Michael Richard Murphy

So my last ‘woe is me’ post doesn’t hang out on my home page too long, here’s a quick blurb about a site I discovered recently. don’t meet your heroes compiles CSS and web standards related blogs, hence the description compiles. While it includes a lot of the sites on my regular reading list, a few don’t make the cut. It’s still a worthwhile visit for me because it quickly enables me to determine if 6 or 7 of my favorite authors have any new content without having to visit their sites individually. It also helped put me in contact with Andrew Faulkner at fad.tastic for whom I think I’m going to start writing.

I don’t want to make a habit out of moaning and complaining here but holy cow has 2006 sucked so far! I know I started off the new year trying to pump positivity but we’ve really been knocked on our asses this month.

In the last four weeks, someone has been assaulted, a long friendship has ended, someone has died, someone has been hospitalized, someone started a new job, someone is sick, and someone’s application has had production issues.

I think we all need a long nap.

Just an FYI to interested parties. Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software is publishing a series of essays on design. He doesn’t mean design like deciding between two colors, we’re talking usability. I’ve always taken something away from his writings so be sure to check them out.

I freely admit that I’ve been lazy. I’ve had years to learn .Net, I’ve even had a book for years, but never quite got around to it. .Net is in, VBScript is has been out. Citigroup’s best practices recommend .Net and C# and after another discussion last week, I decided that’s my best course of action at this time.

I think I might actually be looking forward to it. I enjoy learning new things, and in a sick twisted way, the frustration of grappling with a problem and the satisfaction of coming up with a solution.

It’s been a little over a week since I posted last. As you can see, tonight I emplemented the ‘Rosie the Riveter’ Redesign. That’s part of the reason it’s taken me so long to write here, the other is that I’m also getting close to the implementation date of the recognition program at work that I talk about all the time lately.

Anyhow, just like with the last design, I tried to pick something that really stood out to me and for some reason, Rosie does that. In this case I kept it pretty simple and was able to use most of my existing work so it didn’t take too long to get put together. I find I get bored with the design of my site rather quickly so time allowing, stay tuned for something else. For now though, this has cured my jones.

I don’t mean to brag but it looks like Google and MSN love me! I’ve been paying pretty close attention to my stats since I switched servers and the Googlebot has visited this site about 7 times each day so far this month. MSN isn’t far behind with 5 visits per day.

In my not too distance past, I’d hear constant whining and crying over search engine rankings. “Content, content, content…”, I’d say. Never one to say, “I told you so.”, I’ll let the stats speak for themselves. I’m also not including Inktomi, etc. or blog-related spiders. Alexis found a post here about reddit on Technorati and commented on it within hours of it being published.

I think my point here is that while people offer up lots of tricks to get indexed or high rankings, nothing worthwhile ever comes without hard work. Content is king. Scratch that, fresh content is king. I try to write here regularly to make it worthwhile for people to come back. Search engines are no different.

It’s called The DHTML/JavaScript Calendar and it definitely is. I promised a few days ago that I would start to post links to scripts I’ve found online that were useful to me, so here goes.

The javascript calendar available from dynarch.com can easily be set up in about 5 minutes simply by copying a few scripts from their download to your web server and adding the appropriate links to them in your document’s head tag. It also comes with a half dozen “themes”, which consist of pre-made stylesheets that just need to be copied and linked to.

Once you’ve got the script and stylesheet links in place, Dynarch provides a demo page with all the different types of implementations possible. Find the one you like and copy and paste the source into your document. Further customization is possible with only intermediate knowledge of Javascript and HTML but it really is as simple as cut and paste.

See below for a sample implementation:

I just completed my Web Development Concepts certification from Brainbench at the Master Level, scoring a 4.08 to land in the 97% percentile. The certification covers a general overview of HTML, programming, Internet, XML, and object oriented design. You can view my Brainbench transcript online or download my resume.

I’ve really been testing my usability knowledge with this recognition program I’m working on. In my old position, we had a core set of components or features for our sites that we didn’t really deviate from. Since they were already developed, the only questions was where on the page to put them.

Not so with this new application. While the recognition program itself has existed for a number of years, an application that brings it online and automates quite a few processes is new territory. We’ve had to put together new forms. Forms mean validation and usability issues.

I’ve been reaching into my bag of tricks for things I haven’t used in a quite a while and learning a bunch of new ones as well. I’ve also been writing Javascript like nobody’s business. I’ve found quite a few great scripts as well and when I can, I’ll give the authors credit and post links to them. In the meantime, here’s 10 Tips To A Better Form at ParticleTree.com. There’s some great advice and links to some very nice implementations of that advice. Enjoy.

I like to use fake email addresses. When I sign up for things where email is required but I’m not sure I ever want to hear from that company again, I give them a fake address at my domain; I usually use the company name @ my domain name dot com. That way when I get inundated with spam at that address, I know exactly who to hate.

I recently upgraded server software and my mail preferences for each hosted domain allow me to either bounce mail sent to non-existant accounts or specify a catchall, a real address that should get all the mail forwarded to it. The upgrade doesn’s call it a catchall but it still lets me forward mail for a non-existant account to any account I want. This time it comes pre-populated with the address associated with the owner of the account. Since it only makes sense to allow people to contact me about problems with my domain at a non-domain email address, this is one of my gmail accounts. Before I had them forwarding to a real address at my domain. The difference got me thinking.

I like having the ability to forward mail from madeup accounts so that I can keep track of what’s coming from where. Unfortunately, this opens me up to spam from companies that scan the whois registries and send junk to info @, sales@, and webmaster@ addresses on a regular basis. My gmail accounts automatically forward on to my real address so I don’s have to check them all the time but by keeping them in the middle, I get to take advantage of their spam filter. Any mail sent to a non-existant address that is truly junk gets filtered out by gmail’s spam filter and hopefully what’s left that gets forwarded to me is only what I signed up for and really want. A kind of convoluted way to a clean inbox but effective nonetheless. In fact, since I upgraded, I’ve been wondering at the decrease in volume of mail.

I recently switched servers and the new one “features” an upgraded version of WordPress. Although I was able to transfer over all my posts without difficulty, as you might have noticed, my stylesheet seems to be a little bit off in the Dailies section now. I’m not sure how the process used to work but creating themes in WordPress seems relatively easy now. I say seems because obviously I didn’t do so hot. WordPress comes with two themes installed but allows users to create and use their own. The process sounded pretty straight forward. I take copies of my old index and stylesheet, create a folder for them in the themes directory of WP , then I go into the control panel, select that theme and voila! Unfortunately that’s not the case. A redesign is hopefully not far off but you can still expect that stylesheet to get cleaned up…just not tonight.

On my To-Do list for 1^st quarter 2006:

• A redesign of www.letsgomurphys.com
• michaelrichardmurphy.com the domain that aliases to this will be spun off on its own

After the redesign and spin-off, this domain will still feature my writing (a skill which I’ll forever be working on) and information about me but it will probably be of a more personal nature. michaelrichardmurphy.com will focus more on my career, portfolio, and writing of a more professional nature.

I have something pretty cool in mind for the professional domain but it requires learning a new skill so be patient and stay tuned.

The first of the year is the time everyone is talking about resolutions and making plans for change. Somebody wants to lose weight, somebody wants to set aside and save more money, and somebody wants to take a much needed vacation. If 2005 wasn’t good for you, it’s not too early to start planning for a better 2006.

I’ve selected a couple of articles by the always upbeat and insightful Jeffrey Gitomer to help people get started off on the right foot in 2006. The first has Jeffrey’s suggestions not for finding happiness but creating it within yourself. The second has more to do with setting goals and committing to them.

Read up, set some goals for 2006, and create an environment for yourself that fosters happiness. Enjoy!