Expect your eyes to be dazzled with visual loveliness over the coming weeks.
If I ever get up off my arse to do some work, of course.
8th of December 1999
Yep, I just got DreamWeaver so I'm trying to use it. It's crap! It screws up my layouts! Otherwise, a few optimisations here and there. I've got exams in school so work may be slow. But who cares, my counter reads 38!
10th of December 1999
Forget everything I've said about DreamWeaver. I was under exam pressure or something. It's undeniably brilliant. I've been busy checking my pages for typo's. There were lots. Did anyone else know your 'kneck' is spelt 'neck'?? That looks wrong!! Hmmm...
I have also made a decision. A big one. Here it is :
There are a lot of idiots in the world.
Meaning, of course, that I'm going to start writing for Netscape. DreamWeaver is helping out lots here, sorting out the huge amounts of broken links I had. Now that the dreaded tables aren't such a problem anymore, I can lay stuff out much better, which was Netscape's big problem. Anyway, I've only got 2 days before all my time will be taken up with exam study. Get ready for my great new EarthSource WinAmp skin! It's class!
11th of December 1999
>>Up to Version 2.2! Wikid!
The pages display in Netscape today. That didn't take long did it? If I fail my exams, though, I'm blaming it on Netscapers. Just a few bugs to sort out now, then I have to clean up the code on the pages (DreamWeaver makes a big mess), and we'll be ready for EarthSource 2K. Intrigued? Don't be. I just thought of it now!
20th of December 1999(!)
Man, I haven't updated in ages. But who cares? The exams are over!! Damn, I think I failed Maths. But I'm too scared to ask my teacher, so I think I'll just wait it out. What are you getting for Christmas? I'm getting Donkey Kong! Yay! Wish I could get a DreamCast, though. Ah well.
I dunno what I'm going to update with. I might start a second article or something. How about Pandas? They're cool!
22nd of December 1999
3...more...days....*urgh* I snuck a quick go of Donkey Kong today, it's brilliant. Whoops, I hope my mum isn't reading this...
Today I actually did quite a lot of work. There's a new article doing the rounds
- Elephants!.
Plus! There is now a dictionary, to explain some of those commonly used terms such as 'Ungulate'. Yep. Groove-tastic colour scheme as well.
13th of January 2000 (!!)
Wow. First update of the millennium! I'm sure you're as excited as me. Anyway, I've been thinking about changing the focus of the site for a while now and so I'll probably do it soon. I might get friends to write about stuff that's interesting. Or I'll make it so there's only stuff you can't find easily around the net and that's interesting. Some hope.
I was also reliably informed today that my site was
"Boring"
by a guy who only looked at the first page. Sadly, that's
my favourite page on the whole site. Ah Crap.
I haven't actually uploaded the site in about a month, so, conversely, you're not reading this. Ah. That will only make sense to me.
15th of January 2000 ^ Upload ^
I'll upload today, so you can see all the good stuff I've been working on for the last month. Nothing.
Well, that's not actually true, I think there's a whole new article since last
time - Elephants!
Funtastic!
Most pages load that little bit faster now, because I made the backgrounds smaller. Real clever, huh? You better believe it.
18th of January 2000
A new idea! Thank God! After doing a bit of research, I have discovered that half of the people reading EarthSource can't see the whole page because their monitors are too small. So, as usual, because of someone else's stupidity, I have to do more work. Here's the plan :
Operation Idiot-Proof
It's going to take ages, but I'm going to allow people viewing at 800x600 to read this. I'm also going to try and cut page download times, with some nifty tricks I've been learning recently. So there you go, faster and better all-round then. If I ever do complete this task, I'm bumping it up to EarthSource 3. Then, visitors await....
19th of January 2000
What a pain in the ass. Even if I was numb to pain this would still be the biggest pain in the ass of all time. The pages just don't fit into smaller spaces. The amount of times I have wanted to scream "GRRHHGGHRHHRGHHHHHH!!" defies belief. This could take a while.....
| Source 1 | Source 2 | Source 3 | Source 4 |
EarthSource 3
22nd of January 2000
>>EarthSource 3!! Boo - Yah!!
Well, the redesign is done. I'd like to take a moment to thank everybody
who helped me get this far :
- Geoff Nolan (for keeping me in a good humour)
- Mark Cummins (for his Netscape knowledge)
- John G Kelly (for telling me how crap it is)
and no-one else. All that's left to do is translate all the old pages into the new format. What a pain. Amazingly though, on my first try I made a layout that looks Ok on a small screen. The pages load slightly faster, but not much, especially the graphics-heavy front page. But it looks nice, doesn't it?
23rd of January 2000 ^Upload^
Sometimes I really surprise myself. I had an excellent idea today. Since I now have tonnes of space down the sides of the screen, I have invented
'The SideLine' - Where strange and Obscure crap goes to die
In it you'll find all sorts of stuff. Last night I thought up at least 50 'things' I can put in there, so I'll begin to stuff the sidebar full of goodness soon.
I got some free polls today, from a deadly place called » MyComputer.com. There's loads of good stuff for free there, so soon I should have a GuestBook and stuff. Great!
Plus! I've fully checked and the pages display well all the way down to 640x480. I still haven't checked them in Netscape (because, surprise surprise, it stopped working and I had to uninstall it), so I'll upload today (finally), perfect the design over the week, (we're in the Beta stage at the moment) and make final adjustments next weekend. That's when my life's work will be done.
26th of January 2000
Testing is going well, thank God, and things look like they might start to run smoothly for The Source. Due to my ongoing efforts to make friends, I have installed
a GuestBook where you can let the emotion run free. Check it!
» Sign the Sourcebook.
You know you're going to. I've tested in Netscape. Almost all is well, although no image changing works (like on the front page), and I had to fix a few links that went the wrong colour. I'm pretty sure that you can read these pages in version 3 browsers, which is pretty excellent. Soon there will be a poll on every page, and the new Site Search thing will be up. I won't know if it worked myself until I go on the net again, probably on Friday and I'll update. In the mean time I have to finish off some design, remake a few graphics, and index all my pages for the search thing. Yep, life is good.
15th of February 2000
Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? I haven't been away on holidays in some tropical paradise, oh no. Instead, I have been trying to create a new layout. The old one was ok, but it was far too complicated to work on, so I've gone back to the drawing board for the third time on the site. honestly, I wonder if I'll ever get anything written on what the site is about. Which brings me to a question that has been plaguing the visitors of the site (today, all 97 of you!) :
What's it about??
The answer I still haven't thought about properly. No, really. I suppose it's a place you come to to learn stuff, but that's pretty crap really. And it's not something you want to tell your friends. So in some way I'm going to have to up the 'wikid factor' by a multiple of ten. I'm going to be working on the NEW layout for the next week or so (because I had it, then wouldn't you know...Netscape made it look crap. ARGH!); then I'll put all the groovy writing into the new layout; fix the inevitable mistakes, then invite a few trusted observers to check it!, then it will be finished.
Jesus this newest re-design has nearly been the death of me. A word of warning kids : Website design is buttock-clenchingly frustrating. Especially if you're not quite sure how to fix your mistakes. But! As luck would have it, other people can make good-looking sites that work, so you can just rip it from them. Of course, The Source is above that petty crime.
We knicked someone's layout big-style!!
Yay for us, then eh? Yes. Hmm, I'm going to have to get someone to join me on this site so that I stop sounding like an idiot when I say 'we'. Because it's just 'me', you understand.
Well this update has gone on way too long, and actually this page is far too long. I better break it up or something. See ya soon
~Ross
16th of February 2000
Mr. Casio is going to love me. If the new design is going to work in Netscape, I'm going to have to physically calculate how high every page is. You don't know how awkward it is to hold a ruler up to your monitor while simultaneously beating a Netscape user over the head with a large, sharp brick. Down boy!
While this means even more work and, may I add, less stuff for you to read; I guess it's something I'm going to have to do if I want to consider myself 'un html artiste'. Which would be nice. The Source is going to look far more stylish when it comes back, just you wait. If it ever does come back and I'm not drawing my pension before my counter reaches 1-bloody-hundred. Ah well, I'm doing this for you guys I suppose. Gimps.
| Source 1 | Source 2 | Source 3 | Source 4 |
EarthSource 4
1st March 2000
>>Source 4!! Wicka-Wicka!
Ah yes. Brand new Source 4 is here, still fresh from the oven. And it's prettier, easier to use and just plain better than ever before!
Check the features :
- Now works at screen size of 800x600 (I know I said it used to work at even
lower sizes, but, well, I lied. BWA....ha....ha?)
- Literally everything has been overhauled, tweaked and sharpened
- Pages zip now, rather than 'dodder', like in 3
- Source is now, as promised, a far more stylish affair, especially if you're using a newish browser
- FULL Netscape support -incredibly- and it doesn't look half bad. I am stupefied in disbelief
- I wrote a crapload of new content to ring in Source 4's arrival - the site map page has a use, my profile is (3 months late) finally up, as if you care, and updates has been re-organised (with an excellent, try-to-hold-back-the-tears history page)
The whole site isn't ready yet, but I've settled on a design and have the entire HomePage section running smoothly. The rest will follow, hopefully quickly, because I've left the same (rubbish) version of
Source 3 up on the net for a couple of months while I worked on this one. Upload soon, I promise!
2nd March 2000
After some minor layout problems, I revamped the entire site again, in one day. Ack! The pages now work better in old browsers, a feature I almost forgot to put in. The front page design is almost ready, with some rough graphics looking the business. I got a better search engine today, better for Netscape anyway.
4th March 2000
Ah yes! I finally got rid of the old section system. You remember - Encyclopedia, Atlas, all that jazz. I wish I had noticed that they were redundant a long time ago, since all the sections I've decided to carry on with are all from the Encyclopaedia part. Can you believe I spelt that wrong for so long?!
In other excellent news - have you seen the very great frosty effect behind this writing? I came up with that myself - go on - try to find it on any other site. It means that I can use bright, colourful backgrounds while still keeping the writing readable. Do I have the funk? Yep.
6th March 2000
Isn't the site so much brighter? Hopefully this will mean the site will stop appearing in the newspapers alongside the headline "The Source killed my son". I actually don't know how I worked on such a gloomy site for so long without falling into a massive depression.
Oh well - it's a new sunnier me from now on!
8th March 2000
After a 'great idea' didn't really work out, I've had to spend the whole of tonight fixing mess-ups. Good news though!! The pages work great with even rubbish old browsers.
And Netscape.
I started a 'Muzak' page, and am now realising that it was probably a bad idea. Damn!
Source 4 is definitely shaping up to be a bit special. Can you bear waiting 5 seconds for a page to download? Yes please, Daddy!
12th March 2000
A homepage is always a useful thing for a site isn't it? Sadly, that's the one thing Source 4 lacks at the moment. Not to worry, I'm sure one will turn up soon, and I might have the whole thing ready by next week. Anticipate!
I've been trying to find a new webspace provider for ages, and thought » FreeServers would be good. So I registered www.earthsource.8m.com and tried to log in. Nope. Again. No deal. 7 times... The next day I get an email.
"There was a fire, or something. Your website was lost. Whoops."
Crap! So I have to wait about two weeks before putting it up.
14th March 2000
Muzak section R.I.P. Well, it was turning out a bit crap anyway. I now have almost half the site converted, so please God I'll be finished soon. I got a lot of negative feedback in school today about the site. Where do you people get off?? Tsk. Asses.
Check out the new site search. It's ace. Get one for your site at » Atomz.com. Must be off! The France article awaits!
April 6th 2000
Hope everyone had a good April fools day. The magic is kinda gone, isn't it? Remember, when you would steal your dad's car keys, then flush them down the bog, and run up to him with a big grin and shout "April Fools!" Man, that was the best.
April 9th 2000
I haven't written a proper update for a while, have I? Well, I've been busy - Easter Exams and that. Oh well guess what? I'm redesigning again! Huzzah! Huzzah for redesigns!
Yes, that's right. I wasn't happy with good old Source 4, so I'm going to try again. I don't know why I bother. I had actually stopped working on The Source for a while there, as, let's face it, it's been going almost half a year and I've only recently got past 100 hits. Hmm.. I should probably get those search engines searchin'. What an excellent idea!
| Source 1 | Source 2 | Source 3 | Source 4 |
I was messing around in paint today and 'Hey presto!', I created a new logo! I think it reflects the more 'mature' side of EarthSource, yeah. In case you were wondering, the old was like this :