Techiness

I'll clump web design talk and gadget talk here, I guess.

  • Uncategorized

    Four Cores, Baby!

    I mentioned last week that I had a mostly new computer coming in. The case arrived on Monday (filthy teasing UPS), and the CPU and mainboard arrived last night. Folks, this thing is a computer. Going from a single-core 2.4 GHz processor to a quad-core 3 GHz may completely change how I view my computer. I’m serious.

  • Uncategorized

    New Office Setup

    For the last two weeks, I’ve been depriving myself of good health and sleep in the interests of getting a couple of volunteer websites off the ground, writing, and cleaning and throwing away crap in preparation for having a temporary roomie at the end of the month. My office is becoming a guest bedroom, and my new desk and reading chair are moving into the bedroom. Looking at this in the long-term, it’s great, because it means I can push for a two-bedroom apartment when Greg and I inevitably move. Being on different sleep schedules is going to complicate things a bit, since he’ll be dead to the world when…

  • Uncategorized

    Search-building: custom or Google

    Until earlier this week, I had a lousy site search in place. It was one of Google’s Custom Search Engines, barely configured and only on its own page, due to it’s hefty (and blocking!) JavaScript. I’d long since disabled WordPress’s search since my stories aren’t being run in WordPress, and I didn’t feel like trying to chew on the internal search mechanisms to include the stories. Last week, I started playing around with a project to create my own (Python) site search, including a crawler and Whoosh-based search. I’d seen the implementation of a Lucene search in Zend go fairly easy-peasy, and liked the idea of a self-hosted search. Problem…

  • On Life and Love

    “Pursuit” posted and character sheet news

    Chapter 9 of Witches, “Pursuit” is live. Actually, it went live yesterday, I just neglected to post here for it. I was busy having my ass handed to me by some type of hydra. Damn D & D 4e hydras. It had seven heads by the end. “But how do we get you out of here without anyone noticing?” Robert asked absently. Satisfied that her hand was fine, he pulled his hands back out of the attached gloves. Hardi tamped down a grin of victory. “Nice and easy. You’re going to create a distraction, and we’re going to slip out.” A small smile played on his lips as he asked,…