03.11.01
Building a Desk
Everything is working pretty well at this point. I cleaned up some code that looked weird in Netscape 4, and I’m now posting this from that browser. I suppose I’ll take a look at it when I get into work tomorrow with Mozilla 0.8. It will be interesting to see what happens then.
I’ve begun taking advantage of the variable that are built-in and the ones that are customizable. Getting the Style sheets into their own ‘macro’ really cleared up the entry boxes for the templates and now I can see how the templates are set up.
I’m still exploring the flexibility of the system. I think I’ve figured out a way to get an RSS file to come out of it, but I’m still working on that.
In many ways, what I’m doing here is building a desk, a work space for writing. each tool is used in an environment, and the environment for my work (in this case writing) includes the physical space around my computer(s) and the virtual space that it’s published in. So I’m constructing. What can I say… I’m a contruction worker. 
I should also note that Dwelling in it’s first form came online 3 years ago. The first entry I have is from March 6, 1998, back when I was working at OMSI where I had full access to a server with PERL so that I could do lots of debugging and such. Three years of writting is a good start at a journal. It may not be the most revealing on a daily basis, but I’m doing this for two reasons: To improving my writing skills, and to keep a log of thoughts that I can reflect in later years. A link that I want to get set up is the ‘one year ago’ links. I use that quite a bit to remember and recall events.
[This entry would have been lost were it not for a little control panel I have called “SuperSave”. It’s a simple little utility that captures my keystrokes and saves them to a file. Normally this doesn’t do much for standard desktop applications. In BBEdit I’d just make sure that the Auto-Save feature was enabled and type along my merry way.
However, with these Weblications, there’s no auto-save, no real saving at all, until you’ve finished filling in the form. On small forms that’s fine, but on these longer ones like a journal entry, or an online application you run the risk of a browser crash eliminating 20, 30, even 60 minutes worth of work at times. SuperSave prevents this situation from taking another 60 minutes to re-write all the stuff I typed.
It’s the little things, the tweaks and customizations that really turn a computer from a dull hammer to a fine tool.]