Well here's the way I saw it...

This past weekend was pretty intense. I drove home last Thursday at 11PM with a busted window. It was cold all the way back to VA beach. After I got home I helped Dad work on my truck then we went to Pick-n-Pull with my little sister to get some parts for both of our trucks. Kriston and I left Monday evening, but not before going to the piercing parlor because she wanted to get her nose pierced. After a lot of indecisiveness we both decided to get something done. She got her nose pierced and shortly afterward I had my eyebrow pierced. It did not hurt like I thought it would, just a slight amount of pressure. Back in Richmond everything is going awesome with Kriston, tonight we are going to see the movies in the commons which should be a lot of fun.

Posted by Christopher at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Usually you can change the color of a link with:

a:link{ color: #000;}

When working with the new events template I found that the above code would not work. After a few tests nothing seemed to change the color of the links. I found to change the color I needed to specify the id of the div where the link resides. So my code ended up looking like:

#maincol a{	color: #000;}
#maincol a:visted{ color: #000;}
#maincol a:hover{ color: #999;}
#maincol a:active{ color: #000;}

#footer a{ color: #000;}
#footer a:visited{ color: #000;}
#footer a:hover{ color: #999;}
#footer a:active{ color: #000;}

Posted by Christopher at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are a few updates:

• Focus Groups: I sat in on a focus group and the redesign is looking very snazzy
• Event Template: I created a template for library events. This is my first Dreamweaver Template and I like how it has come out.
• NewsGrab.cfm: I created a script that reads in the Library's "Whats New" feed and extracts the first news item and two other random news items and returns them within <li> tags. Including the file is simple through a SSI.
• VALIDATION!!!!: Another cfscript, this time working with components, through a cfcomponent the validation function is called as a method of a cfobject.

Posted by Christopher at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am still working on the redesign, we are slowly leaving the realm of moving large chunks of the layout around to fine tuning and determining the best margin to put where or which tab should come up first. I got the chance to write some more ColdFusion today. I implemented my RSS functions to pull the first news item from the library news feed, then pull random items from the rest of the feed. All of this is pulled in through a SSI. There should be a link at the bottom of this post showing the source of newsGrab.cfm. Also I took an oppurtunity to work with CSS position and z-index commands. They are essential if you want things to float above or below something cleanly. Overall I am really happy with the work that I have been producing.

newsGrab.cfm...

<cfinclude template="rss-functions.cfm">
<cfscript>
maxItems = 3;
items = getItems("http://www.library.vcu.edu/whatsnew/rss/news.xml", 0);
title = getTitle(items, 1);
link = getLink(items, 1);
sentence = getSentence(items, 1, 2);

WriteOutput('<li><a href="#link#">#title#</a></li>');
item = ArrayNew(1);
for(x=1; x LT maxItems; x=x+1){

	item[x] = RandRange(2, ArrayLen(items));
	for(y=1; y lt ArrayLen(item); y=y+1){
		if(item[y] eq item[x] AND y neq x){
			item[x] = RandRange(2, ArrayLen(items));
			y=0;
		}
	}
	
	title = getTitle(items, item[x]);
	link = getLink(items, item[x]);
	WriteOutput('<li><a href="#link#">#title#</a></li>');
}
</cfscript>

Posted by Christopher at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The past few days have been nothing but start and stop. I have been working on the redesign lately and it is an awesome project, but it can get frustrating. I can spend an hour where nothing works, then all of a sudden I am happily coding away and everything falls into place. On a good note in a couple of days the front page has been created from scratch with some new technologies and a sleek look-and-feel. I have definitely learned a few things from putting it together, mostly in the CSS float area, but also in client-side scripting. I am becoming more proficient with DOM-based javascript which I think will definitely help me out in the long run.

Posted by Christopher at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This weekend my grandfather called me up and said he was going to Dinwiddie County for the annual EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) Fly-in, and asked me if I wanted to go. I have not been in two years, but before that my cousin and I had gone for three years in a row and every time it was a blast. I said sure as I remembered the fun times I had in the past. So I jumped in Kriston's car and headed down I-95 S. When I got there I followed my grandfather in to the back of the airport through an industrial park. and on to one of the runways that they closed. This runway was closed because every year some volunteers at the fly-in choose to camp out at the airport and the best place is on of the runways facing away from the airport. I arrived a day early so there were not that many airplanes there yet so we decided to save our aircraft ogling until Saturday. On the way to dinner the first night the tram from the camp area to the hangar containing all the food passed by a helicopter, it turns out that the VCU Life-Evac helicopter operates out of Dinwiddie County Airport. It was neat to see the school's helicopter after reading about it a few weeks ago. Anyway we had a pizza dinner and turned in early. We got up just before dawn and it was freezing outside. I grabbed a sweatshirt and headed over to the hanger from the night before and grabbed a pancake breakfast. Afterward I headed over to the volunteer tent to get signed up and to pick my job. I signed up for aircraft parking and I was tossed over to the "tail-dragger" area. So the first few hours of the day had a few planes come in, but then everything really picked up. The other parking area had become full, so we had to handle all incoming aircraft. You don't realize how powerful these aircraft are when they are coming at you, but when we had to spin a few of the larger aircraft around to fit them in their space, you get hit with the "prop wash" and get blown away by the shear amount of air being forced at you. I stopped my shift at 2, 3 hours after my shift was supposed to end, I didn't mind working the extra time, because it was fun and I got to be in the "action" if you will. I left later that afternoon to come back to Richmond, mostly because of the 3 tests I have this week. Overall it was an amazing experience and I definitely want to do it again next year.

Posted by Christopher at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)