Archive for September, 2008
Nicole’s surgery was successful
Nicole had her surgery today around noon, and she’s already back home recovering as of this post (3pm PST). Although she’ll have about a week of recovery time ahead of her until she’s back to 100%, she sounded (and told me she felt) fine. The results of whether or not the surgery removed all of the cancer won’t be known for around a week, but I’ll post as soon as I know more. As of right now there aren’t any complications from surgery, and things are looking like they’ll be perfectly fine.
If I know Nicole, after a quick lunch of Ramen, she’ll probably be sleeping for the next 20 hours or so. 
More updates to come!
The Basics of Web Coding (Part 1)
This is part one in an ongoing series of posts.
Many of you have livejournals, xangas, tubmlrs, twitters, and wordpress installations. Customizing them isn’t always easy. Today you’ll learn the basics of HTML and CSS.
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) go hand in hand to produce most of what you see on the internet today. The HTML provides the framework for the content, while the CSS makes everything look the way it does.
HTML is the framework upon which a website is built. When you take notes, you use markup to denote importance within the document. You’ll use Roman Numerals, numbers, letters and various other “tags” to indicate what each piece of content means in relation to another. HTML does the same thing for your website’s code, except instead of Roman Numerals and numbers, you use HTML tags. I’ve listed a few below:
<h1> means "Heading 1"
<h2> means "Heading 2"
<p> means "Paragraph text"
<a> means "Anchor (or you can think of it as an 'active link')
It’s so simple! HTML is the markup that assigns value to the content on a website. It’s also important to note that these tags must be closed in the following way:
<h1>This is the main header!</h1>
I’ve uploaded a demo page where you can view these basic tags in action.
Besides the tags above, HTML supports a variety of other important markup choices. Using semantic markup (using these tags to declare importance or weight of information within the HTML document) is crucial. New web designers will often use tags to incorrectly style their content. The most important thing you can learn early on is that style and markup are best left separated! Leave the markup to do the dirty work of denoting content’s importance within the document and styling comes much much easier.
Now that you understand the basics of how HTML “works”, the next article will cover the basics of how styling interfaces with all of this!
Testing mobile blogging
Isaac debating whether or not to buy a domain….
Surgery scheduled
Nicole’s surgery is scheduled for this upcoming Wednesday. Hanging out in SF this weekend for a relaxing get together on Saturday. Normal posts should resume soon
Life’s full of twists and turns
So as I was finishing up the previous post on how things were settling down, my phone began to buzz with a call from my girlfriend Nicole.
As soon as she started talking, I knew something was wrong. Her voice shaky, she made small talk before getting to the heart of what she wanted to say.
I have something to tell you…I have cervical cancer.
I was speechless. Nicole, at 22 years old…cervical cancer? Isn’t that what happens when you get older? The conversation from this point on was more of me listening than saying anything.
After seeing a few “abnormal” cells in May, Nicole questioned her doctor again at a recent visit. He assured her that they probably weren’t anything to worry about, but after persistent questioning by Nicole, he decided to do a biopsy to be sure. The biopsy results came back, positive for cancer.
Fortunately the biopsy also showed that the cancer is “localized” (meaning it hasn’t spread), soon to be removed with a single surgery. The cancer was also caught early enough that spreading should be unlikely. Recovery time is minimal, and doesn’t involve any serious medication or radiation therapy. Nicole is expected to make a full recovery within a week of the surgery.
While expectedly unsettled (and reasonably so), Nicole is handling the situation amazingly well. She’s already planning for the surgery and working to make sure her school affairs are accounted for while she’s temporarily out.
I’ll continue to post updates as things happen. Please hold back from asking Nicole questions, as I’m sure explaining things over and over again isn’t going to help the situation. Feel free to comment here and I’ll post updates from Nicole over the next week or so.
The dust has settled.
So after a hectic month, things are finally settling down. Work is steady, relationships have come and gone, school has started, and friendships are back to normal.
Read the rest of this entry »
After a brief intermission…
…I’m back. I accidentally took down the entire blog by overwriting my wp-config file which manages the database connection to the server…and therefore all the posts that I’ve made (and all comments made too!). Luckily I was able to enlist the help of Chris Purcell and, with his help, I was able to recover my database.
Surpass hosting (the people that manage my hosting) were of absolutely no help during this, but did let me know that they’d be willing to charge me a fee to recover my database. Once I realized what was wrong, it took 5 minutes and was literally a 3-click solution. I won’t be renewing my hosting, and I’ll probably switch over to Dreamhost shortly.
Now that I’m back up and running again, expect a few more posts coming out shortly.