A fellow member of a forum I have been a member of since 2005, asked the community for a website critique. I checked out her site and found it interesting, in that I could look at it with a critical eye and see, in my opinion, what works and what doesn't. Although I hope my post helps her and her…
A friend I have been emailing back and forth asked me for my website address to 1 Foot in the Grave, or as she put it, “1footinthegrave”. I thought that was odd until I realized there are still a lot of people that don’t understand how some of this IT (Internet Technology) stuff works. My hope was that my answer to her would be enlightening, but as it turns out, it revealed to me just how poorly I understand it. And I’m a so-called webmaster. In case you don’t know, that’s not a braggadocious term, it’s a job title. It means I should know, but apparently don’t, how to get my own website on the first page of Google results (more…)
Nearly all the commonly used message boards allow the use of what is known as an “avatar.” These are the little pictures that you see next to the member’s names in the message thread. Many of the message boards I have been involved with offer a list of interesting avatars that you can set up in the user control panel. You can choose from a couple dozen or even hundreds of pre-selected avatars, or you can upload one from your computer, or point to one of your own located on your website.
Avatars are so popular and forums so prevalent that there are websites solely devoted to offering you a huge assortment of avatars. Some are free, some you pay for, some are plain and simple, some can be joined with frames and other image elements. They come in many sizes, but usually will not exceed the dimensions most common message boards allow. Here (more…)
I can’t believe I let this website nearly die. It has been over a year since my last post and I am still kickin’. I am doing better than this blog. My apologies to all of you thinking you shoulda never added it to your favorites or bookmarks. To show you my sincerity, I have finally given the site its own favicon – the little graphic you should see just in front of the address in your browser (browsers are weird – you may not see it yet, but you will when your browser gets around to it). It looks like a smaller version of the graphic you see over there on the left upper corner of this post.
My health has deteriorated, as is expected with a disease that is chronic and has no cure. But they adjust my medication levels and (more…)
“The Mad Modder” was a tag I picked up sometime in 2003. I was known as “Grump” for a long time – not an undeserved nick-name – and in ’03, I was hanging out a lot in case modding forums. I built the computer you see in the picture (click it to see a larger version) and it impressed someone at CPU Magazine and it was featured in the October 2003 issue and I became the first “Mad Reader Mod.” Of course, the title was derived from my nick-name and a few people in the modding circles began calling me “the mad modder.” I even got the domain name, The Mad Modder dot com, which at one time had a pretty nice forum – another one of those things I had to give up when I got sick. (more…)
Although I had planned for a long time to start a blog (I think I made my first effort in 1993 or 4), I had never decided on what script to use until just a couple days ago. I was actually looking for something that I could use for a Floor Pro Network so that my members could have their own blogs. I tried a couple things out and even settled on b2evolution. But when I installed that application and was faced with the configuration and other options, I gave WordPress another look. (more…)
Nestled in the nether regions of My Documents (this was either a Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Professional based computer) was a copy of the first blog post I ever did. Although this is February 2015, I time-stamped this at the same date and time this file was created. Click the image there on the left to see what it looked like back then. What you see below is word-for-WordPress. 😉 The only thing I changed was the email link at the end – it now links to my official contact page. Sorry. I know it’s bad, but remember, this was new to me in 2003 and still new to the World Wide Winternet back then. Enjoy.
It’s an official fad. I read about “blogs” in my daily newspaper, (more…)