Welcome
So, this is my chance to tell the world what a cool person I
am. And with all that pressure, I've put off updating my web page
until I could do something cool for it, with graphics and interactive
widgets and all that, but I never seem to have coinciding time and
inspiration (or, maybe I'm just not a very cool person after all!).
So I'm starting out by learning some Perl, Javascript, and
about server-side includes to
automate some links and updates, so that as I make changes I
don't have to change every linked page as well.
In fact, the web page you are looking at doesn't actually
exist as an html page. It is generated by a script each time
someone visits it. I set it up this way because I've collected
some quotes I like and wanted to use them. But I didn't just
want a page of quotes. So my perl script picks a random one
from the quotes file, inserts it into a basic web page framework,
and sends the whole thing to your browser. (Just keep
reloading the page to see more quotes.)
I did the silly little
images below. I'm no graphic artist, but I didn't want to
just swipe stuff I found on the web, either (well, ok, I started
the soccer ball with a nice image I found on the web, but I
modified it a bit, and if you pay attention, you'll see that
picture of me elsewhere on this site). I'll eventually
have images for each of my link categories.
My script also looks
for other pages that I have modified within the past
couple weeks and inserts an "updated" note below the image
(or text).
Check out the new Spiro-Graph
I've been coding. You'll need Sun's free
Java
Plug-in
(sorry - that was
the only way I could get the swing classes to load correctly! If
you know a better way, please
tell me). The SpiroGraph we played with as kids is made by
Hasbro -- I was really surprised by the number of SpiroGraph web sites I found
while trying to find that information! My applet's just in the
beginning stages, and I can see from some other sites that I've
got my work cut out for me.
to my (dumb little) home page...
Every island needs a whale skeleton.
-- Gerry Smith, volunteer with the Island County Beach Watchers, in "Crew rebuilds 33-foot gray whale; bones of mammal to greet shoppers", Seattle Times, 11/16/00
Click below to find out more about...
Enjoy your stay!
[email protected]
2/11/01