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Occasionally I get the chance to stretch my web devel legs. It doesn’t happen much (though I’m trying to find more time for it), but it does happen. I just formally announce the redesign of the Midwest Faceters Guild website.
The MWFG is a great non-profit organization. Everyone I’ve met so far has at least been extremely friendly (especially Tyler Miller), most have been willing to share as much faceting information as I could handle (and then some). If you want to get into grinding pretty rocks, but sure to find your local guild or club & dig in — if you already know your stuff, share with a newbie!
As much as I like the thought that someone may post a challenging, insightful and brilliant comment to one of my posts, I have become completely fed up with having to delete loads of comment-spam.
Sorry guys, from here on if you want to comment on one of my posts, just email me directly. I’ll update my original post with your comment if it adds to the thought.
Update 6/9/05: I found a WP plugin which is supposed to eliminate comment-spam. I’ll relent a bit and turn comments back on for future posts. I ‘m still hoping for that single profundity you’re going to post that will make it all worth it. 
O.k., my latest project (other than the SAHD thing) has a facade online — check out Tob Gems. This is going to be my gemstone business site. Hopefully, one day, I’ll have some of my own cut stones on there. For now, it’s standard trade stuff for me — but not with standard trading materials!
None of the links work, but I’m considering this a final draft of the main page. Now the backend is going to get my attention.
What does “Tob” mean? It’s Hebrew for “good” — but not just any “good”. Tob is the word God used to describe creation immediately after He had made it and before the Fall. Using the Hebrew reminds me that what I am doing, in trade and in life, is subject to God’s approval. I’m not perfect, but my goal is to have God look at my business and say “It is good.” For now, that means developing a quality site.
More to follow….
I just updated my header image. This time, it’s an interference pattern from a Ceylon sapphire viewed through cross-polarized filters at approx. 30x maginficiation, darkfield lighting. Gemologically speaking, there’s nothing remarkable about this — interference patterns are pretty common, especially in natural sapphire. I just thought this shot was particularly pretty.
The header is, of course, controlled by a style sheet. I’m still struggling with CSS a bit, but it’s becoming easier. One thing I’d really like to figure out is a way to have the CSS trigger a PHP script so I can randomize the header images. I’m pretty sure the way to do this is to have the tag call a script rather than an image. I forget where I picked this trick up, but I’ve used it in development other places and it’s worked pretty well — I just haven’t tried it from a CSS style sheet. I’ll write it up if I pull it off and maybe if I don’t.
Though its something of a non-issue right now as I only have two header images and the children are pretty merciless when it comes to development time… speaking of which, I should be in the garden while they’re taking nap #1.
I decided to try WordPress as a backend. So far, it’s pretty slick & very trouble free. Set up was a breeze and the interface seems sane enough.
One thing that attracted me to this system (aside from the pricetage) is the fact that WordPress has decided to rely on the Smarty templating engine. I’ve found Smarty very powerful, though it feels like learning a sub-version of PHP sometimes. If you’re hunting for blog software, check out the WordPress website.
Before giving a stronger recommendation, I’ll see how I feel about the whole thing after a couple weeks.
