webnelly.com blog

A New Direction

2009-10-13T12:42:00.001-05:00

My interests recently have started leading in a new direction, if not a new evolution, from what they have been in the past. But first, let’s recap.

Two Years Ago…
It was right around this time in 2007 when I was hitting my stride on the creative aspect of my web development. Up to then, most of my web work was related to coding and application development, while the launch of Ka'anapali Dreamin' was my biggest effort put forth in creating a content-rich site.

I was just back from our second visit to Maui, swamped with tons of photos I had taken, filled with the Aloha Spirit, and inspired to spend every waking hour I could on building a great online resource sharing our experiences with the Valley Isle. I like to think it was a success, and regardless of how many visitors there were and where I was in the search rankings, it was a labour of Aloha and a ton of fun to put together and maintain.

Yes, the site is still live and needs a fresh coat of paint here and there, but free time hasn’t really been in my favor for doing some of the site maintenance and enhancements that I had originally planned for by now. Which leads me to the next stop in our time capsule journey.

Last Year
By this time last year, I was in full swing on Twitter (@webnelly) and earning a tiny spot in the totally cool Hawaii social media ohana. Blogging is where my free time was now being spent, and I was setting goals for myself to try and write on one of my blogs at least once a day. Again, like working on and expanding Ka’anapali Dreamin’, blogging was a ton of fun, taught me a lot about myself, and fostered connections with people across the world.

For me, blogging always was a two way street, with about 80% of my time reading and commenting on other blogs and 20% writing for myself. With so many neat blogs and designs, topics covering all ends of my interests, and interacting with some great people made it very engaging and yes, addicting. My peak blogging rate was about 2-3 posts per day up to our annual trip to Maui in February (2009). There were a few mind/life changing realizations and moments during those 2 weeks in paradise that I won’t go into here, but my writing started to dry up to make way for a newer obsession.

Leading up to…

The Now
All signs seem to indicate that my newest passion started when we first stepped foot on Maui, but it took 3 more trips the islands, a handful of weekend drives up to nearby Door County, WI, some professional hockey games, our cute little rabbits, and a helicopter without doors to realize what was next in my life.

Photography.

That seems like an odd segue, doesn’t it? For the most part, that really sums it up, though. My first serious camera was a Canon EOS 20D DSLR that I purchased prior to our first trip to Maui in 2006. It was right there in paradise where I first fumbled with the controls and still managed to capture some great memories of our trip.

And that really was the initial intent of buying that camera, just to capture memories. Yet, after a few more trips to Maui, and finding more places closer to home to shoot, it became less about capturing memories and more about capturing images. Like other hobbies that have I have found challenging, I began to dive in deeper, read more, practice whenever I could, and push myself to get better. Which is really where I am today.

While I put up a small photography portfolio, photonelly.com, last year, it’s only been since last February where my seriousness and focus in this craft has taken off. I now had enough (in my opinion) beautiful images of Maui to start a “photo memory” site, Maui by Photo in July, and worked my [you know what] off to find and manage a second job over the summer to afford another trip to Maui for the Maui Photo Festival and Workshops just last month. That was it, I was officially bitten by the shutterbug.

What’s Next
My goal now is to just keep shooting, and practice, practice, practice. Stopping to think about it, photography fits nicely into many of the aspects that my other hobbies have also occupied.

I seem to have a knack for it, and really enjoy it
It’s challenging, and something I can continuously push myself to improve on
The technology and techniques are constantly changing and there’s always something new to learn
There are great communities around it, both online and in person
There are a ton of cool gadgets (okay, not a key aspect of all my hobbies, but fun none-the-less)

So now, instead of planning for site upgrades and blog posts, I am planning my own photo shoots and equipment budgets. Much like my the other hobbies listed here, I’m already immersed in photography to the point of saturation, and the feeling of being overwhelmed is pretty much an everyday reality now. On any given day, I have a ton more photos to go through, edit, and post than I ever have time for, and trading sleep and other activities for time in front of the computer is a regular negotiation in progress.

How Long Will This Last?
Seeing that I’ve been doing some sort of programming, either software or on the web, for more than half my life now, I’ve been known to stick with these types of things for the long haul. I can see photography making a strong stance in my daily activity for quite some time. At least for all the time, money, and effort I’m investing in this relatively new hobby of mine, it better stick around awhile.

If you’d like to tag along, or just read a little bit more of what I’m doing with a camera, head over to photonelly.com and check out my photostream on Flickr. Those two places promise to have a lot of activity in the coming months and years as I embark on this new journey of my free time.

Here’s to making a good run at it.
- Kris

My Latest Website: Maui by Photo

2009-07-06T12:54:00.001-05:00

About this time last week, I was launching my newest website, Maui by Photo. It’s sort of a photo blog that is aimed at other Maui fans and local residents alike to relive all their favorite memories of the Valley Isle and share them with everyone, using my photos as inspiration. I’ve already posted comments about the new site on my Maui blog and my photography blog, so I’m not going to re-type all that here as well. Eventually it will get added to the home page and my site portfolio here as well, but only when I’m not as super busy as I am right now (more on that some other time).

The blog here is supposed to be the stuff behind the scenes, and there are certainly a few things I’m doing differently with this new site that have me really excited. I’ll list a few below (call them teasers) and hope to dive into them each in more detail as the summer progresses.

Bye, Bye, Blogger
Okay, so that might sound a bit harsh, considering I have 5 blogs hosted at Blogger, but this new guy is running WordPress, installed on my server. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have all the source, database, and everything else at my disposal and not having to deal with FTP issues between my web hosts and Blogger. I’m really excited with what I’ve seen of WP so far, and the fact that there is a ton of stuff out there that I haven’t even scratched the surface of yet. Stay tuned here, because this is one of those big shifts that rejuvenates some of my older sites and makes them new again.

Twitter x2
With some of my recent work outside of my normal routine, I fell out of the Twitterverse for awhile. Now I’m back online regularly, and also am sporting a new Twitter account to promote my new site, @MauiByPhoto. This has given me new options and responsibilities in terms of managing multiple accounts (via TweetDeck) as well as starting from scratch and organically growing a follower base just like I did with @webnelly did 2 years go. Except this time, I don’t want to take 2 yrs to get 200 followers, and I get to be more open and engaging as a “brand” instead of my shy ol’ self. ;)

Now on Facebook
To compliment the new Twitter account, I’ve also creating the Maui by Photo page on Facebook, which was a first for me as well. Not only does this give yet another vehicle to promote my site, it presents new challenges and experience in the world of social marketing. It’s also giving me the chance to connect to new faces that I otherwise would not have found on Twitter, so another big plus there.

Unlike Twitter, however, I’m still new at the networking side of Facebook. My Twitter skills have had 2 years to mature, so it’s going to be awhile (although I wish it wasn’t) before my page’s fan count gets into the triple digits. Of course, if you’re reading this, maybe you’d like to have a look and maybe join, too.

Still More
Those are the teasers, but the entire process of launching the new site and treating it as a ‘brand’ really has my creative juices flowing. I have some big plans for this brand over the remainder of the year, and it will be a challenge to balance this with everything else I have started and have been working on. But then again, I never really have backed down from a challenge before.

Stay tuned for more details to come, and in the meantime visit the site, follow me on Twitter, @MauiByPhoto, and pay a visit to my page on Facebook.

Mahalo,
- Kris

March Blog Totals

2009-04-05T11:47:00.003-05:00

Back to blogging after a Maui vacation in February.

March Blog Totals

Ka’anapali Dreamin’ Blog – 24 posts
Kris and Cindy’s Blog – 4 posts
webnelly.com Blog – 2 posts
photonelly.com Blog – 33 posts
Total – 63 posts

Notes
63 posts in the month of March actually ties the top number of posts/month from back in December. This time around, though, it’s directly related to the daily photos that I’ve been sharing on the photonelly.com blog. While the daily photo posts have been consistent, I’m really working on getting back into a grove for the other blogs as well. The fact that our (my wife and I) personal blog hasn’t really been touched is a taunting me a little, and I still have so many things to write up here at the webnelly.com blog about some of the latest site changes and code-behind looks that I’ve been meaning to share.

Back to the photonelly.com topic for a second, our recent vacation has rekindled more of my interest in photography yet again, which always happens when we visit Maui. As a result, the division of my free time is somewhat changing to include more shooting, reading, and editing photos than coding and blogging here. Something that I’ll just need to make adjustments for I guess.

February Blog Totals

2009-03-10T07:12:00.002-05:00

Another month, another round of totals.

February Blog Totals

Ka’anapali Dreamin’ Blog – 31 posts
Kris and Cindy’s Blog – 4 posts
webnelly.com Blog – 1 post
photonelly.com Blog – 14 posts
Total – 50 posts

Now, February was a short month to begin with, and on top of that, we spent two weeks of it in Maui. I tried my best to keep blogging away from home, mainly about the amazing experiences we were having this trip, but I just couldn’t keep up and decided to hang loose and relax.

I also started a daily photo post each day over at photonelly.com. With so many new photos from Maui as well as a good sampling of other photos away from paradise, I should be able to keep that going for awhile.

Testing Windows Live Writer 2009

2009-03-07T07:48:00.001-06:00

A co-worker of mine, and brand new blogger, came across Windows Live Writer 2009 as a way to draft and publish new posts, so I decided to try it out. Even though it’s named “Windows Live”, it is intended to work with more than just Windows Live Spaces. I’m trying it out as a way to publishing to my Blogger account, and my friend has installed BlogEngine.NET for his blog.

This is my first test post with this software, and after I put it through it’s paces, I’ll share my findings (good or bad). I have been growing a little weary of the standard Blogger.com online editor for drafting posts and have even had thoughts of switching over to WordPress as well. We’ll have to see what and when I make any drastic changes like that.

Thanks.

January Blog Totals

2009-02-04T22:39:00.003-06:00

Until I have time to post a better way to list and track these numbers online, I figure I'd just post them here as a post.

January Blog Totals

Ka'anapali Dreamin' Blog - 33 posts
Kris and Cindy's Blog - 12 posts
webnelly.com Blog - 4 posts
photonelly.com Blog - 5 posts
Total - 54 posts

Looks like I'm still having cache issues on the Blog Calendar, too, which I'm not too happy about. Unfortuantely, I don't have a lot of time to fix it again.

Not only am I slipping on posting over at photonelly.com, I haven't been doing much with my photography as of late, either. That's all going to change in two weeks when we're on Maui, but I need to find time to stay on top of that as well.

New Mini-Site: Maui Photo Day Calendar

2009-01-28T20:23:00.004-06:00

On a whim, I decided to put up a mini-site to promote my Maui Photo Day Calendar Google Gadget. Nothing too special or elaborate, but I'm pretty happy with it for only about 6 hours worth of work. It's good to have an actual url (http://www.mauiphotocal.com) to send people to when telling them about it, or have others link to on my behalf.

The mini-site features a live preview of the gadget, with an option to add it of course. There are also exceprts and links to the different blog posts I wrote regarding the gadget to provide a little background. There are also links to a few of my primary sites, and at some point, I'll be adding a way to revisit the photos from the previous days.

So if you have a moment, stop by the mini-site and let me know what you think of the design.

Oh, and add the gadget and tell your friends.

Mahalo (thanks).

Social, Networking, and Social Networking

2009-01-19T12:07:00.002-06:00

I spent much of the latter part of 2008 committing my time to two popular social networks, Twitter and Facebook. While having somewhat different goals for each, I mainly ignored their differences out of what you might consider laziness and mostly treated them the same. I even installed the Twitter application on Facebook to have all my tweets sent over to Facebook, which I guess wasn't always relevant to my Facebook friends and vice versa.

After finally heading out for more ideas about using Twitter, I ended up at the blog TwiTip and ultimately at the post Twitter vs. Facebook. While most of the post was not new to me (although there was some interesting comparisons made), it was sort of the splash of cold water on my face that I needed to get me to realize, and treat, these two apps differently.

The Social

Signing up at Facebook was more about being social with current friends, connecting with maybe one or two of the few from the past, and not so much about finding new friends. I'm not doing too much on Facebook to network or promote any of my work online, and I'm okay with that. I realize there are some opprotunities out there to spread the word on my life online, and to some extent, it has brought some awareness to friends already in my inner circle about just how much I do online. Sure, there's a few jokes here and there, but I think it has brought about some sort of respect for my committment and knowledge of this little thing called the Web.

The Networking

By somewhat stark contrast, my use of Twitter has been mainly to meet new individuals out there with similar interests, goals, and habits online. Those interactions have been the more traditional sense of networking, in regards to exchanging information, samples of each other's works, goals, and strategies. While less personal than Facebook, I think this use of Twitter has offered examples of my work online to a further reach than just amongst my existing "real life" friends.

Different Sets of Friends

Interesting enough, but by no means surprising, I've ended up with different sets of friends at each of these online destinations. I already mentioned that my group of Facebook friends are essentially people in my life everyday, co-workers (past and present) and folks I've become friends with over the different parts of my life. My Twitter circle, on the other hand, largely consists of people in Hawaii, of all places.

The Hawaii part makes sense, though, because many of my waking hours for the last few years have been spent dreaming of Maui (at least when we're not actually there). My wife and I have talked about, and I have somewhat planned for, what life would be like in the next few years actually relocating to the Aloha State, and what types of changes that would need to bring about.

So in some sense of the meaning, the networking I do on Twitter with folks in Hawaii is all about learning what life is like there, making contacts, getting advice, and building a group of future "real life" (aka Facebook) friends should we bite the bullet and make the move 4,000 miles West. There is also a more immediate benefit to the networking I do on Twitter, and that is promoting my own Maui website. While there is no current (or likely ever) monetary focus put on traffic to my Maui site, I really enjoy the community and the interactions with our site's readers as well as participating in the communities found on their own Hawaii/Maui blogs.

No Crossovers

Since I work in a technology field, and many of my Facebook friends are co-workers, you think I'd have more tweeps spanning both of my networks. But the fact is, at the moment, I don't. You might also be of the opinion that Twitter is still techie-only (aside from the spammers) and that normal, everyday people haven't adopted it yet. But again, the fact is that quite a few of my tweeps have never written a line of HTML or JavaScript in their lives.

For now at least, it doesn't seem that any of my Facebook friends will be jumping on the Twitter bandwagon anytime soon. I'm kind of okay with that, although having a few IRL friends as tweeps might make it feel a little less lonely sometimes when I read about tweetups and local events in Hawaii that, for the time being, I can only bear witness to from afar. Someday...

What about "Social Networking"

I guess one subtle point in this post (somewhere) is that I haven't really found a happy medium between both the Social and the Networking aspects of my time spent online. I guess if I was more political at work and had the desire to keep in touch with the vast number of past co-workers I've had over the years (something along the lines of LinkedIn), maybe there would be more usefulness of combining both. At least at this point in my life (and career), I haven't had the need to play those social games just to get something back in return. Maybe others might think I do that already, but honestly it's not something I have doing consciously.

So I get back to it, is there really a place (in my life at least) to blend both aspects into a true concept of Social Networking? The closet thing I can think of right now would be in a few years if/when we take the plunge and move to Maui. By doing so, many of my current tweeps become my friends in real life, and a la Facebook. And then what? Who would I tweet with, then?

Hmmmmmm..........

Trying to Avoid Burnout

2009-01-15T12:44:00.003-06:00

Well, maybe I'm already there.

Took my first day off from blogging yesterday, mainly because I had lost most of the momentum I had going for the past few months. Even though the holidays are behind us now, I still have a lot of non-web stuff to do and I'm finding myself spending less and less time at the keyboard for personal stuff.

That might sound like a good thing for most people, but it's kind of a mixed blessing for me right now. There are numerous activities and functions that I serve online these days, from my blogs, to site upgrades, discussions on Twitter, posts in Google Reader, self-learning Ubuntu and Rails, and even my photography that I've been spreading my free time across lately. There are days when I can prioritize the small things and feel like I'm making progress, and others when I don't have the energy.

I'm afraid I might be in that latter category right now, but hoping to recoupe a little bit and bounce back shortly. As I mentioned, there are so many neat things I'm pushing myself towards, so I can't really say I'm "bored." It's really about managing my time, priorities and rolling with the punches when I hit a few snags.

Hopefully I'll be back here shortly with some more cool updates to my sites and great blog posts soon. Stay tuned.

My Web Development Recap for 2008

2009-01-03T16:52:00.003-06:00

This post is coming in a few days later than I had originally hoped, but that's okay. 2008 was a very busy and successful time for me in regards to my personal work online, and I wanted to take a moment or two and recap some of the highlights and numbers.

Four New Sites!!!

With the launch of my largest site, Ka'anapali Dreamin' back in 2007, I would have figured the majority of my time the following year would have been spent with upkeep and expansion of that site. Indeed, I put quite a bit of time into it, with close to 20 updates released last year, not to mention all the new content around our April '08 trip to Maui.

But who knew I'd also be serving up 4 new websites in that same year, bringing the total of sites in my portfolio to 9. Here's a quick recap of each of them.

Maui Wall Candy - This is my online photo store powered by smugmug. While the Pro account that I'm subscribing to handles most everything for me, there was still a bit of customization to get the site looking unique, and it was anything but the traditional coding and markup process, either.
View Site - View Announcement
photonelly.com - This site is my portfolio site for my photography work, much like webnelly.com is the portfolio site for my web development. It was one of those that I decided to throw together in a matter of a few weeks and have been very happy with it.
View Site - View Announcement
kris.nelson - Shortly before completing photonelly.com, I came up with the concept for kris.nelson and literally launched the site in 3 days. It's not a traditional website and bends a few of the standard site design rules, but I think it's a neat little place to visit
View Site - View Announcement
Igloo Surfing - This little blog should have been the first site in 2008, but was put on the back burner almost the entire year. It's a small blog featuring photos of our rabbits doing cute things and my attempted humor with captions.
View Site - View Announcement

While I have some site redesign and enhancement ideas for my existing sites, there are no plans for new sites (yet) in 2009.

Blogging

By the end of 2008, blogging finally became part of my daily routine, and I was very proud of myself. Setting small goes to start with, I finished the year with well over 200 posts on my four blogs, and in December I was averaging 2 a day. Here's the breakdown:

Photos

With the launch of my photonelly.com site last year, photography, much like blogging, became a regular part of my life as well. As a result of our April '08 trip to Maui and my renewed interests in everyday photography, I posted 1,900 new photos to Flickr in 2008. Checking the 2008 Archive calendar at Flickr, the biggest spike in April from our Maui trip, but the last 3 months really started to pick up in terms of frequency.

Twitter

It addition to making Twitter part of my Maui vacation in 2008, I've become a modest use of the micro-blogging service during the second half of '08. I recently posted my 1,000 update on Twitter before the end of the year, and while I only have a handful of followers, it makes a nice balance. My Twitter updates are already integrated into kris.nelson, and I have a few ideas on future uses as well. Fun stuff.

Pretty Much It

That about covers the major highlights. There were so many cool things that worked on this past year, it would just be too daunting to list most of the smaller ones. The new sites are always fun, but the blogging, photos, and Twitter conversations I engage in daily are really what is making it exciting to share my life online right now. The web is such a great place right now, and I'm happy to be a part of it.

Here's to bigger and better things in 2009!

Project Week Wrap-up, Ubuntu and Rails Installed

2008-12-28T19:48:00.002-06:00

Well, tomorrow I go back to work after having this past week off. Time to get back into my normal routine, but before I do, I wanted to recap a few of the things I crossed off my list from last week.

Server Migration Update

I was able to migrate Kris and Cindy over to my new web host with only a few minor issues and fixes. Saving the notes of what I needed to fix for this site will help when I have to move the Nighthawks Hockey Online over next, which shares a few of the same backend coding designs. Only two sites left to migrate.

Kris and Cindy Housekeeping

In addition to migrating Kris and Cindy to the new host, I also did a little housekeeping to the main site, too. While not the eventual site redesign that is needed, it helped reorganize things and remove some of the content that has since been replaced with the Ka'anapali Dreamin' site. That should be good enough for awhile.

Launched Igloo Surfing ... Finally!

As of last Wednesday, my ninth site officially launched after sitting on the back burner for close to 10 months. Igloo Surfing is just a small little blog I'm doing for fun more than anything else. It simply features a different photo each day of one of our rabbits doing something adorable, funny, or otherwise curious. Humorous comments are attempted, but feel free to add your own.

No Facebook Development Yet

I didn't make any direct progress on implementing my first Facebook application that I hinted at last week. The first stop at the bookstore last week came up empty in terms of finding a FB development book, but the latest trip this weekend was a little more successful. While I didn't purchase the book, I thumbed through it enough to see that it was covering Facebook Application Development with Rails.

I'm choosing to save that for after our upcoming vacation, but in the meantime, I finally made the decision on what to do with an old Gateway laptop I had that was collecting dust. I went ahead and wiped out the Vista image on it and installed Ubuntu 8.10 instead. It's still a little buggy and in need of a few tweaks, but I was able to install Ruby, RubyGems, SQLite, and Rails on it to start with. I have a few example apps to work through before I dive into Facebook development, but no real timing on that yet.

A Successful Week

Well, overall it was a pretty successful week, considering how much family time we had last week (which is also welcomed). Believe it or not, it pretty much wraps up the year, which has also been very successful in terms of my web development.

Look for a post mid-week that features the highlights some of the best of my work online over the past year.

Minor Housekeeping at Kris and Cindy

2008-12-27T10:02:00.002-06:00

While the Kris and Cindy site still remains in a dormant state, I did manage to move it to the new web host yesterday and perform a little bit of housekeeping on the site.

Of the various changes I needed to make, I updated the Vacations link in the main navigation to be more of a launch page for details on various trips. That included removing references to our previous Maui '06 and Maui '07 sections at the site, and instead filling those areas in with links to our full Maui site, Ka'anapali Dreamin'. There are other vacations that I'll be looking to add (someday), most notably our trips to Door County. While I see us going to Door County numerous times each year, I doubt it will end up getting its own site like Maui did, so this site is the perfect spot for it.

Similarly, the Hawaii section at Kris and Cindy was started before our Maui site. Now that Ka'anapali Dreamin' is in full force as being a great Maui and Hawaii resource, there wasn't much of a need to continue with the Hawaii section at Kris and Cindy. I did, however, leave the link in the main navigation, and just updated the page to provide details and links over to KD instead.

Lastly, I added a note about the Kris and Cindy Blog on the home page, since that's where a lot of the updates have been coming from anyway. With the addition of our blog to that site, the line being drawn in the sand involves using the blog for everyday updates, and having the website sort of capture all of our longer term memories of the key moments in our lives.

I don't have any real idea on when I'll be able to tackle additional work on Kris and Cindy in the near future, but I think it will keep holding up fine the way it is now after these recent minor tweaks.

Igloo Surfing Launch ... Finally!

2008-12-25T09:06:00.003-06:00

It was 10 months ago when I posted that this site was launching soon. Well, I finally got around to finishing it and it is now live. It's not a major site by any stretch of the imagination, just a simple blog to posts photos on. Just thought I'd have a little fun for a change and not be too serious about things.

Check out Igloo Surfing if you wanted to take a look at what it's all about. I'm scheduling new posts in advance, so there should be a regular string of updates for a while now. Be sure to grab the RSS feed if you want to.

And if you're looking for more cute and funny bunny photos, visit the inspiration for this site, Disapproving Rabbits.

Site Meets Blog

2008-12-23T09:35:00.003-06:00

Continuing with my incessant curiousity and experimenting with 3rd party APIs and integrating them into my websites, I've made noticable progress lately working different aspects of my various blogs into the actual websites they complement.

The Beginning

Long before I started worrying about writing content, the majority of my web development was writing code. Lots of code. HTML, Javascript, PHP, SQL, XSLT, you name it. And all was good.

Much of my self learning of the PHP scripting language came from working with a much older version of a community forum system which is now called XMB. The open-source software package also came with a nice user group that was always making enhancements and upgrades to the code, from the people that were using it. I even made my own contributions as well, which was both fun, and yet also a little daunting with the support and feature requests that I couldn't keep up with.

Anyway, this was all for the Nighthawks Hockey Online, which at the time had a distinct set of code and database tables that was running the site itself and one running a modified version of the community forum. In an effort towards a more unified user experience, I spent close to a year (in between times when I was actually coaching the team) methodically picking apart the code from the site and the forum and merged all the functionality of the user forums to be shared throughout the site itself. A single login, single user profile, and tons of features both from a message board perspective and everywhere else on the site. It was pretty fun to do.

The Now

I don't want to say that user forums aren't as popular as they were a few years ago, but there is certainly a new kid on the block. The blog. And so, I found myself again in situation where I haddistinct code and functionality with my standalone websites and the blogs that accompany them. Was I scared? I think not. Was it hard? Not at all.

Probably a little overdue, I just recently started getting around to integrating some of the blog features and content into my sites themselves. All of my blogs currently run on Blogger in FTP Publishing mode. In this setup, I create a template for how I want my blog to look, usually by reconstructing the main style elements and layout of the site I'm matching. I then use the Blogger interface to author all of my blog posts and when I'm finished, Blogger merges the posts to the template and publishes the files to my web host. This model has its restrictions, as well as causing a few headaches from time to time, but as you can see, it's worked pretty well for me so far.

My Site/Blog Integrations

By using Blogger, I also have access to my blog and post information using the Blogger Data API. At the moment, I'm only using it for retrieving content and not writing or updating data, which makes it very easy to use. In fact, calling just the retrieving portion an API is somewhat of a generous term, because really I'm just formatting URLs in a way that returns post and comment data in a standard Atom format. Very easy.

I've currently integrated my blog content into my main sites in 4 different ways, as described below.

1. Recent Posts Sidebar using AJAX

The first thing I did with the Blogger Data API was to include the 3 most recent posts in the sidebar navigation on the home page of Ka'anapali Dreamin'. Since this part of the home page changes frequently (with each new post), I wasn't as concerned as building it into the page in a way that it would be crawled by search engines. This made it a prime candidate for some client-side AJAX to grab the site's current Atom feed and parse through the last 3 entries to display as links.

Technically, I'm not using the API here, but I've been meaning to update this code to use a filtered API request to retrieve only the last 3 posts and not the entire feed. That would save quite a bit of data needing to be downloaded, thus making it faster. I also will be updating this script to use the Google AJAX Feed API instead of my own custom request handler to fetch the feed. I started using the AJAX Feed API for my blogging calendar, and while I still have a few cache issues to work through, it should be fine for this purpose.

2. Recent Comments per Page Topic

There are many pages at Ka'anapali Dreamin' that also have a blog post or two associated with them, and I wanted to display the comments from that post on the page on the site. Here's an example, the beach page for D.T. Fleming Beach, which is associated with the blog post, Sunday Photo: Waves at the Beach. By grabbing the PostID number from Blogger for that post, I'm able to construct a URL to retrieve the comments for just that post in an Atom XML format. By parsing that XML with a little PHP code and, I have blog comments on a regular ol' site page.

3. Category Pages

Now it gets very interesting, and the benefits of blogging become very clear when having a website, and this type of integration helps to further blur the lines between them. Here's an example scenario, also from Ka'anapali Dreamin'.

Separate from the blog altogether, the site already has a News section. This section leverages various RSS feeds from different providers to display recent new stories in one place (with full attribution and links to the original content, of course). Meanwhile, at the blog, I also like to feature individual news articles I find online, adding my own commentary and having discussions with readers about things happening on Maui and elsewhere in Hawaii.

Out of the box using Blogger, I can just tag each article with a given label, such as I have done with the label "News". Blogger then automatically creates a category page for each label, and features all the posts for that tag. You can see here all the posts that are labeled News. As you can see, in a standard blog view, it's not very easy to navigate. Since I'm using the FTP Publishing mentioned earlier, I don't have the option to offer paging or things like other blogs have. All my blog pages are static HTML.

Luckily, I was able to use the Blogger Data API to request a list of posts with a given label, and retrieve them in, you guessed it, a standard Atom XML format. Cutting to the chase, you can see that I added a News Articles page to the previously mentioned News section to show abstracts of the 3 most recent blog posts labeled News, and using a list at the bottom for older posts. By doing so, this blog content is featured within my existing site hierarchy, and I just have to link back to the posts on the blog for the full version. Nice!

I've also followed this model for adding a Travel Traditions page on our site, that features posts from a blog series that shares the same name. Now, new visitors browsing through our site can find these pages, never even needing to know there is a blog power the content.

4. Recent Posts on the Home Page

The last integration example I have is from the home page of photonelly.com. It features similar recent post information as the sidebar example above, as well as the abstract view from the previous model. Since I don't post on photonelly.com as often as the other blogs, I wanted to keep this content as part of the web page itself (rather than using AJAX) so it would welcome readers as the page loads and it would be picked up by search engines.

I've been toying with similar plans to do the same for Ka'anapali Dreamin' during the next redesign of the site.

What's Next

The next big use of this integration is going to be in the site redesign on Kris and Cindy, whenever I get around to it. The site itself has been in need of an overhaul for some time now, while the blog itself is more active than ever. Initially, I would like to work in the recent blog posts into the site's home page, and then from there, probably break out into more of the different category pages and organize things that way. It will likely take a good deal of effort, but it should all be worth it.

The Conclusion

Hopefully these examples offer some good ideas on the purpose and benefits of integrating blog content into an existing website. I think as that line between blog and traditional website continues to blur, and with micro-blogging sites like Twitter openning up their APIs to further integration on the web, the concept of just a standalone website will be even more rare than ever. Very exciting stuff.

What Gets Measured...

2008-12-21T19:34:00.004-06:00

Part of my little blog calendar widget consists for creating a merged archive file in XML format with limited post information, like blog, title, date, etc. I've meaning to hit it with some XSL/T for a while now, just to see how some of the numbers are coming out month-by-month.

Just after putting together a quick prototype XSL stylesheet on my laptop, here are the numbers as they came out for November, listed per blog:

Ka'anapali Dreamin' - 18 posts - Archive
Kris and Cindy - 7 posts - Archive
photonelly.com - 6 posts - Archive
webnelly.com - 6 posts - Archive

That comes out to a combined total of ... 15, 27, carry the 1 ... 37 posts for the month of November. That's well above my goal of 1 post per day.

And the numbers for December are looking even better. With 10 days left in the month, I've already written 40 posts (41 if you include this one). That's setting a pace for almost 2 a day, which is very good considering I'm trying hard to find enough time to do all this.

Yearly Totals

2007 being my rookie season here in the blogosphere, I only posted 49 posts. It wasn't an entire year, and only included:

Kris and Cindy for 9 months, starting in April,
Ka'anapali Dreamin' for 4 months, starting in September, and
webnelly.com for 3 months, starting in October.

This year being my first full year writing on what is now 4 blogs, I'm at 209 posts. That includes over 120+ at Ka'anapali Dreamin' alone!

At some point, I might think of posting these numbers somewhere, probably as part of kris.nelson. Maybe I'll even dress them up a little bit using the Google Chart API. I guess it's just another example of the old saying, "what gets measured, gets done."

Oh, and in case you were wondering, this very post and the time spent working on the above numbers is a prime example of me chosing code over content, and procrastinating as usual. If I cared for making New Years resolutions, that might be one of them. :)

Code vs. Content

2008-12-20T21:06:00.004-06:00

No one will argue the fact that Content is King, including myself. With my heavy coding background, however, it's not always easy to focus on writing content.

A Little Background On My Background

Professionally, my primary discipline has been building web applications. While sharing a few concepts with traditional website design, designing and developing web applications has many unique aspects to it. Without getting too specific, I spent many years designing application databases, learning new systems and frameworks, building out web services, coding integration with 3rd party applications, and very, very little time writing content.

It wasn't until about a year into my professional career did I start putting together websites on my own. The first, webnelly.com, was more of a playground than anything else. In fact, it looked down right awful.

Yikes! The next site I created was Nighthawks Hockey Online, which was heavy on application functionality rather than content. With a full community forum, extensive stats and schedule sections, and many other data driven features, large blocks of content were nowhere to be found.

Enter Content
It wasn't until I started Kris and Cindy a few years later did I really start writing content rather than code. It was a small start, since many of the pages only had 2-3 paragraphs at most. It was more of a website than a web application, however, since there wasn't much functionality. But the coder in me wasn't satisfied. No, instead of adding functionality to the site itself, I built an entire content management system to control every aspect of the site. In fact, the entire site can be administered from the web-based console, including adding new pages, javascript files, external RSS feeds, you name it.

About this time, I really started to focus on web standards and expanding my skillset with CSS based layouts, designing site comps and layouts with Photoshop, and ultimately signing up for a formal Web Design course. As a result, I created Ka'anapali Dreamin', which is by far the most content-rich site in my portfolio. With the launch of that site, I had successfully added Web Designer and Content Author to the list of roles I now play regularly.

Welcome to the Blogosphere
My entrance to the blogosphere was a little late than most people, giving me yet another place to write original content and contribute to the World Wide Web. Although it was a slow start, I now post on 4 different blogs and target at least 1-2 new posts a day. Anyone that writes on even a single blog will tell you that committing the necessary time and effort can sometimes be a challenge. While my situation is no different, I've always enjoyed writing throughout my life, and continuing with that has become very rewarding.

The Conflict
Where my personal conflict of code vs. content comes into play is that the Web is such an exciting place these days. There are so many cool things I still want to learn and incorporate into my sites. At my recent pace, I've probably been learning 1-2 new APIs a month from different sources like Blogger, Flickr, script.aculo.us, and others. While I enjoy writing, I thrive on learning, so that usually ranks higher when I have to choose what to work on.

For awhile, many of the pages on Ka'anapali Dreamin' were in a permanent "coming soon" state, because I was too busy building out new features to the rest of the site. I've recently tried my best to catch up, but it isn't always easy. I often find myself procrastinating on simple page updates and putting off writing prose just to tinker with something new. Sometimes things completely irrelevant will peek my interest and delay other updates.

Content is King
But I still realize that Content is King. Of all the changes and phases that I have gone through in my web development over the years, Ka'anapali Dreamin' has really brought on the biggest shift in my priorities. The primary focus of my previous sites has really been for my own personal use, or for friends and family. With my Maui site, the purpose is different. The goal of Ka'anapali Dreamin' is to "Share the Magic of Maui". That change in focus puts the site's visitors as the priority, and not just me doing something soley to learn how it works.

While I've been getting better at putting my visitors first and working on pushing out fresh content as frequently as I can, old habits die hard. For example, I have a week off from work this week because of the holiday, and I listed out a few things that I'm considering working on during the break. As you can see, quite a few new coding projects.

Too Many Roles?
At times I wonder if I'm trying to do too many things at once. My background might be a little unique (or maybe not), but I still wonder how many folks out there are trying to juggle being a Web Designer, Web Developer, and a Content Author all at the same time. Maybe it's more manageable for someone that just has a single site or blog. I imagine that having 6+ sites and 4 blogs that are frequently begging for attention doesn't help matters, but with someone that has so many different interests and so much to share, I have a hard time picking just one.

For now, I just continue the struggle with it. Like everything else, there are good days and bad ones. When I get on a really good roll with content and posting on my blogs, it is one heck of a feeling. The other extreme is getting burned out on writing and not feeling like doing either coding or content. I guess that perfect balance is out there somewhere, and if I ever get it down to a science and prove it can be done in a way that scales to multiple sites, I'll try to write it down.

Project Time Next Week

2008-12-16T12:07:00.003-06:00

Next week is going to be the second year in a row that I get the entire week of Xmas off, which is giong to be very nice. Since I haven't been skating as much I as want to, that leaves me with more time for working on different site updates and projects during that week. Now, the only issue is deciding what to work on!

Here are a few things that I'm considering giving face time to next week.

Finish my host migration

Believe it or not, the host migration to a new web host has been going better than I had thought. In fact, I only have 3 sites left to migrate, upgrade, and test. They are, however, the largest sites that I have, which is why they're going last.

Add my Maui Photo Calendar to Facebook

I just recently launched my Maui Photo Calendar as an Google Gadget, and I was thinking yesterday about trying to add it as a Facebook application. I was doing some research and found opensocket, which is supposed to take care of much of the integration for existing gadgets to work on Facebook. Going through some of the settings, however, I think it would be more beneficial to grab a book and learn more about Facebook apps first.

Finally launch Igloo Surfing

It seems like only yesterday I had this idea of launching a fun little website named Igloo Surfing. Actually, it was over a year ago. Going through the web host migration, I revisted were I had left off with the site, and I was a lot closer to finishing it than I remembered. So that makes this another good candidate. Odds are it could be my first new site of 2009.

Redesign for Kris and Cindy

Speaking of a year ago, around this time last year is when I put Kris and Cindy in a dormant mode. Not only is it long overdue for a redesign, but probably some restructuring as well. The current site structure and sections were good a few years ago, but SO MUCH has happened in our lives since then. Mainly for the good, the current structure just isn't going to hold all those new pages.

This is still one of the sites to be migrated to the new host, so that makes time for a redesign a good candidate, as well.

Minor design and layout changes for Ka'anapali Dreamin'

I mentioned last month that I had a few minor changes in the queue for Ka'anapali Dreamin'. The biggest of which I'm thinking of is a slight redesign and layout change to increase the standard page layout for 1024px browser widths, rather than the current 800px width. My other motivation is that we leave for Maui in less than two months (yay!), so I really need to get caught up before we come back with even more content to add to the site.

New feeds for kris.nelson

Last week I shared something I discovered with Google Reader to be able to share my favorites from the different RSS feeds I follow. That, and a few other similar additions, are racing around in the design part of my brain right now, and are itching to come out.

Flickr and Google Map integration for photonelly.com

Just this week I quietly snuck in some new changes to the home page of photonelly.com to include recent posts and photos from Blogger and Flickr. That was more of a spur-of-the-moment idea because of recent work with the Blogger Data API I was doing, so it was completely unplanned. What I really want to add to photonelly.com is an integrated photo gallery like I did for Ka'anapali Dreamin'. You can view that here, and as you can see, there is both Flickr integration and maps displayed with Google Maps.

So that's what I have to look forward to next week. Obviously I'm not going to get to all of it, and I don't really have a set idea on how to prioritize the above. I'll end up playing it by ear, but if I can get at least two of these things knocked off the list by New Years, I'll be happy.

Google Reader - My Shared Items

2008-12-12T12:23:00.002-06:00

Not only have I committed to making my personal contributions to the blogosphere as an author, I'm also a big reader as well. After slacking for awhile, I started using Google Reader again to keep tabs on all the different blogs that I follow. And to confess to how long it's been since the last time I used it, I'm only now seeing some of the new features, like Shared Items.

So, for the last week or so, I've begun marking some of my favorite new posts for sharing, and for now, you can find them on my Shared Items page. It looks a little plain right now, so I might think about dressing it up a little bit. But knowing how I never like to leave well enough alone, I happened to notice the little Atom Feed icon on my shared items page. Hmm, makes it seem like a fine candidate to be added to my kris.nelson site, doesn't it (hint, hint).

Just another thing to add to the list. I already am working on a web host migration and will be launching my first Google Gadget in the upcoming days, so there's a bit of a queue. In any case, feel free to read what I'm reading, and enjoy!

Wasted Web Weekend

2008-12-08T20:38:00.003-06:00

I was really looking forward to this past weekend away from the day-to-day, for many reasons. It is always quiet up in Door County, so that was very welcome. I also wanted to get out on the ice again, but none of the outdoor rinks were open.

As far as all that free time to push out a bunch of new content and posts for my different sites and blogs, I was psyched. Getting up at 6am (considered sleeping in for me these days), I could have a good 4+ hours alone with my laptop cranking out nothing but new code and tons of content. Not to mentioned time in the evenings as well, when the temp drops outside and there's nothing better than sipping hot cocoa next to a warm fireplace.

But alas, my hopes were dashed by a long series of incompetence by my current (and soon to be former) web host. I'm not here to rant or vent or blast these poor souls who apparently don't know very much about anything. Although, having saved all the chat transcripts and ticket updates, it could make for some very entertaining web sattire in the near future.

All told, my sites were not available from about Thursday evening and most of the day on Friday. This was due to a scheduled IP migration (which I was not aware of), and even though their status update said there would be no downtime, all sites were down due to propagation of the new shared IP addresses across the Internet. If that was it, just about 24 hours of downtime, I probably could have managed to salvage some quality time with my sites.

Yet, something sounding so simple was undoubtedly excruciating 4 day ordeal that only ended about 6 hours ago. It turns out, that after 12+ hours of tech support chats, numerous vague and, at times, conflicting accounts of what was being done, the root of my agnst was a silly firewall issue that the network admins forgot to configure. The firewall configuration that was missing would not allow me to access my files via Passive FTP. Doesn't sound like a big deal (especially to tech support), but Passive FTP is the only mode that Blogger supports for FTP publishing.

So you can imagine my agony, wanting to spend all this time writing new content and code, and instead writing the same updates to a brand new tech support rep every 12 hours. Now that is behind me, and I can get back to writing all the updates that I had planned for this weekend, I have some catching up to do. On top of what I already have on my plate, I also get to search for a new webhost (I've narrowed it down to two) and plan out a migration and testing strategy. Always fun, as you can imagine.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to continue towards my personal goals of blogging and adding new features to my active sites. In addition, I'll be migrating my sites one by one to a new host and going through a fair share of testing for each. As part of this migration, I will be looking to upgrade some of my PHP 4 code to PHP 5, which is long overdue. I've also been toying with learning Ruby on Rails and having at least one site running on Rails, which shoulds like a good 2009 goal.

All said, I'm doing a lot better right now that I had been feeling about this disaster over the weekend. It's time to move on and head to a better host and new opportunities. I'm sure to be laughing about this 3 months from now.

Minor Blogging Goal Reached

2008-11-24T12:23:00.006-06:00

It's been just under a month since I launched my Blog Calendar widget for kris.nelson, and aside from a few kinks that I need to work out, it's been holding its own.

More worth mentioning in that post and in the review of my Dell Mini, however, is reaching my initial goal of posting at least one blog entry a day. I realize it's nothing to throw a parade over, but for me, I think it's a big victory and I'm happy to be able to reach my goal of one post a day for an entire month.

For me, it's not as much as being able to write enough or create enough original content to fill a blog post each day. Those who know me know I always have something to say, and coworkers in the past have commented on some of my emails being way too long. No, to me, it's about getting into the habit and making time in my daily routine to sit down, tune out the rest of the world, and write. I think that has probably been the most rewarding part so far.

My Blogs

A big part of the blogosphere is creating engaging content and generating user interaction and coummunity-based discussions with your blogs. Obviously I'm far from that, so that is yet another, longer term goal. For now, just the joy of writing is my motivation at the moment. I currently write on four different blogs, which has it's pros and cons. The biggest advantage is that I have that much larger of a range to write about, from things regarding Maui and my photography, to things in my daily life and for my web development work.

Perhaps the biggest disadvantage, though, is that having so many blogs covering different topics can lead to less continuity at the individual level. What I mean by that is by posting on a different blog each day (although there is no set rotation), there are fewer posts on each individual blog as there would be if I was focused on one topic solely. I have a combined RSS feed that aggregates all the latest posts from each blog, but with a wide range of topics, there is likely not a large enough audience out there that cares about everything I write. I mean, I like to think of myself as sort of an interesting fella, but I know the difference between what's important to me and what everyone else thinks is important are not always the same.

Next Goals

To counter that disadvantage of scattered posts at an individual blog level, my next goal is focused on targeting more than just one post a day, and getting to more of a regular schedule with my different blogs. Namely, the two blogs (and sites, for that matter) that are getting most of my attention right now are Ka'anapali Dreamin' and photonelly.com. I already have a recurring series for my Maui site, which is the Sunday Photo series that features a new photo every Sunday (hence the name). I have long since wanted to expand on that concept of scheduled topics, such as having a news post on Tuesdays and having something for Aloha Fridays, but haven't had the discipline to do so. I think reaching this first goal was a big step closer to that.

For my photography site, there are also many places I can go with that. There are still some functional aspects of the site I'd like to add, as well as more photos and locations that I have visited that I would also like to feature. Something similar to a Sunday Photo, or maybe just a regular post about some of my existing favorites. I still have a lot to learn in the photography arena, so as I push myself there, the lessons learned and notes from my experiences may also be worth writing about.

High Hopes

Like just about everything else, the sky is pretty much the limit here. For those of you who haven't had much experience writing regularly on a blog or similar site, you might not think it's such a big deal. For the rest of you that are already main contributors to the blogosphere, you know exactly what I'm referring to.

So, can I pull it off? I like to think I can do more than I am right now, but I don't know if I can reach that point where I have enough time to devote to this as I ultimately would like to. But as long as I never lose the spirit of wanting to write and continue down this path for all the right reasons, I think I'll do just fine.

What About You?

Have your own blogging stories or experiences that you'd like to share? Comment away.

Beta Testers Needed: Maui Photo Calendar Gadget

2008-11-18T20:24:00.004-06:00

I'm looking for a few iGoogle users that are interested in helping me with beta testing my new, Maui Photo Calendar Gadget. This is the first Google Gadget that I'm looking to publish for public use, so I want to try and do as much due diligence in testing as I can. And alas, I can't do it alone.

The good news is that it is a really simple gadget. All it really does is just determine the current date (one small gotcha in a minute), retrieves a daily photo and details from my Flickr account, and put it all together in a layout as you see here. Maybe it's too simple and I'm only being paranoid about pushing that final "publish" button, but better safe than sorry I guess.

There is one custom setting, though, that might not seem necessary, but I wanted to point it out. There is a Timezone Offset setting that will trigger the gadget to know when "midnight" is and flip to the next day. I know I could use a little JavaScript to detect and retain the timezone information with a cookie, but I wanted to limit the moving parts involved, at least to start.

What To Do
If you would like to help, the first step is to accept my thanks. I appreciate it.

Next, you just need to add the gadget anywhere on your iGoogle homepage. Just copy this url to your clipboard and click on the Add Stuff link on the iGoogle tab you want to use. When you click Add Stuff, the following page will have an option in the bottom left of the page that says "Add feed or gadget". That's where the url from above goes, and you're all set. You'll get a message saying that the gadget wasn't created by Google (obviously).

What Else
Just kick the tires and let me know what happens. Once you add it to your iGoogle homepage, it will show up anywhere you login. I have been trying it with a few different machines, displays, and browsers, so that's really all you can do as well. I know you can use these gadgets in other locations, and while I haven't gotten to trying that, feel free to do so if you'd like. It's not required, though.

If you experience any issues, such as error messages, timeouts, size, cropping, alignment issues, etc., you can post them here as comments, use the contact form, or send me a note on Twitter. Also, if you like it, have suggestions, or anything else, all feedback is welcome.

Timeframe
I'm not looking for anything long term from a testing period, probably a week at most. I'm also using Google Analytics to track the usage of this gadget, so that will help me gauge how much traffic its seeing and where I want to go from there.

So, thanks again for reading and if you decide to give it a whirl (now or when it's published), a big Mahalo.

New Project Idea: Online Photo Day Calendar

2008-11-17T17:54:00.002-06:00

What an afternoon of random ideas. During a rather slow drive home from work, I started thinking about new site designs for Ka'anapali Dreamin' and came up with a few goodies. After some quick browsing for inspiration and a handful of pencil sketches, I arrived at something woth throwing together in Photoshop.

Getting ready to fire up the laptop, I soon became distracted by yet another idea while looking at one corner in my office at home. You see, I have been a fan of the Islands Gallery Day Calendar for a few years now, and whenever I come across a day that features Hawaii, I put it on my wall.

As you can imagine, one would gather quite a few of these over the course of 3 years (I'm counting 39 so far, with a few of them practically duplicates). And in all of that time, I had yet to think of using my own photos to create an online version. But for whatever reason, today I did.

I already have a Today's Photos section of Ka'anapali Dreamin' that features three different photos each day (albeit it on a rotation). The same three photos can also be found on the site's home page in the sidebar as a slideshow using the Google AJAX Slideshow and a custom feed I put together.

I also already have a daily game called Is It Maui? that features a new photo (via Flickr) each day that was taken on one of the islands of Hawaii. Each of these photos has a subtle (or sometimes obvious) hint in them that tips off which island it was taken on, and the object of this simple game is to guess whether it was taken on Maui or not, and if not, which island. I have to use additional photos from Flickr because all of mine are from Maui (and that would have just made for a pretty lame game otherwise).

Yet despite having those daily displays on the site today, I still have this urge to make something like this daily calendar just because I can probably do it in a day or two. There is, of course, the laborious task of going through and finding 365 pictures to use (I don't plan on cheating and including the weekend as one photo). I have certainly taken my share of photos that I could use, but that part of this would still be very time consuming.

Then, there are the options of what I could do with it once it's finished. Obviously, I'd find a home for it on the Ka'anapali Dreamin' site somewhere (no doubt in the Daily Maui section). I could also publish it as an RSS feed and style it for a Google Gadget that people can add to their iGoogle page (even if it's just me). And as being an RSS feed, someone could also just add it to Google Reader and see a warm Maui photo everyday. And then maybe I could integrate it with Facebook, ... well you get the idea.

I'll probably have a working prototype up by the end of the night, and then I'll see if I'm still as excited tomorrow about having to go through all those photos. :)

Stay tuned.

Potential New Project - Auto Blog Utility

2008-11-05T11:42:00.003-06:00

Driving to the office this morning, I happened to be brainstorming a few ideas for another project to work on (in addition to the other half dozen I haven't finished yet). One of the items I kicked around over the weekend was to follow up my new Blog Calendar widget with a version for my Twitter feed. I thought it would be neat to go back and see my tweets from a particular day to see what was going on and how much of it I actually remembered doing. :)

Going down that rabbit hole sort of reminded me of something I had did earlier in the year with creating my Maui Twitter page. I created that page before our most recent trip to Maui in order to record different activities and locations we were visiting using Twitter as a log, and then displaying those entries on my Maui site for others to view. After the trip, I used the same logs to create the Trip Itinerary pages, which included the time and message from each tweet, as well as comments I wrote up for each activity when I was putting the pages together.

...Back to the Point

So I started thinking about doing something similar when I'm not on vacation, where I could gather up all my tweets for a given day and put it into a blog post or something with comments if I wanted to elaborate on something in particular. That itself doesn't seem that hard since I've already played around with the Twitter API for the page mentioned above and for work on kris.nelson.

From there, the idea just started to snowball. Instead of just tweets from a given day, I starting thinking I could import a few photos that I might have uploaded to Flickr that day (probably tying them back to the date taken instead). I've used the Flickr API quite a bit, too, so that seems easy.

But wait, there's more. :)

I started thinking about what else I do online all day and where I can pull that into this new little idea. I'm on Facebook, and even though I haven't looked at the API for that yet, that would be fun to pull in certain things from there. I could bring in feeds and posts that I read from other RSS feeds using Google Reader (either through it's API or just through the individual feeds themselves). I could probably use something like del.icio.us to pull in other pages that I might have read and wanted to include, too. All that seems like a good start, don't you think?

The Plan

This could just be an old fashioned mash-up and not really have to be something that I publish everyday, but for now, I'm kind of feeling like it would be better off if it started as blog posts, at least to start. Thinking through it initially, I will probably create a standalone WinForm app in C# that I use to go out and gather all the feeds and data for a given date. Using a few things behind the scenes (thinking XML and XSL/T), I could create a boilerplate blog post with a merged set of all these various items listed out in chronological order and ready for me to fill in the gaps.

Heck, I'm even thinking of using the Blogger API to post a draft version of all of this mashed-up goodness so I can just run this little guy and go right to Blogger to review, add/edit and publish.

It's starting to look like this could keep me busy for awhile, what do you think?

Updated Flickr Section and other fixes - kris.nelson

2008-11-04T12:13:00.004-06:00

With a lot of the time and effort I've been spending on my photography lately, I thought I'd clean up the Recent Photos view over at kris.nelson. I switched it from the small 75x75 square thumbnail view to a little bit more profound by comparison, as well as added a few details about each photo.

Behind the scenes, I did some housekeeping as well. Previously, the Flickr integration on this site was being handled through the phpFlickr package, as I'm using for Ka'anapali Dreamin' (at least at the time this was written). Instead of using that entire PHP library just for this simple part of kris.nelson, I decided to switch over to the REST version and made a few corresponding changes on the scripting to display the results. It feels like it's running just a little bit faster (without the PHP and MySQL overhead), but I haven't actually don't any formal testing with it.

Other Updates
In addition to just making this piece of the site look nicer, I also cleaned up a few bugs here and there, including a weird issue that I didn't realize at first on the Twitter updates display. It turns out that the date format that is returned from the Twitter API (for example: Mon Nov 03 18:32:33 +0000 2008) is supported by and parses fine with Firefox, however IE treats it as NaN. I ended up just manually parsing out the fields and building the date parts manually. Oh well.

Minor Updates to Ka'anapali Dreamin' and Future Plans

2008-11-01T08:52:00.003-05:00

I haven't made a lot of changes to Ka'anapali Dreamin' recently, with all the work I've been doing on photonelly.com and kris.nelson taking most of my spare development time.

I did make some minor tweeks this morning, however, by rearranging and updating the home page just a little. I added a preview of the daily Is It Maui? game in the upper right hand corner to add a little bit more "above the fold" and also added an update to the top story on the page. The next step there is to add a quick goal setting in Google Analytics to see how effective that change will be in getting more visits to that page on the site.

Nothing terribly large as you can tell. I am toying with a few more drastic changes with the site that I'm sure I'll stop putting off someday and jump on. The first has to do with the homepage again, and consolidating the "Site Sections" content area into a rotating and/or tabbed display to show one at a time and add a little animation to jazz it up a little. I'd also like to work on getting more of the recent blog updates on the home page, too, besides just the list of posts on the sidebar.

The other change I'm considering, and will make eventually, is updating the site template. Whether it's a full redesign or just an expansion, I don't know yet. What I do know is that the current site design is using a fixed width layout assuming an 800px screen resolution. With monitors being much larger than they used to, and with less than 5% of my visitors having a resolution of 800x600 (thanks to Google Analytics again for that number), it's time to add a little bit more breathing room and expand it to a layout that is based on a 1024px screen resolution (35% of the site's visitors, in case you were curious).

I currently use Dreamweaver CS3 and their support for templates, so that should help with updating the 100+ pages on the site, which doesn't included the blog posts. Unfortunately, I do have 10 different page templates to accommodate different page layouts, so there's some work there and maybe the chance to consolidate a little bit. Then, its a matter of retesting all those pages and making sure I don't have float issues or things like that (plus, I never really did a regression test once Chrome came out to see how my site works there).

After I update the layout, then I get to play with those extra 200px!!! I have plans to expand the Maui Island Guide map section, which seems a little cramped at 800px right now, and then work on building out a map and details section just for the Road to Hana (with all my geotagged photos and stuff). I really need to go back and clean up the Photo Gallery as well, adding a better layout and using more of the Flickr API integration and probably more user interaction like I did with kris.nelson using script.aculo.us. Also, maybe some Google Map integration like I did on the Ka'anapali Beachwalk Photo Tour. And then, there's the videos, but I won't go there right now.

So as you can see, I have my sights set pretty high on the next set of enhancements for Ka'anapali Dreamin', and it's really just a matter of finding time to get it all done. It's going to be a lot of work, and I'm sure I'll need a nice, relaxing vacation afterwards. Hmm, I wonder where I'd go...

In any case, that's where I'm at with this site. If you have any thoughts or comments, please share. I'm always interested in what others have to say and try to accommodate what my sites' visitors are looking for. After all, that's the point, right?