Abbreviated For The Masses

This afternoon I spent some more time introducing tweaks to df.com. Our latest improvements are as follows:

  • Cleaned up the 404 Page Not Found quick search function. Better layout and coloring is now found on the 404 Search page making it easier to use than ever.
  • Updated CAPTCHA form to continue to reduce spam comments (haven’t had one sneak through yet proudly enough).
  • Cleaned up the Google.com Custom Search found at the bottom of our in house Search page making that also more user friendly and easier to read.
  • Introduced new “teaser” function to front page News posts. If the post goes over 500 words it will be abbreviated on the main “Home” page. This insures df.com load times stay under 15 seconds and helps make the site snappy when first loading. You’ll also notice a new “Permanent Link” is shown at the bottom of each post to help you with linking to the article on your blog/web page if you so wish to do so. Finally, you’ll notice each post also has the complete word count and estimated time to read it so if you’re on the go or in a hurry you know how much time you’ll need to tackle the text at a later time. All in all I think this will improve web site browsing speeds and also let you know just how long an article is.

These are some of the small, but important improvements I’ve recently implemented. Hopefully they will help you continue to enjoy our site even more. As always, feedback is welcome.

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Countdown to Extinction

With surgery looming some 12 hours away tomorrow morning the reality of things is finally starting to set in. Perhaps the biggest concern I have right now is the unknown– specifically just how much recovery time will I need and just how the Hell much will I regret this decision when I’m laying in bed 48 hours from now in complete agony? Like most things, only time can decide. I ask that you be patient and hang in there– I will be back to update the site further as soon as I am physically able to do so even if it’s just a “Hey, I’m alive” message.  I’d like to also thank all of you out there who sent me get well wishes through email, via one of our social network profiles, and for those of you who know me more personally via phone.  Your thoughts and get well wishes are appreciated.

Some of you may have noticed (if you live in the area of my hometown) that the recent edition of the “Warwick Advertiser” (one of Warwick’s hometown newspapers) “Where In Warwick?” feature was won by one certain history nerd you may know:

Frank Forester Memorial in Warwick NYWHERE IN WARWICK?
Congratulations to Maureen Byrne, Darlene Brozowski, and Christopher Welch, who correctly identified last week’s “Where in” clue. Welch provided some history with his answer: The image is from the Forester Monument found on the corner of Colonial and Maple Avenue in the Village of Warwick. Specifically it is Mr. Forester’s mustache and mouth. “The monument is dedicated to author Frank Forester (aka Henry William Herbert) who wrote the book ‘Warwick Woodlands’ (published 1839) among other noted works. “Forester was an avid outdoors-man and spent many hunting trips in the Town of Warwick woodlands. Forester preferred to stay at the old Wawayanda Hotel, which today is gone (once stood where today the Mobil Station near the monument is), hence the placement of this monument. “One side of the monument was originally a horse drinking fountain, but today is dry– serving as more of memorial to a bygone era. There is a plaque recounting the above achievements of Forester on a rock just behind the fountain. If I recall correctly, they were erected at different times with the fountain being placed first and the stone with the Forester plaque being placed second. I believe the fountain side had ties to the Civil War and was supposed to commemorate the fallen soldiers from the Town of Warwick (who are often referred to in writings from the era as the ‘Warwick Boys’).”

Yes, I have that much spare time– the verbiage is actually from our Beyond DF project on the Google Earth BBS. Check it out when you have spare time (info on how to locate my posts on that site are explained in the aforementioned Beyond DF section).

“Paranormal Activity” is now in official national release and if you still are interested in checking it out (the search results are still pushing around 25 people a day to this very site– sooooooo yeah) be sure to look on Fandango to find out where you can find it near you. The movie right now is listed as number three in active movie viewership rankings and has raked in over $20.1 million USD. Reports peg the film production at less than $11,000 and if this is the case that’s a significant return on investment. Nice job boys. Nice job.

Another article that has resonated with our viewers is our recent “Here Comes Droid For Verizon” article. Again, this is mainly driven from searches and one can only gauge the sheer buzz growing around the launch of this handset. Thanks to DJ ADD for pointing out the Moto Sholes hardware is actually globally available and that means Verizon will potentially not be the only provider with access to a Droid mobile smartphone variant of their own.

For those of you who know me very well– you know I love baseball. As such, I spend way too much effort on my Fantasy Baseball team (the Rhode Island Rabbits). I once heard that Fantasy sports is what AD&D nerds grow up to do to seem less geeky, but in all reality are only more geeky because of it. This is probably true as I was a big AD&D fan growing up and now here I am obsessing over who’s on the DL and who’s going to raise my team RBI to nudge me a point or two up in the rankings. Having said that I finished fourth in my league out of eleven. This was a big achievement considering last year I was in last place in a thirteen team league.

Now my Rabbits are moving on to Fantasy Football with the NFL season in full swing. It’s a public Yahoo! league so you can follow my stats in real time (though I doubt you have as much free time as me right now soooooo… yeah).  Right now I’m sixth out of ten with a 3-3-0 record. Last place here I come!

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DF.com on YouTube

As promised, you will now find in our newly added Video section a group of videos that feeds from our “Favorites” list from YouTube.com (found on the site here). We’ll be adding more videos over time, but there are some of our top perennial favorites posted already to get things going. Of course, you’re always welcome to drop us a line via comments on this post to let us know what videos you’d like to see included. We just might dig what you’re cooking and post it. Who knows. We just might.

To make room on the main menu bar I changed the Visual Artwork section to the smaller length Artwork section. Content remains the same though I did delete some duplicate Graphic Art that I found.

You’ll also find in the right hand side menu some quick picks of the top external DF.com sites from around web the under “Beyond DF.com – Top Picks” heading. The complete list of external sites can be found in the Beyond DF.com section.

Our expansion around the web is complete at this point (at least for the time being). We’re far from done though… we’ve got a few more tricks up our sleeves that we’ll be showing off over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

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Always Renovating & Innovating

I’m not sure I know how to “leave well enough alone”, but you cannot say I don’t spend a lot of time working on df.com. Clearly I may spend too much time, but that’s neither here nor there. With that some of the latest things I’ve done to make things run better and simpler to do what needs to be done are:

  • Added Print/PDF button to make printing off the blog and other sections a breeze. Try it out, it works pretty darn good and helps save you ink by not printing all the graphics/theme gobbledygook.
  • Updated CAPTCHA code so you can comment, but spammers can bug off. Yes, that means less Viagra adds on df.com than the average blog.
  • We’ve tested the new mobile df.com on several phones and it works great.

In short, these are tiny changes, but I think they’re worthwhile ones. As always, if you think there’s something we should be doing or using on the site to make it better drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

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DF.com V11.0 Final Released

I’m happy to announce we have finalized and generally released version 11.0 final of digitalflood.com. This concludes our public Beta. Thank you again to all of you who helped out with development and gave feedback. Together we have built a product I’m very proud of. We’ll begin moving now onto other projects (including the return of digitalflood Pirate Radio) along with continuing to improve the site, as well as, add features over time. I’ve moved the code tracker to its own page (which can be found here or under the “About DF.com” sub-menu “DF.com Code Info”). And with that– it’s time to start the second decade of df.com. So it begins again anew!

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