My admin interface is back, so I'll have an easier time posting new stuff. Also fixed the banner rotation with all the quotes from v.3, and now the real quote with attribution is shown in the footer. I also added some random stats in the footer, like number of opinions and tags and such, with links to the relevant page.

As noted in the last post edit, the tags and tag cloud are back up as well.

Still left to do now: Blog Archive by date, comments and a boatload of opinions.

Here's a short sneak peak opinion for now: Just read the new Robin Hobb book, Fool's Assassin and it's awesome! Unfortunately it ends in a big cliffhanger (first book in a new trilogy).

Yay, the new look is here! Only took about a year from start to finish. The tag system, archive and comment functionality is not online yet tough.

I also have a huge backlog in opinions... It's going to take a while to get back in sync.

Edit:
Tags fixed!

Yeah, still here, just slacking with updates. The opinion backlog is getting really long.

I'm currently working on a redesign of skallen.net. A little wider and cleaner, more suited for todays high-res screens . Will be ready for next month.

Wow, this is close, my clock is now 23:45 on the last november day, just in time for this months post. Didn't have to cheat this time!

So, big change on the frontpage. Now each blog post is in its own frame which makes it much easier to see where one post ends and another begins. Also added support for posting opinions to the front page. Not all opinions will be on the frontpage, only the ones that has a bit of writing in them will be published, to show them off a bit more.

I'm not used to writing reviews yet, last time I did something like that was back in college, so bear with me if they suck in the beginning. Hopefully it will get better!

Okay, time up, clock is now 23:57, better post it.

Well I'm having some troubles producing a new wallpaper... Somehow it just doesn't feel right, it looks too photoshop-noobish . So I'll just have to postpone it again.

But at least I have something new! Instead of just text links to wikipedia for all "watched", I now have a small image (similar to the sidebar) and a rating for each entry. They are also linked to the actual opinion on the opinion page. Not everything is updated yet though. Unrated stuff will still just show a name and the old wiki link. Easier to see and adds a little more color to the front page, especially to those posts with no images, like this one ;)

I'm going to tweak the front page a bit more, then the next part to get an overhaul is the long forgotten 'projects'.

I've just updated the opinion system a lot! First of all: The poll is removed from the frontpage and replaced with a new box called 'Latest Opinions'. It displays the five most recent opinions added, and a link to each one.

That's right, I know have a way to show each individual opinion, without the use of javascript. As just shown in the new box, also makes it possible to link to a specific one. I've also added a way to browse the opinions without using javascript. Maybe not as nice looking as the javascript way but it works. Possibly also lets search engines index the content (not sure how good they are at javascript).

Last and not least, I've also added support for longer comments in each opinion, as demonstrated by my opinion on Yui Makinos latest album, Holography.

I've been working hard on my opinions since last time. I now have a total of 535 items in six categories, as well as a nicer overview page with some graphs and stats. The 'games' category is finished, all the games have an image, a rating as well as a short comment. 'Anime' and 'TV' have images and ratings on all items, but still missing a lot of comments. 'Books' and 'movies' are still missing a lot of images, but they have ratings.

I'll keep working on updating them, as well as adding new features such as fallback browsing without javascript, linking to a single opinion and the ability to post longer 'reviews' instead of a short comment (the limit is 4 lines of text at the moment).

Also been playing a new game, 'The Witcher 2'. So far I'm enjoying myself quite a bit. It's a bit more hack n' slash compared to dragon age, but the story seems nice. It's not a forgiving game though, I've probably died close to 50 times already and I'm only playing normal! Here's a screen from a boss in chapter one:

I mentioned in the last post that I was looking for a place to catalog the books I read, kind of like what I have for anime over at anidb. I wasn't happy with the alternatives I found, so I made my own place to rate and comment on stuff I watch/read/play etc.. So here it is:


Here's a preview if you don't want to head over there just yet:


The listing of opinions is done with a combination of php (for getting the data) and javascript (for display). This means that the user can sort and browse without having to reload the page. Pretty neat .

It's still a work in progress. I have some new features to add as well as more content, stay tuned

Yes, exactly 5 years since the first post on the "new" skallen.net (v2.0). Still cruising around on 800 000+ Visitors, not quite a million yet. I hope I'll reach 1 million for the 10 year anniversary

As a celebration of the five year mark I've added two more themes, 'Grey Garden' and 'Purple Galaxy', as well as 5 new headline quotes (a second plato quote!). Also, new poll, frackin' vote plx.

I was delaying this post quite a bit just to get exactly 5 years, so a lot of stuff has piled up, mostly books. I've recently bought "The Farseer Trilogy" by Robin Hobb. I acctually had my eyes on it for a long time (who can resist titles like "Assassin's Apprentice"?), and finally got around to buying them. Was kinda put off in the beginning, mostly because it was a first-person narrative book, not a type I'm used to in fantasy. But it was kind of interesting to see the story from only one persons prespective (though the books cheat a little, the protagonist "dreamwalks" in his sleep and sees various events happen around the world that he would normally be unaware of).

Anyway, good books, gonna have to buy the rest of Hobb's books now!

Soon vacation time, golfing is going crap at the moment, but hopefully it will change!

'Till next time....

Wooo, joining up with the new titles, the site now also have better urls. So instead of "http://www.skallen.net/?page=gallery&gallery=Wallpapers" I now have "http://www.skallen.net/gallery/Wallpapers". Much nicer, both for me, the visitors and hopefully the search engines .

A new poll is up, this time about the color of the next theme for my site. If you have another suggestion, please post it in the shoutbox.

Saw the new Robin Hood movie yesterday, was really good, at least 8/10 for me! Not as good as gladiator, but still worthwhile to watch

Boo, two posts without images... But I have a new wallpaper that I'm working with, so hopefully I will have it ready for next time.

One more paragraph: Next month skallen.net celebrates its 5 year anniversary, yay!

I've been working to make the site a bit more search engine friendly, and maybe sometime in the future HTML 5 conversion. A first step on this long journey is some proper page titles. Until a few days ago, all pages had the same title (skallen.net - interweb 3.0).

Now all pages are named like this: skallen.net - category - subcategory. For example: "skallen.net - gallery - wallpapers - yui makino" (2 subcategories!) or "skallen.net - tags - worldofwarcraft".

Not completely finished yet though, projects and polls are not done. Projects still have some remnants from skallen 2.0 code structure and needs to be remodeled into my current standard to work with the new title system, and to a lesser extent, polls as well.

Edit: Projects are fixed!

Finally have a Starcraft II beta key! Got it after pre-purchasing the game, woopiedoo. The only sad thing about it is that I really suck at it :/. Needs more practice!

Heroes of Newerth is "going retail" may 12, I've already pre-purchased that one as well, but on the release day I'll have the chance to claim my real nick instead of the one I have now (with some number/letter substitutions).

Yeehaa!

Or maybe inside the pumpkin head?? Anyway, the shoutbox is now working properly, for the first time in like... forever. Anything goes into it, å, ä ö, even 日本語! Test it out

Not much else to report at this time, just posted something last week, can't exhaust my stash too fast, but I guess I can offer some oneliners...

Soon time for x-mas theme, I got it slightly updated for this year.

Two posts now without images (though the last one came with a theme).

Maybe I'll do a list for next time.

Sweden - Czech Republic, 4-3, woohoo.

I wish I had a new game for the site.

Good night!

Booo! It's halloween, and what better way to celebrate it then with a new theme? As usual change to it at the theme selector at the top of the page.

What else.... I fixed my mouse last week, left button was glitching making me double-click when I was just holding it down. So I opened it up, put some epoxy on the thing pressing the microswitch (which was kinda worn-down) and filed it down to the right height. Worked really well. Also took some pictures of it, will put it up later under projects, after my rework of that section is done.

Rework, yeah, I'm moving to Montana... errr no, im moving away from tables to divs is what I meant to say. Already managed to cut down the number of DOM objects on the fronpage from ~900 to 800, and I'm not even half done. So in addition to it being proper (you're not suppose to design with tables) it will also load faster. Sounds like win-win to me!

Thats it for now, enjoy halloween!

Actually, just checking in the DB and visitor count (unique) is on '111 830'! Missed the 100000 celebration with ~12000 visits, but no matter! A celebration it is! With lots of exclamation marks! Every sentence! Weeeee!

Total count according to modlogan (log analyzer) is 843518 visitors, but I'm not sure how it handles uniques, and that number includes when my games was most popular, back when they were on subdomains, not on the main site (thus not counted in my own stats). But anyway, that number is closing in on , maybe next year .

So, new backgrounds! The blue theme now has a nice little row of clouds on the top, and on the yellow one its sunny 8). Also fixed the tags a bit, the cloud is now expanded over the whole page and you can select tags right from it, instead of going via the list on the right. And when browsing a tag, a list on the right will show popular tags, related tags (still in the works), and a link to get back to the cloud, as well as a link for a random tag.

Been home sick last week (swine flu?) but I'm better now . Being home sick equals watching a lot of TV, beware of a big list below...

Never eaten turkey actually, but I've been eating dinner in Turkey just recently. Also took some pictures and drank some beer . Here's one of the photos I took, more in the gallery...



Also updated a little, I've added five new headline quotes:

• An investment in skallen.net always pays the best interest.
• Skallen.net compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
• It is fun to be in the same decade with skallen.net
• Skallen.net is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.
• Skallen.net is the name of the greatest of all inventors

Real quotes that I tweaked a bit. Recognize any?

Going to redo some of the themes a bit and add more interesting backgrounds to them, but that's for next time, cya then

I've done some small updates I've been thinking about doing for a long time. The comments are back! Yay, now I can talk with myself both in the shoutbox and in the comments! Also removed the big box on the frontpage. It was simply too much space for a few headlines. Now you will get right on the latest blog post (hello!). I've also reworked the sidebar a bit, now a small box with recent posts are there (as a replacement for the missing headlines box above the blog), and it moves! If you haven't had time to vote in the poll (you really should) the poll goes on top, but if you already voted, the headlines goes first instead. Also changed a few things in the coding, but mostly non-visible stuff.

Now, for the second time in history, a post with an image!



Two Yui Makino albums fresh from japan!
The picture quality is not the greatest, taken with my old S700i.


It's back

Yes, the long overdue updates to the gallery has finally been initiated. I've been unhappy with the "open a new page for each image" style of the gallery, and was looking for a way to add a next/previous interface to it. I've previously had been working with Lightbox JS in a theme for phpBB (at my old wow guild homepage), and it fits my needs perfectly. But its a bit to heavy for my taste, so I've been experimenting with different lightweight variants, currently using litebox.

In addition to the "show" aspect, I've also implemented an auto-thumbnail generation in php. If it finds an image that doesn't have a thumbnail generated, they will be created on the fly by the script and saved on the server for the future. This will hopefully mean that the gallery pages will load faster (earlier I had the complete image as thumbnail, just scaled down in html), look smoother (resampling instead of html scale) and save me some bandwidth.

Next up on my update list is the blog frontpage! I'm also experimenting with flex and flash programs without using the Flash CS3 IDE, just text editor and command line compiler. So maybe a new game.... but don't expect it anytime soon

Also just noticed, this is my 100th post at the new skallen.net, woohoo, grats me!

I'm experimenting a little with AJAX, and what better place to experiment then here? . So far I've put together a little tagging functionality for the news.

It (will) work like this:
» I create a new entry and add some relevant tags to it
» The tags is displayed under the post
» Visitors can then click on a tag they think is fitting for the post
» Clicking on the tag will add weight to that tag (AJAX)
» Tags with higher weight will display in bigger/bolder style
» Clicking on the image next to the tag will show other posts tagged with the same tag

At the moment I've completed the AJAX part, but new weights wont show on the tags unless page is reloaded, and there's no image to click to get to similar tagged posts. But soon

Future plans includes AJAX-ifying the shoutbox and poll! A little more 2.0 now, wai!
Edit: Woot 80 000 uniques! Also the comment function has disappeared somehow, will fix it later...

Okay, got the new lists on line, for starters i have top 5 for each month someone have played (for now, only November is available, since this is the first month the date is saved with the score) top 100 overall (ignoring date) and currents month top 10. Also changed the score on the front page to show top 5 of the current month. With this changes it will be a lot easier to get your name in the skallen.net game hall of fame

I plan to eventually expand the top 100 overall to browsable list of all highscore later (possibly much later). A Christmas theme is also on my todo-list.

I'm working on a new highscore section here on skallen.net. I've just added the date when each highscore is recorded (from now on...) and I plan to have monthly highscore lists on the front page instead of overall highest. This will hopefully stimulate players to play more (yay internet fame!) and also be a little more fun to watch, since the highscores now are almost static, I don't think there has been much change on like forever.

I expect these new changes to go live sometimes during this month, and I'm thinking of doing a wipe of the old scores as well, since they don't have the date information. Want me to keep them? Let me know in the shoutbox (haha, they will get soooo wiped ).

**** EDIT ****
Forgot to change the link to www.skallen.net instead of site.skallen.net, fixed now!

Working on getting the RSS feed back online. I'm also gonna check out feedburner and see if it can offer anything interesting.

It's online now! And I'm currently using feedburner to parse my RSS so it will be readable to most browsers and also to get some stats on how many subscribers it has.

Hi!

A new look! W00t! Been talking about it for like forever, who would have thought it was true? Tried to make it a bit "2.0-ish" and not as tight and crowded as my last design.

Here's a small changelog:

» New Design
Duh, kinda obvious right?

» New themes
Yes, the new design comes with three themes right from the start, and maybe even more later. The themes can be selected from the small colored boxes in the top right.

» Updated info
Some info updated about me and about the site.

» Games on the site
Yes, the games are finally integrated into the site, and with working highscores! Also the old game links redirects here.

» My music
A new sidebar on the blog page, where some of the music I listen to shows up.

Some more stuff to probably, but that is the major parts I think. Enjoy!


****EDIT****
The RSS-feed is dead at the moment, will fix it soon.

I now got the rss working, and if you are using Firefox (1.5) you will also note the live bookmark in the address bar . The rss contains the ten most recent news items and links to them. Be sure so check it out.

'Kay, did a new menu, with some nice css features. To bad it looks weird in IE, but I dont really care... (get FF!), imo its a bit nicer now and I think I'll keep it this way, at least for the time being. Im starting to work a bit on the info page now. Cheers

Yes, new stuff, great, I love new stuff... It rocks. So whats new this time? Well, I think its hard to miss the new logo, dunno if its any better but someone was whining about the other one. Unfortunatley my photoshop skills are limited so this is about the best I can do. The source is availible here if you wanna try to make something yourself .


What else? The image gallery, php generated and controlled. I like when php does everything for me. Anyway, check it out under images in the menu (the gallery itself is kind of lacking content at the moment)

Phew, almost done with the shoutbox, the design is done and now it just need some database interaction . I probably would have finished it yesterday but I was watching Prison Break. Seems like a real kick-ass show, episode two ended with the main character almost getting his toes chopped off. I guess I have to see the next ep. as well. ^_^

I've remade the menu, this time with html/css instead of mouseover. Clean, simple, easy to change . Other plans for today: Info will be updated with lots of.... info!!!