Fandomlife.net has been moved from Ourinternet to Flinthost. Regrettably, this was born out of a complete breakdown in buyer trust in the supplier. I've been with Ourinternet for sometime, since the site has been developed in Coldfusion, and I've been happy with the service. Recently, they seem to have been doing everything they could to instigate the breakdown by failing in the communications department. That's the sad thing about it from their perspective, it wasn't even the faults, which I'll go into next, but their response to them.

For some reason, I've been hampered by a series of faults on the site which seem to be a mixture of database faults and issues caused by administration errors. I'm guessing at the administration errors as what happens is things stop working even though I've changed nothing, then things are 'fixed', some of them needing subsequent changes on my side (which is annoying). The whole reason why the sequence of events is necessary is never explained. The database faults are usually some form of database corruption, again with very little explanation of why they happen. I'm sure it's not me as the site gets very low traffic and I post to it, on a web scale, at an infinitesimal rate. They usual follow this by asking for my backups despite the fact they have them and the mean time to repair (MTTR) is often measured in a day or so.

The final straw was another database fault (quite plainly one as even PHPMyAdmin ceased to work). Despite this, I spent over 24 hours persuading them it wasn't a syntax error on my part. Basically, four days later the fault had not been fixed. It's a personal site. I have no delusions of grandeur. It being down isn't overly a problem, but they would never communicate what was going on. A request for an update would be an update saying they are going to update and that would be it. Since they always refused to say (1) what was wrong, (2) what the plan was and (3) what the time scale to fix was I lost trust and moved hosts.

I'm glad I did. The site on Flinthost is just an order of magnitude faster. They are constantly highly rated and they are based in the UK, with a UK number that isn't on some fiddly dial code. They also seem to be focusing more on Coldfusion hosting, which is a good thing. The transfer was also very smooth. It took a bit of programming work on my side to scan all content for links to content within the site and remove a superfluous folder, but that is a good thing longer-term.

Hopefully all will go well.

I've commented before on how navigating web development as a hobby can be a pain. The main reason for this is a lot of the tools that make life easier aren't free. As a result, to make the whole task easier for yourself you face using illegal software or making life a real pain on a project that you're supposed to be doing for fun. It's also been the case, for some time, that I've not had a web development environment on my PC. A product of a clean re-build and not wanting to put illegal software on the machine. Time for tweaking the site wasn't really available either. I've also wanted to standardised my options around Coldfusion 8, and the options I had on hand didn't allow me to do that.

I was determined to get a development platform for Fandomlife.net back on my machine over Christmas, and remain 100% legal. As a result, I've been downloading and installing the server applications I use, associated new development tools and connecting them all up.

The environment currently comprises the following free software and tools:-

• Eclipse IDE
• CFEclipse Plug-in
• Coldfusion 8 Extentions for Eclipse
• Aptana
• HeidiSQL
• GIMP
• MySQL 5
• Coldfusion 8 Developer Edition

Eclipse sits at the centre. It's a commercial scale IDE built on an open, extensible framework originally created by IBM. I was aware of the history of the product and the intent, but I'd never installed it in anger. I can't even pretend to be an expert on it at the moment, as I've only downloaded it today and got it into a working state. I'm not sure where Eclipse ends and the extensions I've installed begin, but it's suffice to say I can do most of the things I can do in 'my previous environment'. It code completes. I can access the database from within the IDE. It neatly switches between perspectives, which are pretty cool, allowing me to make CFEclipse and Aptana dominant. It's obvious one of its main draws is its ridiculous configurability, which makes it great for obsessive developers, but also makes it a bit of a big leap for everyone else. You can get up and running with it quickly, it's more the true depths of it are probably hard to master.

The various extensions add key functionality to the IDE. CFEclipse and the Coldfusion 8 extensions bring a similar level of functionality to Eclipse that exists in Dreamweaver. It's not all there, but a significant amount of it is. It's still not allowing me to browse my Coldfusion Components, and I'm pretty sure I should be able to debug interactively, but I'll get there. The browsing of Coldfusion database connections is working really well. Aptana is the extension for typical web development that isn't a server application language, so it covers HTML, CSS and Javascripts, etc. Amazingly, it also provides a range of Ajax libraries, the easy use of such things is often one of the first things to go once you try and remain legal. I've not used them yet, but you never know in the future. I like the fact it automatically uses the resources from the correct plug-in (CFEclipse or Aptana).

Last, but by no means least, is HeidiSQL which is fast, responsive and elegant to use, making interfacing to the MySQL database a breeze. I might not use HeidiSQL that much as I can do a lot of database work from within Eclipse and keep everything together. What it did do though was import the SQL scripts I exported from my service provider and re-created the database without giving me any trouble. This is a first, as the script usually takes some manual hacking.

That's it. Interactive debugging and the exploration of my Coldfusion Components aside, I've probably got around 80% of the functionality I had before while remaining entirely legal. I may actually have more, as I notice I can automatically create a Coldfusion Component to provide the CRUD functionality of a table by a wizard. I may never actually use it, but it's a nice to have. I also couldn't interactively debug before anyway, I know I can now, it's just figuring out the settings. The ability to use Ajax libraries also needs some investigation. I can now exploit the full functionality of Coldfusion 8, I was more limited to 6/7 before without resorting to notepad, which wasn't going to happen.

The only thing I'm really missing now is a CSS application that allows me to do some of the work via visual design rather than coding. I'm still at the stage with CSS were I need to get to a certain point before I go all hardcore on the code. I'm thinking that may remain something you end up having to pay for, but you never know.

Fascinating day. If you're into that sort of thing.

Well, I've watched all six Rocky films and chronicled the experience. You can find the results in The Rocky Diary. If you want a quick summary? I really liked the films, I think Rocky is a classic, Rocky II is one of the best sequels ever filmed, while Rocky III and Rocky IV are entertaining to a degree. Amazingly, for the fifth and sixth films in a franchise, the last two are good.

What's become universal on websites these days is the ability to click a quick link to post a web page, with some summary content, to a social network site. I decided today that I needed to sort that function out for Fandomlife.net as part of my whole social network experiment. I had no idea how to do it, but a bit of searching soon got me to AddThis, a service that provides said social bookmarks.

The observant of you will now notice a small image (it looks like ) at the end of the links and date of each blog entry, hovering over this will now give you the funky ability to post blogs to your social network off choice.

I may play around with it in the future to make it more obvious. I'll also look into the ability to post article content.

The second phase of the Fandomlife.net changes have been completed. After deciding not to embark on a grand .Net re-write last weekend I concentrated on grappling with CSS to make some layout changes. This weekend I continued with that to move the site to a multiple column layout. At first I was going to go with two columns but I ended up with three. I'm still tweaking it in terms of spacing and I'm slowly trying to remove tables from the design. There is a lot less tables now, but I've still used them when I was hitting diminishing returns on trying to get the CSS to work for the sake of it. Easy wins. I can work on the thorny bits later. I'm also in two minds about the profile picture.

It would be better, but considering how I'm squeezing this stuff in around other, more important activities, it ain't that bad.

The main thing is I'm actually laying things out with CSS and it's starting to make sense as I'm doing more and more work without the graphical design tools.

I must admit, the Fandomlife.net work this weekend followed the usual technological bell curve when undertaking something new. I was all excited about it on Saturday morning and then as Saturday went on it got more and more of a slog until I re-evaluated things and saw some sense. It then got very interesting as I started fiddling around with Microsoft Expression 2 instead of trying to replace all the technological plumbing. Expression 2 hasn't done everything for me, but it's supported me in the right way, allowing me to get stuff done and I'm learning how it all interacts. I've even fixed the odd multi-browser issue myself as the combination of background image and image map used in the header proved to be a bit more awkward than I thought. It's all tested in IE, Firefox and Chrome, albeit the latest versions.

Stage one of the improvements is complete, and it's cosmetic work to give the site a new, more modern, simple and clean look. If I was a CSS genius this would have been five minutes of effort probably, but it's took me half a day I'd say. The site now consists of CSS layout for the four main areas, though it's still using tables within those areas. I've finally got my simple white background with a border and a different background for where content doesn't exist. I've also done some consistency work on the colours, a lot more stuff is now uses the variations of red, yellow, grey and green that I've adopted.

In the future I'm looking to remove more of the tables by putting the blog and articles in CSS containers. I'm also hoping to spruce things up a bit by changing elements that are just vanilla text, such as doing different things with the keywords, blog title banners and other links. We shall see, my ideas may be beyond me ability at the moment.

New features are a few stages off, but things are moving, and that's good. Easy wins, only way to move forward.

It's my view that doing web development as a hobby is a bit of a pain, or it is if you don't want to spend any money. The reason for this is sourcing the right tools. If you're in a professional outfit doing development chances are you've got all the tools to bring together the variety of technologies that constitute web development: XHTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX and whatever development platform you've chosen be it .Net, PHP, Coldfusions, etc. You might even be integrating techologies like Flash, Flex, Silverlight or whatever else.

When you are pulling things together for your hobby development without wanting to spend cash it proves difficult to get an integrated environment that pulls all this stuff together and provides fast track tools to use the various technologies. This means you end up doing it by hand or scratching together individual tools and trying to do your best. As an example, Dreamweaver is pretty good for hobby work when using Coldfusion because it integrates with Colfusion language and can also provide integrated Spry widgets for AJAX work. You have to pay for Dreamweaver though. The free Express development environments for .Net give quite a lot of stuff for free in terms of integrated options, hence one of the reasons for moving to it. Legal, integrated and access to some level of tools across the web development options.

The trouble is, as I discovered today, and discovered last time I tried this, converting the site to .Net is quite a lot of work. Possibly too much work for what is a hobby while doing the MBA at the same time. I'd need to re-work a new layer for getting the data from the database to the interface and I need to re-do the interface as well just to get the same output with the same appearance. I decided this probably wasn't worth the effort, though I'll continue to play with .Net and experiment. It's easy to appreciate Coldfusion too much as it is such an effective and quick development platform.

So, I re-evaluated the project this afternoon with the aim of going for easier wins rather than some massive effort that never sees any results for weeks. This rules out a big technology change I think. Instead I decided to focus on presentation changes and any extra back-end work that demands while keeping Coldfusion as the development platform.

A bit of research led me to Microsoft Expression 2, and it's really good. One of the problems I've had with CSS is I've never found it easy to learn from the point of view of typing it in, even with code completion. What I've always felt should exist is a way to design your layout visually and have your CSS generated, possibly even providing some templates to tweak. This is what Microsoft Expression 2 does and I'm learning loads of CSS by fiddling around visually and via coding and seeing how the two interact. It's producing results very fast and I suspect I'll have some visual tweaks completed this weekend which will begin the transition of Fandomlife.net to a more modern look. This is good as I've been wanting to do it for ages. Microsoft Expression 2 should also allow me to experiment with some bolder ideas, for me anyway, and see if I can pull them off. It even obeys all the standards.

This doesn't solve all development tool related problems though. I still face a problem of what tools to use when I move to Coldfusion 8, which I'd really like to do as I'm currently using version six, as I'll need another version of Dreamweaver. Microsoft Expression 2 isn't free either and I'm currently working on a 30-day trial version.

The problem continues to be cobbling together the tools to make life easier for what is essentially a hobby. If I'm missing something I'll be glad to be enlightened but it continues to be a problem and I rarely do anything too long when the lack of the right tools makes things difficult.

If I'm going to migrate Fandomlife.net from Coldfusion to .Net the first thing I need to do is change databases. Strictly speaking, I don't actually need to change databases and I could continue with MySQL. I'm going to though, as I'm not particularly attached to MySQL. I might as well go Microsoft all the way as it allows me to gain some synergy benefits and just have easier services, functions and facilities between .Net and the database. As an example, the security framework for controlling security on websites can be created automatically if the database is SQL Server Express. I'm also betting the new OR Mapping facilities, if they are suitable at all, will certainly be smoother if the database is SQL Server Express 2008.

This essentially becomes a data migration exercise, as I have my data in MySQL on my remote web server and it needs to be in SQL Server Express on my local machine.

Luckily, SQL Server Express 2008 comes with a data migration wizard, which is an improvement on SQL Server Express 2005 which didn't come with any automated way of migrating data. What becomes key, once you have such a wizard, is what imports it will accept. It has numerous options, the most applicable to me being Access, Excel and ODBC data sources.

I also needed to get my data from my hosted MySQL to my local copy of MySQL. I'm fortuitous in that my provider provides numerous facilities to get my data out in numerous formats, ranging from Excel to XML via SQL. I exported the database as SQL and then ran the script on my local MySQL, which worked fine after I updated the MySQL ODBC driver to the latest version. One script, run with ease, created my local tables and filled them with data.

Regrettably, it wasn't as easy when I tried to use the data migration wizard to import the data from MySQL to SQL Server, so I decided to use Microsoft Access as an intermediate step. Strangely, Access imported the data from MySQL easily. This had numerous advantages anyway as I wanted to rename tables, clean up some fields, etc. As an example, the article table has an author field but it hasn't been used for a while since a change in the design. Once I'd imported into Access I deleted this field from the design in Access. I was also able to change some fields that should have been numbers but had come in as text. Obviously, the data migration wizard, now working between Microsoft applications, liked things a lot better. I used the data mappings to make sure I was happy with the field conversions and ran the package. It seems to have worked fine.

The data is now in SQL Server 2008. I now need to:

• Verify the integrity of my ID fields (they used to be set to auto-increment)
• Document the process so it's repeatable at a later date
• Test various queries in Management Studio that I use on the website
• See how the OR Mapping works in Visual Web Developer Express 2008 and if it is suitable for purpose

Things aren't going to happen quickly as I may only have weekends to do this stuff, and only then when I'm not doing MBA assignments. I'm hoping to make progress though, it may be frustrating at times, but it is still fun to get embroiled in some technical stuff.

Well, for those who are keen on the details it's not technically the one thousandth blog entry as the nature of these things means I've not used every single index from 1 to 1000. A quick check of the database tells me the blog entry with the index of 1000 is actually going to be the 970th entry. I'm probably a couple of months away (see below) from reaching the true 1000th entry. A bit like the millennium though, it seems odd celebrating at the real time when you've got such a visual milestone in front of you.

I didn't think it'd get this far. In all honesty I thought I'd give it a shot because blogging was picking up steam way back in 2003 (though well before you could get a good one at the touch of a button for free), but ultimately I'd go back to trying to make the site a place to find regular, longer stuff more like the articles. I still post an article every so often, but as feared when I started the blog, they've become ridiculously small in number (not even one every quarter). I do have one languishing on my hard disk though, it just needs to go through the final third-party editing process.

The blog has obviously proved a more productive form of writing as the content has just kept on coming, while the articles always had, and still have, more arduous births (and not just because of the extra editing). The site has over five years of blogs now. This also equates to 194 blogs a year, circa 15 a month and roughly a blog every other day. That's not bad going. Even I'm surprised how consistent that posting rate is, especially when you consider very few, if any, amount to frivolous two-liners on what I did today.

What has proved most interesting about it is the fact, in some small way, though obviously within the remit of the site, it is a diary of events. This has proven interesting. While I don't make a habit of it I have occasionally looked at an old entry and found it intriguing. It also provides a record of key events, albeit from my view, and not 100% complete, of things like the rise and fall of The Dungeoneers or the games I've played and events like Cottage Con. It may be only in my sad mind, but it has built up a sort of holistic worth in its own way.

Anyway, to the next 1000.

Fandomlife.net didn't come from nowhere. It was an evolution from other websites that existed before it. Two of them I think, though I forget their names. One of them has a small form of relative immortality due to being in the acknowledgements section of the Sorcerer role-playing game. What's important to understand about this history is my website experiments go back before you could just sign up to Blogspot and have a blog delivered, for free, at the touch of a button. Hell, my website endeavours pre-date blogs.

All this means I have a history of doing it myself. I know it's hard to believe, but there was a time when all you got was server space and you had to start working that HTML yourself. It was hard to call it Web 1.0 never mind all this Web 2.0 shenanigans. My first couple of websites were static affairs, and the big thing with Fandomlife.net was it being powered by a database. At first it was Lotus Domino, and now its Coldfusion and MySql. It was fun to build it myself.

Now I wonder whether I should just sign up to Blogspot? Data migration issues aside, the question has to be asked whether doing it all myself is really worth the effort?

I still ponder the issue.

I'm not actually going anywhere exciting, but having two full weeks off over Christmas is pretty exciting. The issue is filling it with something, as I'll be very annoyed if the whole period goes by and I have absolutely nothing to show for it. I'm not suggesting I should achieve world peace during this 14 days, but I want to say I did something. Have something to show for it, so to speak.

So, what are some of the possibilities?

Play video games. Then play some more video games. I am currently some way through Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Tomb Raider Legend and Blue Dragon. I could dedicate some time to actually finishing some of these. It always feels good when you actually finish a game you've spent 30+ GBP on. I may also invest in Mass Effect, which will become another one on the list. The Xbox 360 isn't really used that much for some time, it would be good to see it get some serious, heavy use. This used to a bit of a tradition, with me playing Tomb Raider I-III on successive Christmas periods with Louise acting as my second pair of eyes. Good times. This is hampered slightly due to conflict over the TV.

Resurrect Thrilling Tales. Resurrect is a bit harsh, as that implies Thrilling Tales should be being played more often than it is, which isn't necessarily the case, as it has to stall Pendragon to run anyway. It does need a kick though, just because I'm out of the habit of paying it creative attention, and I'm also getting a bit distant from it. I know there is gold in the characters and all their inter-related novels but I'm no longer intimately close to it. I am, as an American might say, no longer in the zone. The 14-day holiday could afford me sometime to not only get another instalment hashed out, but also a bit of a broad brush approach to bringing the various strands born out of the aspects to a grand conclusion. I don't mean conclude it, just make sure I have a bit of direction. I like direction.

Kick start a mini-series. I've discussed it in the passed, the concept of mini-series format gaming, since it's the essentially the way I've run most of my 'campaigns' over my gaming life. Since the group no longer has a long-term campaign focus, despite (rather ironically) playing the longest campaign on Earth, with short run (as short as 3 sessions) games springing up left, right and centre it is a good time for a mini-series. This would involve cracking that thorny problem of prepping a mini-series so it is good to go despite not having characters. I'd like to think this is possible. I'm thinking about six episodes long, so that would probably be 6-9 sessions. If this happened it would almost certainly be The Circle, I can't see anything else coming about in that time frame. Possible, you never know.

Fandomlife improvements. I could look at the coding improvements I could make, though I'm not sure at this time how many of those there are without the associated web design changes. This then makes me think I should use the 14-days to try and crack the back of CSS so I can do the design myself. Easier said then done, as that then challenges my graphical abilities, which aren't really up to the job for the look I'm wanting. This would bring a high level of kudos and self achievement. Still, there probably is some room to make some more improvements, and the Christmas period represents and opportunity.

Hit Level 70. Again. Hellaina hit level 65 over the weekend, after playing the World of Warcraft for a couple of hours (the first time for ages). I'd like to get to 70 as it opens up the option of doing the level 70 dungeons, and I have a Priest partner waiting in the wings to join me. This means I only have to find a Tank for each trip. I'm quite looking forward to doing the level 70 dungeons, and hopefully some heroics. I also want a dragon flying mount. Though I do have to get my epic land mount first. Anyway, the short answer is I could play World of Warcraft.

Which one is going to get the nod? Hard to say, chances I'll end up doing a number of them, possibly spending not enough time on any of them. A part of me can't help but think that some two role-playing ideas allow for the doubling of the fun, since I'd have the fun of creating and then the fun of playing. We shall see, my brain usually likes multiple things to focus on, as it allows me to move to other tasks when a hit a problem, or a need bit of space from an idea.

Three busy weeks to go before I have to decide, and the ever present option of eating too much, getting up too late and watching too much TV always exists.

The re-design of Fandomlife.net has begun. I've given up trying to find someone who will do it out of the goodness of their own hearts, which isn't surprising, and as a result I've been forced to delve into it myself. This undoubtedly means it will not be as grandiose as I would like, as that would demand some nifty CSS and stuff, and I'm not up to it and I'm not sure I have the time to master it. The plan is to do bits and pieces over time, eventually getting to the end result at some point.

The more observant will notice that the header has changed, which is the first part of the new design, dropping the scif-fi media subtitle, as well as the zine tag. Instead we have the subtitle of pop culture phenomena and fandom. I think this is a better description, as there are a number of conventions now that call themselves pop culture conventions and pretty much cover everything I waffle on about on this site. I think pop culture means something slightly different to each individual, but I think it holds water well enough.

One of the larger tasks of the new design is not to open with the blog, but instead open with a page which gives the first 5 (possible ten for the blog) items in that section. This may be dynamic, so when I had more sections it automatically creates a new 'section block' of items, and I may even put the blocks in latest item order, but I'm not sure how confusing that would be to have the 'section blocks' change order slightly top to bottom as content is posted (the blog would always be top). While this easy enough to do in terms of back-end coding, it's getting all the front-end to look and work right which is problematic. As an example, since I'm trying not to absorb my time learning CSS, I'm forced to use tables, and I always hit the problem of: if you don't want the background to the tables to be white, how do you stop a gap between the backgrounds showing because of each border? I now expect someone to tell me to make the borders the same colour, and I've been incredibly stupid last time I tried, which was many months ago.

I also need to improve the navigation of blogs, I'm not fully decided on what to do about that at the moment, as I'm not overly convinced about entering into the effort of widening the site. It's easy to widen, but it has other implications, nothing hard, just fiddly, or annoying since so much has been done with the width in mind. The least I might do is create a better drop down for data selection, allowing a year then a month to be chosen so each one is smaller.

There is also a few little things, like arranging the site around a bit so useful, if not earth shattering things, can be accommodated. The best example is icons for the RSS feeds, as well as improving the RSS feeds (and including an article one). It seems they are standard things to have these days and now I can knock them off I might as well have people know I have one.

Anyway, suffice is to say, it'll be fitted in where possible, with the hope that upgrades can be applied as and when rather than waiting for some grand, finished masterpiece in an attempt to store everything up for one big update.

We shall see, just don't hold your breath.

This week has been a bit of a pain, as the spam wars came home to roost. In the first instance I've been without my e-mail for about 3 days due to my host deciding to block a very large range of addresses owned by Virgin Media due to spam issue. I work in IT, I understand the need to do that, but they have blocked a ridiculously large range, and while they try and shore up their defences so they can plug the whole and open the IP range again I can't communicate with their mail servers either. It's getting to the point I need to ditch them and move hosts, and if it wasn't so difficult, and such a pain, I'd have probably done it now out of principle.

The second spam problem this week was the ever increasing number of attacks on this sites comments system. I found within a day of enabling the comments system I got my first weird comment placed by a bot. They've grown over the weeks but always been easily manageable and I just delete them manually. The trouble is, once one bot finds you another seems to come a calling. It's like they speak to each other about new outlets to spam useless information with. Anyway, I decided it had gone a bit beyond a joke, and I needed to do something about it, if only because I quite like getting my e-mail comment alerts, and finding out they are spam is annoying. So, I implemented a system that will hopefully fool them, which basically amounts to the code knowing it's a bot and not actually running the code to insert anything into the SQL. We shall see if the bots are clever enough to adapt, it seems to be working so far!

I also have another improvement in mind: an RSS feed. I've sort of ignored an RSS feed for a while, and I'll admit part of the reason for that was because I thought it would be horrendously complicated, but that doesn't look to be the case. In truth, I probably don't need an RSS feed as not that many people read the site to demand one I suspect (though I did have an e-mail from one person saying I should have one a while back). The main reason for doing it is just because I can, and I like to do these things just to give me an appraisal of how they are done and an appreciated, etc. I've also found a few sites now that I frequent that allow you to have an RSS feed as part of your profile, so when people look at your profile they can see the contents of your site via the RSS feed entries. I thought that was pretty good.

The RSS feed will probably be slow in coming, as my brain tends to dart around during my free time, but come it will!

It goes without saying that what I really want to do is change the site quite significantly in terms of the layout and graphics, but alas I need help with that and I've not found someone I can sucker into it.

I've been looking through my web statistics for Fandomlife.net, and I've noticed a few things. I noticed again, that my website seems to get hit by porn search strings for some unknown reasons - naked chearleaders being very popular. I've also noticed a core of links from what amount to discussion forums.

First, you think this is a good thing, people linking to the site on a discussion forum can't be a bad thing can it? Of course it can, because after some investigation what seems to be happening is people are linking to images on my site. One person even has the image in his forum profile so it drags the image from my site, over my bandwidth, each time he posts! I use so little of my available bandwidth, this ain't really a major issue, it's the principle of it. It is a sort of theft.

Strangely, the most popular images come from the articles on Bring it On and Underworld. The images aren't mine, they can happily take them and do what they want with them, but copy them down off my website and post them to some space of your own, have some manners.

Yes, at long last, after probably about two years of saying I was going to do it, along with Keywords, I have at last put a comments system on the site. As I expected, it's been a bit of a big one, and probably still needs some work, but a level of comments are present.

At the moment you can post comments in response to the blog entries, but not the articles. I didn't see the need to comment on the articles, but I may change that. At the minute I usually post a blog entry about the new article so any comments in relation to the article can be placed there. I eventually got the validation working, and I decided, due to the fact it's hardly a line of business application, just to validate things server side, as this means I don't have to get into Javascript, or worry about people having it turned on or not. It also meant I finally got my head around solving the whole thing of a form posting to itself and reacting different, etc. It was interesting, probably not that complicated for some, but it was an interesting challenge.

The first post award goes to someone from my Neverwinter Nights days (Graham/Elbast), who managed to sneak a post in while I was still working on the final bits of testing. He was very lucky it didn't just collapse on him.

We shall now see if anything shows up, and if anything does show up whether it adds to the site or is just random crap. Since I tend to avoid just writing diary type entries as much as possible, I'd hate to see the comments boil down to what seems like a load of people who know each other talking down the pub, and thus making it unintelligible to anyone outside the circle.

We shall see. The experiment begins.

I was hoping I'd have the comments facility live on the site by now, but alas the final step has eluded me: validation. I'll happily admit that, at the moment, the site accepts anything input without any validation. So far this has been fine, as the only person entering stuff has been me, within the administration area. Obviously, a whole other can of worms is opened once the Internet audience at large, or not so large, has the option to enter comments.

I've been forward and back on the issue. Should I insist people authenticate first to stop random spamming? Do I ensure people enter an email address? Should I just provide a comments field and let people post totally anonymously? Thorny one. Currently the comments asked for a name and your comment, so it's pretty much anonymous. I think I'm going to extend it to ask for an e-mail address since I've figured out how to protect these from being harvested by spammers.

Anyway, I think I've found a handy way to validate on the client side, since Coldfusion provides the handy CFORM tag, which works in the same way as the FORM tag in HTML but it allows you to set-up validation and it generates the necessary Javascript. This is very handy. I then have to sort out the server-side validation for those annoying people who don't allow Javascript to run. While this is easy from a general coding perspective, as it's just more CFML, I have to say, at the moment, I'm getting hung up on how to return to the comments page with validation failure communicated to the user clearly. I've always had that conceptual problem though.

Still, it will get solved, and finally both keywords and comments will be part of the site. That's not bad going, since it's a couple of good steps into one of my trio of challenges.

Once they are live, all that will happen is a select few people I know in real life will comment and it'll all sound like some private conversation no one else understands. Anyway, we shall see.

I can procrastinate about these things forever, but I need to come to some conclusions otherwise nothing has changed. A new direction, or at least a better understanding. So, let's see were it's all taken me so far.

One of the more definite conclusions that has come out of this is the World of Warcraft journey is over. I've cancelled my subscription and even removed myself from The Dungeoneers website. I thought this might send a shock through my system, but it didn't, it was a remarkably simple thing, that felt like the right thing to do. To be honest, part of me thinks if nothing else comes out of this, that realisation it was time to break from World of Warcraft was worth it alone.

The most important revelation, which I never really thought of until doing this, is I have the creative hobbies, the power trio, and then the rest. It's like a two tier system. The power trio are Fandomlife.net, writing and role-playing, these are the interesting hobbies that demand a bit of thought and actual creative work, it's safe to say the rest just trundle along, in a pretty passive manner, ebbing and flowing in importance, and will always just fit in around anything else. I've also noticed I tend to get frustrated with hobbies in the second tier that become too dominant, examples being when I'm watching too much television, or more recently World of Warcraft. The reason for this is simple, I see them taking up time I should be spending on more creative or fulfilling things, even though it's probably a myth I'd fill my time up with the power trio if only I wasn't doing other things.

The question then is: should I more aggressively pursue the power trio?

I am conscious of the fact that in some ideal world, a sort of nirvana in which everything went as I hoped, the power trio would just be that, a trio of hobbies that reinforced each other, created an exponential feedback loop and became something that was much bigger than the sum of their parts. There is a synergy between Fandomlife.net, writing and role-playing on a number of levels. Fandomlife.net gets me writing. Role-playing stuff gets me thinking about narratives, dramatic scenes and characters, which relates back to writing and also provides material for Fandomlife.net. They are, without a doubt, a powerful set. If you then factor in the second tier hobbies of watching TV shows, reading and playing computer games you'd think I'd be onto a winner. Lot's of imaginative material and stimuli on which the brain can feed. In this nirvana I'd be developing Fandomlife.net, writing for it and numerous other publications and running and enjoying a role-playing campaign.

The problem at the moment is the balance between them isn't right, and I'm not sure what the ultimate balance will be, and this is the problem I have trouble solving. A big problem is role-playing has left a big gaping whole, which gets filled by different things to different degrees, sometimes even attempts to run a game, but it's never been properly replaced or fixed, just sort of patched up rather ineffectually. It's true to say playing is great, and playing now satisfies about 80% of the DM'ing urge, but it doesn't provide the volume and regularity needed to fill the void. To be honest, the craving hunger isn't even filled by running a game either, that's part of why they crash. I need a social group which has a high amount of traffic and discussion of role-playing games and related genre material for the games to survive. Could the power trio, if correctly balanced, provide that, create a mechanism under which all three productively happened and supported each other? A triangle of mutual creativity?

The question now remains, how the power trio will balance out. Will role-playing remain the weaker one of the three, somehow being compensated for by the others? Will the others in some way support the role-playing and see it come into play as a more equal partner somehow? Hard to say, and at this precise moment in time, I have to be honest and say I don't have the answer.

It does need a bit more thought.

I've probably put about six or so hours into ASP.NET 2.0 and I've not thrown the computer out of the window yet, and so far I've found my initial conclusions to be correct: this version of ASP.NET has things set-up correctly, rather than that half finished version 1.1 which almost sent me insane a couple of years ago.

As I suspected, ASP.NET 2.0 has all the power of the event driven, object orientated model, but with the simplicity of Coldfusion. In fact, the theory that putting together a website of FLN's scale would be very similar to Coldfusion has proved correct. Basically, I create a class for each type of data, which has a number of methods, each method performing tasks related to interacting with the MySQL database. This code is slightly more involved than Coldfusion, as Coldfusion's CFQuery is still quite impressive, but not to a degree that it's a major issue. This step is pretty much identical to the current way I use Coldfusion components, but with the added power of Datasets and .Net being truly object orientated. I can then connect to these methods directly from the web page via putting on an ObjectDataSource, which connects to a method of a particular class and pulls in the returning data into the web page. This is identical to the idea of depositing the Coldfusion component on the web page, but again with much more flexibility and power. It is this step that could not be done so flexibly before, and it is this feature that bridges the gap between the 'chuck it all on with the visual designer' and going someway to sensible coding using objects that brings the power of .Net into the realm of Coldfusion's ease of use. I can then use any of a number of controls that render data to the web page (from the ObjectDataSource), which is very similar to the idea of CFOutput in Coldfusion, but .Net provides lot of options, some of them with more features than others. As an example, the Repeater control is pretty similar to CFOutput, but other controls allow for structuring the data, paging the data, and controlling dynamic changes to the page depending on if the data is in edit mode or not. These data rendering controls can be easily assigned which method gets the data, which one updates it, which one deletes it, etc, thus allowing that data rending control to handle the majority of interactions with the class that provides these back-end data interactions (the amount of lines of code you have behind your page responding to events has been radically slashed).

So, to cut past the technical paragraph, version 3.0 of FLN will be in .Net and the work has already started on porting over the code that deals with the database interactions and the web pages that just display data. It's going very fast as well. The good thing about using .Net is that I gain access to a lot more powerful features that I can use when needed, but ignore if I want to keep it simple. As an example, the ability to post comments to articles and blog entries will become a feature of FLN version 3.0 as I can use the validation controls in .Net to make sure the user entered data is of the correct type. I can even look at doing an RSS feed, which is something I've wanted to do for a while. Looking further down the line, I could even investigate the personalisation features of ASP.NET version 2.0 and bring some personalisation to FLN for those willing to login. In fact, I'm thinking of demanding a login to place comments, while this may discourage people, it may also mean a better signal to noise ration, and also allow me to add other features around it.

All this, and I'll be developing in a completely legal environment, which almost certainly would not have been the case with Coldfusion, as I'd have had to illegally copy, which I wanted to avoid, or purchase Dreamweaver to get anything like the features I have in Visual Web Developer Express.

I'm hoping to have FLN as it exists now, totally converted to .Net over the Christmas week. I will then have a .Net base to start work on new features throughout 2006.

The fact I've got a new PC, and the fact ASP.NET 2.0 has gone into production, had me downloading the Mcrosoft Express Editions for developing in .Net. As mentioned before, these are an excellent way to get the hobby developers on board with the Microsoft technologies, and allow for Microsoft to start competing with PHP and MySQL. It is now completely free to develop a website in ASP.NET, along with pretty good development environment in for form of Visual Studio Express and a database complete with all SQL Server functionality, in the form of SQL Server 2005 Express.

The good news is I got further than I did last time. I have Visual Web Developer Express installed and working, and I have connecting through to both SQL Server 2005 Express and MySQL 4.1 (though I noticed the much more functional MySQL 5 is out). I've even started playing around, and at first I was getting frustrated by how little progress I was making. As in I was even having to remind myself of the basics, but then certain things started becoming clearer, and unless more knowledge makes things more difficult, I'm starting to think this second version of .NET may be what I wanted it to be in the first place  a bit closer to the elegance of Coldfusion in terms of getting data to and from to the web interface.

The problem I always had with the first version of .NET is a lot of the fancy rapid development options were only good for simples website. I don't mean they couldn't be used on enterprise scale applications, that would always be true, but they even started to fall apart when multiple tables needed updating (say simply an article and all its authors). Now this doesn't seem to be the case, as the controls used at the User Interface level now have proper hooks to business objects in the business tier and/or data tier. Ironically, this means you can put a control on a web page and just state which object methods it should use to update, delete, edit and retrieve data, what items it should send as parameters for those operations - this would include all the details of the article, a list of authors from web page all sent to the AddArticle method existing in a class. They've also provided better ways to format how the data is layed out and structured.In fact it allows your classes to act as much more powerful Coldfusion components and a combination of data connectors and rich controls to make getting data to the interface in a way almost as easy (and much more powerfully) as Coldfusion. It looks to be very powerful, and for the hobbyist developer, an excellent way to do things. It'll be interesting to see if it holds up.

In the back of my mind, I think I've made the decision that any future alterations I make to FLN, and there is a number I want to make, will be done in .NET. I realise this means converting what already exists to .NET, even though I've already done that from Lotus Domino to Coldfusion, but that work is an excellent way to learn and it allows me to dig around in another technology.

Funnily enough, one of the reasons for swapping is the fact I can use rich development tools for absolutely nothing. I realise MySQL is free (and I may well keep using that to avoid having my data locked into the MS model), but being able to play around with a fully functional version of SQL Server (albeit limited to a 4GB database) for development purposes is great. Then you have Web Developer Express, in order to get that sort of functionality for Coldfusion, an actual Integrated Development Environment (with code completion, validation, debugging, etc), I'd need to purchase a copy of Dreamweaver, and that doesn't come cheap. I can't help but be pulled to an option that gives me the tools I need and I don't have to consider installing illegal software to get it.

We shall see, I've been impressed with what I've seen so far as it seems to specifically target the problem areas I had with it last time (for my hobbyist work, anyway). We shall see though.

I'm contemplating upgrades again. Every so often I just get the feeling I need to spring clean. I've even been contemplating changing the site from Coldfusion to .Net or Java, but I've probably got over this. There is a lot I can still learn about Coldfusion, and it seems madness to change it all the time (though it would be useful career wise).

So, what am I considering upgrading?

I'd like to add a comments system to the blogs and the articles. I'd probably focus on the type of comment system that sits at the bottom of the main item. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to structure the interface, as I'm not so keen on having the article and then all the comments appearing after it, so I may list the comments and only the selected one will appear on the screen (though this means a server round-trip each time the user selects). I could have the comments appear in a new window, but I don't really like that idea either. The individual selection of each comment is probably the way to go. This is the largest upgrade, but probably the most essential - assuming anyone is reading to ever leave a comment.

Improving the author system is also on the list. At the moment the author is recorded via a field that is just filled in, I'd like the authors of an article to be picked from a list of authors so I can easily filter them by author. This would allow me to make the author listed next to articles a link which would instantly show all articles by that author. It will be interesting as each article can have multiple authors, so it will be a 1-to-many relationship, which is normal for SQL, but the site hasn't used one yet.

Then there is the keywords. At the moment the blogs can only be found by filtering the list on a month and year basis, obviously this can leave about thirty blogs in the list (assuming about one a day). One way of improving this would be to have each blog tagged with keywords, allowing the user to filter the blogs by keyword. The dilemma is how far to go with these keywords as you have to strike a balance between being too general and being too specific. Do I just limit the keywords to the article sections? Or do I get more specific?

I'd really like a graphical update, but I lack the skills to do it. I'd keep the structure of the site exactly the same, along with the white background, so the html would remain intact, but having someone re-design me some header and footer graphics to give the site some 'oomph' would be excellent. I quite like the way theforce.net uses images from the movies in its headers, the problem I'd have is any images I'd use now would be out of date in a number of years and I'd be asking someone to do the graphics again. So, I'd need something exciting, yet classic in the sense it doesn't age. Along with the graphics update I'd probably remove the graphical 'section bar' for the articles and just replace it with a drop down menu, that way I can add new sections easier (such as a technology section). This would also limit the amount of menu information that would need to be integrated with the new graphics - I might even try to remove menu items from the graphics all together.

I really like learning about new web development technologies, so once I have my computer back up and running, and everything installed I may well start working on the upgrades. I suspect things may be a bit hectic for a while like, but it's all on the 'to do' list.

In the past we've discussed why fan fiction sucks, or at least ten reasons why most of it sucks. Now people are free to check out some of the worst offenders at the site Really Bad Fan Fiction. I've not actually read any of the stories on the site completely, but giving the site a casual glance was enough to realise these stories basically cover all the bases.

Check the site out, but be warned, some of the material is not for those who are easily offended.

I've made a couple of mistakes when I moved the site to Coldfusion (from Lotus Domino). The first mistake, which was obvious from the date of the transfer, I've just not had time to fix it, is the content of the articles, etc, was not fully liked by Coldfusion. Hence we get strange, graphical squares where certain punctuations marks should be. That is just a job of going through them all and correcting them.

The second mistake is I didn't overly concern myself with the change in the URL formats, and I should have done. A number of sites and individuals have linked to articles which they now cannot find. I should have some re-direct on for every article that existed before the change to Coldfusion. It might be possible to still dig the old URLs out and do that, but it would be a long task, and I need to spend time on other things. At least it explains the 404 errors that show in the web stats.

Well, the site is now running on Coldfusion MX and MySql and is hosted with Outinternet. At the moment all seems to be going fine. The site is a bit rough around the edges when it comes to updating information, but I wanted to leave the finalisation of such things until the site was live with an actual host (it should make no difference to the reader).

I can now happily look at rounding out the rough edges, adding a better way of dealing with thumbnails and images, and then coding some new features.

As you'll notice things have been a bit sparse around here, that's because I've been a bit busy. The experiments with Coldfusions MX, ASP.Net (not really an experiment, but a line of business application) and the odd writing project has kept me very busy. It's all quite technical I must admit, and it has involved some serious banging of the head against a wall.

The new, but looking amazingly the same Fandomlife.net is finished, other than getting all the content from Lotus Domino and into MySql - which is nothing but a long stretch of manual effort. The articles are in, but the blog entries are not. I'm surprised by how many blogs there are, so it might take a while. I need to block out about a working day I think. I've held off what updates I have time for in order to minimise the time it will take to get that data into MySql.

The rest of the time has been spent on .Net, and that is headache inducing. The main problem is Microsoft. Microsoft has developed a good, Object Orientated application development environment for the web - it makes the web event driven, which is quite clever. The problem is they then go on to tell you in all their documentation, and in the training courses, how to develop for it totally wrong. If not totally wrong, then at least to approach it as if you're some small-scale developer doing the web equivalent of Microsoft Access programming. In truth, you need to take a page from the Java development community and use Object Relationship Mappers to make your database back-end a non-issue, as you just deal with objects (while the mapper does all data access and updates). In order to use objects in .Net without an Object Relationship Mapper you have to spend days programming a layer of code that loads data into constructs you create. Anyway, highly technical, probably boring you stupid. It's suffice to say, Microsoft have created a great environment, but then tell all their legion of programmers to limit the potential.

It's the difference between an Application Architect and an Application Developer.

The writing is the third thing taking up my time and it is going well. The first article is finished and awaiting the contract from Eden Studios Presents before I can send it off, which is a bit strange to have to wait considering how eager for content publications usually are. I cannot really move until then, though I have started the second article they expressed interest in.

Service will resume soon.

It only exists on my hard disk, but the upgrade plan (as detailed here) is on schedule - in fact it's probably ahead of it. The site is not only being converted to Coldfusion, but after probably eight hours of time, if added together, it's actually coming together under a solid design. I'm putting all my 'business logic' into Coldfusion Components, an method of object orientation, so that all inserts, deletes, data retrievals and business rules can be performed in these components. This allows me to re-use them and put less code intensive stuff in the web pages. Ive even started working on functionality required to add, delete and modify articles and blogs, as Ill need these to put test data and transfer the content (possibly).

It's also proving very easy to keep the current design and just change the technology that gets the data and where the data is stored. I'm now quite sure the site will be much easier to update in the future. To be honest, the biggest decision is going to be whether to go for a graphical re-design before adding more functions? And the biggest task is going to be getting all the current content, stored as Lotus Domino documents, into the MySQL tables.

Anyway, for the non-technically minded, sorry for boring you stupid.

Since New Year is approaching, it's time for some resolutions, most of them will be coming later, but since one is to set some time aside for finally doing some upgrades on FLN, you get to know about one of them early. For those interested in the technical aspect of the site, the strategy is as follows...

First, I want to initiate a platform change, way back when FLN was young, it was developed in Lotus Domino, because it did everything in one box, I was familiar with it and I was using it in my career. It was a good route into web development and I learned a lot, but to be honest I now want to move to something different. Lotus Domino works very differently to the other options available to me, and since I'm using ASP.NET at work, it seems a good idea to learn another one via FLN. The logical choice for many would be PHP, but that just turns me off, and I'm not a big fan of learning a free technology as companies rarely adopt them. In my review of Web Application technologies (done for work) I was always impressed with Coldfusion MX, more so than ASP.NET in many ways, and as a result I'm going to fulfil my desire to work with CFMX via FLN. CFMX has the whole rapid development thing going on, and they also make it easy for you to work as a developer without incurring any costs for CFMX itself.

The plan is to move the site over to CFMX without changing a thing. No graphical upgrades, no new functions, the site will look and feel exactly as it does now, the only difference will be the server-side technology spitting out the HTML pages. The HTML may get a clean up here and there, but the site will be the same. This gives me the quickest route to CFMX, as I have the design, I have the HTML and I have the functionality, I just have to change the code that gets the data from the back end.

Once I've done this I have a platform that I can upgrade from, most of which I could have done with Domino, but I feel more comfortable this way with a traditional SQL back-end. I want to upgrade the look and feel of the site, and I have a few CSS Zen Garden designs I like. I'd like to make the site totally compliant with the standards so I can put the cute logos on the site; this is both because I want to do it and because the site always works as a reference on the CV, etc. I also want to add new functions, like comments for articles and blogs, being able to list articles by authors and keywords and so on.

I've already picked out a new web host, the chances are, unless something surprises me along the way I'll be moving everything over to Our Internet, as they seem to have a good CFMX hosting package.

I hope to have the port to CFMX done quite quickly, ideally by the end of January, as if it takes any longer than that I'll have proven myself to be very dim, and chances are I'll lose patience as other demands hit on my time.

Anyway, I've installed the developer version of CFMX, and MySQL and I'm ready to go. I feel a bit more confident the upgrade process will happen this time. I have a vision of how I want it to look and work, and I'll learn a lot along the way (especially in the CSS area), so I'm hoping it happens.

I've wanted to re-design FLN for a while now, it's finding the time to actually do it and get on board with the technology. At the moment I'm going through a real headache inducing period, having to get on board with about 6 six different internet technologies, some of them related, but still substantially different.

I would love to re-design FLN so it was totally CSS and XHTML based, to such an extent that it could be verified to comply with the standards. The trouble is, I find coming home, and then dedicating time to CSS hard. The potential results are amazing though; just check out the CSS Zen Garden for some awesome web designs, and not a single one of them uses a table. I'd probably find using XHTML problematic as well, though that might be more related to Lotus Domino, but getting the server to return proper XHTML might be easier now I'm on version 6.

The end result is, I'm still saying I'm going to re-design FLN. I still want to do it totally CSS-based, as it could look so good, but I'v not started it yet. I might start tomorrow though, yeah, may be. Possibly.

Well, I've decided its time for a spring clean around here, not a major, hide away in my room and develop until the site looks totally different sort of spring clean, just more a 'constant bits of development until I have the site how I want it' sort of deal. A number of issues with the site annoy me, always have, and I think I'm now going to concentrate on slowly putting them right.

In the first instance you'll probably notice nothing different, as a lot of it will be technical stuff related to how the site works with regards to Lotus Domino. Once these are complete and I have a better base to work from then I might start changing the site design a bit. This will also include widening the remit of the site slightly. Eventually, it may even result in more features, including the comments feature I've always wanted but never got around to.

So I'll be working away, doing constant small updates over the coming months. I'm hoping this will be more friendly to my lifestyle, as periodic attempts to do the big update have never worked.

It would seem I've received my first award of sorts, in the form of the Dominopower Site of the Month award. Dominopower seeks out Domino powered websites on the web and gives out an award to the sites that show the potential of Domino.

It's not going to make me rich, but it's always good to be noticed.

I've finally succumbed to the blogging craze. I've tried to resist the trend for over a year, but I regularly go to so many sites now that I enjoy that have a blog front-end that I've become accustomed to the idea. FLN will no longer be fronted by the latest article list, but a blog instead. Any new articles will no doubt be the subject of a related blog anyway, but you can also get to the latest articles from the graphical menus.

As I've read other focused blogs, that is ones that have a theme or a topic they discuss, rather than just being the random ramblings of the author, I've come to realise that a blog does have a home at FLN. FLN is about fandom life, it's about how it integrates into every aspect off your being, and a blog is a useful tool for this. It's also true that a lot of material does not find its way to FLN simply because it is too short. I may want to write about my opinion of The Two Towers, but since I cant spin a whole article out of it (normally 1,200 words and up) it does not get written. The blog will provide an opportunity for shorter material to find a home on FLN. It may also server to get me writing more often, even if it is relatively short pieces.

So, welcome to FLN, and the home of the Fandomlife blog.