Website Launch

My personal website is now officially live. I tested it in Opera (Mac & PC), FireFox (Mac & PC), Safari (Mac), and IE7 (PC). There was a slight JavaScript bug in IE7 that I resolved today thanks to webdeveloper.com (see my post here). It turns out that IE7 does not handle <script .../> correctly. Instead, you must use the longhand closure <script .../></script>.

There are a few small rendering discrepancies across browsers, particularly in IE7 vs. everything else but I'm willing to live with them for now.

You may notice the dynamic content in the right side column of the about me page. This was done using a mixture of php and JavaScript. I plan to post those scripts on the website (in the hacks section) for public consumption. This was my first experience using php and I was impressed. It's amazingly easy to parse XML data and the library calls are straightforward. I imagine that if I did something more complicated, I would definitely need some sort of php debugger.

Website Header Reflected

From Mockup to Website

I've been using PowerPoint to mockup interfaces since I got into graduate school. This weekend, my goal was to implement my website ppt mockup in actual html (and learn php and CSS in the process).

Here's the ppt mockup:


Here's a screen capture of the actual site rendered in FireFox:


Time will tell whether this renders correctly in all browsers, FireFox and Opera seem to do fine.

Running SSH Server on Windows XP

This howto document created by the University of Waterloo on "how to setup the Cygin SSH Daemon on Windows 2003" is fantastic. Note that every piece of advice translated directly for me to Windows XP Professional (except for the keygen stuff which I don't use).

There was one thing missing, however, and that is to unblock port 22 in your firewall. By default, the Windows Firewall blocks this port. If you don't, the ssh server will be inaccessible from outside your domain. :)

NetFlix User Reviews

Recently, NetFlix has been actively promoting their user-created content. NetFlix allows users to rate and review movies and share them with public/friends. One of the coolest features is the user-to-user similarity rankings--e.g., my g/f has rated569 movies and has a 80% similarity ranking with me. The reason for this post, however, is that I recently rented Maria Full of Grace (which was fantastic) and I found the most current"user reviews" to be quite interesting:

The movie might have been OK except that there was non stop comentary [sic] through the whole movie... The comments told every small detail about where he met the actors, physical points he liked etc. I got a BIG headache and had to turn off the movie. Who cares where he met the actors, I wanted to see a movie, not hear about what it is like to make a movie.

and, from another user,

I hated it because the movie was in Spanish and I could not get it to speak English.

New Years Resolution Passed

This year for my New Year's Resolution I decided to gain 100 pounds of pure muscle. On Thursday, the 12th of January, I passed my goal. This is, mind you, without steroids or even Gatorade. This is simply the outcome of 12 days of hard work.

Next year, I plan to work on my other arm.

TechCrunch's Best of Web 2.0

I subscribe to TechCrunch's RSS feed. I found it to be one of the best news sources for up to date information on Web 2.0 and Mobile startups. Recently, they posted their best of Web 2.0 list.