Getting My House In Order

If anyone has happened to drop by my website, www.andymercer.net, recently, you'll find that a lot has been happening. The RMA website finally got moved to it's permanent location, then I got my own design up and online. To get it up quickly though, I did some lazy coding and used a template for almost every page. Over the past week, I've been fixing this, and last night I was ready to transition to the finished version.

I decided to use the opportunity to totally uninstall WordPress and reinstall in a sub folder, as part of a general housecleaning of my root hosting folder. Everything is now nicely organized into subfolders under public_html, with corresponding subdomains.

public_html/www = www.andymercer.net
public_html/development = dev.andymercer.net
public_html/smartsearch = smartsearch.andymercer.net

And so on and so forth. This will make maintenance easier in the future because everything that isn't part of the primary site is separated from the WordPress installation.

The final point of order is this blog, which I will expand upon in the next day or so.

Shift In Focus

Over the years, this blog has been somewhat of a scattershot of topics. Initially, it had a very political/civil liberties focus, but that branched into more theoretical topics, such as ethics and philosophy. As I moved into web development, and WordPress, those became topics of greater frequency. And scattered throughout have been posts on music, humor, and even poetry I've written.

You may have noticed that I haven't posted much about politics for some time, and the reason is that politics has become increasingly depressing to me. We live in a society which increasingly embraces constant surveillance, in which we daren't videotape a police officer out of fear of retribution. A society in which we can be sent to prison for shooting a home intruder who invades without a warrant or even warning, just because they happen to have a badge and made a mistake on the address. There are some bright spots. Marriage equality has won. The falling tree may not have hit the ground, but gravity took over years ago and the conclusion is foregone. But in almost all areas, the world has become a scarier and more depressing place.

I also don't write about civil liberties as much, because I have grown increasingly disillusioned and fed up with all sides. It is absolutely wrong to judge someone for the color of their skin, or for the person they love. But that cuts both ways, and as someone who has been judged for being a white male by my supposed allies, my willingness to get involved has decreased over time. Yes, I understand that I have white privilege, and any automatic judgement I get for my skin is nothing compared to the judgement that a transgender person of color gets. But time and time again I see a level of automatic hate coming from the non-cisgendered community that almost approaches the level of hate (that I've fought against) from the fundamentalist religious faction.

Which brings me to my final point. What I HAVE been writing more about recently is code. The beauty of PHP, of HTML, of CSS ... is that they are languages of utter and complete honesty, and logic. If you write something, it's either correct or incorrect. There's no debate, there's no hatred. Certainly people might have differences of opinion on best practices, or what browser to use, but in general it's a much more pleasant area to spend my time in. Additionally, the communities are some of the least judgmental communities that exist. No one cares about who you are or what you look like. If you can write good code, or design great UX, or even just come up with good ideas ... that is all that matters. WordPress contributors are from all around the world, and almost no one brings their societal/cultural baggage with them. Code is king, and I like code.

The Future

Recently I've been trying to find a new home for myself on the internet. A permanent one, based on my name. Andy.anything have all been taken long ago. Andy.com and Andy.net both aren't being used, and are even for sale. In the multiple thousand dollar range. Not happening. AndyMercer.com is unfortunately being used as a memorial page for an Andy Mercer from Florida who died in 2008. It's being maintained by a company who is run by the guy's uncle, so it'll be there, if not forever, for a a very long time.

I even looked into odd names. Ma.tt is currently the home of WordPress's founder. An.dy isn't possible though, because there is no .dy. There is a .er, so theoretically I could do AndyMerc.er. However, there are no companies selling that domain at the moment, and there are no plans for any other companies to start.

AndyMercer.net and AndyMercer.me both are second-tier choices, but both pretty good. I ended up going with AndyMercer.net because .net is a better known domain than .me. I have purchased .net (and given that it's only 15 bucks in the future I could always change to .me), and so I will be moving there shortly. I am going to be upgrading to a WordPress installation. Makes sense, given that I develop WordPress sites through Catstache Design, LLC. I'm really excited about the design of my new site. It's entirely from scratch, with heavy inspiration from several other sites which I'll detail soon. This URL will redirect to AndyMercer.net/blog, which will be the new URL of my blog until such time as I acquire AndyMercer.com or Andy.something (a long long time from now, if ever).

Anyway, stay tuned. The site is up and running on my internal server, and I'm getting the last few bugs worked. Should be up online soon. Thank you all for your continued support (support being reading, given that I don't do ads ... because screw ads).

New Code View

I've been working for the past day on integrating jQuery and user defined javascript functions, and finally figured out what I was trying to finish. Coming here to show off the results, I realized that I'm quite tired of scripts/HTML/CSS looking terrible. So I've finally gotten around to adding a special view for code, using the open-source Syntax Highlighter. Great code, and very useful as you can see below.

So on to what I was showing off. In the members section of the CESAC website, I'm building up a set of tools that will allow future webmasters to edit the site without touching code. The current section I'm working on is the members database. One tool in that section is an Add New page. On that page, one item is an HTML textarea, for the member's description. Since the description field in the SQL database is limited to 1000 characters, I don't want people putting more than 1000 characters into the textbox. I also wanted to give them a live updating monitor of how many characters they have typed.

I gave the textarea a class of 'new_description', and the monitor 'new_description_monitor'. Below is my initial script.

$(document).ready(function(){

  if      ($(".new_description").val().length < 1)    { $(".new_description_monitor").css("color","black"); }

  else if ($(".new_description").val().length < 1001) { $(".new_description_monitor").css("color","green"); }

  else                                  { $(".new_description_monitor").css("color","red"); }

  $(".new_description_monitor").text( $(".new_description").val().length + "/1000" );

  $(text).keypress(function(event) {

    window.setTimeout(function(){

      if      ($(".new_description").val().length < 1)    { $(".new_description_monitor").css("color","black"); }

      else if ($(".new_description").val().length < 1001) { $(".new_description_monitor").css("color","green"); }

      else                                  { $(".new_description_monitor").css("color","red"); }

      $(".new_description_monitor").text( $(".new_description").val().length + "/1000" );

    }, 0);

  });
  
});

It works perfectly. It annoyed me though, because I'm using the same code twice, once on pageload, and once each type a key is typed. I wanted to be able to type out the function once, then just reference it twice. So I dove into it, went through about 10 iterations, stopped by the jQuery forums for some help, and finally arrived at what you see below.

$(document).ready(function() {

  $("textarea").each(function(){ update_monitor('.' + $(this).attr('class')); });

  $("textarea").keypress(function(event) {

    var text = '.' + $(this).attr('class');

    window.setTimeout(function() { update_monitor(text);},0);

  });

});

function update_monitor(text)
{
  var value = $(text).val().length;

  var colour = (value < 1 ? 'black' : (value < 1001 ? 'green' : 'red'));

  $(text + '_monitor').text(value + '/1000').css('color', colour);
}

The function is declared and separated entirely from the main code. Additionally, this script will handle infinite textarea/monitors on a single page, as long as the monitor has a classname that is the classname of the linked textarea plus '_monitor'.
 

8000 More And I can Bust Out a Meme

I remember a while back I was browsing the stats page provided by blogger, and I realized I had just over 2500 hits (page views) total, since I'd started this blog several years ago. I felt pretty satisfied with that because I started this blog as just a personal journal of sorts. One where I could get my ranting out, or post things I'd learned.

Since then, I've actually been posting pretty often, trying to average one every other day. And I guess you all are interested enough to read. My hit counter for April just broke 1000. I'd been happy with 2500 over several years ... now we're looking at over 1000 a month. So thank you, all you nameless faceless readers out there. You just made my day.

Yet none of you ever comment or give me feedback ... Ya just look and then leave. Say something once in a while! Speaking of which, a good topic to give me feedback on is the lock of my blog. I'm considering switching to a modern theme. I took this one up back a long while ago, and have since edited it to make it wider. It's not even offered anymore, and it's quite out of date. Yet I like it because of the simplicity. Any thoughts?
 

Hello Out There

When I started this blog, I figured that the cloak of anonymity would hide me pretty well. How many people are going to look at it, even on the internet. And for the first several years it was true, I'd average 20 or 30 hits a month, probably half of them being me.

Over the past year though, the numbers have been going up. In fact this month I almost doubled the past highest, from 417 to just over 700. While still nothing huge, this is far beyond me or my friends, so some of you out there must be people I don't know. It's to you that I send this greeting! Thank you for stopping by and spending some of your time here with me. I hope that what I post entertains or educates you.
 

Post 100!

This year has been pretty intense for this blog. In 2009, it received only 12 posts from your's truely. In 2010, I upped that to 18 posts, making a grand total of 30.

2011 though, has seen my flighty forget-about-you-for-months attitude towards this blog change into one of lets-actually-post-regularly. The changes are pretty self evident, as this post you are now reading is number 70 for the year. (and we're only halfway through!)

100 posts, read 'em and weep. Been a long while, and while I doubt I'll break 200 any time soon, I can say with certainty it won't take the 2 and a half years that 100 took. Thanks for readin', folks, we've got a long way to go.
 

Wider Blog

So a while back, I wrote a post explaining why my blog was so narrow,and why I wasn't going to change it. Well ... I changed it. The reasons or leaving it narrow, accessibility for people will smaller screens, still exist. However, I finally decided it wasn't worth it anymore, because it was narrow that I had to shrink every photo and make all youtube videos a special custom size.

Another reason that was delaying me was the template I have. I really like the way it looks, it's nice and simple. But it's also no longer offered, because it's so old, and I was hesitant to change it, fearing I wouldn't be able to get it back. However, I realized that I have the option to manually edit the html of the template, so I just went in and increased the width myself. I think it looks better, and will be easier to use in the future. Any thoughts? Yay, nay?

Edit: Finally finished resetting all the video sizes to fit the new width. I think they look better, though it seems to dominate the text.
 

Narrow Blog

I've been asked a few times, 'why is your blog so narrow? There are so many templates now, why not choose a wider one'. The answer is accessibility. Sure my blog is narrow when you are viewing on a computer who's screen has been set to huge resolutions. On a computer with traditional 1024 by 768 though, it fills up almost the entire screen, with a bit less than an inch on either side.

I keep the narrow width because it's better to have it too small than too large. At least the whole page is visible. If it appears too large, the user must horizontally scroll, which is a pet peeve of mine. And if you find it too small, you can just hit Ctrl+. (Firefox should even save your preference for this specific site, so others will not be zoomed but when you come here, it will be)
 

Monetize

So, I've been examining all the options on the Blogger Dashboard, and found this cool "Monetize" tab. It simplifies adding ads to my blog, so that you all can click, and I can make money.

Yay ..... not.

I hate ads. I hate viewing them. I hate having them even on the page. Ads are annoying. So, I am going to do you all a favor and Not monetize my blog. No annoying ads.

What about the other blogs, which do have ads? I can't control them. What I can do though, is tell you how to get rid of the ads, from your own end. Let me introduce you to a beautiful little thing I like to call AdBlock Plus. It's a Firefox addon, that blocks ads. It blocks picture ads, it blocks Java ads. Even blocks Flash ads. It's quite nice. It even blocks the ads on the side of Facebook. Here's a preview of how it handles the PCMag website.

















I'd recommend this, it's a nifty little addon that makes the web nicer. Granted, in a way, this whole post is an advertisement. Yay for irony.
 

First Entry, Lets Try This Out

Okay, my first blog entry on here. I'm not really sure what all I'm going to use this for, be it a specific theme, or just random. However, since it will be linked as part of the site, it will have something to do with living as a rational anarchist.

Speaking of which, I was thinking about that the other day. How does one translate the ideals of rational anarchy into real life. I have been playing the game Nations, on facebook, and in making decisions, I've found that many times, I actually do something that ideally, I should not do, because it seems like a good idea. I mean, for a normal person, living as a rational anarchist is easy. As Heinlein said, I am free, because I know that I alone am responsible for my actions. I do what I wish to, but I do so knowing full well the consequences. Translate that into the real world, I would think of it like, a balance. I know that if I do something which breaks a law, there will probably be consequences, because, the government is more powerful than I am. So, if I felt like doing something illegal, I would just balance it out against the consequences. Is it worth what will happen? If it is, I will do so, if it's not, I won't.

The basic idea to that rambling is, look at life rationally. Look at the consequences of your actions. If the good outweighs the bad, do it, no matter what other people, even the government say.