Handmade HTML -- 02/08/00

Today's workout

Three miles on exercise bike (eight and a half minutes) as warmup
Two mile run on a treadmill (plus one tenth mile warmup and two tenths cool down)
Brief workout with handweights

My posting yesterday at Pamie's site generated a record number of visits to this site... of course the screwed up html on my index and journal pages probably kept them from seeing much unless they were interested in ancient archives
What I'm wearing:
LandsEnd blue button-down oxford dress shirt
jeans
sneakers (technically hiking shoes)
I listened to Vivaldi all day:
Concerto in D for Lute and Strings
Double Concerto in B Flat for Obe, Violin, Strings and Basso Continuo
Concerto Crosso in C
Double Concerto in D Minor for Viola d'Amore, Lute, Strings and Basso Continuo
Concerto in G Minor for Violin, Strings and Basso Continuo
These pages are built with one hundred percent genuine handmade homegrown html.
When my daughter and I first put up our webpages, back in '96 -- which I guess is a long time ago in web years (or dog years) -- I had purchased an html editor. It was nothing fancy, just something I saw on the shelf in a computer store... it had a CD full of .gif files for backgrounds (which was the source of the sky and clouds pattern I have on my index page), some icons, etc. and a text editor that would insert html tags -- highlight the text, click on the appropriate symbol on the tool bar and it would insert the to do whatever you had requested to the text... bold, italic, etc., also would insert img src for .gif files, etc.
After working with that for a couple hours she turned to me and said that she could do that herself... and she began writing her own html... using a Laura LeMay book she taught herself things like mailto and forms and various other bells and whistles. And I wrote my own as well.
Okay, so this is essentially a text-based site, so what's the big deal in writing html... all I really ever did was just type in text with an occasional paragraph break or maybe an anchor tag for a URL link. I did add some photographs -- I've always been interested in photography, even played around with printing pictures when I was a kid (I mean literally a kid, like maybe ten years old... but although I have done darkroom work a few times as an adult, playing in the chemicals is not my thing) -- there were times when I was in my mid-twenties when I was taking vast numbers of black and white photos. But I digress (I was about to wander off into a discussion of various cameras, etc.)... So, anyway... I've added some photographs here and one of these days real soon now I'll be adding some more.
I've improved (I think) the appearance of the various journal entries by using tables (because text spreading across the entire width of the screen is, IMHO, a nuisance for reading) but I've not really done anything fancy with the html.
The problem is that I make typographical errors which I guess is no big problem when it's simply a misspelled word in my text, but when I screw up when typing a URL, then my links won't work.
so my Jan 15th entry was impossible to reach for a few days
so recently I discovered that some of the links from my little calendars of days with entries were bad links because I put a dot instead of a slash between the subdirectory and the file name -- a dumb error that was replicated for two or three weeks because I kept copying and pasting snippets of bad code and changing only the date number in the file name, not even looking at the full thing. (The links from the list of entries worked, but not from the calendars)
and then I discovered (or, rather, had it pointed out to me by a reader -- thanks, skatterkat) that I had inserted an extra character into my file names in the links. Same cause... I typed it incorrectly once and then just kept copying that and changing one character in the file name without ever actually reading it. (This time the calendars were working, but not the February entries in the lists.)
What I've got to do is check my own webpage to make sure it works. I've been avoiding accessing my page since I added all of those counters because I didn't want to skew the data... but I think I really should make a point of doing a QA test every once in a while... especially since I tend to use Netscape but our machine at home has both Netscape and IE on it and I should check to make sure things look okay in both browsers. Yeah, so geocities provides a preview of the page, but that's not the same as actually testing links, etc.
And I guess it wouldn't hurt to eyeball check my code as well...

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**Handmade HTML -- 02/08/00**
Today's workout Three miles on exercise bike (eight and a half minutes) as warmup Two mile run on a treadmill (plus one tenth mile warmup and two tenths cool down) Brief workout with handweights My posting yesterday at Pamie's site generated a record number of visits to this site... of course the screwed up html on my index and journal pages probably kept them from seeing much unless they were interested in ancient archives What I'm wearing: LandsEnd blue button-down oxford dress shirt jeans sneakers (technically hiking shoes) I listened to Vivaldi all day: Concerto in D for Lute and Strings Double Concerto in B Flat for Obe, Violin, Strings and Basso Continuo Concerto Crosso in C Double Concerto in D Minor for Viola d'Amore, Lute, Strings and Basso Continuo Concerto in G Minor for Violin, Strings and Basso Continuo		These pages are built with one hundred percent genuine handmade homegrown html. When my daughter and I first put up our webpages, back in '96 -- which I guess is a long time ago in web years (or dog years) -- I had purchased an html editor. It was nothing fancy, just something I saw on the shelf in a computer store... it had a CD full of .gif files for backgrounds (which was the source of the sky and clouds pattern I have on my index page), some icons, etc. and a text editor that would insert html tags -- highlight the text, click on the appropriate symbol on the tool bar and it would insert the to do whatever you had requested to the text... bold, italic, etc., also would insert img src for .gif files, etc. After working with that for a couple hours she turned to me and said that she could do that herself... and she began writing her own html... using a Laura LeMay book she taught herself things like mailto and forms and various other bells and whistles. And I wrote my own as well. Okay, so this is essentially a text-based site, so what's the big deal in writing html... all I really ever did was just type in text with an occasional paragraph break or maybe an anchor tag for a URL link. I did add some photographs -- I've always been interested in photography, even played around with printing pictures when I was a kid (I mean literally a kid, like maybe ten years old... but although I have done darkroom work a few times as an adult, playing in the chemicals is not my thing) -- there were times when I was in my mid-twenties when I was taking vast numbers of black and white photos. But I digress (I was about to wander off into a discussion of various cameras, etc.)... So, anyway... I've added some photographs here and one of these days real soon now I'll be adding some more. I've improved (I think) the appearance of the various journal entries by using tables (because text spreading across the entire width of the screen is, IMHO, a nuisance for reading) but I've not really done anything fancy with the html. The problem is that I make typographical errors which I guess is no big problem when it's simply a misspelled word in my text, but when I screw up when typing a URL, then my links won't work. so my Jan 15th entry was impossible to reach for a few days so recently I discovered that some of the links from my little calendars of days with entries were bad links because I put a dot instead of a slash between the subdirectory and the file name -- a dumb error that was replicated for two or three weeks because I kept copying and pasting snippets of bad code and changing only the date number in the file name, not even looking at the full thing. (The links from the list of entries worked, but not from the calendars) and then I discovered (or, rather, had it pointed out to me by a reader -- thanks, skatterkat) that I had inserted an extra character into my file names in the links. Same cause... I typed it incorrectly once and then just kept copying that and changing one character in the file name without ever actually reading it. (This time the calendars were working, but not the February entries in the lists.) What I've got to do is check my own webpage to make sure it works. I've been avoiding accessing my page since I added all of those counters because I didn't want to skew the data... but I think I really should make a point of doing a QA test every once in a while... especially since I tend to use Netscape but our machine at home has both Netscape and IE on it and I should check to make sure things look okay in both browsers. Yeah, so geocities provides a preview of the page, but that's not the same as actually testing links, etc. And I guess it wouldn't hurt to eyeball check my code as well...

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