2004 Report
By Alan Baylis 20/12/2004
Hi all. I hope you had a good year and got most of what you wanted to achieve
done. I certainly got a lot done but not necessarily in the way of programming.
As you can see, the website has had a facelift, hopefully for the better, but
the good news is that I am now using cascading style sheets (CSS) for the site
and I will be experimenting with a few different styles until I find that
ultimate look, or at least something halfway decent. I am sold on css and
actually enjoy making webpages now, the days of fighting font tags and tables
are finally over. The only problem now is I spend so many hours trying
different styles that I end up taking far more time to get the work done; though
I guess the novelty will wear off after a while. I don't have enough expertise
to comment on the browser issues but I have only used CSS1 which works well with
most browsers and even passes the ultimate test in the Firefox browser.
The last part of this year has been spent making webpages for a small local
hosting company which has been a good opportunity to practice and learn a bit
more about webpage design, javascript and search engine optimization, but I
would like to get back to my true passion of programming, making example programs and writing
tutorials. To be able to do this on a full time basis I need to derive an income
from my website so I hope you understand why I must now sell a small amount of
advertising space on the website. Having just made over a hundred two page
websites for local businesses I can see that most businesses are small family
owned and operated businesses, even the franchise outlets, and have a legitimate
need for promote their business through a reasonable amount advertising. By allowing businesses to
sponsor my website rather than using pay per click banners I hope to be able to
be more selective in the type of advertising I allow on the pages. If
advertising is truthful, non-patronizing or intimidating then it is a benefit to
both businesses and the community.
You may also have heard that I am now using the ODE library for physics
simulation. I'll be having fun experimenting with the library during the new
year and I hope to bring you the results of this experimentation by way of
examples and a few tutorials. Again, it all depends on whether I can make a
modest living from my 'craft'. To help me achieve this you can click on the
banners and if you are running a website of your own then perhaps you could
include a link back to this site to help improve its position in search engine
results. After all, this is all I am asking for in exchange for using my source
code. To date I haven't found a lot of links back to this site. I have to agree that
not everyone is going to want to link to a website run by someone who goes by
the name TheGoodAlien but it was very common only a few years ago to have an
interesting alias, how times change. The new improved look should remove this obstacle for
those contemplating a link back so I'd appreciate you taking the time to do so.
Have a great time over Christmas and remember to play nice :)
Bye for now.
Al
