The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture.

I’d like to think that I normally post topics of substance, but given my current post-baked state, this’ll make perfect sense. Ragdoll Avalance II - just play it.

First, let me begin by saying that I’m not a programmer. I have always been, first and fore most, a visual artist; that being photography and Web/graphic design. But as the nature of the Web has changed (at least in terms for designers especially) so have designers methods of creating Web sites. Gone or going are the days of static pages. The world wants dynamic, data-driven content. And that means that designers, especially one-man-army designers like myself, have to learn some kind of programming language. The two-fisted combo of PHP and MySQL has become a powerful tool for Web designers. The ability to create dynamic, data-driven sites is exciting (I know this is gonna sound dry for some of you). You can offer your clients/potential customers more interesting content based on what they’re looking for. It also allows greater levels of interaction between user and usee (is that a word?). Both PHP and MySQL are open source and free. Both are readily available and installed on most Web serves these days. But Oracle is something else. It is another database language, and it does work with PHP, but it’s not open source and it ain’t free. It’s also not as simple to learn (in my opinion) as MySQL. So today, I had to create a dynamic, data-driven page that would work off of an Oracle database. It took me most of the day to get up to speed but at the end, as of right now, I learned it - I got it done, thank God. And I’d also like to thank Mark. Without his help today, I would surely be mad, raving and bald (from tearing my hair out) by today’s end. So, that was my adventure in technology for today. If you’ve got a funny or interesting story about your adventures in technology, drop a note in the comments section. Ciao.

One of the problems of big corporations is that they can tend to have inflated egos. They don’t need to listen to anyone - they’ve got tons of cash to throw at a problem (instead of fixing it). They don’t need to listen (everyone else listens to them). That is why, despite having tremendous resources, big corporations are just sink holes of time and talent. Check out this article on the Web Standards Project’s Web site about Disney and their Web site redesign. Warning! This post is for Web design geeks only. All others could pass out due to boredom.

It seems there will always be people who can’t behave themselves. Those who just can’t be civil - play by the rules. Now I’m not saying that I’m some sorta angel ‘cuz I know many of you would laugh yourselves to sleep at that notion. But I’m not a jerk, either. I keep a blog because: Read more this entry »

Today, I finally got some stuff up for the United Muslim Movement’s Web site: ummonline.org. I’m in the process of a complete site redesign for them but at least there’s something there. Mostly just waiting on content. The site will feature goings-on at the mosque as well as a Blog. Stay tuned for more.

I have just been livin’ lately. Not up to a whole lot. Met Leah and had lunch with her today. Talked to Ginger today. I think I’m going to shoot her; put her in the new book. She’s great. She’s got two different colored eyes! Pretty wild. She reminds me of my cousin Karen for some reason. So yeah, I walked over to the Weary today. Before that, I met with the Tech College to discuss implementation of Dreamweaver as their standard WYSIWYG HTML editor. It kinda sucks, really, since Dreamweaver MX has very poor support for CSS. This poor support results in the user not seeing the site in the preview mode correctly. Instead, the page is broken and it’s difficult to see where one can add new content. I don’t know what we’re going to do to fix this issue but an issue it’ll be.

I got all hot and bothered walking from the Weary to the movie theatre thinking I was going to be able to see Batman Begins only to find out that the movie doesn’t start for another week. They posted the wrong times in the newspaper. That’s a long way to walk in this humid weather.

I think I’m just gonna be on chill mode tonight unless Leah calls and we hang. Maybe do some reading and what not. Oh, by the way, yes, I have added a comment feature to the blog now. So feel free to leave your comments and stuff. Ciao.

I did a bunch of spring cleaning and revamping today of the Old Mac. Added yet another 80GB hard drive (have 2 80’s and one 40GB as the main drive). I also did a bunch of archiving with my new DVD Lacie writer. I took about 30 or so some CD’s and copied them on to a couple of DVD’s, hence making less clutter. While I was digging through old CD’s of crap I came across some really old stuff I had shot. There’s a bunch of really interesting early work. I will try and put it up for the viewing in the coming weeks. I’ve also been adding furiously to the music collection. I’ll update that as well as soon as I have time.

Perhaps this article can solve yer blues, greens and reds.