Dear Reader
This is Brian. So you found this. Well if you think you are first to find it........
Sorry - the first person here was Mr David Carlisle!!
When Phil first said that he wanted a website to record (or should that be “log”), his, and Norma’s, Minnie B and her grand adventure, my first reaction was “I think I can do this as I run a company who, amongst other things, builds websites”. www.forthdata.co.uk
Once he had said “Yes, please” ....reality set in, and I thought (as you do) “shit” - how the **** do I do this?
Some short hours in research brought me to a program called “Web Plus”, which I first saw as a free download off a magazine cover, and played with it for while. Bear in mind that I had talked over building sites with the guys at work and heard lots of tooth sucking, whistling and comments like “.you know it takes years of training” and” I have a degree in this....”, and of course the classic “do you know how much you spent on the software we use?? Can you afford it?” and finally “don’t even think of using this cheap S**t software” - as you will note, I employ highly educated , literate and tolerant people
But .....Disregarding totally all of the professionals comments I thought I would give it a go.
After a few more hours I realised then that I could use the cheap and nasty software that was so disdainfully criticised by my staff (why do I pay these people?) that perhaps I could manage it as it seemed fairly simple, and decided to invest large sums of money (well £40! Anyway) in the latest version, which this site is now written in. It has been a huge learning experience. Not only in learning software, but also in learning about human nature (well, I will come to that later....).
So I played around with the software for a while and then decided to make a start.
Firstly you have to think about how the pages should look. Now I am no Graphic Designer (did I say I owned an Advertising Agency?) but I think I have a very small eye for what looks OK and what doesn’t. So using Webplus X2 I setup a master page.. Basically the heading and the navigation bar layout - yet to develop as the pages grew in number (and how they grew!!!!), the background colour and set up the colours of text and hyperlinks etc. All to a (hopefully) restrained nautical theme in muted tomes of blues, greys and greens. Looks OK, I thought and passed it by Phil for initial reaction. “Where’s the colour” he said, “can we make it more lively”, he said, “can we have red”, he said.
But then, taking a deep breath and curbing my burgeoning graphic persona for a bit, I said “.....of course”.
So the site as you see it now is more lively, but it doesn’t have much red!. It also has lighthouses, but we can’t talk about those as I am not sure that I (or Phil) will have to cough up usage fees! I hope not!
Then he said, take a look at this one http://www.zeroxte.com/.
So I did.
So now I thought - OH how can I compete with this!!!!!!!
And.then I looked at the small credit in white bottom right - links to here http://www.iandd.com/iandd_flash/index.html
....and felt better.
S**t these guys don’t get out of bed for less than $64,000!!
Then, another thought.... If they can get $64,000, could I ..............
No
I really am not good enough. But you can always dream...........
So anyway onwards and upwards............
Now - I asked Phil the next question!
“What pages will we have “.
So, this list arrives by email.... Talk about the Gettysburg address! I had no idea!
Well, I gulped and set to and prepare the site layout and page relationships. Phil may be able to navigate from Ringhaddy to Manaus, but I now know how to set up page relationships!
Once the pages are setup you have to fill them. I perhaps had a premonition when I got the page headers. This was made reality when the first email from Phil crashed my email system due to its size! There was going to be lots of text!!!! Anyway I finally received the text, the first instalment. How had someone crammed so much into a short lifetime experience! This was my first inkling of what was to come
Well anyway I set to.
With the text came the pictures - lots of pictures!
OK, this is going to take a while.
So started to work (with glass of wine), and eventually text went in and pictures as well. Then reality hit (with a hint from Phil) “the pictures need to be next to the text that talk about them - not just anywhere on the page”. Right (sigh) a redesign ( how do the professionals do this, I think) - now I know why they get the $50K!.
Anyway I juggle with HTML and Creative Text boxes (see how the tecchie jargon is now rolling off the tongue?) and redesign the page.
Whehey - it works.
..........................................................
Hours later.....
Lubricated by Red wine (wife saying “should you be swearing like that to yourself” or ” ANOTHER bottle?”)
Then I hit a snag - too many pictures and not enough space adjacent to text.
What can I do? A dive into the online manual is needed.
Eureka - a thing called “Popup Rollovers” - (stop sniggering - I didn’t name them that!) .
So I can now get lots of pics into one small space and a bit of interactivity with the viewer (you have to have interactivity - rule 69 in web design apparently).
We are on a roll now. Text flows and pictures go in, boxes are drawn and we even find waves!.
More text arrives from Larchill.
More text goes in to the site, but have now cracked the size problem (for the moment anyway!)
Next we have to go for the big one.
The site looks great on my computer but how the F*** do I get it up on the Web?
Bit more research and six (or was it sixteen) false starts(.... More wine....) and magic happens - just surf to wwww.minnieb.me.uk and there it is! Oh - don’t bother, you're here already!
Then, “just keep buggering on as Churchill,” (and Jill), says
Adding text to pages and adding photos to text (in the right place of course) and then........................
Total disaster..............................................
Software crashes again and again. Will not publish site to own computer never mind web.
Panic.................................
Sleepless night..................................
What can I do?....................................
What has gone wrong??????????????????
Now find out that Internet Forums are so useful. There is always someone out there who has been there before you and can help. In my case is was an Aussie (I will never call them convicts again!). Problems were - page length and picture sizes. Have you ever seen exactly how big a picture file is when it has bee taken at fine quality by an expensive digital camera?? Huge????
The file sizes were just too high and the software thought it would take 2 days to publish (for Gregg’s benefit, what I am talking about is what you would know as “rendering” in video circles).
Anyway, after a few sleepless nights and lots of work to resize things, we achieved liftoff and the site is live.
At this stage - May 6th 2009 at around 9.00pm and after a couple of glasses of wine, I think that all of Phil’s text is in, the pics are in the right place and we are all setup.
Now I have to look at how to track progress on the Great Adventure. A few options are open, some simple; some simple and effective; some complex and stunning, and others (like those used for the Volvo Round the World), just out of reach!
We will achieve tracking - and with the Diary you will be able to read how Phil and Norma are getting on, and also to let you get messages to them.
More as we go on!
Watch this space...........................................
This is Brian. So you found this. Well if you think you are first to find it........
Sorry - the first person here was Mr David Carlisle!!
When Phil first said that he wanted a website to record (or should that be “log”), his, and Norma’s, Minnie B and her grand adventure, my first reaction was “I think I can do this as I run a company who, amongst other things, builds websites”. www.forthdata.co.uk
Once he had said “Yes, please” ....reality set in, and I thought (as you do) “shit” - how the **** do I do this?
Some short hours in research brought me to a program called “Web Plus”, which I first saw as a free download off a magazine cover, and played with it for while. Bear in mind that I had talked over building sites with the guys at work and heard lots of tooth sucking, whistling and comments like “.you know it takes years of training” and” I have a degree in this....”, and of course the classic “do you know how much you spent on the software we use?? Can you afford it?” and finally “don’t even think of using this cheap S**t software” - as you will note, I employ highly educated , literate and tolerant people
But .....Disregarding totally all of the professionals comments I thought I would give it a go.
After a few more hours I realised then that I could use the cheap and nasty software that was so disdainfully criticised by my staff (why do I pay these people?) that perhaps I could manage it as it seemed fairly simple, and decided to invest large sums of money (well £40! Anyway) in the latest version, which this site is now written in. It has been a huge learning experience. Not only in learning software, but also in learning about human nature (well, I will come to that later....).
So I played around with the software for a while and then decided to make a start.
Firstly you have to think about how the pages should look. Now I am no Graphic Designer (did I say I owned an Advertising Agency?) but I think I have a very small eye for what looks OK and what doesn’t. So using Webplus X2 I setup a master page.. Basically the heading and the navigation bar layout - yet to develop as the pages grew in number (and how they grew!!!!), the background colour and set up the colours of text and hyperlinks etc. All to a (hopefully) restrained nautical theme in muted tomes of blues, greys and greens. Looks OK, I thought and passed it by Phil for initial reaction. “Where’s the colour” he said, “can we make it more lively”, he said, “can we have red”, he said.
But then, taking a deep breath and curbing my burgeoning graphic persona for a bit, I said “.....of course”.
So the site as you see it now is more lively, but it doesn’t have much red!. It also has lighthouses, but we can’t talk about those as I am not sure that I (or Phil) will have to cough up usage fees! I hope not!
Then he said, take a look at this one http://www.zeroxte.com/.
So I did.
So now I thought - OH how can I compete with this!!!!!!!
And.then I looked at the small credit in white bottom right - links to here http://www.iandd.com/iandd_flash/index.html
....and felt better.
S**t these guys don’t get out of bed for less than $64,000!!
Then, another thought.... If they can get $64,000, could I ..............
No
I really am not good enough. But you can always dream...........
So anyway onwards and upwards............
Now - I asked Phil the next question!
“What pages will we have “.
So, this list arrives by email.... Talk about the Gettysburg address! I had no idea!
Well, I gulped and set to and prepare the site layout and page relationships. Phil may be able to navigate from Ringhaddy to Manaus, but I now know how to set up page relationships!
Once the pages are setup you have to fill them. I perhaps had a premonition when I got the page headers. This was made reality when the first email from Phil crashed my email system due to its size! There was going to be lots of text!!!! Anyway I finally received the text, the first instalment. How had someone crammed so much into a short lifetime experience! This was my first inkling of what was to come
Well anyway I set to.
With the text came the pictures - lots of pictures!
OK, this is going to take a while.
So started to work (with glass of wine), and eventually text went in and pictures as well. Then reality hit (with a hint from Phil) “the pictures need to be next to the text that talk about them - not just anywhere on the page”. Right (sigh) a redesign ( how do the professionals do this, I think) - now I know why they get the $50K!.
Anyway I juggle with HTML and Creative Text boxes (see how the tecchie jargon is now rolling off the tongue?) and redesign the page.
Whehey - it works.
..........................................................
Hours later.....
Lubricated by Red wine (wife saying “should you be swearing like that to yourself” or ” ANOTHER bottle?”)
Then I hit a snag - too many pictures and not enough space adjacent to text.
What can I do? A dive into the online manual is needed.
Eureka - a thing called “Popup Rollovers” - (stop sniggering - I didn’t name them that!) .
So I can now get lots of pics into one small space and a bit of interactivity with the viewer (you have to have interactivity - rule 69 in web design apparently).
We are on a roll now. Text flows and pictures go in, boxes are drawn and we even find waves!.
More text arrives from Larchill.
More text goes in to the site, but have now cracked the size problem (for the moment anyway!)
Next we have to go for the big one.
The site looks great on my computer but how the F*** do I get it up on the Web?
Bit more research and six (or was it sixteen) false starts(.... More wine....) and magic happens - just surf to wwww.minnieb.me.uk and there it is! Oh - don’t bother, you're here already!
Then, “just keep buggering on as Churchill,” (and Jill), says
Adding text to pages and adding photos to text (in the right place of course) and then........................
Total disaster..............................................
Software crashes again and again. Will not publish site to own computer never mind web.
Panic.................................
Sleepless night..................................
What can I do?....................................
What has gone wrong??????????????????
Now find out that Internet Forums are so useful. There is always someone out there who has been there before you and can help. In my case is was an Aussie (I will never call them convicts again!). Problems were - page length and picture sizes. Have you ever seen exactly how big a picture file is when it has bee taken at fine quality by an expensive digital camera?? Huge????
The file sizes were just too high and the software thought it would take 2 days to publish (for Gregg’s benefit, what I am talking about is what you would know as “rendering” in video circles).
Anyway, after a few sleepless nights and lots of work to resize things, we achieved liftoff and the site is live.
At this stage - May 6th 2009 at around 9.00pm and after a couple of glasses of wine, I think that all of Phil’s text is in, the pics are in the right place and we are all setup.
Now I have to look at how to track progress on the Great Adventure. A few options are open, some simple; some simple and effective; some complex and stunning, and others (like those used for the Volvo Round the World), just out of reach!
We will achieve tracking - and with the Diary you will be able to read how Phil and Norma are getting on, and also to let you get messages to them.
More as we go on!
Watch this space...........................................
Brian’s notes
It is now 10th June. Phil, Norma and MinnieB are safely in Sada in Northern Spain. You will by now have looked at the tracking pages so I don’t need to explain exactly where that is. Emails flow in and out.. Lots of people are sending their best wishes for the journey and enjoying the site, promising to keep coming back to see how things are going (No pressure then, but my pressure pales into insignificance when I think about where P & N are going!).
Tracking seems to be working in Google Earth and the offshore email system works too! Mind you - the whole site is getting bigger by the day, am going to have to do some more optimising (yet more tecchie speak - see how easily it rolls off the tongue now!)
Jill & I have now booked our trip and we are going to meet up with P & N in Vilamoura - Algarve, but of course, being us we are driving there (and going via Edinburgh - Don’t ask!). Next task is how can I update site remotely. Think I have it cracked, but dial in between 1 - 7 September to see the results. By the way this is in red because Phil wanted some red and I couldn’t let him down. Do understand that my instinct is blue and his does tend to be red. But that’s life!
Watch this space again...............
Tracking seems to be working in Google Earth and the offshore email system works too! Mind you - the whole site is getting bigger by the day, am going to have to do some more optimising (yet more tecchie speak - see how easily it rolls off the tongue now!)
Jill & I have now booked our trip and we are going to meet up with P & N in Vilamoura - Algarve, but of course, being us we are driving there (and going via Edinburgh - Don’t ask!). Next task is how can I update site remotely. Think I have it cracked, but dial in between 1 - 7 September to see the results. By the way this is in red because Phil wanted some red and I couldn’t let him down. Do understand that my instinct is blue and his does tend to be red. But that’s life!
Watch this space again...............