Raible Designs

New Look and Feel, Designed by Gillen's Army

As part of my 10-year blogiversary, I was hoping to refresh this site with a new look and feel. A few months ago, I contacted my friend Mark Waggoner to see about getting his design help. We promptly worked out a logo/business card/website deal and Gillen's Army went to work.

I picked a logo from numerous choices in late June, finalized a business card for printing in July and received the HTML and CSS for the site on August 2nd. I started converting it to a Roller theme last week and did a whole bunch of other modifications in the process.

• Upgraded to Roller 5.0.1.
• Upgraded wro4j to the latest version (1.4.8.1) to workaround using a → (\2192) in CSS.
• Changed to use jQuery and Lightbox2 for pictures.
• Upgraded to the latest version (3.0.83) of SyntaxHighlighter. You might notice there is no longer a toolbar in this version. However, you can still double-click on code and easily copy/paste it.

In addition to these upgrades, I made a few enhancements. I converted to HTML5 (by switching the doctype), added Modernizr and a feature that detects if the sun is up in your location. If you allow your browser to send me your lat and long, I'll give you a dark theme when the sun is down and a light theme when it's daylight. I used Preston's Hunt's JavaScript Class for Sunrise and Sunset Calculations to determine isDaylight. You can also change the theme to light or dark using the small rectangles above the search box on the right. This sets a cookie and overrides the HTML5 Geo check. You can see the implementation of this logic in site.js.

The stylesheet switching doesn't happen as fast as I'd hoped (there's a flash even if using cookies), so I'll likely be converting some theme-setting logic to the server-side. The HTML5 version of the FaceBook Like Button requires you to specify the "data-colorscheme" in markup so this further supports moving to the server.

I have other minor adjustments I'd like to make, but more importantly - I wanted to get it out to you all. Tell me what you like and don't like. Among other things, the form inputs for comments and contact forms have backgrounds that might not be great for those color-impaired. Also, you can see how the iframe on the contact page has a white background instead of one based on the theme.

Here's some stats comparing my old andreas08 theme to the new darklight:

Sweet! It looks like this site is faster than ever. Cheers to Mark and Gillen's Army for the new design. I dig it!

10 Years Ago...

Wouldn't you know it, I missed my 10-year blogiversary. 10 years ago yesterday, I wrote my first blog post. This was shortly after reading Dave Johnson's article about Roller. I originally started this blog to share a bunch of tips and tricks I'd learn while doing web development, particularly with Java and Struts. Since then, I've written 3,086 entries and received 13,462 comments.

I found that writing technical blog posts was a great way to remember things and share knowledge. According to Google Analytics (which doesn't track my RSS/Atom feeds), here's my most-visited blog posts since 2006.

• Tips for Productivity and Happiness at Work - April 14, 2006
• Play 2.0, A web framework for a new era - November 16, 2011
• Ajax Framework Analysis Results - April 23, 2009
• RE: Moving from Spring to Java EE 6: The Age of Frameworks is Over - October 16, 2010

I also started it to document my life, so I could remember the details of significant life events and fun family vacations. I wrote about Abbie's and Jack's arrival. I penned a story about growing up at the cabin, twice. In April 2004, I wrote about buying a 1966 21-window VW Bus. Yes, I'm still restoring it. No, I don't know when it'll be done. This year I hope.

I blogged about Abbie and Jack's first day of school, I wrote about almost all of Abbie's birthdays; Jack's 5th, 4th, 3rd and 1st. Some of my favorite comments are on Jack's got a bead stuck in his nose! I blogged about getting a divorce 5 years ago. I wrote about visiting the real Oktoberfest the next year.

I wrote about my Dad's retirement, my sister's wedding and my Mom's retirement.

I met Trish in June of 2010 and mentioned her name for the first time in September 2010. I introduced her to the kids in November and we started traveling the world together. We journeyed to Antwerp/Amsterdam, Fort Lauderdale/Key West, Crested Butte, Alta, Las Vegas, a hut trip in the Rockies and Kraków. And that was just in the first 6 months! We got engaged last November.

I summarized the years several times, in 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Last, but certainly not least, I'd like to thank the ones that made the last 10 years possible:

• Keith at KGB Internet. Hosted here since day 1, for $20 month*.
• Dave Johnson, for creating Roller and continuing to maintain it all these years.
• Java and Tomcat, for your rock-solid stability through the years.
• The Open Source Movement, for providing so much to write about.
• My Family, for giving me with so many adventures and memories.

* Thank goodness he doesn't charge me for bandwidth. It's a little heavy on the bits.

Update: As part of this 10-year celebration, I've updated the look-and-feel with help from Gillen's Army.