Okay, okay, using version numbers makes me a dork. I can live with that. Anyway, here's the most complete list of updates to my site that I can come up with. Anything from before summer 1999 is being done from memory, so the dates may be off. The most recent updates are at the top of the list.
Version 8.x
- 23 Nov 2024 – 8.32
More CSS tweaks and updated my social media links. Also fixed character encoding in the RSS feeds. - 15 May 2024 – 8.31
Small adjustments to CSS to make code samples and bowling scores look nicer. - 5 Feb 2023 – 8.3
I must have timekeeping on the brain lately. I added a coding toy about the Year 2038 problem. - 22 Jan 2023 – 8.2
Added the photo gallery from the trip I took to the UK nine years ago. - 20 Jan 2023 – 8.12
Another small-to-viewers update: I fixed the redirect for old blog links so they should return a 308 Permanent Redirect now, and got the admin for photo albums up for my own use. - 13 Jan 2023 – 8.11
How do I spend my Fridays? Fixing bugs in time-handling code and making additions to the RSS feed. - 12 Jan 2023 – 8.1
Added another coding toy, and fixed the last bug in the admin. - 10 Jan 2023 – 8.02
Big update for me, small for everyone else. I got the admin area pulled into the new design. Also made the PHP code suck a little less. Refactoring: it's what's for dinner. - 08 Jan 2023 – 8.01
Remembered too late that I have an Atom feed, which the update broke. Fixed it, and added an option to get full posts instead of excerpts. - 07 Jan 2023 – 8.0
Our long national nightmare is over. After eighteen years, I've finally upgraded the site. There's a new layout, things have been reorganized. Also I've deleted some really old stuff that had other people in it, which I probably should have done a long time ago.
Version 7.x
- 11 Jul 2006 – v7.5
Shut off blog comments due to jerk spammers being the only ones using the comment forms. - 28 Dec 2005 – v7.421
Minuscule update: Added the "standard" feed icon to the Brain Farts navigation. Feedicons.com has files in multiple formats and resolutions that can be recolored. Hey, jumping on a fad is what the Net's all about. - 27 Aug 2005 – v7.42
Made a minor addition to the style sheets. Safari's WebKit now supports the draft spec for border radii, so I added those commands to the rules. If you're rolling your own Safari (or, when it comes out, using the version that will come with OSX 10.5) you should see the same effects as the Firefox users do. Firefox, unfortunately, doesn't support it yet, so I still need to use the Moz-specific rules for it. - 05 Apr 2005 – v7.41
Minor tweaks to the comment styling. - 25 Mar 2005 – v7.4
Modified the photo albums to have more usable URLs and to remove query strings. Site search has been altered to use the "good" URLs now. Old ones will still work if you bookmarked them. - 24 Mar 2005 – v7.3
Updated the individual BF entries to make them display comments automatically. There's still some work to be done on the back end to make the old-browser version work more like the new-browser version, but since most everybody uses "good" browsers I'll up the minor version anyway. Eventually I'll be able to make it so that /brain_farts/* is all answered by a single page. - 22 Feb 2004 – v7.21
A brain fart entry got me thinking about the site search. I beefed it up a bit and separated it into its own navigation section. The layout preferences look kind of lonely by themselves, but dem's da breaks. - 09 Feb 2005 – v7.2
Updated the site search. It pulls from the photo albums as well as the Brain Farts and my static pages. It also separates out the different types of page, since BF tends to overpower everything. I seem to have actually improved the speed somehow. - 20 Jan 2005 – v7.1
Created a new thumbnail page that partially generates itself, has a smarter thumbnail generator, and includes my site navigation. I can also import an extra style sheet (this was to do things like add my high-school colors to my reunion page) — I'm not sure whether I like that or not. Maybe I need to convert the navigation, too, but that would require making a bunch of special logos. Not sure how I'm going to go on that one. I also made a change to the BF monthly and yearly archives to add the calendar if an archive isn't found or is empty. - 03 Jan 2005 – v7.04
Added a fix to the Brain Farts yearly and monthly archives that was causing the calendar to overflow the colored portion of the page. I'm pretty sure that's been there since I started doing a CSS layout, but it's fixed now. - 19 Nov 2004 – v7.03
Small changes to the FAQ. Also made one last tweak to the CSS. Nothing was missing this time, but the BF calendar was just a bit too glaring white. I think this will work much better. - 18 Nov 2004 – v7.02
Removed some standards stuff that made IE puke. Explorer? Not standards-compliant? The hell you say! - 15 Nov 2004 – v7.01
Got the last of the style changes this time, and I think I mean it. I go so long without having people commenting on blog entries that I forgot to style them... - 05 Nov 2004 – v7.0
I think I've got the last of the display taken care of now. Remember, kids, no matter how appealing it may seem to just blow everything up and start over, it always winds up taking longer in the end. - 01 Nov 2004 – v7.0b2
Fixed up some omissions from the CSS I'm using. Lists next to the brain fart calendar were overlapping, and I forgot to style text inputs, making editing the blog pretty... interesting. I also set up the server (via .htaccess) so file extensions no longer need to be typed. That let me rename my files to .php which Dreamweaver knows how to read. - 30 Oct 2004 – v7.0b1
Redesigned the site again. I was never really happy with the 6.0 look, so I juggled things around again. I used some Mozilla-specific CSS with this site (to round off some borders) so this site will look moderately better in Firefox or the Mozilla Suite. But the basic idea will show up as long as you use a 6.0 browser or higher. Total redesign time: two hours. That's why I like CSS.
Version 6.x
- 28 Jun 2003 – v6.0b3
A couple minor debuggings. Still working on the navigation. - 18 Jun 2003 – v6.0b2
Fixed up the search to index the new-style BF properly. Still trying to figure out how to handle the navigation. I was never terribly fond of the old way, but what I have now sucks too. - 14 Jun 2003 – v6.0b1
Got the new layout finished (not much of a change) and started juggling pages a bit. Changes to the directory structure that I should've taken care of two years ago. Lots of old links will go 404. Good thing I only have a handful of readers... (And no, I'm not exactly thrilled with the sub-pages' navigation, either. I'm still working on it.)
Version 5.x
- 10 Jun 2003 – v5.9
Started tidying up some of the pages I don't want around anymore. Moving toward the reorganization for 6.0. Also, put the Libertarianism page into BF where it belongs. - 01 Jan 2003 – v5.85
Added a "short" essay about my take on Libertarianism after seeing someone else's essay on why it's stupid. I like to think I'm not deluded; decide for yourself. - 18 Dec 2002 – v5.8
Made the Brain Farts comments page a little more LJ-ish. I like it better that way. - 25 Jul 2002 – v5.75
Spun off jasonfleshman.com for the job hunt and reworked this site's navigation to balance things out a bit. I also added a "last updated" function that will tell you if any page has been changed within the last 10 days, so you don't have to go hunting around the site for new stuff. None of the actual site content has changed. - 13 Jul 2002 – v5.51
Just remembered that I'd wanted to add a printable version of the pages before. It's even more important now that the page backgrounds are all colors. Click the "Printable Page" link under "Utilities" below to have a look. - 11 Jul 2002 – v5.5
I think that was the shortest-lived redesign ever. I was tired of it after less than two months. I've "downgraded" to HTML 4.01 Strict (XHTML is technically supposed to be served as an XML document, which just isn't feasible yet) but that's about it. The back-end work that I did for 5.0 allowed me to make the changes from start to finish in less than a day. Cool. - 28 Jun 2002 – v5.02
Just went through my older #sw logs and added a few more. - 26 Jun 2002 – v5.01
Not much; added a fairly amusing log from the IRC channel #spinnwebe that I hang out on most days. There'll be more, eventually. - 03 May 2002 – v5.0
Yet Another Redeign. This takes better advantage of styling and uses more correct markup (these pages should all validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict). Also added skinnability to allow users to pick the color scheme, page layout, font style and font size. Skins are available under "Layout Preferences" in the Utilites area of the page. As happened last year, Netscape 4 cannot be supported due to its lack of style sheet support.
Version 4.x
- 07 Apr 2002 – v4.78
Got fed up with the super-long list of months in the Brain Farts and set it up to sort by year and month instead of just month. - 02 Apr 2002 – v4.77
Ported the message board over to the Brain Farts. Now my reader(s) can comment on what I wrote. - 25 Mar 2002 – v4.76
Did a little tweaking to the navigation along the right side. Still haven't ported the new search to the Brain Farts-only search page. I know. I suck. - 01 Dec 2001 – v4.75
Built site search functionality into the site. It currently pulls in the Brain Farts entries as well as all the static pages (I'm going to keep the BF-only search I'd already implemented, but using the new indexing I just built). My plans for this are to eventually include all the useful database information, such as my portfolio entries, and any static text that's buried inside a PHP script (which is currently stripped out). But this is good enough for now. - 08 Nov 2001 – v4.52
Added the Mozilla-improved "favicon" to my site. Using a <link> tag, I can specify an image that appears on every page immediately, not just on bookmarking. It also doesn't have the privacy implications of favicon.ico (a webmaster could look at the server log and see which page you bookmarked) and supports multiple image formats. - 05 Nov 2001 – v4.51
After spending the better part of two hours attempting to debug a problem that Netscape Navigator 4 has displaying the site, I have decided to discontinue support for Netscape 4. If you can't or won't use a Microsoft browser (I don't blame you) I recommend Netscape 6.2 or, better yet, Mozilla 0.9.5. The Netscape browser is available at Netscape's site (click on the "Download" button); the Mozilla browser is available from Mozilla.org (under "Download Mozilla" on the right side). I really didn't want to cease support, but this page (and all pages on my site) are HTML 4.01 and CSS 1 compliant — there is nothing there that Netscape shouldn't be able to understand. I would rather create a standards-compliant site that is compatible with all browsers going forward than kludge my way into compliance with a five-year-old browser that now makes up less than 6% of the market according to TheCounter.com. - 03 Nov 2001 – v4.5
Uploaded my slight redesign that makes my site more compliant with the spirit of HTML 4.01. In other words, everything is done with positioned <div> tags instead of tables. In the sidebar, there is now a link for people to use the alternate stylesheet that uses double-sized type. - 11 Oct 2001 – v4.25
Added a page about my apartment. - 03 Oct 2001 – v4.2
Added <link> tags to the site to assist standards-compliant browsers by giving them navigation meta-information. The only browser I know of that currently supports this particular nugget of HTML 2 is Mozilla, but I hope others will come around soon. It's really pretty cool. - 10 Jun 2001 – v4.15
Created a message board to show off some more PHP. Also put up redirects on GeoCities so everyone will come here now. - 08 Jun 2001 – v4.1
Created a browser detection and logging as a code example. - 03 Jun 2001 – v4.05
Created a press release page to show off my PHP skills. - 21 May 2001 – v4.0
Transferred everything from Geocities to Pair. In time I'll put redirects on the Geocities site and start funneling people through here. Did another redesign, using the theme from the Sig Tau Alumni Site (which I also did) that I like a lot.
Version 3.x
- 03 Feb 2001 – v3.51
Downloaded Mozilla 0.7 and took a look at my pages. Turns out that I have to explicitly set the layout tables to width="100%" for them to display correctly in the new browser. Also corrected for a style sheet bug(?) in Mozilla/5.0 browsers that apparently only allows them to use <link> to access one style sheet. The @import rule, however, seems to work multiple times. - 03 Dec 2000 – v3.5
Re-wrote the page template to make better use of style sheets while fixing the problems caused by Navigator 4. Wouldn't recommend wiewing this at less that 800 pixels wide, though. - 13 May 2000 – v3.1
Added the Cedar Point page, although right now it's really just an AP article, with some hype from me. Still trying to figure out that Navigator 4.72 bug. - 11 May 2000 – v3.0
Added new pages, reorganized the site, re-did the look to be "something other than black text on a white background." Added JavaScript effects for version 4 and up browsers. Will eventually change that to W3C-DOM-compliant browsers only, as Nestcape 4 and Explorer 4 lose market share.
Version 2.x
- 12 Apr 2000 – v2.7
Added the Projects I've Worked On page. - 24 Oct 1999 – v2.5
Moved my pages from CMU to Geocities, added Little Things that Amuse Me and the contents of my .plan file. - Late Spring 1998 – v2.01
Matt graduated from CMU and took his computer with him. The Web site went down, except for some random content on the CMU server. - Mid-Spring 1996 – v2.0
Moved my pages from the Andrew contributed server (which tended to go down for entire weekends) to the computer belonging to my roommate, Matt. Added gratuitous <frame>s to the site.
Version 1.x
- Early Spring 1995 – v1.0
Added content for an e-mail-based role playing game that I took part in. Figured out why nobody could view my pages — I hadn't been told about the .htaccess file that had to be in my Web directory.
Version 0.x
- Mid-Fall 1994 – v0.9
As part of the "getting to know the brothers" portion of pledging Sigma Tau Gamma, I was instructed to "make a page with Bill." Not knowing about the World Wide Web, I responded with a motivated "Huh?" Bill showed me the very basic HTML tags, <b> and <i> and maybe the headers, and I viewed the page with NCSA Mosaic on his 386/16. But once I put the files on the Carnegie Mellon contributed server, nobody could view them. Didn't give it much thought.
