New Homepage Now Exists

Posted on 2nd April 2011 in Something Daily

The idea occurred to me recently that I wanted to have a place online that functioned both as a portal and hub for my other online presences (twitter, tumblr, this) and as a networking tool for me to direct people to via word of mouth so they could get a look at my resume and portfolio. So over approximately the last two weeks, I put in the work to register the domain and buy the hosting, moving this blog to my own host as well as moving the domain name threestegosaurusmoon.com to here. I also just sat down last weekend and decided to design the homepage, which was surprisingly easy in light of the fact that this was really my first experience with CSS. The design part was easy and fun; the process of implementing the design across multiple browsers was not either of those things. Once I had a design worked out nicely in Opera, I tested it in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and….Inernet Explorer (don’t get me started). Basically, everything was a mess, since I didn’t know from experience what to avoid in the first implementation. But I had a five hour shift last night where I wasn’t doing much of anything, as well as access to a Windows laptop running IE9, so I had a great opportunity to iron out all the stupid horrible display bugs that it imposed upon my design, which worked more or less the same across all the other browsers I tested. Like I said, please don’t get me started on Internet Explorer.

Anyway, the nap I took yesterday before work enabled me to stay up until about 2:30 putting the finishing touches on emmettbutler.com, including the automatic emailing form and custom favicon and 404 pages. I also implemented a tagging system for the gallery of my work using (for the first time) object-oriented PHP, which is actually really awesome. Sometimes, when I don’t use OOP for a little while, I forget how awesome it is. But it is really useful. This is my first website, but I’m actually quite proud of it. And, in light of how easy it was to make (took me about a week without Dreamweaver or anything of the sort), I’m very open right now to the idea of doing freelance web design for people who need it. It’s exciting. So yeah, check out my new website. I like it.

Now I’m going to go buy that Four Loko skateboard deck and maybe some old computers, depending on the price. Bye!

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My Online Life Expands

Posted on 25th March 2011 in Something Daily

Today involved my first use of an API in any real capacity, as I used some websites I visit as examples of how to add Twitter and Tumblr feeds to a page. (By the way, I started a Tumblr.) It occurred to me today what I really want emmettbutler.com to be: ideally, it will be the hub of all aspects of my internet life. It’ll have this blog, my twitter, and my tumblr all represented in the form of feeds, as well as my resume, bio, and a gallery of stuff that I’ve made. In terms of these feeds I’m talking about, they’re surprisingly easy to implement – a lot more so than I expected. In the case of the tumblr feed, it’s actually just one javascript call that returns your ten most recent posts, and the twitter one is just two calls. Very nice. This is quite helpful in getting ready for the HackNY hackathon on April 9th, as I was looking for an excuse to learn practical applications of APIs like these (who am I kidding…I really don’t need an excuse). But to make a long story short here, as of today I’m starting to pick up steam on this personal website project. Also everything that I previously had on my roommate’s web host is now here on my own, so it’s certainly a good thing that I don’t have to keep directing people to emmett.ericsluyter.com. That was a little embarrassing. Not really though.

I once again haven’t really had a time since Tuesday in which I wasn’t doing anything productive, and that is continuing, as I’ve been either web designing, writing html, drawing a triceratops with aviators, or doing studio maintenance all day today, and I plan to continue this at work until I go to bed tonight. I will eventually burn myself out and be forced to take a break, probably. I’ll just watch a few more episodes of Dragon Ball Z. I’m going to see Eric’s show tomorrow at Gallatin, which should be super rad (and also something that’s not ‘work’).

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New Site – too bad it’s not doabarrelroll.com

Posted on 24th March 2011 in Something Daily

You may have noticed that this isn’t threestegosaurusmoon.com anymore. That’s because it’s not, I migrated the blog to my own web host this morning, and spent the day getting the URLs moved around and the theme working properly. I say that I was working on this, but really what it amounted to was me closing my eyes and randomly clicking around until the files were all on my server. The old threestegosaurusmoon.wordpress.com site still exists, but I won’t be updating that anymore – it’s here at emmettbutler.com from now on. The one big advantage I’ve noticed so far to being on my own server is that I’m now allowed to install plugins, which means that I now have a random post button; to the right, just below the “about me” section. It’s fun!

Also, as you can see, emmettbutler.com is now a thing. If you go there at this moment, it’s just a “coming soon” image that links back to right here, but it will, within the next six to eight weeks, become a glorious and fully-functional homepage for me, where I can keep all of my drawings and music and resume and all that. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, keep keeping it really real right here. Thanks for reading.

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