I have spent a reasonable amount of time today (and some yesterday) preparing a brand-spanking new image gallery. At present, the image gallery has around 130 images taken over the past three or so years.

I have only decided to put a few of the better images online, since putting crappier images would have two effects. The first is that it would take more bandwidth from the site should people feel like perusing all the galleries and images contained therein. This could slow down the site — or maybe Optus would notice I’m being naughty and running it. The second is that having the crappier photos would make me look worse. By only choosing the better images (and they really aren’t that great) I look better.

I used a free program called JAlbum to generate the galleries, but since you can script the whole thing and create templates, the galleries fit perfectly into the site as if I’d hand-coded them. I would have preferred to create a database-driven gallery, but to be honest I really can’t be bothered since it wouldn’t automatically generate the thumbnail images like JAlbum does. It doesn’t look great if your browser is smaller than 1024×768 pixels (so you should have the resolution as a minimum and have the screen maximised), but to be honest I don’t care.

Lastly, the images have been reduced quite a lot — both in size and in quality. You may see a fair amount of JPEG compression artifacts on the pictures. Well, unless you want to pay for hosting, it’s going to stay like that until one of us starts paying for fancy-schmancy hosting.

So, here we go — the bludger.org image gallery (in case you missed it, there’s a link on the right).

I have added a new stylesheet called “red ‘n’ grey (no transparency)”. If you find that your browser chugs when scrolling, try that.

If it still chugs after that, your PC is probably crap, the browser is probably crap, or I’ve missed something.

As you can see, I’ve finished the news section, and the archive section is done (well, 99% done ;). I could probably implement the photos section in an hour or so but won’t bother because as stated earlier, it’s not how I want it to be.

So no photos for you!

The members section is way off yet, I want it to function in a very specific manner and it might take a while to implement that, hopefully sooner rather than later. I could, of course, download a ready-made solution, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, you often need full access to the server to implement those solutions, something I don’t have.

On another note, I finished Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast last night. The trip was better than the destination that’s for sure. I must say that it was extremely satisfying to carve up large numbers of Imperial scum armed with only my lightsaber and force power. Oh, I had guns and stuff but what fun are they? Especially when you can turn an enemies’ rocket around and aim it right back at him. ;D

Update:
Well, it’s not really an update, but I recently came across a US Government site, Section 508. This site details good practices in making US Government websites accessible to all users, unfortunately, this site has a nice little message at the bottom, “Best viewed with Internet Explorer 5+”.

Umm, aren’t they supposed to be encouraging accessibility? Just proves how bright some sparks are, eh?

I’ve created a few different colour schemes for the site, and am planning on adding a pull-down list at the top of the screen somewhere. If not I will add it into the customisation page when I get around to doing that (I wouldn’t hold your breath).

In the meantime, if anyone wants to suggest some colour schemes, go right ahead (examples would be nice, too ;).

Work’s proxy has been down for the past few days, so I’ve been gradually fixing some parts of the site (including a few multiple posts) that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to alter.

Update: Work’s proxy has now been fixed, but it looks like I may be able to update my website.

Still a work in progess, though.

I’ve changed the news to be read from the new database system rather than the old system which wasn’t being updated.

A few people were asking me where the updates had been going (a few more than expected), well, they were going into the database! As you can see, the past month or so I have been updating, you just couldn’t see it.

And no, the first phase wasn’t, “collect underpants.”

I’ve been redesigning the back end (get your mind out of the gutter) of this site which should make it a whole lot better soon (as far as admin is concerned).

Hopefully this process won’t take too long, I’m going to leave the old setups in place until this is fully complete, rather than changing to the new system before it’s done.

Be patient, padawan.