iamnotagoodartist

It’s been online for awhile, but I think now it’s officially ready to be publicly unveiled: http://howtodocomputer.com/

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Basically, it’s an experiment in passive income, rashly created after brainstorming ways I can conquer the internet without trying too hard or involving drugs, naked people, or naked drugs.

Ultimately, the goal is to make $10 a year to pay for the domain renewal. So far, I’ve made a penny, which is a pretty good start!

.1% Success! Huzzahs!

This is also my first time playing around with ads, which has been pretty fun.

Do I “want own business?” Hmmm… I don’t quite know exactly what that entails. I think I’m good?

Oh, one more thing… Computers, stocks, bonds, NASDAQ, black people and white people shaking hands, buzzwords, etc.

I’m sorry, internet, I had to.

Woah, buddy, I haven’t posted on here in awhile. What have I been working on? I’ll tell you!

We used to have this game on the Something Else forums where we’d collectively write a cheesy romance story, with each person contributing a new line or paragraph. It was pretty fun. A month or so ago, friend/colleague Kris Knight had the idea to make a whole site dedicated to such a peculiar activity. I volunteered to help.

With that, we give you:
iromanceyournovel.com

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Here’s how it works, from our “About” page:

Every week, we will start a new story, giving the readers the first paragraph. Past that, it’s up to you. Log in, read up, write a new contribution, and wait for someone else to follow your lead.

The site runs on WordPress but is definitely more complex than anything else I’ve made with the blogging platform. The theme we made formats the posts and comments so they all run together cohesively, unlike a traditional blog. The comment (or, as we call them, contribution) details are hidden using Prototype JavaScript, a first for me. I also used multiple loops within the index page to display the latest news above the story of the week.

This site is also cool because it’s the first project I’ve done where I haven’t gone out of my way to support Internet Explorer 6. Without going off into a rant, for those not savvy to the internet, coercing your site to work on IE6 is possible, but extremely difficult and limiting. We decided to take a stand and be lazy and not support it.

Here’s a video promo Kris made about IRYN:

And I think that’s it. Go take a look and contribute, if you dare. We really hope this thing takes off.

Here’s another YMC MySpace. It’s been up for awhile, but I’ve just finished giving it a total code revamp.

Looky: http://www.myspace.com/damasses

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As always, depending on when you look at it, it may or may not look anything like the picture, bla bla blah.

New to this one:

• Fixed height of top navigation and ad bar. No more hidden/covered content when AdBlock is running.
• Increased efforts to have everything identical cross browser. Probably as perfect as it can get on my end without covering the whole thing in a new layer.
• A band name that’s funny because it sounds like “dumb-asses.”

I think that’s it. Time for bed.

Ghostie is the music-making alias of a friend of mine who is particularly pale. He pretty much gave me free reign to make whatever I wanted, and this is what I made: http://www.myspace.com/therealghostie

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His layout is clean and easy, with all the content in one box rather than being split up and all the non-essentials on the page removed.

Its v1.0 for now; we’ll probably change some stuff later.

PowerThirst is one of the two bands from the Young Musician’s Club this summer. They’re metal. They’re scary.

Here’s the logo and MySpace I made for them: http://www.myspace.com/powerthirstwillmeltyourface

Right now, it’s all dummy text and the CSS is pristine. Depending on when you visit and how much they alter things, it may or may not look anything like these images.

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The crowning achievement for this one is the use of semi-transparent PNGs in floating DIVs to splatter “kool-aid” on top of the content. Super classy.

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This is actually the first MySpace layout I’ve made entirely from scratch, CSS and all. I’m pretty proud of myself. It works in all major browsers and systems, including IE6, which I can’t believe people are still using because it’s a complete piece of garbage.

I’ve got a couple more to make for YMC and a buddy of mine. I’ll post them as I finish them.