Sunday, April 30 2006, 12:04 PM

Last night, while reading over some sites, I decided that I wanted to go beyond the somewhat static category scheme that my site has had for a while, and do something a bit more dynamic, like the tagging scheme that sites like del.icio.us have made popular. It was a really simple change on the backend side of things, but it should allow for me to be a little more descriptive in my categorization of posts. You'll still be able to find the different tags from the dropdown in the menu, but you'll also be able to see tags via the Tag Cloud. The Tag Cloud is a premise I borrowed from a few other tag-oriented sites that shows visually how usage of one tag compares to the other tags.

To compliment the new tagging scheme, I set up some more neat (read: pointless) interaction with del.icio.us, so that any tags that exist both here and on my del.icio.us page will display an icon denoting the shared tag. The behavior is different based on what you're looking at, so I'll leave it for you to figure out. You're all smart people.

delicious rss siteupdates

Tuesday, April 04 2006, 4:25 AM

I'm sure all the cool kids have known about this site for a long time, but I just gave del.icio.us a try this weekend, and I must say it's pretty neat. It's termed as a social bookmarking service. So far, I've just used the bookmarking part, and none of the social part. There are a few things that make it pretty handy. First, it allows you to store bookmarks in a central location. This makes it easy to keep track of handy dandy links across multiple computers, which is really handy for someone like me. Second, each bookmark is tagged with one or more categories for organization. Third, there are a few extensions for Firefox that integrate the tagging and viewing of bookmarks right into the browser, so you don't have to go to the site to view what you've saved.

Another really neat feature is the ability to export RSS feeds for all of your bookmarks or just bookmarks in individual categories. I see this as being a cool thing because I could tag articles I find interesting with a particular category, and have them show up in a section of my page for others to see. The tagging process allows one to enter a description, and those descriptions should show up in the RSS output as well. It could just be more fluff on my website (of which there is already plenty), but it could be cool at the same time.

delicious firefox rss

Wednesday, September 07 2005, 11:02 PM

This past weekend found me up north with my family for the Labor Day holiday weekend. I went up thursday night with my sister. The journey went pretty quickly - only three and a half hours. My parents were already up there on their summer vacation. We did a whole lot of nothing, and it was stellar. I slept at least 10 hours a day each day except monday. I guess I needed it. On monday we partook in the annual Labor Day Mackinac Bridge walk. It was my first time, and it was pretty neat. The morning was beautiful and pretty much perfect. I can't say I enjoyed waking up at 5:30 to head into town, but you've gotta take your lumps every now and again. Pictures from the trip are up in the gallery.

Speaking of the gallery, I've updated my gallery installation to Gallery 2, and I have to say it is pretty sweet. It seems a tad bit slower, but there are a lot of cool features that counter that speed decrease. I set up a template that uses the general layout of my site, so the appearance shouldn't be any different than what you're used to. The RSS feed update thingy is gone for now, but I'll probably have it back up there once it's implemented in gallery2. Until then, you'll just have to make due with the cool javascript tree thingy for album navigation. Wheee!

gallery2 mackinacbridge rss upnorth vacation

Monday, January 10 2005, 3:52 AM

No, not like the corny chick flick. Just can't sleep. I did my best to force a switchover from 3rd shift sleep schedule to a normal one, but my body is resisting. I figured that being awake for 21 hours out of 24 would help me sleep, but apparently my body doesn't listen to the will of my mind. What a pisser. I went to bed around 8pm, and woke up at about 12:30. I'm going to try to hit the sack again here in a little while.

Speaking of the night shift, I can say with a certainty that this was the most laid back stint of 3rd shifts that I've had, with the possible exception of the first one way back in September '03. No big problems, low phone call and ticket volumes... just calm and quiet. It allowed me to get a decent amount of work done on a few more projects, which is definitely nice. Having to miss out on New Years festivities kinda stunk, but I guess that's life. I had most of the other major holidays off this year while other people worked them, so I guess it was my turn.

I've been putting a decent amount of layout work into the site, but anybody who has visited the site before should see that. I definitely like the new layout and style - it's much more colorful much less boring. The new RSS stuff is hot too, but I agree with Joe that it looks a bit cluttered. I'll have to work on that. Not tonight though.

rss siteupdates work

Sunday, January 09 2005, 2:49 AM

Well, as you can probably see, the layout is different. I finished up the modifications I was looking to do so I could incorporate the RSS feeds into the site more. I think it turned out well. I also made it a bit narrower so it would fit on smaller screens, like Joe's laptop. Let me know if you see anything broken.

rss siteupdates

Wednesday, November 26 2003, 3:51 AM

Heh, I got bored and decided to make a RSS news feed for the dynamic content on my site. If you have a RSS capable news reader, point it at mike.neir.org/rss.php and you'll get the last 10 posts (sans website updates) that I've made. I'm sure this will get TONS of traffic.... right. I've tested it in Evolution and in a phpNuke block, and it seems to work quite well. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

rss siteupdates

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