I think I've got it

In keeping with the theme of always striving to improve, I think I have yet another milestone in the legacy of the Mikeiscool Website . After some hacking into the HTML templates of Thingamablog , and learning on the fly while I made some modifications to the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) provided by this guy , I think I have finally attained a cohesive and consistent website. While this might not mean a hill of beans to you, to a computer geek like me, I'm pretty darned proud of myself. I've always like learning new things, particularly where computers are involved. In fact, years ago, I did study computer programming and even considered working in the IT field. Hell, I was even one of those wild-eyed enthusiasts who jumped on the "Certification" Craze in the late 90's early 00's and was going for my CIW . Unfortunately for me, before I could finish, the "school" I was attending (which shall remain nameless because they don't deserve 1 shred of any credit/mention) went bankrupt and I was left with a large student loan and only 1 of the 3 certifications!! Suffice to say, I was a little miffed.

Anyway, I got over it, and you know what....I'm glad I did. I'd really hate to have to be sweating whether my job was about to be outsourced to India or Brazil right now. Nothing against any of you that do, but I don't think I'd enjoy working in IT. I love working with computers, I love learning how they work, learning new languages and operating systems, but at my own pace and on my own schedule. Plus, when it's my stuff, I can do whatever I want.....rather than be stuck in a cube explaining to people how to install printer drivers etc etc.

This website began as an experiment as I was learning some of the finer points of Fedora Core which is a "flavor" of Linux . As I was teaching myself how to set up a webserver, I started to realize the value in it for me as a musician and composer. While at first, I just stuck a few pages of text on my webserver to see if I could see it on my local network, I started to realize how much further I could take it. I registered my domain name, and then had to refresh my memory on proper DNS structure so I could point the "internets" to my server, I had to punch holes through a few firewalls I had set up on my boxes and routers, I had to configure my routers to direct all appropriate "internet" traffic to my server...and voila....I had my boring looking website available to the world (not that anyone would have wanted to see it).

Then I decided I would make my site a resource for developing more contacts for licensing my music . I had to re-learn the finer points of web design (which I won't go into here but you can read about in past entries), and maintain my site. Now that I've achieved a "semi" professional website, I will feel even more confident directing people, producers, filmmakers, etc to my site in order to find out more about me. I had previously taken the attitude of "well, they're coming to the site to hear the music" but I began to realize that no one wants to look at a horrible website, and that was what I had. I hope now that people find the site useable, attractive, and easy on the eyes (kinda like me.......no just kidding.....I had to). Anyway, if any of you have read most/all of the entries relating to the development and improvement of this site over the last year, I hope you've seen it improve steadily. Stay tuned as always for more updates and ramblings, and as always, check out the Music Page for the latest and greatest creations.

WHEW!!

Man, my brain, eyes, and fingers hurt! No, I didn't just kick my own ass like this guy , I just finished overhauling the Official Mikeiscool Website.  It's been a long time coming, and I must say that I'm pretty happy with the results. After a LOT of work, I confess, I'm not really feeling like typing too much today, but I wanted to at least stick a post up, ensure it went across the servers ok, and that the new Cascading Style Sheet from this guy plays nicely with Thingamablog . Overall, it looks like it does, although both the Mikeiscoool Blog Page and the Mikeiscool News Section render slightly differently than the other pages. But, they look good enough for me to feel that the bulk of the work for this project is over. Surprisingly, a big part of the solution was abandoning Dreamweaver for NVU.  For those of you needing to create/edit/update a website, please check it out, I recommend it highly.

Anyway, Lily's in the other room in her swing, and she's sounding like she's going to need something to eat very shortly. I must sign off, but I thank you for stopping by. Let me know what you think of the new design, and please let me know if you find any dead/broken links, I could use the help troubleshooting.