And another new site...

And another new site opens at ehewlett.net, this one (lance.ehewlett.net), unfortunately, because we need to sell our beloved horse, Lancelot du Lac.

Web Design: Valuable Tutorial Sites

My (non-paying but, to me, fun) job as webmaster of various sites (like this one, archdiocese.ca, and artofseraphim.ehewlett.net) is forcing me to learn, among other things, about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). I've been very impressed with some of the free resources out there, most notably, w3schools.com, which I've mentioned before, and, most recently, alsacreations.com, whose tutorial on the Use and position of CSS elements finally cleared up for me some of the bits of basic information that I was missing in understanding exactly how CSS works.

I've always been impressed by the "open source" idea, even before the concept of "open source" came around. Knowledge, it seems to me, is not something that should be hoarded, but, rather, is a gift to be shared. My thanks, and my (metaphorical) hat off, to all who do that.

Of course, that being said, there is one important caveat that should be noted in this context. Tennyson said it best, perhaps, in his prologue to In Memoriam:

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster.

But certainly not first - my other favourite articulation of this idea being from the Teacher in Ecclesiastes:

Much study wearies the body, and of the making of books there is no end.

OK, I'm tired now. Goodnight!

Update: OK. One thing more (there always is, it seems). Just after signing off and articulating my intention to go to bed (yeah, right!) found another nice resource, HTMLdog.com. Perhaps I should add some of these to my (rarely updated) Links page, eh?

Seraphim's New Site

I had the privilege yesterday of helping a very talented artist friend of mine (whom some of you might know) set up a site to display his artwork. The new site can be found at http://artofseraphim.ehewlett.net. Enjoy!

St. Herman's July Newsletter Up

It's a bit before July yet, but, in good publishing tradition, St. Herman's July Newsletter is now up. In addition to the usual locally important details, it includes Fr. Lawrence's usual insightful article on larger-scale issues important to the church as a whole - this month's being on the office of women deacons in the early church and the question of restoring the order of deaconess today.

Fixes to the Main Menu

I finally got around to fixing a few of the problem links on the main menu. Took off the Old Site and Forum links, since they hadn't been working since the hack-attack, and were even less likely to get fixed now that I've moved to a new site and have no intention of reinstalling the content management system that the hack attack broke. So, the Old Site is dead, long live the new site! (I may try to get a forum system up and running again, but for now Blogger's comment system seems good enough...)

And, in related news, the Christianity link in the main menu is now working again, now pointing to an annotated index post that will eventually list and link to all the Christianity-related posts on this site.

New Web-host

I've just transferred web-hosts, switching from the ever excellent and inexpensive ICDsoft.com ($5/mo) to the slightly more expensive but more powerful iPowerWeb.com ($7/mo with a 2-year contract). In the long run this should save me a bit of money, as I intend to relocate a number of different websites in one account (something I couldn't do with ICDsoft. In the short term, it may mean a bit of instability as I reorganize and transfer things from my multiple ICDsoft hosting accounts to my one new iPowerWeb hosting account ("one host to rule them all...?" - hope it doesn't turn out to be quite that sinister!).

I'll keep you posted on my experience with the new web-host. So far, besides having a good deal more space and bandwidth, things do seem a bit faster... Republishing my entire blog, for example, takes about a quarter of the time with iPowerWeb as it took with ICDsoft as my host.

PocketBlogger Updated!

Well that was quick developer response! PocketBlogger has been updated to version 1.1, incorporating some of the most important features I was wishing for. The most important improvements have been the addition of the ability to paste text and the ability to retrieve and edit previous posts. Having tried a number of the Pocket PC blogging solutions out there, I think I can now safely say that this is the best solution now available to Pocket PC users with Blogger blogs - it has certainly become my first choice for updating my blogs from my Pocket PC. That being said, there are still a few odd quirks that, in my mind, make this not much more than a beta release. Pasting replaces the whole post, no scroll bars appear when the text-entry box has been filled up, the "link" button only adds link text to the end of the post, and any SIPs other than Transcriber or an external keyboard cover up any text that is being entered on the bottom of the screen. Still, an excellent offering, especially considering that it is free! Thanks, ScaleOvenStove, and keep up the good work!

My Godson's Blog

Just added a link to my godson David's blog, being is beautiful and hard, as well as a few others, on the links page.

Site Hacked!

If you were trying to view the main page of my site yesterday or today, you might have noticed it was hacked. Congratulations, oh brilliant hacker who managed to deface a completely innocent and unprotected web-site. Your ability to take advantage of a well-publicized weakness in phpBB leaves me underwhelmed in the extreme.

One unfortunate byproduct of the hack attack is that the old site (though not the original site) has been disabled. I was planning to take it down eventually anyhow, but the hack attack has brought about its demise sooner rather than later. Thank you, Mr. Hacker.

Cool Periodic Table!

Just noticed this really neat periodic table of the elements. The students at the school where I teach were using it.

The Corporate Boat Race

I rather liked this little fable on the "American Way" I ran across on a blog called Peak Day Blues. It's worth a click... Maybe even a read!

The New Blogger NavBar and Google

I think I like it! So much so that I've actually replaced the custom Google site-search box with the new Blogger NavBar (which you will now see at the top of the site). It's reasonably unobtrusive and actually useful (for searching the site)—exactly what internet advertising should be. But then I've come to expect that from both Blogger and Google.

I was also very impressed with Google when, upon acquiring Picasa, the maker of my favourite free photo-sharing-chat program, Hello, they immediately started giving the $30 photo-organizing program away for free! Picasa may not be the very best photo-organizing program out there (as far as I can see, that honour still goes to Adobe Photoshop Album—also available in a quite-functional, very useful free starter edition), but it is certainly right up there among the best—and its integration with its companion photo-sharing-chat program, Hello, makes it even more useful! While it has not yet replaced Adobe Photoshop Album on my desktop, it has complemented it there and has replaced Photoshop Album Starter Edition on my laptop. If you have a digital camera, I highly recommend downloading and installing Picasa—at least to check it out. After all, why spend $50US on a photo-organizing program if you can get one that does much the same thing for free? It is wonderful that the biggest name in computer search is also such a good corporate citizen.

And if you're interested in photo-sharing and/or chatting with me through Hello, send me an e-mail (webmaster{at}ehewlett.net) with your name and Hello username, and I'll add you to my contact list.

Excellent site for learning web-page programming

I've been trying to learn how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as I've been tweaking the site template, and I ran across a truly wonderful site for learning about HTML, CSS, and other web-page-producing info: w3schools.com.

There and Back Again

It's amazing what you can do with Blogger and a bit of HTML know-how! Having explored a number of PHP-based content management systems, I am now returning to the content management system that I've had the most fun with, namely Blogger. And since Blogger was purchased by Google, it has just been getting better and better. Now they have a WYSIWYG editor for those without HTML know-how, comments, permanent post-pages, nicer-looking templates, a prettier (and easier-to-use) user-interface, and, best of all, the financial and computational backing of Google: the search-engine giant whose clean lines and "Do not be evil" philosophy meshes wonderfully with Blogger's egalitarian and empowering "Push-button publishing for the masses" raîson d'être.

And so, I am a Blogger convert. Fully seven of my nine web-sites (yes, I know, they're not quite all listed - the "nine" includes this one and my private family site) are now "powered by Blogger", and one other site that I help maintain (www.archdiocese.ca) incorporates two more "blogs" with server-side-includes. My personal favourite is the St. Herman's site, which uses certain dedicated post pages as annotated collections of links to other post pages (as this site soon will), to help with categorization of content (check out the newsletter page for the best example of this, or, rather, what will be the best example as soon as I post some more newsletters)! Anyhow, enough technical trivia.

The original site is still up and running, and will continue to be (even if only as a musem piece!), even once I finish salvaging all the important content from it and posting it here. The latest Minerva-run version of the site is also still up and running, though it may come down once I've salvaged all the content from it. The forums are also still all there, and I intend to keep them going in one form or another - probably continuing with phpBB, if not with the phpBB-based Minerva. I hope you continue to enjoy the site as much as I do producing it. Look for more frequent updates now that I'm "blogging" again!

Getting Started with a Blogger Invitation

The tutorial below outlines how to start contributing to a Blogger web-log (or "blog") when someone sends you an invitation to join. It assumes no previous knowledge of "blogging" (or tries not to). Please let me know (frjustin{at}ehewlett.net) if anything is unclear. Larger versions of the screen-shots can be obtained by clicking on the image you want to see.


We'll start with the invitation e-mail you received. (If you didn't receive one, or if you lost it, e-mail me [frjustin{at}ehewlett.net] and I'll send you another one.) Read it if you like, but all you really have to do is click on the link (the blue underlined gobbledy-gook)!


Clicking on the link should take you to a page that looks like this. Since you probably don't have a Blogger account yet, click on the "Create an Account" button at the bottom.


Clicking on the "Create an Account" button should take you to (surprise! surprise!) this "Create an account" page.


Fill in all the required information on the form, making sure to check the "I accept the Terms of Service" button at the bottom (I suppose you could even read the terms of service before accepting them), then click the large orange "Continue" arrow in the bottom right-hand corner.


Clicking on that "Continue" arrow will take you right to a page that Blogger calls your "Dashboard". This page shows all the "blogs" (web-logs) that you own or help to contribute to. Right now you're probably only contributing to one - the one you were invited to join (in this example, the underlined "St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church" blog). Let's start adding information to the web-site! Click on either the underlined name of the blog or on the big green plus sign underneath "New Post".


Clicking on the blog name or the "New Post" plus sign should take you to a page that looks like this. (If the "Edit Posts" tab is black instead of the "Create" tab, just click on the word "Create" to get to this screen. We'll deal with the "Edit Posts" tab a bit later.)


Each bit of information (be it an article, an essay, a blurb, or whatever) you add to the weblog is called a "post", and will usually have its own title. Type in a title for your post in the "Title" field, then type in whatever information you want your post to contain in the large rectangle. If you have more information than will fit in the rectangle, don't worry, a scroll-bar will appear and you'll be able to keep on going. You can cut information out of other programs (like MS Word) and paste them into the large rectangle, as well, and you can make things bold, italic, etc. by highlighting and clicking on the "b", "i", and other buttons at the top of the large rectangle. If you want to see how your post will look, click "Preview", then click the "Hide Preview" link (that will appear while the preview is visible) to get back to your editing. If you are an HTML code wizard, you can click the "Edit HTML" tab to view and edit the code that is used to format your post. (Click the "Compose" tab to get back to What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get-style editing.) Finally, when you're all finished typing and editing your post, click the orange "Publish Post" button on the bottom, and the new post will be sent to your web-site.


Once you click the "Publish Post" button, you will see a screen that looks like this for a few seconds. The "Files published" percentage should start to go up eventually, if it doesn't right away - so be patient!


Once Blogger has finished sending your post to the web-site, you should see a screen that looks like this. (If you don't, contact the person who set up your blog for you!) Click on the "View Blog" tab, or, better, on the "(in a new window)" link to see what your blog looks like now!


Here is your new blog! Our sample post has been added successfully. It's not a very interesting post, however, so we'll proceed right to the editing/deleting portion of the tutorial in order to delete it! Click the "Back" button on your browser if you clicked "View Post" to get here - or, if you clicked on the "(in a new window)" link, close this new window by clicking the "X" in the upper-right corner of your browser program.


Once you're back to this page, click the "Edit Posts" button to get to the page where we can edit or delete posts.


Here is the "Edit Posts" page, with the five most recent posts to our blog listed from most- to least-recent. (You can change how many posts are shown by clicking the drop-down arrow beside the word "Show".) If you click on the "Edit" button you will be taken to a page that looks exactly like the "Create" page we saw, but with all the information from that post in the page, so you can edit and re-publish it. We just want to delete our new post, so we'll click on the "Delete" link instead. (Notice that we can only edit/delete posts that we have added to the blog.)


After clicking on the "Delete" link, Blogger will show you a copy of the post and ask you whether you are sure you want to delete the post. We are sure. Click "Delete It"!


Once again we see the "Publishing is in progress" screen for a few seconds...


And, once again, you should see the "Your blog published successfully" page when Blogger is done. If you click on the "(in a new window)" link, you should see that your post has disappeared. If it hasn't yet, try clicking the "Refresh" button (usually represented by two circling arrows) in your browser's toolbar.

And that's it! You should now know everything you need to know to get started contributing to the blog to which you have been invited. Happy blogging!

What I've been up to lately...

It's been quite a while since I posted anything to the site, so I thought I should let you know what I've been up to lately. It's not that I've been neglecting the internet - in fact, I've been busier than ever posting to web-sites; just not this one! Mostly I've been using Blogger lately, and having a blast! In fact, I may even switch this site back to Blogger, if I can figure out how to keep the forums running without Minerva... But that's for another day. [Update: And now I have!]

So, now, a brief tour of the new web-sites:

www.christianfantasybooks.com/ - Regular visitors to this site will have at least noticed the "ad banner" for this site - though it's in a very unfinished state, as yet. The goal is to eventually transfer all the (not now outdated) content of the old Christian fanatasy site over to this new (tastefully) ad-supported version, with discussion forum. I must admit, though, I'm a long way from my goal yet! (Perhaps a new Bloggerized version would help?)

www.saintherman.net/ - The new St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church web-site: my finest Blogger creation to date! Now if only I could get some of the other members of the blog contributing...

www.orthodoxmission.org/ - Intended to be a hub for Orthodox missions with little or no money, who would like a web-presence. The initial inspiration for the project was Fr. Sergius Nauman's site, OrthodoxHawaii, but so far most of the development here has come from yours truly!

hawaii.orthodoxmission.org/ - Fr. Sergius Nauman's site, but I'm not even sure whether he's made it to Hawaii yet. Anyone heard anything from him lately? I did finally get the pictures of his ordination up there...

bc.orthodoxmission.org/ - The new OCA BC Deanery site, which hopes to facilitate communication within the BC Deanery, though so far I'm the only one communicating!

bc.orthodoxmission.org/camp - A new web-site for a new camp, which I gather went very well. Hopefully we'll manage to get some pictures up when I get back home...

camp.ehewlett.net/ - Updated the old Saskatchewan Orthodox Youth Camp site, mostly with new pictures from this year's camp, though I did try to make the site a little more official-looking by changing the main page title!

Phew! So, busy enough for you? See why I haven't posted anything here for a while?

ICDSoft.com - The Ultimate in Web Hosting

Web-hosting anyone? If you're interested in running your own web-site, you can't do much better than ICDSoft. I did some pretty exhaustive comparison shopping when I was looking for a company to host my web-site, and I never found anyone offering a better deal that ICDSoft. 333Mb of web-space (enough to hold about 10 photo albums, so far, with space to spare), 999 e-mail accounts, a great control-panel for maintaining your site, and a whole host of other features (no pun intended!) for only $5 a month + only $5 extra for your own domain name. And no, I don't get any commission or affiliate bonus for writing this - just wanted to pass on a great deal!

Pocket PC Thoughts - News, Views, Rants & Raves

Just a link to my favourite Pocket PC website.

Welcome to the new ehewlett.

I have yet to find a content management system I'm fully satisified with, so I'm back to my old friend, Blogger. The old ehewlett is still alive and well at www.ehewlett.net/oldsite, and will remain so as long as I can maintain it. But any new stuff will be posted here. Enjoy!

Home

ehewlett: QuickLinks

Mail: Gmail + MRCS + ehewlett
Calendars: personal/family + church

Sites: MRCS Online + Blogger + BC Deanery

Pocket PC: Thoughts + Now + Brighthand + Gamer + Passion
Directories: OCA Parishes

Links

Blogs of Note

• 
  FilmChat - Peter Chattaway's Film Chat weblog
• being is beautiful and hard - my godson's David's weblog
• the musings of a princess - Biss's blog
• The Rants of Issachar - my co-worker (and friend) Andrew's blog

Useful Software

• PDFCreator - adds a virtual printer to your computer that will convert any printed document into a PDF file

Hmm... This stuff would be nice to have...

(Also to self: Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not covet.)

• Stuff on my Amazon.com wish-list

More Sites I've Made

• Christian Fantasy Books.com
• HewlettHill: the Hewlett family news site (to get access, e-mail webmaster{at}ehewlett.net)
• Orthodox Mission.org

Sites I Help Maintain

• St. Herman's Orthodox Church in Langley
• The Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Moose Jaw
• Holy Apostle Barnabas Orthodox Mission in Comox
• BC Deanery (OCA)
• St. Arseny Camp
• Archdiocese of Canada (OCA)

Sites I've Made for Others

• BC Parents and Teachers for Life
• My father's family history site
• OrthodoxHawaii
• Saskatchewan Orthodox Youth Camp

WebRings

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