Ever Shambling Onwards...

So, as I've mentioned in the past (and more recently in friends-locked posts), I've been rebuilding my website.

What I'm aiming for is a kind of group-blog / webzine kind of site. I'm quite specifically not aiming for an overall theme beyond "The kind of stuff that people writing for it are interested in". Basically, a geek interest blog. My plan is to try and do an "issue" a month, with each issue consisting of four articles. You'll be able to get at all of the articles at any point, but the four for an issue will be on the homepage for that issue.

I'm planning on having some very loose thematic ties between the articles in each issue... for Example, my plan is to make issue 1 something along the lines of "New Beginnings". I've got the text of at least one contribution - a gig review of the Fields of the Nephilim gig I went to last weekend. I've even sourced a couple of photos that are on a creative commons license, so I can use them in the article and on the site.

What I want

What I'm interested in is sourcing a three more articles for the first issue. The theme's mentioned above, and I'm interested in reviews, essays, fiction, artwork or, indeed, pretty much anything else. If I can't make it work in the site, I'll change the site. If I get more than three contributions, then I would either put them up anyway but not on the homepage, or I'd hold them back for a future issue.

No subject is too geeky, but if I end up with lots of articles on one subject, only one of them will go into a given issue unless they're very different in content or viewpoint.

I'm particularly interested in artwork or photography if it ties in with other articles or the theme of the issue, because then it can be used with the other articles. If artwork's to be an article on it's own, I'd like a bit of blurb to go with it that could provoke some discussion.

How I want it

I don't want people to just send me text for articles - I want people to let me know if they'd be interested in providing something for the first issue or for subsequent issues, and a rough idea of what they'd be providing.

If you're able to provide, comment here or drop me an email.

My webhosting provider has spent most of the past couple of years getting progressively more crap, and I'm seriously considering changing. Initially they were okay in a "so long as you don't need them to do anything more than just host stuff" kind of way, but their handling of email, spam filtering and the like has been a long running debacle. So I'm looking to drop them like a stone in exchange for another host that's not much more expensive, but looks to be considerably less poo.

So - anybody out there used hostmonster? Any horror stories? How about InMotion?

Anybody in these (facebook or LJ) parts use twitter? I've just added it to my strange amalgam of cross site social network horror, and now use twitter to update my Facebook status. I'm intrigued by twitter's ability to mash itself into other things, the fact that there are loads of widgets out there that can be fired from appropriately formatted twitter updates and the fact that twitter lets people reply to my updates...

I'm on there as the_eggwhite, by the way. There's an eggwhite there as well, which probably isn't me. If it is, I can't remember enough of the details I used to get it to send me my old password.

This article has some cool examples of how an end user (or mashup site) can take a page which has had it's information enriched with microformats, parse that information and present it in different ways...

It's stuff like this that reminds me why I like microformats!

It must be said, HTML 5 and the Web Forms 2.0 working drafts both intrigue me. Particularly the latter (which, when they're both mature enough, will be merged into the former), as it has stuff in it which would make my life so much easier.

It caters for proper combo boxes, for a start.

HTML 5 looks neat because it deals with a bunch of problems that most end users should never need to know about, but that will be rather handy for designers, developers and the small segments of the population that will need them.

Even if it does have the font tag in it. They have at least added explanitory text to that bit now... saying that it's only there so that HTML5 supporting browsers have a clear definition on how it should be handled if found, along with a quite strongly worded "don't use these" message.

Internet Explorer. Yes, both of you. Seven, and your deadbeat parent, Six.

I understand that you want to be special and unique snowflakes in a world full of conformity, but you're got a job to do and you're not doing it. Everybody else in the class understands - even weird little Safari & Opera at the back there!

What you seem to not be able to grasp is that one thing is contained within another in the markup, it is expected that it will be contained within it on the screen - even just a little bit. The anchor point should be inside the container, at the very least. No, not next to it a few pixels away - inside it! Near and Inside have different meanings!

Yes, I know you're doing it right over there. But you're using exactly the same code in these three other places, and getting it wrong. You've shown you can get it right... now why can't you do it more than once?

All I can think is that you're doing it on purpose just to get attention. Stop it. It's not big and it's not clever!

That's it! Go and stand in the corridor. I'll have words with you later.

Don't make me send a letter to your parents, Six, or your grandparents, Seven. Five-point-oh and Five-point-five have enough on their plates dealing with all the drool and constant falling over. They don't need you causing them trouble as well.

Edit: IE has been successfully slapped, and is now behaving.

Edit 2: I'm not sure WHY it's behaving, but it is. I used an analytical process to identify what the problem must be, then applied a fix for that. The fix worked, so I went in to clean up the root of the problem... and found that it wasn't there. I've successfully applied a very specific workaround that will only fix this specific problem. The workaround worked, despite the only possible root cause not actually being there. Sod it. It works - I'm going to leave it alone now. The CSS is clearly haunted.

So... My current employers are looking for a temporary replacement for me. The standard of applicants is... somewhat lacking.

Can anybody recommend good places to potentially get a stand-in web designer from? Agencies or suchlike? The idea is that they're going to get a temporary person in for 2-3 months whilst they find a longer term replacement.

You know, when you have a website that's driven by an access database which you occasionally freeze, grab a copy of and manually enter data into (hideous as that is...), you may find that it's generally adviseable to not delete said database. More accurately, it's best if you learn the difference between "copy" and "cut".

If you copy the database, then you'll be working in a new copy. This means that when you utterly fail to FTP it back again because you don't know how your FTP client works, at least the information that was there before will still be there.

If you cut the database then it won't be there anymore. This means that when utterly fail to FTP it back again because you don't know how your FTP client works, and in fact as soon as you cut the database in the first place, your entire site will stop working. This is your fault. Not ours. You rent server space from us - not support time. We do not have to support you for anything other than making sure the machine is running and has a network connection. You do not get to complain that our developer isn't here to hold your hand.

Gah!