Here's a list of all 65 blog entries tagged Web here at derek.broox.com. I've also got 17 other things related to Web.
Anyone who's visited my personal website probably knows that it's pretty much just about telling my life story (filled with a ton of TMI, of course). Every thought I've had for the past 13 years is on here. Nearly every photo I've ever taken is here. Shit, if you want to know how much I slept, walked, or even what I weighed yesterday, it's all here. But over the past couple years, I've been thinking a lot about experiences and contextual stories... read more
And now for a story about Josh and I geolocating a random YouTube video - and how I'm amazed by how easy it was. So, this all starts with a conversation with my dad over the recent snowfall we've been having... He tells me about this Toro Power Shovel thing, which sorta looks like a vacuum sized, cheap snowblower. My dad said that he was super skeptical of this power shovel, but he tried it out and wound up being thoroughly impressed. Soon after, I passed this info onto my buddy, Josh... read more
About half of my readers are techie enough to share in this enthusiasm. If you're not in that group, just know that something awful is coming to an end. ...Like the end of of a war. The people - the big people, are killing all support of something horrendous. IE6... read more
So for the past 8 years, the focus of this website has been on my blog. Come to think of it, it seems like everyone's personal site basically follows that same model. We've all focused on our "blogs," however, after a few months/years, everyone seems to get bored with blogging. Don't get me wrong, I still like to blog - it's just something I don't do often... So I started thinking about my web presence and where most of my online "footprint" lies these days... read more
I love maps. I've always loved maps. I love seeing the places I've been on a map, crossing places off, and planning where I'll go next. When I was a little kid, my grandma always gave me a calendar/planner from my grandpa's company. It was one of those little yearly pocket calendar things the size of a checkbook, you know... read more
Oh man, I love lists. I really do. The "notes" section on my sidekick is always full of lists that I can add to while I'm out and about. One of those lists is always a "to buy" list... AKA, a "wish list" It's really handy when I'm out with some money to spend and I think to myself, "which DVDs do I still need?" or "what was that random tool that I needed last week?" So, I quick whip out my... read more
I've been trying to get www.derekbrooks.com since I was in college. It's belonged to a canadian by the name of... wait for it - Derek Brooks since like 2001. I remember e-mailing a few times trying to get him to give it to me... but obviously that didn't work out... read more
Well, let me rephrase that. Mosso tries hard to be awesome - they just released a beta application without the beta label. Harper convinced me to join Mosso based primarily on the billing/user management system - which rules by the way... but it's really the only part that rules. When I first joined Mosso, Harper and I got to have a conference with one of the founders of Mosso, Todd Morey... read more
So, I haven't really blogged about life in over a month. It started out that I was overwhelmingly busy. It sucked. Then I became even busier. So, now that I'm back down to semi-normal busy-ness again, let's bring everyone up to speed... read more
Well, I was trying for a month without blogging, but this is an emergency blog which all began this morning with: rich: so my outlook wont check my dick4d email rich: anymore Rich is a friend of mine whose websiteI host. I'm currently in the process of switching hosting companies from my dedicated box to a mosso account. However, half of my sites are still on the old server, which went down: reynoldsgrid.com, solidgrind.com, dick4d.com, aeongrey.com, desmoinesalive.com, qcalive.com, iowacityalive.com, cedarrapidsalive.com, victoreynolds.com, aylarexroth.com, n8than.net, dsmpaintball.com, and truespin-media. A couple hours, calls, failed reboot attempts, and e-mails later, I get this e-mail: After running hardware tests on your server, your hard drive has failed. I will need to reinstall your server... read more
omg. So I've been staying up past midnight every school night in the past couple weeks. It feels pretty good to be excited enough to work late again. But that said... as soon as you see this article, you'll be looking at my site on a new server(s) at Mosso... read more
Why do I do this to myself... I always get excited about too many things at once and try to take it all on. So a couple months ago I started a book display for Kari. She had been wanting this one for her classroom that cost like $250, but I said we could easily build it for $50... So I did... read more
i have no idea what that means, but i think i'm the first person to ever say it. yesssss. Pron: zoh-my-gollerskates. So anyway. Holy nuts... read more
Man, busy times... as usual. Work has been insane lately, slightly annoying, but good... and insane. Outside of work has also been pretty nuts... read more
Just so you guys know... You are Iron Man Inventor. Businessman. Genius. Iron Man 95% Green Lantern 70% The Flash 60% Superman 55% Spider-Man 50% Batman 50% Hulk 50% Catwoman 50% Supergirl 47% Robin 47% Wonder Woman 42% Take the Superhero Personality Quiz read more
In the middle of cleaning/working on the house Sunday I decided that it'd be a good idea to start scanning all of my old photos. This kind of thing always happens to me when I start projects. However this time, my decision was retarded. It has completely consumed me ever since and now my house is a disaster. So I've scanned about 1,200 photos now... read more
Remember back in college when you could find out what everyone was up to just by checking their AIM away message? Like, "Ah, Kari's at Hilltop? Bet. I'm headin up town." It was nice, real real nice. But now, if I wanna know where my peeps are, there are like 18 places to check... read more
Rico keeps telling me that he refreshes my homepage non-stop just to see what random photos will come up. So I decided to make it a little easier for him (and anyone else) to see random photos. Just click on the blue "random bar" above the random photos on the right of the home page. Or go to /photos/random/ Also, I now display the number of comments for a given photo on the thumbnails... That way you know if there are comments before clicking. read more
wtf, are you speaking greece? So this weekend was quick, fun, and productive. Thursday we had a little wine tasting party, which was half lame, half fun. But regardless, it was interesting and I learned a few things. Hopefully some of my friends did too... read more
In July of 2005 i wanted to make my site nicer, more organized, and more fun. To do this I added Tagging. Tagging is this really nice feature used by popular sites like Flickr, YouTube, Google, etc. Tags rule. They invoke a lot of coordination in a web site and are just fun... read more
I haven't really done much framework stuff outside of my full-time job, so I decided to play around. (mainly so Harper would stop yelling at me). Nearly all of my personal development is in PHP and JS, so I tried out some PHP and JS frameworks on a simple app. After a few hours, my "funny quotes" site is all smartied and prototyped, which was a nice little learning experience. The big thing I learned is that prototype RULES... read more
Man, I am really beginning to love Amazon wish lists. Not only are they super nice for gifting, they're nice for finding new items and keeping track of things you need to buy. I often find myself looking through Amazon just to mark things that I already own. Why? Because then they recommend things similar, and their recommendations are usually pretty relevant... read more
Oh Yeah. So, we had a Halloween Party last weekend, which marked the biggest party held in my house to date - 40 people. I didn't realize how much fun that costume parties can be. It sort of makes an automatic ice breaker and then everyone ends up hanging out with everyone. I loved it... read more
So, minnis is one of the biggest hotkey fanatics ever, which is starting to rub off on me. He's gotten me all excited about them in web apps... You know, Google uses them, flickr uses them poorly, etc. That said, I added some super rad new hotkeys to my site. They use eventlisteners and all that so you don't have to use the accesskey and alt keys... read more
So I had just left the house this morning and got an IM from Zach: zachsatwork: hey something is wrong with your website zachsatwork: Network Error (dns_unresolved_hostname) zachsatwork: Your requested host "derek.broox.com" could not be resolved by DNS. Please verify that you entered the URL correctly and try again. At this point I freaked out a bit because I vaguely remembered a "1 month expiration reminder" from Joker. zachsatwork: thats it though, all the other sites are up brooxmobile: Is kari.broox? zachsatwork: down So I freaked out more, pulled off at this gas station and logged into Joker from my phone while pumping gas... read more
Man. This house is in so much need of tech upgrades, it's ridiculous. My PC runs decently but it's now over 4 years old (9/2/2002). I started noticing the suckiness a lot lately because I am constantly running out of room on my secondary HD, which is primarily used for media (photos, videos, music, etc). I mean, I have an 80gig primary and a 120 gig secondary... read more
I'm really confused about Google's index. I used to think I understood it really well, but now that I've gotten into this sitemaps business, it's much more confusing. I mean, Google had www.cedarrapidsalive.com indexed fairly well shortly after I released it. Then I added the link to Google Sitemaps (without submitting an actual sitemap) in an attempt to get the pages picked up faster. It made things worse... read more
...seen the Grand Canyon 66 times, spittin wicked sh*t rhymes. So yeah. If you didn't know, I had this Map that kept track of everywhere I've traveled to. It made use of the Google Maps API (v1) and was fairly ghetto. So I upgraded to v2, used xml, and integrated it into derek.broox.com... read more
Hmm. I sort of said, "yeah right" when I first heard about this this morning. Because netrality and freeness is really what the internet is all about. And I rarely like to stand behind causes - but since internet is what I do... this one seemed scary enough for my attention... read more
This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group. Why does MySpace suck so bad? Seriously. It's horrible. I think I see that message more than whatever it is I'm actually trying to look at. read more
Oh yeah, I redid the home/splash/main/whatever page for www.broox.com. I figured that after over 3 years of that blue design, it was time for something new. Plus I don't wear suits, I have facial hair, I'm cooler, etc. However, I'm not quite ready to admit that I don't skateboard. P.S... read more
And it all begins - again. I have this love/hate relationship with summer. I love the weather, all the hanging out, skating, traveling, driving, partying, etc. But I hate hate hate how poor I get. And even more so, I hate complaining about how poor I get... read more
This weekend was pretty nice. I got a lot done. Friday night, we met nick and Nicole at A Dong then went up to Mars Cafe for some hip hop and breakdancing. It was nice. The bboys definitely stole the show... read more
Oh man, the past couple weeks have been insane. Work has been pretty stressful - a lot of weird things are happening, but they're panning out to be not so bad. Regardless though, it's prompted me to start updating my portfolio. Here's what I've got so far... yeah there's still a lot to do... read more
Welp, last week my site broke... so instead of fixing it, I decided to write a complete new design, ha. Actually, when I say "design" I really don't mean "design" at all. As you can see it's not much different than before. Lots of grays, same header, etc... read more
So desmoinesalive.com is almost 1 year old and is doing really well. Some pretty cool things are happening. First of all, we got myspace! haha. So now we can be friends with bars, restaurants, ballers, party people, etc... read more
Man, Man. I'm having some fun lately. Awesomeness is awesome. So last week I was sick... which I suppose was not awesome at all... read more
So I haven't really been writing much or posting pictures much in the past month. Nothing has really happened cause Kari and I have been too poor to do anything. Mostly I've been doing a ton of web dev, and figuring things out. Some of that has been super painful, some has been really nice. I'm excited to start a couple more projects and hopefully start generating more cashflow... read more
Haha, I'm on the Vox Vodka Website for the podcast at Buzz with Harper. It is so funny, and rules so much, haha. This is from their site: "A Weekend Out in Chi-Town@ Buzz and Soundbar (Podcast Coming Soon) 8/17/2005 This past Saturday, Vox Vodka made a second appearance at Buzz nightclub in Rivernorth. The last time Vox dropped into Buzz, we celebrated the best of Chicago bartenders and entertainers at "Industry Night". Saturdays bring a different crowd full of both Chicago residents & weekend warriors who come to experience the Chicago nightlife scene... read more
I made thumbnails for the albums in my photos section. I love working on my site, haha. Hopefully soon it will be how I want it... so I can start over and redesign the whole thing again, haha. Stupid website... read more
I made a little web site about our wedding so I don't have to answer the same questions 1,000,000 times. Check it out: www.broox.com/wedding read more
Some things are going on. Kari's parents stopped out Friday night before their flight to Phoenix in the morning. We had a good time, went to Buca di Beppo, ate in the kitchen, had too many limoncellos. Her family loves food like no other. It's insane Saturday I got a lot done, sometimes it rules to actually stay home on weekends... read more
My plate is so full right now it's retarded. I mean, the only other person I can think of that has this much stuff going on is Harper. He's always working on too much and I'm starting to get a taste of it. I mean, once you get any kind of skill, everyone wants to use you. And once you acquire every skill (like me, hahaha) then everyone wants even more... read more
umm... New design! haha. I guess the site is different now. At first I was all like, "I should make a css site." So I made 3 designs or so and came up with this one... read more
So my buddy scottv contacts me yesterday and is like, "BROOKS, need your help, asap. I don't have photoshop here and I need some quick work done." He then goes on to show me the sexual harrassment lawsuit against Bill O'Reilly (from the O'Reilly Factor) and his strange falafel fetish... So Scott told me to photoshop an image of O'Reilly with his arm around a gigantic piece of falafel. Which I did (in about 3 minutes - as you will see). Long story short, scott bought falaphilia.com and came up with a pretty good definition of "Falaphilia." Harper is hosting the site and it's getting hit pretty hard - which is awesome... read more
Hmmm, the weekend.Friday, Kari and I saw dodgeball. funny movie. Kevi also finished editing the third nutpunt video, which is sort of a continuation of the characters and ideas of our "I against I" video. Today he got it all converted to flash and uploaded to the site: www.nutpunt.com. Too bad the flash is a little choppier than the actual video (especially the first time you watch it)... read more
So a while ago I made a "new design" for derek.broox.com, but I wasn't able to upload it because harper's server went wack on me. Anyway, everything is kosher now so I finished it up and uploaded it today. The only reason I really redesigned is because all my friends are starting to build sites and the list was too big for the header above... So I added a column on the right and put them there. The new links are Cedric and Aaron... read more
So, I'm starting to get a lot of friends with web sites, which kinda sucks because I've maxed out the space that I left for my friends' names above the friends link on the header. I added Dave Conger and Nehru Cheddie to the list, so check out their sites. Nehru is a guy I work with and fellow car enthusiast and Dave is a dude I know from my Soaping web sites and through short films, etc. Also, if you actually click the friends link, you can see some news from my buddies' sites... that is, IF they have an RSS feed... read more
Nick Leeper and I have been working on a new web design/digital media company called: Truespin Media. We already have our first project going and today we launched the site. Our focus is the for the Des Moines, Iowa area , but hopefully we will be building sites all around the country. Check it out: www.truespin-media.com read more
I just lost the last 6 months of my life documentation that makes up derek.broox.com. if any of you have any of my articles saved/cached for any reason at all, please email them to me at derek@broox.com. i am really a complete retard. kick me as hard as you can the next time you see me. either in the face, or square in the balls... read more
I finally got the audio and video sections up on the site. Each has 1 file. The audio section has a song by my buddy's band (Van Johnson), and the video section just has the tech deck video. Be sure to check out the Van Johnson song.Hopefully everyone doesn't hate me or my views on updating my website this time. read more
A couple months ago some friends and I claimed the Sun. We were so happy when we obtained it... but we didn't know what to do with it. After breif discussion we decided that we should sell parts of it as real estate. And since there is so much surface on the Sun (6,069,871,166,000.84 square kilometers) we figured that we could sell it for an insanely low price! read more
Well, this site has had the same design since January 9, 2002, so I think it might be time to redo it again. I'll probably go darker and more simple. However, I'm also doing a site for some hip/hop groups in Des Moines, you might have read about them in an earlier article. The website is softfocusart.com. read more
So it looks like AOL Time Warner finally decided to pull the plug on Netscape and call it quits. http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/919792.asp?cp1=1 ...and the web developers of the world rejoice. read more
My buddy, Zach Larson, finally got cooler and bought his own domain name. He's also learning some flash stuff, so that's awesome too. Check out his site at zlarson.com. Remember, Zach has only been designing websites for a few months, so you're about to witness a very fast learner. Zach also does all his work in notepad already, BOMB! read more
I decided to go with productions.broox.com for my professional website. Check it out and tell me what you see wrong with it, and let me know if it looks ok so far. (i know that it doesnt work with netscape yet). read more
This is getting quite annoying, heh. I keep making my "professional sites" too personal. I originally bought www.broox.com to use as my professional website for freelance projects such as web design... it turned out to be a personal site, and then later became an extreme sports site. Soon after that, I created derek.broox.com which was to be my personal/professional website... read more
I did a few updates to the site... First of all, I wrote a Spanish Flashcard program for a class at Cornell. It's written in PHP so if you want to check it out you can by clicking here. If you want more info about this program, check out a more detailed description of it in the portfolio section. I also completely redid the portfolio section... read more
What up. If you haven't already noticed, I've redesigned the site. But since it's completely different... you probably noticed. I changed the color scheme from blue, red, and grey to green and grey... read more
I added some pictures to the people section, so feel free to check those out. And if you noticed that there has been an error when trying to post comments lately... It's fixed now.Also look out for a video coming soon. My roommate (Kevin Switzer) made his first music video, and I got to help out with the production of it. It's pretty cool, I'll feature it on here when it's complete. read more
I've been real busy lately, hence the lack of updates on this site, and on brooksfsw.com. But I haven't been just sitting around doing nothing. I've got 1 new website and 2 new databases done, and I just added them to the portfolio. So check them out, and any feedback would be greatly appreciated. read more
I updated my portfolio with a new website today. I am almost done with the Cornell College Computing Services website... so you can check it out if you'd like. read more
I haven't had time to progress this site lately. I am actually working 4 jobs at the moment and it's tough... but finally paying off! I am thinking about coding my other site (brooksfsw.com) from scratch. See right now, it is using a web portal system built in PHP (PHP-Nuke)... read more
I took the Webdesign link down today and changed it to "Professional". The reason being... I'd like to publish all my projects on that page. So it will include web design, database design, videos, and any other projects. I added a little to it also... read more
For the few people that are checking out my site already... do you have any ideas for things I could put up on my site? e.g. - links, pages, etc. I understand that this site wont be that popular because its mainly just a personal site that will have a hint of webdesign advertisement for myself... read more