Asterism

Gotta Captcha'm all!

2008-10-05T09:18:00.001-07:00

So after deleting a grand total of over 27000 (27 THOUSAND!) spam comments of porn, drugs, and lord knows what spam links, I've finally gotten around to adding a captcha to the comments section. Take that, spambots! Take that, my hit rate count!

I predict that my advertising will now drop substantially past it's 4 cents a day rate now that I have cut off the only people visiting the site. Oh well.

You may now browse, spam and porn free, my friends.

Spam Comments

2008-06-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

Urgh. So I decide to check in on the comments to make sure that no one's been posting spam in them in the past few months. Guess what? They did! Faantastic! Nearly 400 comments filled with linkspam have been deleted. Fun stuff.

That does explain the odd flow of traffic to a site that hasn't been updated properly in a long time...

Jerks.

Moving on Up

2008-05-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

Alright. I haven't updated in a bit, but I promise I will soon, once I have some things worth updating. I've got some poem ideas juggling around in my head, if I'll give them heed, and a sketch waiting to be monumentally cleaned up (I cannot, in fact draw hands or feet in perspective that well).

Hey, if anyone out there is playing Mabinogi, then look out for Reilaos on Mari- that's me.

And now you know what's been distracting me from anything productive.

Did you know that this, a site -titled- asterism, only shows up on the third page of google results for it? It's not even the one at the new, proper domain, but the old one at the X10Hosting subdomain! But it used to be on page for, and now it's on the middle of page 3. Look on the bright side- we're moving on up.

I'm think I might also eventually recode the silly PHP/MySQL tables in the content management system so that media and the gallery pages are the same one, since the code's more or less exactly the same...

Domain has been registered!

2008-04-25T18:19:00.000-07:00

So yeah. I looked at what little advertising revenue I get, and decided that I could just barely not break even to jump for a decent domain name. Seeing as asterism.com cost ten THOUSAND dollars, and asterism.net is in japanese (I think. Don't remember), I settled for 'www.asterismstudios.com'.

And after filling out a few forms and waiting for GMail to get over whatever error it was having this morning, and then waiting for everything to settle down into the new configurations, my own Asterism site is now comfortably settled as Asterism Studios. This may or may not be a fallacy, depending on your definition of studios. And this may or may not call for a change in banners to reflect the URL. I hope not, though.

Get a domain name? Also: Test.

2008-04-15T17:41:00.001-07:00

I promise I'll finish uploading things soon. In the meantime, I'm thinking registering a domain name (the advertising seems to be going at a rate to just barely not cover the cost). Unfortunately, asterism.com is taken (and up for sale for $10,000 dollars), whereas asteri.sm costs 50 Euros (like, 70 ish dollars) a year. I'm thinking of asterismstudios.com. Maybe.

In an experiment with my layout and Google indexing, I am now going to link from this post to a category link in my gallery, and see if it'll index that. For the moment, most of my site is unseen by Google, except the ones I've linked to in the news posts...

Changed front page (again!)

2008-03-31T22:07:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this, that means you've clicked the news links at the side of the Asterism's newly changed front page! That, or you've somehow stumbled upon my blogger account. Either way, there's been some changes.

I've removed the twitter from the front page, moved the news updates to where they used to be, and added a random image/poem to the front page, just so people get a better idea of what the website is about. Well, it's not quite random. It'll only display things I deem worth of the front page.

When I get the free time, I'm going to code automation into the 'Viewings" section as well. Maybe internalize the blog into the website, instead of using Blogger and RSS parsers to do it.

Comments, Headers, and Notes

2008-03-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

New, improved header! It's centered!

Check it out! I've made it so that you can comment on things in the gallery!

I've also coded support for multiple pages of gallery stuff, though you won't see that in effect, yet, since I don't have enough gallery items to actually need more than one page. I'll be remedying this eventually.

New philosophy notes are being uploaded as you read this, or already have been.

Layout changes and comments

2008-03-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've reverted back to 1000-ish pixel layout, because I liked how the ads framed the right side better. I've also shuffled things around a bit on the front page- the updated items are now at the top, instead of on the sidebar, they take up less space, and now they give you a preview of what it is when you mouse over them, if it can. There are now only two news posts on the front page.

I'm also going to work on a way to post comments on each of my things, and even possibly apply my gallery system to the media page.

Expect a better looking header in the next few days. This one doesn't quite line up with the website, and doesn't quite seem as sharp as the rest.

Altered Layout!

2008-03-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Upon changing to Project wonderful, I decided to put multiple ads instead of one large skyscraper ad, because they had no option for a skyscraper of the same dimensions made out of smaller ads. It looked strange when I was done, and I decided that since the right sidebar was meant to balance out the page, and didn't have much justification in being there if it was going to be mismatched, that I should just scrap the sidebar altogether and put the ads in the left one.

While I was at it, I fiddled with the site layout in general to make it fit into a 800 width, rather than my 1000-something width, so now older screens can fit it all. I don't like it quite as much as the old layout (except for the lack of a huge ad-dedicated column), but I think I'll be able to touch it up to look better soon enough, and now it's closer to being same-ish across the board.

More Updates!

2008-03-18T17:26:00.000-07:00

I've made the switch to Project Wonderful. Go put ads up! It's free (until someone actually bids something higher than $0)! Secure one of those boxes on the side and you'll get that corresponding slot on every page for that ad!

Also- I'm using a new RSS parser, though you might not see the difference (except with the Twitter feeds). The old one decided to break overnight, and not come back, and this one is more flexible.

I've updated the About page ("Regarding").

Coming soon: mouseover previews for the update list over on the left of these news posts.

Poetry/Prose Added to the Gallery

2008-03-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

Coded text capabilities into my submission and gallery pages, so now I am fully capable of subjecting the internet to my creative output with ease (with the unfortunate exception of animated .gifs- I need to upload the images and update the database by hand for those).

Also, I will soon be changing over to a new ad system- Project Wonderful, rather than Google Adsense. Even if it doesn't earn any more money than the 38 cents that Google has garnered me (which I shall never, ever see), it'll be interesting to see who would actually bid to get the spot. I am just waiting for approval.

Gallery Functional!

2008-03-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

After sporadically working on it for the past two days, I've finally fixed up the Gallery page, now entirely MySQL, PHP and CSS based.* I've also rigged together a page for me to submit my stuff to my own site, which eases things up in the long run. Yay! It's not the most elegant of codes, but it works, for now, provided I don't try to do certain things which will make the database unhappy with me. I'll load more content up and maybe pretty up the actual interface tomorrow.

I've gone ahead and nixxed the Writings page until I've got it up and running as part of the gallery page. Cut down on the links in the header, you know?

*That is, of course, except for the Javascript used for handling the menus in Internet Explorer, which continues to be the slow child in the web browsing classroom, and the Adsense Javascript, which will take something around a generation or two to actually get Google to pay out.

Oh, and you might also notice that the menu bar at the top may be weirded out over the next few days. I'm redoing it for more minimalistic goodness.

Still working in the gallery...

2008-03-04T17:54:00.001-08:00

Started learning how to deal with MySQL to give myself a complete set of internet tools to work with. I might merge the writing and drawing sections into something like 'viewing'. Also, the more I deal with these, the more I realize that I'm more or less now making a (very) rudimentary CMS. But I can't work on the site too much this week- my classes seem to be bent on getting their stuff out of the way before spring break this week, so I'm caught up until then. Maybe I'll get it all done next week.

Mission (almost) Complete!

2008-03-01T18:57:00.000-08:00

I've pinpointed the problems in my IE compatibility! Anyone who looks at this in Internet Explorer 7 should see approximately the same thing as the rest of them, give or take a few pixels, now.

Also, the gallery page (Drawings) backend is now up. You won't find anything in it yet (I'm unsure how I'll organize everything still), but the coding is in place for a basic gallery. I'll probably redo the entire thing once I figure out databases, anyways. If you want to check out something before I actually set up links, head over here.

I've also set the UTexas Asterism site (webspace.utexas.edu/fli58) to redirect to the new one (asterism.x10hosting.com).

Moving In

2008-02-28T18:12:00.000-08:00

Okay. The (not even) two or three of you who're taking a look at the website are probably doing so on the version of the site I have on my UTexas webspace (which will redirect to the new webspace when I'm done). Well, work on the PHP-based version of the site has gone underway. The Javascript and IFRAME reliance is gone, meaning that web crawlers can freely... crawl my web.

Due to overwhelming demand from a third of my viewerbase (I'm looking at you, Kevin), I made sure to make the site compatible with Safari (the Windows version, at least). Unfortunately, it looks like someone went and hit something vital on the site when viewed in Internet Explorer- it refuses to render what it had previously rendered. Here's to hoping MSoft makes good on their promise for a compliance-mode in IE8.

As I write this, all the pages I had up on the old site are now up and running (except for IE users) in new, spiffy PHPness (heh). You won't notice the difference, but it's a lot easier for me, now.

Host Jumping

2008-02-27T08:01:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've actually found a PHP-offering free webhost, with no ads. There's some stipulation about forum activity and activity in general that I have not yet looked into, which will probably come back to bite me, but it looks promising so far. Soon enough, we'll see a complete website up and running there, and the utexas page will redirect to it, since I like the .edu URL. Soon, we shall be free from this hack together of Javascript and IFRAMES in favor of server-side includes. I hope.

Also, maybe Safari users won't get screwed this time around. Strange how two ACID passing browsers render this page totally different. I blame IFRAMES.

An Explanation

2008-02-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

For those who found this magically through Blogger and not through the personal site it was made for, this blog might not make too much sense. I am basically using this Blogger account to manage news posts for my personal website, Asterism (edit: new site is here) which is, in turn a repository for my 'creative output', which is really just the parts of my creative output which I deem anywhere near suitable for human palatability.

At the writing of this post, though, large chunks of the site are missing, namely the text-based (Musings) and pictures (Drawings) sections, as I haven't really figured out how I am going to format layout of the latter nor figured out what to put in the former. The main problem of the drawings section is getting the Ads to pick up on the comments I put on each thing without simply mashing all of the silly text bits onto the HTML file or giving them all their own separate pages...

Oh no. He's gone and made a blog.

2008-02-21T17:36:00.000-08:00

Well, because it's all the more spiffy and easier to archive using a blog for my news posts rather than hand-code my index page every time I want to tell you about an update, I've gone and set up a Blogger account with my already-existing Gmail one. Yay. The problem with that is that these news posts will no longer be readable by those Google ads on the side of the page, so they'll have a jolly old time trying to figure out what they should post. It shall be amusing to see what they'll put up there. It's not like the 0.2 people who look at this site who aren't me click on the ads anyways.

On another note, I've uploaded my philosophy notes to date. If there is a problem with this, I will gladly take them down. I don't see any reason why there should be a problem though, since we can freely give notes to sick people, and it's not like I'm handing out test answers...

I've also made one less dead link on the page. "Recordings" now actually leads to a page. Next step is trying to think of a suitable layout for image posts (do I really want to make individual pages for each one, or should I javascript it? I'd do the latter, but the same restrictions of javascript from before apply). Writings is slightly easier, though I don't really have much to put up there (what, do you want my old, high-school poetry?).