What's Happened Here?
(The history of my website)
This is the page where, if you're interested, you can read about all the changes I've made to my website. I won't guarantee that it won't be boring. Most of it will be silly technical details. And this page is mostly for my own interest.
But feel free to read on...
This Month's Entries...
ENTRY #33 - January 26-28, 2006
It's been a while since I've actually worked on my website and, well, it's highly possible that it might get a bit of extra attention next week, thanks to Adam from my work who has chosen to include a link to my website on our company's intranet. He's written a "staff profile" about me, which was a really fun experience. But it means that I've had to look critically at my website, and make sure it's in ship-shape.
So I've made some minor adjustments, playing around with the order of the text and links on my homepage and a few other pages, deleted a basically dead page, and adjusted a few links. I've also changed the photo of me on my home page. (It's not the most flattering, but it's one that is more "me," and it also holds fun memories for me.) And, since the Garbett Newsletter is now essentially it's own micro-site, I've removed the link to my homepage from the bottom of all the pages, replacing it with a link to the Newsletter homepage instead. I've also renamed the Newsletter "Site Map" page to "Table of Contents", which is more apt for a newsletter, don'tcha think? :P Which, of course, required some tweaking of the links on all the Newsletter's pages. I've also cleaned up some of the code - for some reason, it doesn't like double spaces anywhere, or a space at the end of paragraphs. Dunno.
Previous Entries...
ENTRY #32 - February 7, 2005
I finally got sick of my old "temporary" front page,
and decided to update it. I got the inspiration from my older sister's new
website. :)
Gone is the graphical top/left margin, which annoyed me because it limited the length of the page - the graphic repeats (because it gets treated like wallpaper), extending across the middle of the page and into my text.
I've also added buttons to my navigational bar, which simplifies the page and makes the important links stand out. I've decided to make the background blue, with white text, which appears to be easier to read than the black-on-white.
And I've made a personal decision to go ahead and add a photo of me to my homepage, as well as a link to my Webshots community photo albums. I've also made more of my personal photo albums public, so that they're easier to share with my family.
ENTRY #31 - October 3, 2004
My friend Matt showed me how to make a link on my site open in a new window. Using HTML code. I've been wanting to figure out how to do this for so long, and I thought I had to learn JavaScript to do it. I'd actually started taking a JavaScript tutorial. But this is much easier. Thanks Matt!
I've used this for any external links on my site, as well as my links to the Garbett Family Newsletter and to my Wedding Website (both of which I want to appear as external sites).
ENTRY #30 - May 4-5, 2004
Just a little tune-up work... I've added a few more of my fave "Fun Links". I've also split up the 4 pages of Lateral Thinking Puzzles into 8 pages, to break it into more manageable chunks, and so puzzlers don't have to scroll down so far to find my email address. (For help!) :)
ENTRY #29 � May 2, 2004
I decided to reverse the order of the entries on my History page. So now the entries are in REVERSE chronological order. I figured this would make it easier to see the most recent changes to my website.
ENTRY #28 - April 17-20, 2004
I was inspired to add a little comment under each link in the navigation bar of my Wed-site. I gathered this information from the personal website (not wed-site) of another Canadian bride. I found it really amusing that each of the comments changed when you clicked onto another page. So I thought I'd try it.
It took longer than I thought to come up with a plan for the comments (I played around with a few themes), particularly since I also decided to group the links together, and to "hide" some of the links in each group when the current page is not part of that group. (The links in Group A, for instance, would "expand" when the heading for Group A is selected, and then the user could visit any of the pages within that group.) I might play around with this some more, depending on what kind of feedback I get, but I'm happy with it for now.
I also decided today to inspect my wed-site's Toronto page for broken links. I updated these, and added a few new links. And that's all for today!
ENTRY #27 - April 10, 2004
Actually, it's about 2:30am, so I still think it's April 9th. Regardless, it's Friday night, and I've just researched and added a whole whack of lateral-thinking problems to my site. There are a few more that I remember doing, and I'll have to write those up before they can be added. Coming soon, I guess. But man, today has really been one website marathon for me. :)
ENTRY #26 - April 9, 2004
Over the past several weeks, I've been slowly working on moving my Wed-site over to Geocities from Sympatico, where it's been for the past year. The reason I moved it is because I prefer the simplicity and control of using HTML, and being able to edit it directly. As opposed to using Word as a WYSIWYG page editor (I know, I should never have tried it in the first place) and having to transfer it to my site using FTP (which isn't bad in itself, but it's hell in combination with using Word as an editor).
So this meant spending many hours trying to read and clean up the HTML code. Word threw in way too much garbage. Though I'm still using a tiny portion of it - for the logo in the top-left corner of my Wedsite pages. But everything else is pretty much all me. Can't say I didn't learn from the experience, like never to use Word as an editor.
But it's finally done, and I've even added a few things and tweaked a few bits. Like - I've added the "email the bride and groom" link in the navigation bar. And I've chosen to bold the (non-linked) name of the "current page" in the navigation bar, so that it's easier to see at a glance what page you're on. I've also chosen to hide the URL addresses of the many links in the About Toronto page, so that the page doesn't appear so long and onerous to read.
ENTRY #25 - March 23, 2004
Today I added "MY FUN LINKS" to both my Links page, and to my homepage.
ENTRY #24 - March 20, 2004
Today I finally added all the logic puzzles that I created for mathNEWS, as well as links back to each mathNEWS issue where the puzzles can be found. I am forever grateful to mathNEWS for giving me, a lowly Artsie, the opportunity to try my hand at greatness. :)
Also today, I updated my homepage and edited a lot of the body text. I updated some of my links on my Fave Links page, and added one or two. I changed around some of "MY LINKS" on my homepage. And some minor glitch-fixing here and there.
ENTRY #23 - March 13, 2004
I recently realized that it had been a very long time since my family contributed any articles, etc., to our Family Newsletter. So I had another look at it and revamped it a little, as well as adding a couple of bits of my own to help motivate the rest of the family. Some of the tweaks I did are: on the main pages, I added a little summary of what each page is for (not just "in the future, this page will have..."; on the main pages, I added/updated my email address to include a subject; on the About page, I added links for "Feedback" and "Contributions". I plan on adding these links to the Editor's Notes page in each issue. And I started adding (hr)'s to separate the body of the page from my footer links and "last updated" info.
Today I also moved the front page of my Wed-site from Sympatico to Geocities. I just really hated using FTP to add or update pages, and not being able to edit my pages using HTML. I also updated my "Getting to know me" page. Wow, was I ever feeling energetic!
ENTRY #22 - June 10, 2003
Basically I just reworked all my links today (for the pages and images that I renamed or moved around), and checked for any "dead" links.
ENTRY #21 - June 2, 2003
I divided the Bruce Trail main page into three parts: the main page (with links to the following two), the Southern Sections page (with links to the blogs and brief descriptions of the area covered), and the Northern Sections page (again, with links to the blogs and brief descriptions of the area covered). I then reworked my file directory tree so that all images have their own sub-folder. This is because my Bruce Trail folder was getting cluttered with images, however lovely, and I was having trouble finding the html files that I wanted to edit. And of course I did the same for all my images, not just the Bruce Trail images. Cuz it's just nicer. Now I just have to rename all my image links (and re-work my Bruce Trail links).
ENTRY #20 - June 2, 2003
Since we've started the Bruce Trail hikes again for this year, and since my Bruce Trail main page (links to hiking blogs) is getting pretty full, I've decided to split the hikes up into Southern Sections and Northern Sections. (Note that I've only started this, I didn't have enough time today to edit all the links, so I'm saving most of the work for later.) There will be two links on my Bruce Trail main page (which I may end up renaming into "Hiking" main page), one to each of these sections. Sounds like I've started a tree. :-(
ENTRY #19 - June 2, 2003
I got sick of seeing all that blank space on the right side of my page (I usually use a large screen when browsing), so I decided to change the table definition to use percentages instead of a fixed size. To do this, I've deleted the fixed width numbers from the table and the left-hand column, and defined the right-hand column (my links) to 25% of the table width. I also decided that perhaps some cell padding (2 pixels) is better than none - the words run right alongside my vertical line, which is not visually appealing.
ENTRY #18 - February 19, 2003
Changed the background and "home" arrow for my 2002 blog page. (I hate searching through the free GIF sites online - too many pop-up windows!) Added a cute leaf-string graphic to replace the horizontal line in many of my Bruce Trail blog pages.
ENTRY #17 - February 2, 2003
Finished my blogs for 2002, and added A NAME tags for each month, so that readers can jump down to continue reading in the month where they left off. I figured there was no point in doing this for each week - I'd need a table of contents!
ENTRY #16 - January 5, 2003
ENTRY #15 - October 12, 2002
ENTRY #14 - October 11, 2002
ENTRY #13 - October 9, 2002
ENTRY #12 - October 8, 2002
ENTRY #11 - October 6, 2002
ENTRY #10 - October 5, 2002
ENTRY #9 - October 3, 2002
ENTRY #8 - September 29, 2002
ENTRY #7 - September 27, 2002
ENTRY #6 - October 2, 2001
ENTRY #5 - October 2, 2001
ENTRY #4 - June, 2001 (I think)
ENTRY #3 - July 10, 2000
ENTRY #2 (Exact date unknown - sometime in 1999)
ENTRY #1 (Exact date unknown - possibly as early as 1997)
During this period, I experimented with lots of HTML stuff, using Netscape Composer to post my sites. Some of the stuff I produced was absolutely horrible, and some of my pages were an eyesore. But I had to start somewhere. I eventually got used to using the code (fairly straightforward, like the BASIC I learned in school, years ago). Then I tackled figuring out how to create tables. What helped me here was "sampling" the code from other websites, and then picking them apart to figure out how it worked.
Unfortunately, what stumped me at the time was using Netscape Composer, cuz you don't get to see the HTML until it's uploaded to the site. So it took me a lot longer than it should have. As soon as I stopped using a program and writing my own code from scratch, it became much easier to play with the tables.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE UPDATES...
Moved the 2002 blogs to a new page, and created a subfolder for my older blogs to go into. I'm thinking of adding
Completed the blog for hike 17, and decided to change one of the photos for this blog. Played around with horizontal break-lines. Also added links to go from hike to hike without having to always return to my main bruce trail page. (This was at Mike's behest.)
Added some thumbnail-sized photos to my bruce trail pages, complete with ALT-codes. I may later decide to have a collection of my Bruce Trail photos (which I'm very proud of) on their own page, but for now I'm just using them as illustrations to go along with my text. I also added the blog for hike #2, and added a second link to the BTA (history of the trail) to the blog for hike #1.
Added this page, and the corresponding entry in the right-hand margin of my homepage.
Added new backgrounds/borders for my blog and bruce trail pages (a different background for each page). Some of them could be better, but they could also be a lot worse. Also revamped my tables in these pages so that the text will not overlap with the margins, even using different window sizes.
Added description of bruce trail hike #1. Did some fixing up of the bruce trail blogs. Added link to the Bruce Trail Association to my "bruce trail" page.
Discovered that there is a maximum character length for the HTML of each page, so I had to plit up my Bruce Trail blogs into multiple pages. Created a separate page for each week, with links to these pages on the main "bruce trail" page. Made minor changes to text in homepage to reflect minor changes in my blogs, etc.
Added "bruce trail" page. Descriptions of the hikes I've been on this summer. Some descriptions are missing, to be added later.
Fixed some of the broken links on my pages, deleted some of the dead links from "my links" page.
Added "my blogs" page - my latest project. A weekly diary of interesting bits from my life.
Created "my links" page, so that I could include more of my favourite links, and so they don't all have to be on my homepage. Decided that I might rotate my "favourite" links onto my homepage (monthly?), depending on whether my interests change.
Fixed some of the broken links on my pages.
Added my birthday logic puzzle. Experimented with a few backgrounds.
Added "all about me" page. The idea for this page came from numerous email I would get from my friends, asking me to answer a bunch of random (but usually fun) questions. Also in 2000 sometime, I played around with tables, and improved the HTML code for my homepage, so that I could change the number and style of the "my links" that I included in the right margin. Figured out how that vertical-line thing worked (it's surprisingly simple). Changed the headings so that they're no longer "images" with pre-determined text (and, in the process, figured out how to do the reverse, using my own text, if I wanted to).
Moved my website to Geocities, due to aforementioned baloney. So here I am. Thanks to Peter in UK for pointing out Geocities as a great place to park my website!
My first website was with Spree.com, but I eventually got an email from them, saying something about how my site wasn't generating much traffic, and how I shouldn't really have an account with them cuz I'm not American. (This is something that wasn't mentioned in the TOS.)
Back to my homepage!
This page created on: October 9, 2002.
Last updated on: January 29, 2006.