Hey, cool!  So I uploaded this picture for use - which Btw, I occasionally use as my desktop picture.

I have a thing for marmots and rodents, so that's why I like this picture.

I recieved this response from Capital One:

Sorry, we were unable to approve the image you submitted
Sorry the image you submitted for your Capital One® Image CardSM has been rejected. We will not approve any images that contain the following: Celebrities such as actors, musicians, athletes, or cartoons.

Interesting...  I didn't know this marmot was a celebrity.  Dang.

Now that the Talk Boards are there, its MUCH easier for people to discuss things on the Talk Boards as a 2-way conversation - opposed to Features, where its 1-way, and people can make comments to the article.  But more importantly, I wanted to remove the Discussion/Editorial articles to give more attention to the more significant articles in Features - the interviews, and newsletters.

I didn't just remove articles written by other people.  Some authored by myself were removed as well.  I hope the other guys got a chance to copy or back up any articles they wrote that they may have wanted to save.  I never like to completely remove work done by people.  But I have to make space, and the authors did get advance notice of the category's removal from the A-List.

Also, after messing around with the Author Archives pages and not figuring out why they aren't coming out right - I just decided to disable the Author Archive pages and all links to them.  If people want to look at past articles, they can always look at the Category Archives and the Full Index which do still work correctly.

As things have developed, I never was quite happy with my description on there.  I thought it was too wordy, contradictory, and repetitive.  I also didn't think it answered the question very clearly.  However, like a lot of things, fixing and improving other things were more important so I never got to it.  So I did today finally update the "What is Specialty Gamer?" page and I think it is much more clear and consise.  Well, I hope it is clear to other people.  The sentence highlighted in green I think best describes what Specialty Gamer is if I had to do it in just one sentence.

Elsewhere:

• Added the linktree to the bottom of topic pages in Talk Boards (so now its located at top AND bottom of each topic)
• Added social bookmark icon links to the pages in Talk Boards

To make the change of the online icon, I simply replaced the useron.gif and useroff.gif files in the /default/images folder.  To change the wording, I edited the index.english.php in the /default/languages folder and replaced the words where the code reads

$txt['online']  = 'Online'; 

and 

$txt['offline'] = 'Offline';

changing the part in single quotes on the right side.

Also changed the website favicon back to the black and blue SG that I originally had.  Also edited the meta keywords, noticing that by default they are all related to SMF.

"PHP, MySQL, bulletin, board, free, open, source, smf, simple, machines, forum" 

No... I don't need to promote SMF any more.  Changed keywords to promote Specialty Gamer.

"Specialty Gamer, Talk Boards, video game, games, classic, retro, Brian Moy, NWCGE, Portland, Northwest, Oregon, collector"

As I've added more and more, I kind of had the concern that there was so much on there it would take a long time for users with dialup and slow connections.  Some graphic files I added recently I forgot to compress, which I did using Ignite.  I noticed from the results of the test, it was mentioning I could save notable file size by compressing various CSS and JS files.  So I did a search for JavaScript compression and I found JavaScript Compressor website.  With that, I copied the code in my JS files, entered it into the online form on JavaScript Compressor, and some results came out in a second form on the bottom - which I cut and pasted into my JS files.  Many of them had their file size cut in half!  As far as I can see, the file compression is by removing all the carriage returns and comment tags.

Later on today, however, I noticed that some of the functions on pages that required those JS files were not working...  So I ended up having to refresh all those JS files to their original formatted code.  The file sizes are back to being big again, but everything seem to work again now.

Oh yeah, and I also deleted the SEGA category in Features.  Now that the Talk Boards have been open for a while, the SEGA category isn't necessary and also its a subject that overlaps and could have articles placed in other categories anyways.  Besides that, there was only one article under there from February - nearly a year ago.

Last year, I thought of the idea to make the calendar a surprise, so I didn't say what it was or even post a picture of how it looked.  I really do like the design, so I thought it was a better idea to show people what I'd be giving them.  Maybe people wouldn't think they'd be interested unless they saw it - and maybe when they see it, they'll think its cool.  I liked the design so much, that I even have a special item I made with the design just for myself and one other friend.

I put up some temporary banners to help promote the 2009 calendars for now.  I found a neat JS code that makes a smaller pic grow to bigger size when the mouse rolls over it.  Only thing about it, is that whe the image gets bigger, it moves all other elements out of the way with it - rather than dropping down over it.  The JS code is by John Scheuer and I found it on Dynamic Drive.  I have to say, I have some hesitation that it might make the page load slower for users with dialup and slow connections.  I really can't know for sure though, because I have Comcastic High Speed Internet - so everything is fast for me.  I think the web pages may be building up a lot of bloat.  If its too much, I hope that doesn't turn people away.

Elsewhere, I added some new smilies to the Talk Boards - including creating one of the Specialty Gamer logo.  Making a smilie of the SpGa logo is something I've put off for a long time.

Here is the new smilies added:

And I removed three stupid smilies that I don't think anyone uses.

SMF, the forum software I'm using has a newer software version than the one I'm using - SMF2.0 Beta4.  You may note that I'm using a beta, so it not fully stable - but it has features the stable retail version doesn't offer, which is why I'm using it. 

Months back, I tried to upgrade the SMF software before but was having issues with the upgrade not converting everytihng fully, so I ended up having to delete the upgrade and reinstall the old version using a backup.  It ended up being a ton of hassle just to ultimately get nothing done.  Hopefully I can get this upgrade complete without issue.

Also, I converted the language and HTML files to UTF8.  The language files in SMF have to be upgraded too.

Reminder to myself - remember to copy the /Themes/default/images folder before upgrading, and then recopying over the default upgrade images with my customised ones for Specialty Gamer.  I made a new theme called SpecialtyGamerTheme, but strangely I get permission errors when I try to rename or even delete files in that folder.  Both thru FTP and using the Cpanel backend thru a browser. 

(You can unsubscribe from the list at any time) (You can unsubscribe from the list at any time)

below the

banner with the thought that it might be good to emphasize that people who sign up for the mailing list can always unsubscribe at any time.  I know some people may be worried that by adding their name to a list - less professional websites won't have anyway to easily unsubscribe from the list if they want without emailing the list source directly.

I've been added to lists - some are people I personally met - where its obviously more amateur so there is no unsubscribe list.  If I want to unsubscribe, then I have to reply directly and ask to unsubscribe which is way more hassle than should be necessary.

Since starting Specialty Gamer, new people signing up to the list has been slow... so I really have to work on how I can have more people sign up.  If they don't sign up for alerts, they won't know when the website is updated - and my thought is if they don't know... then they probably won't come back.

Also thought up some new ideas to spruce up the site, make things maybe a little more interesting and personal to regular visitors.  (yeah all three of you guys!)

Just a few days ago, my webhost provider, Acornhost, made a change to the server upgrading to Suexec so the scgi-bin directory no longer works for scripts.  I don't exactly understand what that is all about and why that was necessary, but anyways I moved my entire Movable Type installation from my personal domain, www.thebrianpages.com to the www.specialtygamer.com cgi-bin folder. 

With the move, I needed to republish just about all the pages with journal entries, and update all file paths to the new ones under www.specialtygamer.com.  Everything would appear to be in place, however if something I forgot, then you'll just get the old 404.  If by chance someone reads this (ha ha), maybe you can post a comment if you come across any dead links and I'll fix it ASAP.

In addition to that I upgraded the MT install from 4.12 to 4.2RC4, which yes is a beta version.  The new MT install does seem to have a lot of new feature enhancements to make navigation around the backend more thrifty with more links and information on each individual page.  Also I hear there is a lot of performance enhancements to make MT load faster with Memcache.  I don't quite understand what Memcache is or does, but I'm trying it out.

I heard these things from Byrne Reese, the Product Manager of Movable Type, whom I met at OSCON this last week and spoke in detail with him personally for a little while on things.  He's a very nice guy and obviously cares very much about the product, the user experience, and the direction of progress in technology in general.

So, today I updated my Newsletter Signup form to emphasize the free bumper sticker with signups by adding "and get a FREE bumper sticker!!!" right above the signup in heading letters so people can see it at a glance.  Also clarified the optional address form a bit.  Added some cellpadding so the words aren't scrunched in the box.  Set the font sizes so everything fits correctly.

Also, added the Newsletter Signup form code to the footer of my Talk Boards.  The Talk Boards are becoming one of the main areas of traffic since I opened that section - so it makes sense to add the signup form to that portion.  Previously, I added a link to the signup in my sig - but really it makes more sense to have that all on the same page.

Thought of plenty of good ideas for Specialty Gamer and etc.  One of them was to add game collection tips section to the talk boards.  Basically the idea being for people share their tips on keeping their collection in the best shape possible.  With areas such as cleaning, repairing, buying, researching, maintaining and storing.

Check out the Talk Boards