Guess who figured out the XML problem that was rising with the whole stupid Lightbox XML gallery … I did! It had to do with my WordPress installation not sitting on the root in which can be easily changed without the need of moving around tons of files and changing where things point too. Basically came down to moving ONE file over .. changing ONE location link and BAM we are in business .. Whats good sucka!

Test it out .. go down below and check it out. Click on the XML test down there.

For a while now it has been a dream of mine to expand my room into dead space that was rarely used by anyone in the house. Finally, the dream is coming true. A whole 12-13ft of length is getting added onto my room and new walls and ceiling are being installed.

Of course this is a process, which the first was demolishing a wall that separated my room and the dead space. The next step was to then strip the wall that had the baseboard heating attached to it and remove the old wood frame and replace it with sheet rock and a metal frame. The baseboard that was along that wall will just be re-applied to the wall again when it is put back on. That is probably the hardest part of this whole project is figuring out the wall and the baseboard situation.

Along with the walls being put up with brand new sheet rock we are installing a new ceiling to replace the plaster ceiling that is currently there with high hats in them already. We are basically going to be installing a drop ceiling with new high hats as well on two different dimmer switches. Essentially its going to transform the basement living area into an amazing new modernized room. Not only will it be more energy efficient in the fact that 1/2 inch sheet rock replacing 1/4 inch plaster and paneling to keep heat in the room but it will also be more sound absorbent. All in all the project when it is finished should be amazing.

Not to be left out, my girlfriend will be moving in with me (Melanie) and it will help us in the fact of saving up for engagement, wedding, and moving out in the future. As well as it will be great to leave my parents with another finished room for when I leave for them to enjoy and also up the value of the house if they choose to sell at a later date (which will never happen).

Here are some pics so far:

I am having a problem with the XML pop up of the Light Box coding. I don’t know why this is happening. I’m going to have to dive into the PHP pages inside this script and pick it apart, or is it the JS pages. Regardless it’s a pain in the ass. A lot of it has to do with the site auto forwarding to zooyorkfreak.com/main where the blog resides.

I’ll go through the WordPress Codex and fix that so it says zooyorkfreak.com in the address bar instead of zooyorkfreak.com/main, I have done it for other sites but i’ll fix it for this one as well.

Always the pain in the ass of trying out new scripts that you haven’t made yourself before pushing them to other sites. I really like the whole XML gallery thing. Soon enough.

This time im testing out it’s gallery possibilities.

image #1

Or I can do it this way:

With XML:

There is nothing like screwing around with 15 different ‘font-family’s or ‘line-heights’ to try to find the right one that looks great. Seriously it all comes down to what I like and want to present to the world. Of course if I offered a unsupported font in a very small size I wouldn’t attract much visitors would I? Not that I do currently but that is neither here nor there.

I read in many different places how ‘px’ is better over ‘em’ whereas ‘pt’ is better but can only be used for this and that, seriously when did it become a big cluster fuck of “hey my fonts better”? Quite honestly, I just want a smooth font that looks the same in browsers everywhere. Regardless if I pull it up on my iPhone or I pull it up on a 27 inch Wide Screen monitor, I want the site to look the same in all browsers and devices. You will never get it exactly alike but to get them all relatively the same is my goal which I think I have accomplished.

The only difference so far is the rounded edges on the sides of the posts and the menu area elements. I used the new CSS3 standards that are going to be coming out sooner or later. It uses the border-radius tag to create rounded corners effortlessly with only a line of code. Every browser will show it correctly except IE. Here’s the example:

IE (internet explorer) is the last to adopt anything that makes web designers jobs easier, so you basically have to always live with that. I didn’t want to go the whole route of creating 4 corners then jig rigging it to show them correctly in the code and make it so heavy. I opted for the ‘You should be using Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome’ to view my site in its full glory, if you use IE it doesn’t fall apart but doesn’t look as aesthetically pleasing as it does in the others. I’ll live, but if I was designing for a major site other then my own personal blog then it wouldn’t be an option to use these not fully adopted CSS standards.

Regardless I fixed all the code on the site for quicker load times as well as less code and cleaner CSS so the browser doesn’t choke at all, not like it was anyways to begin with. Welp, back to the books to turn out some other great stuff over at dirtydalerz.com as well.

Yup, totally re-code’d the whole blog. I just have to finish how posts show up and such, the big things are over small things just need some tinkering. I’ll do work. lol.

Want to see something that sucks, how about losing by fractions of a point in fantasy football now I have to win this last game in order to make the playoffs … ugh!

Yeah, I been doing nothing but going page by page through my CSS book from WROX. The one I half-assed through a couple months ago because damn there is a lot of stuff I can pull out of that book and put to use. The place I work at is implementing it as well and they are actually learning it all themselves. Mostly the ‘tables’ section, which I skipped to and read page by page.

CSS tables are seriously the shit. They render EXACTLY how you want them to render with a simple stylesheet. You can create the CSS stylesheet, specifically name things how you want them to for the future so you can change on the fly just through the sheet how you want the table to appear. Seriously, so kick ass and powerful. Thing is it just gets mind numbing all the things you have to remember and code you have to use over and over.

As mundane as it sounds its exciting to a geek like me. Learning the in’s and out’s of a web design language or any language is important and useful. I have custom tailored all my wordpress themes off of other people’s ideas. Now it is time for me to create one myself the way I want it all from the ground up with no help from other peoples codes. We will see how long that takes until I want to kill someone. lol.

I seriously rather be learning all this coding then doing other things in my life. I seriously LOVE learning all this shit. Sounds really gay, but it is fascinating to me.

Side-note, I’m growing out the scariest mustache ever. lol.

Welp, back to reading and learning.

… does time just fly by or what? Seriously, week by week the summer is almost over because we are coming up at Mid-July. Summer starts for me in June in my mind. June-July-August is the summer in my book. I can not believe it is almost over, and I really haven’t done much other then play a ridiculous amount of softball. I mean I love softball, and my teams started off rather slow but are now picking up and hitting there stride for when playoffs come.

This all hit me last night when the guy who runs our Sunday Night team (Mike) mentioned we only have 3 more Sunday Doubleheaders until we start playoffs. That just boggled my mind. Usually when Softball season ends that is a mark for the end of summer. Now on my Week-Night softball team (Dirty Dalerz) we are going to be playing in Late-August only because of so many rain outs this year. Still, that is right on que for my end of summer calendar. I just feel like its all breezed by so far. I don’t go out partying at much anymore, let alone do the beer pong on Thursday nights, so I guess I am less eventful?

I don’t know but it’s kind of depressing in a way. Lol, look at me getting all emo all over the summer coming to an end in my mind instead of thinking of the glass being half full in the case of the best of the summer having not happened yet. Ah, well. I’ll try to make the best of it either way.

It has defnitely been a little while since I have updated here, with good reason. I have been trying to get a couple things off the ground as well as teaching myself a million new things. In my constant struggle to figure out life I’m simply opening my mind to everything it has to give. I find myself emersed in books and how-to’s that I work on immediately and then toss to the side. The thirst for more knowledge with my drive is kind of a bad thing in a way. There are only so many hours in the day to put these new things to use.

On top of all other things that have happened since I last posted (close family member death, still figuring out my energy/stamina problem, and softball season starting) there are just things in life that you need to take care of and put on the forefront. I have been doing a pretty good job managing all aspects. As well as giving up something I created ‘beer pong night’ at a bar that I made them a ton of money on and kind of not purposefully got neglected in treatment and feelings. I have scaled it back a lot, but I am loyal enough to bow out and leave a solution, where it leaves me still having a hand in it but not as much pressure that I had to endure over the past 3 years. I have to say I have only missed 3 days out of the 144 nights I have had to work there, that is quite a feat for me if you know me.

If you look at it though, it explains my general feelings and drive in life. If it is something that interests me and I have created as my own then I am all for it and project it as an image of me. I ran things so smoothly and had it down to a science to only which I really could figure out (with the help of my brother Tom and Nacho). I look back at it and say “Wow, I really did something great for very little in return because It was something I called my own and represented me”. I took crap pay and I put my integrity and image above that. Another reason I did so was out of respect to the guys who gave me the job. One is no longer there and one is there every once and a while and I totally respect and love those guys and would go as far to say they are friends/family to me. Regardless, a common ground was reached and things corrected but too late? Maybe. I still feel as if I need to have a hand in it somewhat because 1. I own equipment used so I have vested capital, 2. I don’t want something I created to become chaos. I won’t let it go down in flames, because it is my own creation.

Well that aside, can’t promise daily/weekly updates but will keep this on my mind to contribute too.

Found this on some other site .. thought I would borrow it for the sake of spreading around the wealth of such a great guide.