web-goddess

Category: Computers

  • Domain name change

    Please note if you were using the old web-goddess.co.uk URL that that domain name has finally expired. You can update your bookmarks to web-goddess.org. Thanks!

  • Start preparing your acceptance speech, Ms. Kidman!

    She’s a shoo-in to win, according to the entries I’ve received for the Oscar Contest. Check out those nifty pie graphs! Those images are all generated on the fly by PHP from the database tallies. There are some surprises in there. Like, I can’t believe how many of y’all expect that Big Fat Greek Wedding woman to win. Yeah, I know it was a big cultural thing in the U.S., and it did okay business over here, but I never thought of it as Oscar-worthy. Maybe it’s because most Australians actually know real Greek people… 🙂

    (Also, some people might want to re-think their tiebreaker guess. You’re supposed to predict how many extra minutes the show will run beyond the allotted time, not how long it will be overall. A couple people had guesses up around the 3-hour mark. Just e-mail me if you wanna change yours…)

  • Simpsons Valentine

    You know, all the thank you’s I’ve been getting have been great, but I’m thisclose to taking the damn Valentine down. There are still jerks sucking up my bandwidth despite me asking three times now for them to stop. I’m sorry to punish everybody for the actions of a few, but I’m now looking into barring all external image serving permanently. For now I’ve just renamed the image… for the third time. Do I sound frustrated and bitter?

    Update: I’ve used .htaccess to block all external image serving. If I was hosting an image for you and it’s now appearing broken, let me know and I’ll add it to the exception list.

  • OmniWeb

    You Mac OSX users should go download the 4.2 beta version of OmniWeb. Still no tabbed browsing, but it’s got a new feature that I’m loving: a “zoomed” form editor. Basically, wherever you have a text box on a web page (like where you enter comments on this site), there’s a little button near the scroll bar. Click it and up pops an editing window for you to enter your text in. (It dynamically updates on the page itself.) So when you’re entering large amounts of text, you can have a full-size window and don’t have to keep scrolling. I’m really amazed nobody’s thought of this before. I was heeding the siren call of Safari, but OmniWeb has once again reeled me back in…

  • Comments

    I just fixed a tiny bug in my “Roll Your Own” PHP comment system. Basically I had a random “)” on line 45 of comments.php. If you’re trying to implement the code and that line’s giving you errors, that’s probably the culprit.

  • Chairs

    My office space

    The Snook and I had a visit from the Office Supply Fairy this morning. The new desk chairs we ordered last weekend have finally arrived! This is a view of my office work area right now. See the black chair over on the far right? That’s the crappy IKEA one we bought months ago. It’s still brand new. You know why? BECAUSE IT HURTS YOUR ASS. Seriously. It’s the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever sat on (including picnic tables and the stationary bikes at my gym). Recently we’d been using the wooden chairs that came with my desk (technically a table), which can be seen sitting on either side against the wall. They’re pretty uncomfortable too. I made some stylin’ little red foam cushions for them, but it didn’t help a lot. Now we’ve each got our own Cogra Task Chair, which are comfy and rolly and supportive and everything else you want a work chair to be. Plus I think they look kinda tomorrow with that aluminum base.

    Edited 14/04/2025: Link is dead and not archived.

  • ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!

    I just lost the last two weeks of database work I did on the project I’m contracting. “Upset” doesn’t begin to describe my state at the moment. “Frantic and wailing” is more like it. If anybody needs me, I’ll be drinking my face off for the rest of the night before trying to pick up the pieces tomorrow.

  • Bookworm

    Bookworm is my new obsession. My highest score so far is just over 150,000. It’s also sucked two hours of my life away. Be warned – this game is extremely addictive!

  • Still broken

    My server’s clock is still horked, which is messing up the number of posts on this page as well as the recent comments box. I’ve raised the issue with Support again, so hopefully it’ll be fixed soon. Sorry about the inconvenience!

  • Children’s UX

    Jakob Nielsen has a new report on website usability for kids. Since I myself run a site geared towards children, I read it with some interest. Unfortunately it confirmed my worst fears. Kids want bells and whistles. Kids don’t like to read. Kids don’t get hierarchical navigation. All of which means my site is one big usability nightmare for them. Honestly, though, I sorta knew that would be the case when I designed it. I had to think about the adults that would visit the site too, though. I also wanted to make it clear that my site was about information, not pure entertainment. I mean, compare my site to the official one. That’s the debate right there. The official one is very flashy and whizzy and noisy, yet it’s also incredibly difficult to track down specific information about Dahl or his books. My site, on the other hand, is pretty much transparent about where everything is located. Which is better? Personally, I think challenging kids is more important than pandering to them. I’m not talking about making things deliberately difficult, but I’m not talking about making them totally simple either. Kids are gonna need to learn how to research someday. Why should I hand them everything on a silver platter? I want them to think and read and figure things out. I refuse to dumb down my site because little Johnny’s too impatient to click on the “Timeline” to find out Dahl’s birthday. This is where I think the flaw is in Nielsen’s study. Was he studying kids using websites for fun, or kids using websites for a purpose? Which type of site do you prefer?

    I think I might make a survey at my site to find out what the visitors think. Not that that will make me change anything, but I might as well know if I’m pissing them off.