cleverswine.net

I like big houses in fancy neighborhoods.

I’ve been pretty happy with the current state of cleverswine.net, but I think it’s time for a redesign. I would like to de-emphasize the blogging portion of the site and instead create something more like a portal. I use quite a few web sites that provide activity feeds (Facebook, Delicious, Amazon, Netflix, Last.fm, and Flickr to name a few). Since I rarely blog anything of interest, I’m thinking that the main content on cleverswine.net should be a summary of my online activity (a la FriendFeed). That way, it’s constantly being updated and it gives more insight into me than my shallow blog entries. To take it even further, I’d like to be able to annotate my activity (I may be able to utilize FriendFeed for that). I still want to have a traditional blog, it just wouldn’t be the main focus.

Some other things I’d like to incorporate:
*An image gallery, rather than just linking to Flickr.
*A better “Project” page, where I can more easily showcase code and projects.
*A better “Music” page, where I can post songs with annotations.
*Be able to tag different elements on the site (not just blogs) and have a nice tag cloud.

So many ideas… None of this will happen in the near future, as I have enough on plate at the moment, but I will be doing some research on the matter. I’d like to stick with Wordpress, and I think that will work out.

Being a web developer and active browser of the web for many years now, I see a lot of wasted web space (including this web site). I would venture to say that 90% of web sites out there are useless and/or uninteresting, or just a rehash of other web sites that are slightly more interesting.

And then there’s Batting Stance Guy, which is the best use of the web that I’ve seen lately. This guy posts videos of himself imitating the batting stances of MLB players. He is right on with all of them, and it’s sometimes hilarious. I’m also really impressed with design of his web site. It’s simple, eye pleasing, and user friendly.

Speaking of baseball, the Houston Astros are at .500 on the season as of yesterday! They still have almost no chance of making the playoffs, but at least the season isn’t a complete disaster.

If anyone is wondering why they can’t find our wedding web site via this page, it’s because I purposely do not link to it from this page. If I were to put a link to that web site from here, the search engines would crawl and index it, which means that anyone in the world could easily find and visit our private wedding site. As a result, spammers would start posting comments, evil people would know all of our personal details, etc.

If you got an invitation, the web address is enclosed. You can also email us, or use the contact form on this site to ask where it is. Our gift registry is detailed on the wedding web site.

Gracias!

The truth hurts. I’ve been trying to lose weight for 8 months now, and I’ve lost nothing. None of these truths are surprising, yet I’ve ignored almost all of them. I will be pleasantly plump for my wedding.

1. You have to exercise more than you think. [I have to do what!?]
2. A half-hour walk doesn’t equal a brownie. [Doh!]

See the rest here.

Good to know…

We just got back from watching the Round Rock Express vs. the Portland Beavers. It was a good game! It was tied in the bottom of the 9th, and one of the Beavers hit a home run (almost) and the Express center fielder made an amazing catch over the wall to save the game. Then Reggie Abercombie hit a 3 run homer for the Express in the 11th and Fernando Nieve saved the game in the bottom of the 11th. Towles was catching, and he still can’t hit, but he made a great diving catch on a foul pop up.