Site News Archives

11 am → Happy 5th, Capn Design

After posting about Russell's, I happened to notice that the very first post to this blog occurred on December 1st, 2000. Therefore, Capn Design is officially five years old.* Man, how things have changed. Just take a look at the December 2000 archive if you need any proof. It's entertaining for me, at least.

In honor of this birthday, I fixed the rotating images that had been broken for a month. Also, once I finish up a couple freelance projects, this whole site will get an overhaul. For at least the last three years, I 've just been putting code on top of code. It's time to start fresh. Hopefully all will be ready in time for January 1st, but 5 years of this has taught me that hitting design deadlines for a blog is less likely than being cast as Michael Jordan in the sequel to Space Jam.

* I've been journaling online in some form or another since September of 1999, but the word blog would have meant nothing to me then. Also, those archives are either lost or buried somewhere on an old machine in my storage locker.

Posted in Site News | Comments (3) | |

12 am → I Gave Into the Siren Call of MT 3.2

Yeah, you would have expected to see this post about a year ago when Movable Type 3.0 was announced, but I was hesitant about screwing with how my site works. To be honest, I was (am) still nervous about installing 3.17 tonight. But MT 3.2 was just too enticing, which is why I made my first step towards it. If everything went as planned, you'll see much less swearing and all of it will be jubilant. Wish me luck.

Posted in Site News | Comments (1) | |

3 pm → A Couple Site Changes

First, the RSS files now point to the quick post URL instead of the archive URL so you won't have to click in your news reader. I used the MTCompare plugin to do that.

Also, in order to prevent comment spam, I am closing comments on entries older than a month old. Also, I'll only open comments on entries that warrant comments. For instance, this one won't have comments. You can always send me an email though.

That's it for now. I'm hoping to do some new stuff with this site in the next month or two. Don't worry, you'll be informed.

Posted in Site News | |

3 pm → Ugh. Host Recommendations Please.

So I just had my Movable Type software suspended by my host, Midphase.com, after I rebuilt the montly archives. This was baffling as they claim to be Movable Type compatible in their feature list. I was able to get it reinstated, but I obviously can't have it shut down everytime I make a change to one of my templates.

In the event that I can't come to some agreement with them, does anyone have any good hosting suggestions? I need MySQL and at least 500MB of space, but I'd like mailing lists, lotsa bandwidth, multiple domains and subdomains. Oh, and some decent stats. I'm willing to spend as much as 20 per month, but I'd like to spend 15 or under. Your thoughts?

Posted in Site News | Comments (6) | |

10 am → Referrer Spam is Out of Control

This week, I have been trying to tackle my referrer spam. It has gotten terrible. I have looked in a number of places (botwack and diveintomark), but I can't seem to figure it out. I'm guessing the main reason I couldn't figure this out is because I don't really understand it, but I'm wondering if something has gone wrong.

So, could someone help me out please? Here is the source for refer.php (with the server login bits removed) so you can see what I'm up to. If you can help me, I'd really appreciate it.

Posted in Site News | Comments (2) | |

2 pm → Honestly, Do You Like the New Design?

I've had a couple of people (namely my sister and girlfriend) gripe about the new site design. Mostly, they don't like the stripes. I like them, but I'm definitely not in love.

So are you all staying silent because you like the design or because you don't want to upset me? You may also not care, and if that's the case that's fine, but if you have any input for me, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Posted in Site News | Comments (15) | |

10 pm → Capn Design version 1000000.0

Okay, I'm not sure how many revisions I've had for my personal page, but it probably isn't a million. Here are some details for the newest one.

It's All About Me

In this revision, I've decided to make this site better suited to my needs. In the past year I've noticed that the posts and features have started to cater more to my audience than to my own needs, and that's no good. So, expect more posts about potentionally benign goings-on and a less features that will be intentionally helpful to you. Don't worry, I do have ideas for sites that could be very helpful to you that are lodged in my brain. One day.

Lots of new colors

More than anything else, I was a little sick of my color scheme. It was time for something fresher and brighter. It may not be all that masculine, but I'm comfortable with my pastel-y color palette.

Back to Two Columns

I've decided to move away from the three column layout. First, I really didn't need all three columns. It worked visually, but there was no functional purpose for it. Second, I wanted to have more room in my main entry side for graphics and photos. I've only added about 60 pixels, but that's helpeful.

The Photograph Style Header Remains

A couple people got to see my original redesign and a couple mentioned how they liked it, but they'll miss the header. After some thinking, I agreed. So, the photography header remains. It's also worth noting that the last word in the tagline rotates thanks to the Image Rotator from Automatic Labs. There are eight right now, and I'll add more as they come to mind. If you want to see all of them, you can keep refreshing or check the source code for their location.

Mini Reviews are Improved

If you head to the Mini Reviews page, you'll see that it exists. This has never been true before. It's a one stop shop for all my little reviews, which I hope to make more regular. The information design isn't totally perfect (archives aren't clear), but I'm working on that.

Photo is Redesigned

I have moved to a black background for the photo section. Personally, I think it looks a lot better. I'm most excited about this section. This is the section I hope to put the most energy into over the coming months. Summer is good for photography.

Remainders

There is a new about page. The archives are now better organized. I have set up an automatic redirect in my .htaccess file so that no one will get lost, hopefully. There are no more comment pop-ups, except in photo (btw, I still need to redesign the comment template). The RSS feeds will soon be simplified, with the addition of an Atom feed, which hasn't been created yet. I'm also shifting the focus of the calendar, which should pop up next week, and I'm bringing in a new section called lists. More about that later.

That should cover just about everything. If you have any questions or notice any bugs on any platforms, please let me know.

Posted in Site News | |

2 am → New Design is Up

As you see, the new design is up. Some stuff is missing (photo section is done, but not up yet and there are two features not done yet), but most everything should be working. If you see something is amiss, email me on the right.

There will be another post tomorrow (Thursday) with a lot more information.

Night night.

Posted in Site News | Comments (4) | |

2 pm → I Just Moved

Well, I just changed web hosts. You'll only see this when the name servers change.

If you see anything that is amiss, please let me know.

Update: I seemed to have moved. Email is a little wonky right now, but I can still receive it. Just know that I might have trouble getting back to you today. Oh, and I know about that isse on the right side. Not sure what the problem is.

Hmm: Ok, it seems to be working now. Everything's a go on my end. Wheeeeeee.

Details: Matt requested to know who I'm hosting with, so here you go. I'm using Midphase Hosting, per the recommendation of Web Host Magazine. I'm getting 1.7GB of space (although cPanel claims my space is unlimited), 55 GB/month of bandwidth, two hosted domains and all the other goodies (PHP, MySQL, etc.) for $9.99/mo. So far so good as my account was set up in 20 minutes and everything is up and work less than 24 hours later.

Posted in Site News | Comments (2) | |

3 pm → A Small Update

Two things of note have been happening at Capn Design lately:

1. Yesterday my Open Letter to Apple was linked by MacSurfer. It resulted in over 600 people looking at the page. That's pretty ridiculous. Well, it's either ridiculous or I am just used to my humble level of readership and I'm betting on the latter.

2. People keep coming to my post on Surprise by Design from November of 2002 and leaving comments. Great, right? Well, it seems most of these people are looking to get on the show. The first time this happened, long ago, I personally pointed the person to the application to apply. Now, eleven comments and a several emails later, I put the information in the post. Some of the replies are funny and some are moving. Here's an example:

In other news, I feel a redesign coming on in the next couple months. I still like this design, but I want something new. I'll keep you posted and may even let you watch as I design. We'll see.

Posted in Site News | |

1 am → Kottke-ization Complete (I Think)

As you can see (if you're looking at this through a browser), I have Kottke-ized my site. Essentially, I brought the reviews into the main blog. I made a few small changes to the far right side as well. I'm hoping this will give a little more attention to the reviews and maybe make me write them a little more often.

Like Kottke, I used the SQL, Compare, and ExtraFields plugins to make this all happen. The ExtraFields plugin is just used to clean up the review ratings a bit.

I'm still fixing things up, but if you see anything that looks out of place, leave a comment. I haven't had a chance to look at the site on a PC so it would be much appreciated.

Posted in Site News | |

6 pm → New Feature!

As of today, you can now see everything I ever think about doing in New York. Well, at least in terms of artistic entertainment. The new Events Calendar is as much for me as it is for you though. I'm always forgetting about shows and either letting them get sold out or missing them all together. Hence this list. The area is pretty much finished but you can expect some RSS stuff to make browsing easy and whatever else seems interesting.

I teamed up with Emceebard to bring this new feature to life. This means double the events for you. You know you love it.

If you have any suggestions you can always email me* and tell me what to do. I like that.

*email is in the "essentials" section on the right side.

Posted in Site News | |

6 pm → A Quick Note

As I test out TypePad, I will also be posting at my TypePad weblog. I'm guessing it's going to be somewhat Livejournal-ish, but read this post and you'll understand a little better.

Posted in Site News | |

1 am → Visual/Photo is Live

The Visual/Photo section is now up and ready to be loved. Please check it out and provide feedback here or in the individual photos (especially if something doesn't look right). As you've noticed it, it's the harrumph! style of photoblogging now. I'll post a photo or set of photos every couple days or more (ideally) and there may or may not be some text. We'll play it by ear.

Also, you'll notice that the link to the photos from the homepage has changed, as has the masthead. As a bonus I've decided to enable trackback for the blog.

That's about it. Enjoy kids.

Posted in Site News | |

12 pm → Valid and Expanding

Hello readers. I thought I'd take some time to let you know what's going on with this site. A while back I claimed that it would be redesigned by May 1st, and that has obviously come and passed. Instead, I am going to go a different route. The design will stay the same but I going to be completely reformatting the photo section and making it much more prominent. I'm thinking about a two to three week timeline. You'll know when it's all finished because the header image will be different. So things are changing, but also staying the same.

I also finally got a number of the pages to have valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS code. Most of the archive pages will not validate because I am not going to go back and fix every ampersand and image link. The validation also meant that my CSS now works properly on every page and I am completely free of any table design.

Finally, I am still working on giving the mini-reviews a better home. I have already given the individual archive pages a real design (example) and I'm working on the rest of the site. This is important for RSS users because if you'd rather read the review from within the site, now you don't have to look at a blob of plain text with no formatting.

That's about it in terms of new work. Let me know if you have anything you'd like to see more or less of. You can be blunt, I can take it.

Posted in Site News | Comments (1) | |

11 pm → Hello Again

If you are seeing this message, I am at a new server now but using the same host. More space, same cost (yay for 50% off deals). If you notice anything missing, please let me know. Thanks.

Also, I made some minor tweaks to the site. The mini-reviews sidebar is now a total of 15 reviews and they're all lumped together, to aviod showing ones that have been around for 6 months. There will be some more changes to that part of the site fairly soon. Oh, all of the RSS feeds are now 2.0.

Posted in Site News | |

5 pm → 1000 + Apple Music

This is the 1000th post to Capn Design. That's a crapload of posts. In honor of this I will do something, but I'm not sure what yet. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about Apple's announcements.

For the unaware, today Apple announced new iPods, iTunes 4 and the new Apple Music Service, which is built into iTunes. Before I make any observations, I would like to say two things. First, I am impressed. B, There is a chance I lost my iPod this weekend and that is horrible/interesting.

The new iPods - They are at the same prices as before but they are up to 10, 15 and 30 gigs with new enclosures and a docking station. Also, the Windows iPods now support USB2. Thirty gigs is a lot of room and it is very tempting. The buttons are now backlit, but I don't think that matters as it is easy to remember the location of 4 buttons. The screen is new, but no biggie. What's nice, is they are incredibly skinny which is great. Size and speed are two of my major buying factors. So I give these a thumbs up.

iTunes 4 - They turned aliasing off? All of the text looks really weird. This was the most noticeable thing, by far. After that, I realized that they added AAC encoding and converting (from MP3 or whatever else is supported by iTunes). I converted an MP3 and it took as long, if not longer, than it would take to rip it. So, I guess I may be ripping all of my albums again at some point. Good thing I stopped when I heard the rumors. One annoying thing is that when I search and I'm using the browser it doesn't narrow down the albums as I'm searching. Also, they've added the ability to have album art for your music. Unfortunately, you have to find all of the album art yourself. Boo. Finally, the look of the program is much flatter. There is little depth to the buttons and there is something of a cel-shaded feel (a la The Wind Waker). It looks a little weird but nothing I can't get over. Aside from the music service, which I'll talk about now, iTunes 4 seems to be a bit of a dud. Big features yes, but they skimped out on the little stuff. Very anti-Apple.

Apple Music Store - Alright, here we go. 200,000 songs at 99 cents a song. All of the songs are encoded at 128 kbps in AAC format. It is not my perfect set up, but it is an amazing start. You can buy a song with one click and an album only costs $9.99. There are a lot of albums I would buy at that price that I wouldn't even consider at $16-19. The navigation and searching seems good enough, but their servers have been hit hard to day so it's difficult to be sure. I'll try to buy some stuff tomorrow to check things out for real. My only real complaint is that lack of independent music. I want to be able to get my Les Savy Fav albums from this service. See, these are the things I can't find in the store and the convenience of this music service provides the perfect opportunity. Hopefully they'll open things up to indie labels soon.

To restate what I told you from the get go, I think this was a great day for Apple. They are once again leading the field and I am excited about everything that's happening. I'm also excited that I can actually start ripping my entire music collection now.

Note: I have spent a bunch more time with the Apple Music Store and I have noticed some inconsistencies and a number of confusing pricing schemes. I'll post more late tonight.

Posted in Music\TV\Film\Media   &&  Site News | Comments (2) | |

11 am → I'm working

So if things look screwy right now, they'll be fixed in a few minutes.

UPDATE: Things will have to be fine the way they are until I get home tonight. If you're curious, the front page is all CSS formatting now and I am trying to get it to work on the interior pages. More later.

Posted in Site News | |

5 pm → Now What?

Well, Safari Beta 2 is out and it rocks. Unfortunately, it breaks this site. I think this is a sign that I definitely should redesign things. (In the meantime, I'm going to fix that) I mentioned I was going to a while back, but I haven't had the time.

The redesign may affect the address of this site. I am starting to pursue freelance gigs now and I need a place for potential customers to visit. Since I am planning on sticking with the name Cap'n Design, the blog may have to move around a bit. I'm still not really sure what I'll do yet.

So, now I ask for suggestions. What do you think I should do? Also, if there are any designers out there, I'd love to chat with you about running your own freelance web business. Shoot me an email or leave a comment. Thanks.

Posted in Site News | |

2 am → My Newest Toy

A little while back I mentioned a new segment I planned to create called Media Intake. Well, it's ready enough for you to see it, if you'd like. Here it is. Essentially, I will be able to keep track of every bit of media I take in. Every book I read, every record I hear and every film I see. Right now, it is just a basic list of everything I have entered. There is more information about each event that is not listed yet, but it's coming.

So, in Zeldman-esque style, I will let you watch me as I create. Along those lines, I have a question for CSS gurus. When I'm using a table (it's ok, it's for data. you're supposed to use them), how can I create a border in the cell? Also, how do I get rid of cellspacing and cellpadding with CSS? I can't figure these things out.

Finally, could those people with windows machines check out the page and make sure it doesn't look funny. Thanks.

Posted in Site News | Comments (3) | |

5 pm → It's About That Time

I love this design, I really do. It even almost won an award. Still, I'm jonesing to redesign. I haven't had the chance to design anything in quite some time and my brain needs to be challenged. Also, I have a new section that will be ready by, if not before, then and some of the old sections need to be worked on. I want to post more photos and reviews, but I need to make it easier for me.

I am going to give myself plenty of time and aim for a May 1st deadline. Hopefully things will be just as good as they are this time. Hopefully better since this design is going to be tough to part with.

On another note: after listening to the new Cursive record a few more times I am starting to really like it. Not their best, but I'd give it a solid 7.5.

Posted in Site News | Comments (1) | |

5 pm → NicelyDone Host

My hosting company, Affordable Host, has generally been pretty good. I have had a few issues here and there, but I am generally happy. Today, I am even happier. They have moved my server to their new datacenter and it is really snappy. It used to take forever to load, and now it comes up about 5 times as fast. And, there were missing perl modules and a MySQL problem, but it was all cleared up in about 2 hours. So, I can definitely give my full support back to my host, after a few rocky months.

On another note, I think I will be importing all of my old posts from the days before I knew of the word blog. I don't know how much they need to be here, but I think I want to save them before they get whisked away by UW. If you'd like a preview, they are here.

Posted in Site News | |

2 am → MT, Are You Messing with Me?

I just finished giving a title and category to every post, and towards the end I ran across this:

Hmm. I'm not sure if this is just a very odd coincidence or a way of Movable Type to tell me that my time has come. Granted, I haven't had much of a job or much to do for the last eight months, but I think that would be a bit rash.

In addition, and this is big, you can now subscribe to an RSS feed for each category. So, if you only care about my commentary on video games, you can subscribe to the video game feed. It will give you the 10 most recent posts. All of the links are available on the main archive page and at the top of the regular category pages.

Posted in Site News | |

8 pm → Lil' Improvements

I have spent some time today tweaking things here and there. Here is the list of changes I've made.

1. I am now offering up individual archives in addition to the monthly and category archives. They have also become the primary archive. So, if you are coming to this site via a RSS Viewer, then you will notice the difference. On that note, I added the ten most recent and most recent commented on entries to the individual archive pages because whenever I visit a site that has multiple new entries I like to be able to navigate to the other entries from the page that pops up. So, they are there.

2. The monthly and category pages have changed their format to include more information on the page.

3. I moved the location of the monthly archives. The old files will still work (for now) but will not be updated.

4. I made some changes to the categories. Design and Video Games are their own categories now. I am hoping to make more posts about both of these topics.

5. You can leave comments on Quick Posts (with less effort).

There is more to come, but this is it for now. Let me know if something is broken.

Posted in Site News | |

9 pm → Media Intake

It seems that the new section I am planning to introduce will be a bit larger than I had first thought. First, I am definitely creating my own little cms for it because MT won't be able to handle some of the things I'd like to do. This should be fun as I haven't had a new project like this in a while and it should be a good way to build up my skills.

Second, although the information will be only mildly interesting at first, in a few years it will be awesome to see how many times I've watched Seinfeld while doing work on my computer. That reminds me that I don't plan on logging shows while I'm flipping or if it is completely background noise. If something is just on, it will not be noted. (I have been thinking about all the little features and the design. It is fun.)

In the end, this is really more for me than it is for you. Granted, my whole site is in some ways more for me than you, but the reason I am making this is so I can look back and see what I thought about Three Men and a Little Lady when I watched it for the 6th time. Really, it's so I can have a document of how I've spent my time and so that I never forget the name of "that movie with Christopher Guest and Vin Diesel" ever again.*

*that movie has yet to be created, but I would watch it in a heartbeat.

Posted in Site News | |

1 am → New Features, As Promised

I promised you two new features and I am delivering. You can now see the last 50 songs I've played in iTunes and review my Netflix Queue. So, you can always keep tabs on what I'm listening to and watching, even if I'm not reviewing them on time or at all. The links are in the sidebar, but here they are again for your convenience.

Last 50 iTunes Tracks
Netflix Queue

Posted in Site News | |

10 pm → The About Page

I have redone The About Page. It is now designed to match the site and the copy is all new. Ha ha, new copy. If you copied it, how could it be....

So I fulfilled the promise I made a while back. I have two other new additions that will likely come sometime this weekend. They will be fun. That is all.

Posted in Site News | Comments (1) | |

3 am → Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I plannned to make some changes to the site. I made the first round of updates, with some others to follow very soon. Here is what's done:

• Top Ten has become quick posts. Same idea, but w/o the numbers and infrequent updating.
• XML/RSS feeds. Use your favorite RSS Aggregator and stream Capn Design without the fancy graphics. A lot of people aren't using this yet, but it's a great way to check out a lot of sites in a little time.
• I'm only showing 10 photos, saving us some bandwidth.
• The archives list is using some javascript. No biggie, but I wanted to try that out.

Here's what's coming:

• Search.
• Trackback. MT user know what I'm talking about.
• An all XHTML and CSS layout. Gulp, I really want to do it but I'm not sure it will work.
• A home for mini-reviews.
• A redesign for the photos site

Yay, change is good. And since I like this design, I'm just upgrading instead of starting over. Whew.

Posted in Site News | Comments (1) | |

12 am → Some Changes

As a result of the 2.5 release of Movable Type and my rekindled usage of NetNewsWire, I will be making some functionality changes to this site. There won't be anything incredibly different, but MiniReviews will receive its own page, finally. Oh, and this will all (hopefully) go down in the next week or so.

p.s. The Top 10s will likely go away or change form. Does anyone care?

Posted in Site News | Comments (1) | |

6 pm → Top Tens

I just finished a top ten, but I have decided that in honor of my last few weeks in Madison, I will roll out a few top tens related to Madison and college in general as a way to look back without writing pages of drivel about how I loved college and am nervous to move on but will do it because I have to yadda yadda yadda.

This plan will be better for the both of us. Oh, and it will gain a more prominent display (i.e. in the main section as well) during this time. Prepare for the first one at the end of the week.

Posted in Site News | |