over all of my options for a few days before making my choice. I'll get back to you guys by then.
kilala.nl tags: website, other tech,
View or add comments (curr. 9)
2007-05-17 10:21:00
You may remember that I've been using Google Analytics to track visits to my website. So far it's been treating me well and I've been getting some useful information from its statistics.
This morning I received an e-mail from Google telling me that they've upgraded their Google Analytics software and that I can now access the brand-spanking new Dashboard in the normal fashion. So far things look alright, although I rather dislike the new colour scheme. I'm also not quite sure about the various options that GA provides; it looks like Google's been trying to cram more and more stuff in the menus. :/
I'll poke around GA some more and I'll try to send some feedback back to Google.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2007-04-10 06:35:00
* Family
My mother and her husband had flown over to the Netherlands for a long weekend, so we went to see them at my sister's yesterday. It was very nice to see them again since it'd been at least a year! I'm sorry to say that we had to leave early, in part due to the crap I described in my previous blog post.
@ Anu: we're sorry for leaving so early, we really -do- miss you you know? :)
* Website
I've been cooking up ideas for a completely new build of Kilala.nl. Most of the content will remain the same (although some parts will be taken offline) and the change will be mostly visual. I plan on finally -really- learning CSS so I can implement some nice, graphical trickery.
In order to get to a point where I can start working on the new code I'll first need to get some things sorted. I'm already working on moving all archived blog posts into the database (only 2002 and 2003 remain) and I've set up MySQL + PHP on my Powermac so I can run a local version of the website. Still, it'll be a very long road 'till I finally get to the end result and I hope that the creative process involved will keep me a bit happier.
* Doubts about work (see yesterday)
One of the doubts I was talking about earlier, about work, is that I would love to do something more creative than systems administration. Of course I "make" stuff now as well, but I can never go: "This is me! This is what I've built! Marvel at my handiwork!". Scripts and proposals and solved incidents just aren't tangible like that.
I think this website is here to at least partially fill that gap: I'm trying creative processes that I never would get to use otherwise. Thing is though, jobs with tangible, creative processes start to sound more and more enticing! Jobs like gardening, cooking and carpentry where you make something and people care.
That's something jobs in IT are renowned for: most people outside your sphere of influence, but inside the same organisation, don't really seem to care about what you do. So if you're part of a team of sysadmins the "we care"-level drops steadily once you moved outside your department.
For now I'll stick to my current job and get more creative hobbies. There's still that sewing project lying in the corner and woodwork sounds rather relaxing by now :)
kilala.nl tags: family, website, career, life, relaxing,
View or add comments (curr. 9)
2007-03-21 05:37:00
Make sure that, if you have a SNAFU earlier on, things are still working properly! Yesterday I had a little accident while moving files around on the web server and I thought I'd restored everything. Apparently I hadn't, which led to commenting on the main page being broken.
It's fixed again. Thanks to DrFaulken for pointing it out :)
kilala.nl tags: website, snafu,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2007-03-20 22:28:00
All that talk about website optimization and such leads me to the following: I really am curious what it could be that makes people turn away from my website at their very first page load.
I'd really appreciate any and all feedback that you guys can give me.
Here's what I'm aware of so far:
* most of the stuff in the Apple section needs to be dusted off and updated.
* the same goes for the stuff in the Manga/Anime section.
* most of the incoming searches lead to my Sysadmin section, which gets updated regularly.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 5)
2007-03-20 21:58:00
A few months ago my friend Dirk tipped me about Google Analytics. He uses GA to keep track of all the visitors and customers at his forum server and it helps him in optimizing the flow of his website.
Since September of 2005 I've been using a free Stat Counter account and I liked it pretty much. The only real downside being the fact that it would only track the last hundred visits to my site (an upgrade to your account lets you track a thousand visits). Even so, Dirk's tip peeked my curiosity and I created a GA account, just to give it a try.
Two months down the road I have to say that I am rather impressed with Google's work! Not only does the site provide me with detailed information, but it also looks absolutely great! The interface is rather user friendly (although one or two minor glitches pop up in Safari) and it contains just the right amount of eye candy to spiffy things up.
One of the most interesting features Analytics provides you with, is the option to configure Goals. By telling Google about the path you would like visitors to take through your website and by setting certain milestones you will be able to track how effective your site's design is. Google will tell you exactly at which points along the path people stop moving towards the goal you've set, allowing you to optimize the relevant pages.
A very simple example: I would like people to leave comments on my blog, hence one of the goals I've set for my website is for people to reach the addcomment.php file. In order to get there, people will have to visit both index.php and viewcomments.php.
Using Analytics it becomes clear that:
1. Out of 3927 hits to index.php only 72 have progressed towards step two of the funnel.
2. Out of 72 visits to viewcomments.php all 72 have progressed towards the final step and thus towards the goal.
This could lead me to conclude/brainstorm a few things:
* There's nothing wrong with my commenting page. Everyone who gets there intends to leave a message and they do.
* Only 1.8% of the hits to my front page actually lead to comments by visitors.
* This could mean that my front page design sucks and that people are not aware that they can leave a comment. I think this is rather unlikely though, since the commenting links are in plain sight.
* This could also mean that my blogging is ultimately dull and that people die from boredom before they can actually leave me a comment, cursing me to eternal damnation for their suffering. I am well aware my writing isn't the greatest and I'm also aware that I write about rather mundane stuff. So it's definitely a factor.
* This could also mean that I attract a huge lot of hit-and-run visitors who find their way to my site in a rather random manner, who have a quick glance and who decide that it's not for them.
This last idea is supported by some of the other data Google Analytics provides me with:
* Out of all the visits I've had in the past two months approximately 30% are returning customers. The rest visit once and never show their face again.
* Looking at the depth of all the visits we see that ~2600 visits only load one page before leaving again. ~550 load two pages and the rest (my regulars and a few sysadmins digging around for Nagios stuff) load more than three pages.
* This is supported by the bounce rates amassed by my pages. They seems to average around 65%-70%.
Again, this could lead me to a number of conclusions:
* my content is uninteresting.
* my website's layout and design is boring and unattractive.
* people come here to looking for something, but find that my site doesn't have what they hoped for.
Anywho... Loads of lessons to be learned from the information that Google Analytics provides me with. Aside from all the stuff I've mentioned so far, GA also provides the bog standard stuff that all others give you: browser stats, OS info, platform info, geo-location (most of my readers are from western Europe and the east of the US by the by), stuff like that.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2007-03-17 10:17:00
Hooray for another new feature to the website: searching o/
Right now it's rudimentary at best, with the following limitations:
* It only searches through titles and blog post contents. No tags or articles outside the database.
* You cannot use (double) quotes to string together queries like "os x". The quotes will be removed by Dirk's MakeSafe function and thus the search will find all posts containing both os and x.
Still, better than nothing ^_^ Now all I need to do is enter all the blog posts from before July 2005 into the database.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 4)
2007-03-16 22:43:00
This evening I've reworked the feed subscription buttons in the menu. I didn't really like my previous set of buttons, mostly because they didn't have a unified look to them. With some GIMPery and a few hours fiddling, this is what I've come up with. Still not great looking (mostly due to my inexperience), but good enough for now.
You can now subscribe to my site's feed in five ways: my local RSS feed, through Technorati, through FeedBurner, through Google Reader and through e-mail.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 5)
2007-03-03 11:52:00
Recently I've been expanding the functionality built into my website's CMS. A few days ago I implemented the Flash audio player which allows me to inline MP3 files and today I'm adding something new again!
Instead of just plonking links to video in the blog posts I can now inline video as well. It doesn't like very pretty just yet, but I'll try and find a way to make things look better. The video player functionality comes courtesy of the Anarchy player project of the An-Archos network. It works rather nicely, as you can see here.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2007-01-28 01:06:00
It's been a long while in coming, but I've done two major tweaks to the site code tonight.
1. I've added password protection capabilities for my blogposts.
2. I've moved code that gets reused a lot to a separate include file, building functions.
Adding the password stuff wasn't that hard, since all it took was some fiddling with IF/ELSEIF switches and with cookies. Moving all that reusable code into sub-routines of their own was a lot trickier! For some reason I couldn't get elements of the array filled by SQL to go global, so I couldn't move as much code as I would've liked to. I still don't get why I can't make a whole array that's filled by mysql_fetch_array global... I guess I was doing something wrong.
Why the password protection? Well, on the one hand this blog originally did start out as some sort of diary for myself so it's only natural that I don't want all of you to read -everything-. And at other times I might write about stuff that you don't even -want- to read, so I'll take the liberty of screening it for you <3
kilala.nl tags: programming, studying, website,
View or add comments (curr. 12)
2007-01-01 18:15:00
Just so you don't think the Archives are malfunctioning: I haven't archived any posts from 2007 yet :) So please amuse yourself by browsing older posts, like those from 2006 or even those from the first year of my blog: 2001.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2006-12-20 23:20:00
*sigh* I got a little bit carried away with the whole Meebo thing today.
I was introduced to Meebo by a colleague as an easy way of having MSN (and other IM) access at the office, which works a treat. But in the meantime I also got enamored with the Meebo-me messenger widget that could be embedded into my website. "Wouldn't it be cool," I thought to myself, "if some passing stranger would be able to chat me up through my front page?"...
Well... Let's put aside that the widget looks ass when combined with my site's design. Seriously? Who the heck is going to "chat me up"? :D So after mucking about with my site's CSS for an hour or two, trying to make things look "nice", I decide to just fuck it and dump the whole idea. It was a rather dumb idea to begin with anyway.
Got caught up in the Web 2.0 hype, shall we say? So now it's back to who I am: somber, functional, no silly frills. :)
RSS feed = handy, functional.
Tagging = handy, semi-functional.
Meebo chatty widget = silly.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 4)
2006-12-20 22:07:00
Never mind me folks. Pay no attention to the screwy layout of the front page. I'm mucking about with the CSS of my site, trying to get that Meebo widget positioned the way I want it :)
It'll all be over soon. I promise...
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2006-11-29 10:46:00
It's funny how dangling a freebie in front of people's eyes can make'em do stuff. In my case I've spent at least five hours the past two days learning about Technorati, tagging and all things related. And of course making sure that all the relevant PHP pages and the RSS feed have been modified to take full advantage of these features.
All of this just because R. Stevens from Diesel Sweeties is tempting bloggers to write about his comic, with some undisclosed freebie (me, I'm hoping for one of his uber-sweet t-shirts). And since he'll use Technorati as a basis for his "contest" I just _had_ to get on board, didn't I? :3
Thanks R. Stevens, for reaching out to my inner consumer whore. You made me learn new stuff! How dare you?! *shakes fist*
kilala.nl tags: dieselsweeties.com, internet, website, studying,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2006-11-12 15:49:00
Thanks to Kaiju for pointing out that my RSS feed wouldn't work with Firefox's live bookmarks. This was due to the fact that my feed was not 100% valid RSS2.0 with a few nasty errors still left in there. Luckily fixing the problems took about an hour, but this has also resulted in some buginess with regards to the times and dates of the front page posts. These were catapulted back to 1969, thanks to a PHP mistake I'd made.
For a list of fixes made to rss.php, please read the comments on the blog post originally announcing my RSS feed.
Once again my apologies for any inconvenience.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2006-11-06 14:30:00
Don't you just hate not being sure whether you have a certain DVD, when you run into it at the store? I know we do and it happens a lot because it's hard to keep track of our extensive collection.
For now, I've hacked together a nice solution that will allow me to check a DVD from my cellphone. Sweet! It's real simple, mind you: just loaded all the DVD titles into the MySQL backend of this website and kludged together a clean and simple search page. Works a treat, it does!
Thanks to Marli though for entering most of our titles into the computer. She did all the western/Hollywood movies, which only left the anime and Asian stuff for me (which is only about a third of the collection). All in all, we're at a whopping 482 titles now (counting boxes as one title). Wow! o_o
kilala.nl tags: website, studying, movies,
View or add comments (curr. 9)
2006-11-04 15:08:00
Way back when I'd just converted this site from static to dynamic (PHP+MySQL) MK was hassling me about adding an RSS feed as well. At the time I didn't have enough spare time to start learning about syndication, but I did this afternoon :) And MK was right: it only took me about an hour to hack together the code for the feed.
So... Your browser should have alerted you of the RSS feed (e.g. Safari shows an RSS icon in the address bar) and as far as I know basic functionality is up and running. Now I need to find a nice way to fix the layout of the feed contents. For some reason line-breaks are ignored and I haven't thought of a nice way to include graphics.
It's not that I seriously expect anyone to subscribe to my feed. Let's just call it an exercise in IT and web design.
EDIT:
I'm also finally coming through on my promise of moving other parts of the site into MySQL. The Sysadmin blog posts are in the DB now as well, which means that they will get included in both the RSS feed and the Archives. Naturally this required me to make a number of changes to the code, which's been educational as well.
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 15)
2006-10-19 20:11:00
While perusing the archives of my blog I found out that a three weeks of entries were missing. I guess those had been forgotten when I was recovering from The Great SNAFU of 2006. But luckily I was able to recover them from my backups! Hooray!
So the big, gaping hole between June 29th and July 20th has been (re)filled. o/
kilala.nl tags: website,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2006-09-24 09:04:00
So I made it back home in one piece. My trip back took me around 7.5 hours, which was mostly due to me driving a little bit faster :p
I have to say that the A45 route up north is much less glamorous than the A3 :( The Rast Hofe all look much older and less fancy than the ones on the A3. Ah, but they sufficed anyway...
I'm thinking of moving my summaries from the previous blog posts into one big page in the Sysadmin section. Reckon that should prevent Google from raising the Archives above the Sysadmin section when it comes to Nagios.
/me starts immediately.
kilala.nl tags: work, nagios, website, conference,
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2006-08-21 21:56:00
Twice this evening did I see people trying to post a comment to one of my blog posts and twice did they fail. I assume they got some error message, telling them what they did wrong, but they never tried posting again.
If anyone runs into any trouble, could you please warn me through e-mail? The contact info is in my profile. Thanks.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-08-20 16:14:00
The title says it all: people search for the darndest things on Google! I just hope the guy's employer knows that I'm innocent and that I have nothing to do with that Solaris cluster running on their Fire 12000 going down. Honest!
What do you think? Was it some bored IT worker? Or are terrorists visiting my website? XD
kilala.nl tags: holy shit, website,
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2006-08-09 15:05:00
Heheh...
I've known about Google's ability to guesstimate a website's translation into a foreign language for quite a while now. It's semi-useful when I try to surf websites from China and/or Japan. However, it never dawned on me that it also works the other way around.
That is, until I decided to follow the Google search that a Japanese visitor of my website had used. Lo and behold! You could translate my site into Japanese :D
I've no clue whether the results are even remotely close to what I wrote in english, but I have to admit that it's hilarious to see my website in kanji and kana.
kilala.nl tags: website, japan,
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2006-08-08 22:24:00
My buddy Dirk recently gave me a whole bunch of useful tips on improving my website's standing with the web's search engines. In the next few days I'll be implementing all of them. This may make the site look a bit wonky at times, but it'll get better.
And hopefully it'll attract some new customers as well :p
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-08-08 22:04:00
Great! Just great... >[
Thanks to my Stat Counter web site statistics, I've just found out that my page is ranked -third- on the dutch search engine Ilse if you search for the word "realdoll".
Great... What have I done to deserve this? I've only used the word once in my blogs!
Oh wait, make that three times I've used the word "realdoll".
Fsck... Four times...
kilala.nl tags: website, holy shit,
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2006-08-08 16:52:00
Because I've got all kinds of things lined up for me to do, I'm going to put them into order. That way both you and I will know what to expect. Here's my priorities:
1. Make the requisite changes to my website, so that it plays nicely with search engines. This shouldn't be more than an evening or two of work (barring any reruns of Doctor Who on BBC3).
2. Study for my two LPIC1 exams.
3. Revive the manga and anime section of the website. This needs regular updates, so I'm going to have to think of a few nice things to add to this. I'm thinking "reviews"... It's also meant to give me a couple of days off between studying for my four exams.
4. Study for my two LPIC2 exams.
5. Move other parts of the website into the mySQL database as well.
6. Improve the PHP code that gets data from the database. It could be much cleaner, safer and efficient.
7. Build some form of CMS for myself, so I don't have to work in the database manually.
So there you have it boys! The next few months of my life lined out for ya.
Parallel to da plan I will keep on expanding the Sysadmin section with new stuff I discover every week. And I will try to fit in a week or two of vacation somewhere along the line. I have a big bunch of video games that I finally want to finish!
kilala.nl tags: website, work, studying,
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2006-08-07 22:58:00
Right. It looks like things are back to normal.
A few blogposts are now lost forever, but they have been recapped in a "fake" post for the 2nd of August. It combines all the stuff I remember from the last week. Better than nothing is what I say!
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-08-06 07:20:00
FSCK FSCK FSCK!!! X_X
I had just finished adding the code that would allow you guys to add comments to my blog posts and I'd finished testing the code. So I went to clean up all my test posts from the comments database. I press "Empty" in PHPmyAdmin, return to the front page of Kilala.nl and what do I see?
Nothing...
AAAUGH!!!
I'd emptied the wrong database! I didn't pay enough attention and deleted all my blog posts ;_;
So for now both this page and the Archives for 2006 will be empty. I'll spend the better part of tonight fixing my stupid fsckup, but things'll be empty all day. Stupid thing is, I don't make regular backups of this database yet, so I'll lose about a month of blogposts, simply because I don't have them in normal HTML (as part of my "old" site). So any which way you look at it, a whole bunch of blog posts are lost forever.
/me hangs head in shame
kilala.nl tags: website, snafu,
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2006-08-02 00:00:00
In what archeologists will come to call "The Great SNAFU of 2006" I accidentally deleted all of my blog posts (as you can read in the blog post after this one). Because I could only find 95% of all blog posts, I'm missing out on a whole bunch of things. A shame really.
I'll try to recall summarize what has become lost, so it won't be completely forgotten.
Website news:
I added two new sections to my personal section. They're about my beliefs and my likes/dislikes. These lists will grow in the next few months, allowing one to form a decent picture of my character.
Professional news:
Aside from the fact that I'm expanding the Sysadmin section with loads of stuff on SNMP, I also visited the Megabit festival. To sum it up quickly: wet, quite small and IMHO not very interesting. I'm hoping they'll have more luck next year. It was nice to see Willow again though.
Fun stuff:
I was wondering why stuff like this never happened in any of the real Transformers cartoons. I was also plugging the Perry Bible Fellowship which in actuality is quite a cruel and funny webcomic.
And I told you about the latest Apple themed Lego playset by Pod Brix
Finally, I told you about a cool USB hub I saw on Akihabara news. Recently they even put up a .WMV HD movie clip showing how the hub works and all the cool features it has. Shiny!
That about sums it up really.
kilala.nl tags: snafu, website,
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2006-08-01 11:49:00
Busybusybusy, that's what I've been. I've been adding all kinds of new stuff to the Sysadmin section, telling you everything you'd like to know about monitoring Solaris and Sun hardware through SNMP.
I don't have much interesting to tell to the non-admin people right now :) Better luck at a later point in time.
kilala.nl tags: website, work,
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2006-07-28 00:16:00
Changes and modifications complete ...
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-07-27 19:17:00
Site directory structure overhaul in progress. Please ignore any flakiness.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-07-25 22:44:00
Linkage section is now also running from mySQL. My PHP code must the shittiest on teh Intarweb, but at least it works. It's also been expanded greatly to be up to date with my bookmarks...
kilala.nl tags: website, programming,
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2006-07-24 06:16:00
It's reassuring to know that my website still looks like ass when browsed through the likes of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I don't know how I do it, but it looks decent in all other browsers... But since 39% of my visitors still use that browser I'd better do something about it... So here's the problems that I'll try to fix RSN:
* All icons and logos used at the top of each page will be converted from .PNG with transparency to .JPG without transparency. Apparently MS can't be pantsed to put in decent .PNG support.
* I'll try and see why IE insists on putting extra whitespace between each line in the menu bar. I think it may have something to do with the changes I recently made with regards to the W3.org compliancy.
Don't you just hate pandering to the lowest common denominator?
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-07-23 21:20:00
Well, finally all the blog posts for 2006 have been loaded into the database. It took a bit of effort, but was actually over faster than I thought it would. Posts from before 2005 will stay where they are: in the flat text HTML file that they're already in.
I hope to add the comments facility to the website sometime later this week or month. It's just a shame that I'm still struggling a little bit with the inclusion of images into the blog posts. I currently can only work one image into each post in the way that I'm used to. Other images will have to be kludged inline, looking a little bit awkward.
Ah well :) I'm just happy that this is working well now...
kilala.nl tags: website, programming,
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2006-07-22 23:38:00
Today I've been trying to teach myself something new... Something I should've known how to do IMHO. What I've been working on, is getting the blog part of my site to work from the mySQL database I got from TransIP. So the page you're reading right now is already working according to this principle. I'll try to get the Archives working in the same way RSN(tm).
Another thing I'm thinking of adding is a way for you visitors to leave comments behind. I've no clue if that'll be a popular feature, but I know of a few people who'd like to...
kilala.nl tags: website, programming,
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2006-07-20 23:11:00
Well, it took me a whole evening of banging on the keyboard, but finally my website is completely XHTML 1.0 compliant. Meaning that I can now officialy stick the W3C's logo in the menu on the left :)
There are two pages of HTML left that I need to fix, but they will need to wait until tomorrow. Right now I -really- need to get some sleep.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-07-20 19:08:00
At this very moment I'm working on fixing all kinds of small mistakes in the HTML/XHTML code of my website. This in order to get my website fully validated by W3.org (or at least for 95%). Please bear with me if you see any weird glitches in the layout of the site.
I've also found out why my page dedicated to Arrow Emblem - Grand prix no taka wasn't working properly with Google. I'd written that page using SubethaEdit and had inadvertently set the file encoding to Unicode, instead of plain Ascii.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-05-26 00:03:00
Well now! It's been a few hours work, but two things are nicely done now! For starters I cleaned up things a little bit, removing stale image files and adding subdirectories to various image directories. And second off, I added that Arrow Emblem section to the website. You'll find everything from toy pictures to music and video footage from the series.
Now I'd better get myself to bed, since I need to be in the (home) office by eight in the morning. Today's a national holiday in Dutchy Land and my client gives everyone off on Friday, so I can easily work from home. *phew*.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-04-19 22:20:00
A-frigging-MEN! It took me a while, but I finally got the layout using tables debugged. Turns out that I was making a few stupid mistakes with the h-alignment of various table elements :[
/me = n00b
So now I'm back to only one big nag: the fact that Internet Explorer makes my site look like ass because it cannot handle PNG transparency. What a douche bag. I guess I'll have to tackle that sometime soon, by using another file format (possibly without transparency altogether).
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-04-12 08:50:00
AAUGH! You'd think that with my history in IT I'd be able to get something simple as an HTML table to work properly! Right? RIGHT?! Well, I for the life of me can't figure out why this piece of crud HTML code keeps borking things up in Safari. Usually that browser's pretty good with layouts and so on, but the tables I use to put my pictures in keep getting mixed up. Even though I checked all the tags and made sure that all sections are closed off as they should.
Camino and Firefox seem to get everything right, while Safari and IE (for Mac) screw things up slightly. And don't start with me about Opera and IE (for Win). I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but my site looks totally ass in those browsers. ;_;
*growl* I'll deal with it when I get back from my trip to Finland. I don't feel like fixing it now. So for now you're stuk with a crappy lay-out. Sorry... -_-;
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-02-07 10:43:00
Hmm.... According to the Google Sitemaps various parts of my site are broken or unreachable (mostly PDF documents). I hadn't even noticed any problems. Please have a little patience. All will be fixed in a few days.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-01-15 18:45:00
In the immortal words of Jessica Simpson: "Can I get a yee-haw?!"
Yee-fscking-haw! No more than three weeks ago was I bitching about how I didn't like the layout and the look of my website and now I've finally gotten over with it! I spent the better part of today performing a complete overhaul of the structure and the underlying code.
The code? Yes, I've decided to give back the old mighty FRAMESET to the nineteen-nineties! Instead, I've finally caught up with 2004 and have decided to learn a little CSS and a little PHP. No longer will my site be untraversible by search engines! No longer will we carry the burden of crappy scroll-bars in Opera! No longer will I have to tweak each and every fscking page of HTML code if I want to make a change to the look-and-feel of the site! Hale-fscking-luyah! o/
For now the whole CSS+PHP deal is still quite limited though, but who knows, maybe sometime in the near future I will also risk my sanity and try to tackle MySQL. That way all of the content on this site could move into a database :)
For now, these are the changes that are most noticable:
* No more frames! Hence, only one scroll bar. And _no_more_inconsistencies_between_browsers_!
* Finaly, a proper navigation bar! Now each page displays a hierarchical view of where you are on the site.
* An update header graphic, which IMHO looks much better than the last one.
* The retro gaming section has moved into the Archives.
* Overall the code has become a bit more organised, although I'm the only one to notice this :p
* The site has been checked in the following browsers: Safari, Firefox, Opera and MS IE.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2005-12-30 13:27:00
I know I've said this before.. On multiple occasions... And I haven't done anything with it to date... But I really need to do an overhaul of this site :3 I'm not that happy with the graphic at the top and I'd love to lose the frameset (to replace it with CSS). Ah well, maybe some day...
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2005-11-17 08:39:00
Oh bugger! I'm in a fix with Google again! My website has once again been bumped to pages two or three if you search for my name or nickname... *grr* I'll have to do more troubleshooting and see to it that I get this fixed as soon as possible ;_;
On the plus side this involves learning about the inner workings of Google and other websites, as well as learning about building site maps and such.
kilala.nl tags: website, problem,
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2005-11-06 15:19:00
Well darn, this is just such a pain! Ever since we moved our website (again) Google's gone on the fritz when it comes to finding our web space :( I've tried numerous options on getting us at the top for searches pertaining to ourselves and have succeeded in all cases but one. All of our nick names work, as does Marli's full name. My full name however returns a lot of forum posts I once made and the link to this site is stuck on page two *grr!*. I'll try and do some more magic to get that working.
Also, since the date for our move into the new house is coming closer and closer we should start putting some effort into cleaning out any crap that we no longer need. So far I've filled a couple of boxes and bags with trash and we're still not done. It's miraculous how much stuff two people can amass over the course of a few years. We also went out shopping yesterday and splurged on a new living room arrangement! Two sofas and three large closets (a dressoir, a buffet and a showcase) are on their way! ^_^
Oh yeah! And one thing I never expected to say, but: I enjoy playing golf! And would like to do it some more! o_O
Last Friday one of $CLIENT's associates took out our whole department for a golfing clinic and thus we spent a few hours practicing stuff like putting and driving. We finished off the day with two ar 3 holes and, while I sucked royally, I can really see myself doing this stuff on a sunny autumn afternoon :)
kilala.nl tags: website, house, sports,
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2005-10-18 18:47:00
Now that I'm preparing everything for the move to the new web space (like adjusting meta search stuff, banners, titles and so on) I find out how horribly outdated certain parts of my website are!
Sections like Marli's page, the retro gaming part and the Apple section have been horribly neglected! So I'll start fixing those up as soon as I can! But first I need to visit 20+ fora and other websites to change my e-mail and website addresses. *groan*
Oh yeah! All of you Apple-fans out there: don't forget to check out the press conference Steve called for tomorrow! I'm curious what he'll be unveiling this time! :3
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2005-10-17 12:00:00
Would you believe that we have moved to a different web space again?!
Unfortunately we have gotten fed up with Tweak DSL because of various reasons and have decided to switch to Casema once we move into our new house. Of course this would mean moving our web space _again_ and would also involve informing all of our friends, family and colleagues of new e-mail addresses. To ensure that we would never again have to do so, we decided to get our own domain and sign up for virtual hosting with TransIP.
So why call it kilala.nl?
Well, there's a number of reasons really:
1. Most of the names Cailin likes are way too hard to spell or remember for most people (like "valhalla", "yggdrassil", "tenseiga", "kitsune" and so on).
2. Since it's our shared web space it needed to be something we both like.
3. The manga (and anime) InuYasha is one of our favourite series.
4. Kilala is one of our favourite characters from the series.
So who's this Kilala then?
She's a feline demon who never leaves the side of Sango, another character from the series. Kilala (whose name is also spelled "Kirara") is pictured in the top left of our main page and from now on will also be our mascotte :3 More information about her can be found at Wikipedia.
So what'll change?
Not much really ^_^ The contents of the website will just keep on expanding in the fashion they have for the past two years. Also, the website should be much easier to find these days. And we finally get to have some easy to remember and permanent e-mail addresses :3 The only thing that I'll miss compared to Tweak DSL is the fact that TransIP will not give me shell access to the web server.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2005-09-10 13:37:00
Wow! Major updates! I've added a lot of information on a wonderful security tool I think you guys should be aware of. It's called Fox Server Control (previously knows as "BoKS", "Keon" and "UNIX Control"), and is a product of Fox Technologies.
I've also added a boatload of stuff regarding Nagios, which is a free monitoring solution I've been becoming familiar with at $CLIENT. In the near future I will also add a bunch of plugins that I either modified or wrote.
All this beautiful stuff can be found in the sysadmin section of my website.
kilala.nl tags: website, work,
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2005-09-07 10:15:00
For about two years now I had been using Nedstat to keep track of visits to this website. It gave me some interesting insight into you guys' visiting habbits and what specifically interests you. However, Nedstat was recently taken over by some other guy (or is it a company?) and they decided to slip a new clause into the EULA: each tracked website would automatically open pop-up ads from their servers!
No frigging way! So, hard as it was to give up the buit up historical data, I deleted all of my Nedstat counters and moved over to Stat Counter. The information they provide on site hits is actually even a bit more comprehensive than the data provided by Nedstat! So I'm not feeling that bad about switching.
In other news I finally joined the rest of the fantasy-loving world and watched The princess brideyesterday evening. A smashing movie! Just the right amount of humour and cliches but nothing over the top.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2005-08-11 03:43:00
Well, aren't I the dumb ass? I just remembered that I'd been tinkering with my website recently and that I switched around the frame-menu.html file in the root of my website. I also remembered that the copy of said file on my Mac does not contain the required Nedstat code, since I didn't want to generate false visits. Doh! A quick copy-past-ftp fixed things :)
kilala.nl tags: website, snafu,
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2005-08-11 03:43:00
Woke up about fifteen minutes ago and I really couldn't get back to sleep anymore. Some stupid mosquito's chasing us around the bed room :( So I decided to surf the web a little bit and I discovered something creepy. Weird really! I use Nedstat Basic to keep track of visits to my website and all of a sudden, come the second of August, visits completely drop off to zero! Where my site was pulling maybe an average of three to four visitors a day (which is good in my books!) all of a sudden there's been absolutely _no_ visits whatsoever for a ten day stretch. Weird!
Now I know what queen Mab was feeling like in that mini series "Merlin".
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2005-08-02 21:11:00
I made some minor changes in and around my website. You'll probably not notice the tweaks :)
Changes which _are_ a bit more important than that are the following:
* The comics section contains a new "chapter" so to speak, with cartoons based on my view of sysadmin life.
* The sysadmin section contains a new "chapter" on the sysadmin toolkit, a chest filled with goodies which make my life a lot easier! Read through it and you'll see why I always carry a rubber chicken with me...
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2004-12-20 07:15:00
Currently listening to the album "Balance" by Kim Lian.
Well. I have to admit that it feels kind of strange to finally be able to write blog update and work on my articles while on the way. It also feels strange to finally have my wish for a nice portable serial terminal fulfilled. And the weirdest of all has to be the feeling of finally owning that most wondrous of Apple PDAs: the eMate300.
I'm not quite sure in which section of my website I'm going to file all of the eMate stuff since it covers two of the categories I write about:
1. Apple is of course the manufacturer of this pretty little device and I also make use of Mac OS X (and Classic) for managing and syncing the device. Hence it be logical to include it in the Apple section.
2. Of course the Newton is a product range by its own right, which would warrant a section of its own.
3. I will be using the eMate for System Administration at least 40% of the time. Which makes it ogical to include it in that section of the website.
I guess I'll modify the Apple section in such a way that its focus moves from the "Windows to Mac OSX switch" to "Apple in general" and then split off any Sysadmin specific parts (like a tutorial on linking the eMate with our Sun Microsystems servers).
Right. Now that that's out of the way. Other updates! ^_^
My work for the Anime Con has been a bit slow the last two weeks, due to some family troubles. I won't go too deep into it, but let's say that Christmas 2004 almost went down the crapper. Unfortunately I foresee that I won't be able to get any work for the Con done until halway January. This is of course partially due to the holiday season.
Also, those sysadmins out there keeping an eye on my NIS+ antics may have noticd the severe lack of any updates in the matter. The truth is that we were forced to move back theNIS+ Maser Switch until halfway January (a pattern is forming!), so it'll be a while.
Finally, Marlijne is doing well at school. She's still enjoying herself, so that's all good. She also decide to make the switch to another major within the same faculty. Instead of "Management, Economy and Legal" she will start in "Business economics and IT" in the next semester.
kilala.nl tags: apple, other tech, website,
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2004-04-25 13:30:00
It was definately needed and had a long time in coming, but it's here: the first website overhaul of this year! ^_^ I had gotten tired of the old division of my website, so I decided to shuffle things around a bit and to add a new chapter.
Things that have changed in this 'jumbo-update':
* New UNIX System Administration section.
* Expanded the Archives section with sections previously in the main menu.
* Added four new comics.
* Updates of various pages with new information.
* Overall cleanup of directory trees (you won't notice this :P).
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2003-10-15 16:41:00
Decided to renew a couple of sections and to add some extra stuff to others (Retro gaming and Warhammer in particular). I've al so added a new option to each side menu, allowing you to move the browser back up to the top of the section you're currently in . So, where clicking on /home will move you back to the homepage (this one ^_^), clicking on /Warhammer in the Warhammer sectio n will put you back on the page with all of the text. Thought that might be handy... or something :)
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2003-07-23 12:35:00
I hope that you guys are completely used to the new look of my site :) I'm quite pleased with it, even though there might still be a couple of bugs hanging around. If you find any, be sure to drop me an e-mail!
Now... I haven't had much time during the last month to keep things up to date and as you can see nothing came of that whole Blogger.com deal. For some reason their web interface kept on crapping out on me :/ I'll see what I can do to fix that, but I'm not going to put too much time into it.
And finally I got round to putting some extra stuff in the Retro Gaming section! Be sure to check it out, if that's your kind of thing :)
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2003-06-18 17:03:00
As you can see I've gone and changed the whole look and layout of my website! I really thought the site needed an overhaul, because the layout was buggy (Darn you CSS! Why are you so mean?!) and because my webspace had gotten clogged up with stuff... let's call it Internet Dust Bunnies, or something... Scary thought, never mind that -_-'
So I went ahead and made copies of all of the stuff I had up in my webspace, trashed all of the kruft in between the good things and sorted everything into seperate directories per topic (which you'll notice in the URL bar in your browser when you're browsing this site). I decided to give all of the pages a much cleaner look, which is actualy The One Look (TM) that I'd been trying to reach ever since I started this site.
I also redid all of the logo's for the chapters. When I first did the original ones I really liked them, but it's been a while now and my tastes and drawing techniques have changed since then. For the better I like to think ^_^;
Just one or two last things :) As you can see I took out two of the old sections ("The SCA" and "Misc. Art") since those were topics that didn't hold any more interest to me. I replaced them with one of my favourite subject, being "Retro Video Games"! Be sure to keep an eye out for updates in that section! Also, I got round to verifying the new layout using four different browsers (IE5, Mozilla 5.0/0.9.8, Opera 6.0b1 and Konqueror 3.0.0) and I found out that there's a couple of tiny bugs hiding out there. For instance, Opera will not (however I try to coerce her) stop showing borders around the frames, Konqueror has problems with the nested menus in the "Anime/Manga" section and IE5 decides that I really do not need any space between the frame's border and the text inside it. :/ Oh well, at least it's a big load less buggy than the previous version was :P
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2002-10-20 10:11:00
Boy, it's been a while since I've worked on this website! /me looks down... :eek: It's been more than three months already!
I've finaly found out that nasty CSS bug that was causing my page to look b0rked in Opera and Mozilla.. I'm definately _not_ a CSS wiz, so it took some fiddling with random parameters in the stylesheet I once downloaded and apparently it worked :) From now on you friendly Linux users (I'm one myself, so you can understand my troubles with this page) won't have the problems of the header's contents dropping down into the text ^_^
In local news: About two months ago (as per the 1st of September actualy!) me and Mar _finaly_ moved into our new house! Yay! It took a couple of weeks, but now we're settled in nicely. Everything's great actualy :) The house is really neat, we decorated it nicely, we don't have any money shortages (/me drops down to his knees..."Thank you Gaia!") and even Blackie found her own little spot in the house.
In the work department things appear to be picking up. After a couple of dreary weeks/months at the office I'm finaly getting back into the groove, setting my teeth into some really nice projects. Marlijne's been busy trying to find a job too... She mailed two letters of application a couple of days ago and the employment agency's trying to get her a job as a delivery driver.
Re: the website. Well, as you see I've finaly taken a look at the site again after a very long time. In the near future you can expect some new pictures of my case, a load of info on the new house (pictures are sure to follow) and hopefully I'll get around to writing some stuff on anime and manga too.
Cheers!
kilala.nl tags: work, house, life, website,
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2002-07-11 22:25:00
Wow! Massive updateage ^_^
I had a couple of spare hours lying around and decided to fix a couple of nasty bugs in my website design. I also finaly got round to typing up that mini-report of the Anime 2002 convention (Yeh yeh! I know! It's been five months already! ^_^') and I've updated the cosplay section a little.
I hope you guys're all doing okay :)
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2002-06-27 19:05:00
Man! Have I been busy the last couple of weeks! You may have noticed the lack of updates *sniffles*
Today I've put up some pictures in the SCA section, so you guys can see all my neat clothing and weapons. I'll probably never use them ever again, but I like to keep that page, for old times sake.
Later on tonight I'll also post the long awaited new comic in the Comic Diary. Technicaly speaking it's not even a comic (I've taken another format just this once), but a diary snippet I drew up to thank my very good friend Bas. He's a real sweetie and we went to visit him during the last week of May.
Well, gotta go again! ^_^ *waves*
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2002-05-04 16:27:00
It's been a looooong time coming and I've been working on it for quite some time now, but the overhaul of this website is almost complete!
Though I liked the look and feel of the current version (black and blue neon Wolf theme), I was never completely happy about the code and how the way things were organised. I'm not proud of it but that version of my site was created completely using Star Office and Netscape Whatchamacallit. Yes indeed! Me, the kid who'd done an intership coding Cold Fusion websites, had completely forgotten everything about webdesign! The code was a complete mess!
That was until my sweet friend Wynk applied a clue by four to my brain and suggested I take a look at BlueRobot's CSS website. It's not very stylish of me, but I blatantly ripped one of his (or is he a she? I dunno!) examples and used it for my own site. Don't get me wrong: BR puts up the examples for everyone to rip and use and abuse, but I'd prefer it if I known how to do this stuff by myself.
I'll get myself a couple of books about this some day soon ^_^
kilala.nl tags: website, studying,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
