My main task to achieve is setting up a standard of how I manage this website and it’s maintenance. I want to be able to track, read and visually see how it evolves from version to version and have it all in documentation.

What I want to document is my way of developing the website from the beginning. From prototyping on my sketchpad all the way to the install of the wordpress theme.

Here’s a brief list of topics that I’ll elaborate on:

• Sketches
• Photoshop
• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• WordPress

Each of those topics will have my thoughts on why and how I decided to do that or this for the website. An example of the Sketches topic will elaborate why I decided to go with that type of layout or where I got the inspiration to go that path. I really want to describe to myself as close as posible what I was thinking when I was doing those things.

I hope this will help me make better choices from past experiences creating and managing this website. At least thats what this is for! A plus I’ll get out of this process will lend itself for developing other websites. In Coda I have snippets of code that I use regularly when I’m developing websites. But this process will FINALLY help me in having a standard WRITTEN process of ALL that! Just the thought of that makes me happy in a nerd type way!

I swear this is not a April fools joke. I want this badly to happen!

But when it comes to actually playing and thinking what sport I’m best at, basketball wins hands down. I’ve been playing basketball since I was 13 years old. Ever since then it’s been none stop love between me and the basketball. Initially I started playing on the street where I lived with my parents and brothers. I usually played with my eldest brother and the neighbors that I’d invite over. Those times were so different from my style of play. I’d get mad and almost cry for anything like a foul, steal and even getting my shot blocked. Somehow I always believed I was in the correct. I usually wasn’t.

When I was either 13 or 14 I spent the summer somewhere near by Houston with my second eldest brother in a camp near Trinity Bay. I remember that they wanted us kids to go to do some activity but I saw a huge basketball court and asked two of the camp counselors if I could play basketball instead. They both joined me and we played a game of 21. The game is won by who gets to 21 points first. Each player plays for themselves. So in this case it was three of us playing and I was seriously the smallest. These guys seemed like giants to me. I can’t remember who won that game but what I do remember is a drive I did to the basket between these two guys. I was in shock that I had passed by both of them and easily made my shot. Who knows maybe they were playing nice but for me at 13 years old I felt like a big shot.

Soon after I joined my middle school basketball team and only achieved playing for the B-Team. I remember having a lot more fun playing for the B-Team than what I saw from the A-Teamer’s. The coach was always screaming at them and in our games I didn’t ever see the coach on the bench during our games. But I definitely got most of my basketball schooling at home on the street where I lived and at Oliveira Park next to Pace High School. I was lucky enough to have an older brother who loved playing and always let me play with or against him.

Fast forward a few years and I’m 19 years old and living in Houston to do the college thing. I probably went maybe a year without playing. It was a new city and a whole new way of life for me. So I needed some time to settle before I could get back to playing. My first introduction to Houston basketball was through a friend that worked with me at Starbucks. He invited me to play at a residencial park near by our workplace. It was a strange setup because instead of the basketball courts facing each other, they were stuck in the middle of the court on their backs. So this produced two half courts to play on. No way of playing full court. For me that wasn’t a problem at all since at this time of my life I was a bit over weight. The biggest difference I faced in Houston basketball was height. I’m definitely not the tallest at 5’8″ but to see so many taller folks everytime I played was different from the usual. Speed wasn’t an issue as I continued to play because the best attribute I have when it comes to basketball is my defense. I quickly learned to read players whether they were quick or not. It was about how they positioned themselves that clued me in to take advantage to stop them from advancing. I always make them pass the ball. You ain’t going anywhere against me!

So now I’m back home in the valley at 29 years old and still playing basketball. I swear I’ve never been so consistent on one thing like I’ve been with basketball. Even at 29 I continue to improve my style of play. At one time when it came to offense I could only drive the ball to the basket. I’d never dared to shoot a shot because I know I was just horrible. But now I can shoot with the best of them. My repertoire has everything from dribbling, driving to the basket and even three-pointers. But my defense is still my top skill. Last week on a Thursday I showed up at the Brownsville Sports Park and went to one of the courts where this three middle school kids were playing and one of them I had played against before. I asked them if they were up for a two-on-two game. Before we started we shot around to warm up and then made the team selections. That one kid that I had played with before said to his buddy who was on my team for the game, “he’s really good”. I have to admit it felt good to hear that. My main thought when I play is to always hustle for every play of the game whether I’m on defense or offense. Most players appreciate that. I know I do.

One thing is for sure about my 16 years of playing basketball if you practice consistently, have fun you’ll continue to enjoy what you’re doing and be great at it. I need to transfer this way of thinking to everything!

The only dilemma now is having to prove it to an employeer. Whether that be full-time job or a freelance client. For me there are only two options to show that I am good at what I do. One option could be references. That I do have. Plenty of co-workers and friends that I’ve worked with. Second and best option would be my portfolio website.

My work should represent my skills of what I’m capable of doing and have done. The references should be another part of checking my skills. As in how I am to work with and personality sort of stuff.

References are fortunately there and as for my portfolio it’s a work in progress. I have it up and running with a latest client work I did in February. Obviously it’s not enough to convince anyone that wants to hire me. But I have plenty of personal work that is being worked on and will post soon to the portfolio.

So here is to progress and showing off!

Everything was going to plan until one of the work content containers height increased above the others. This caused the layout to not be so grid like.

Each of the work content is wrapped in an <article> tag and a single <section> tag is containing all of the <article> work content. For the styling I simply did a float: left; and width: 29.5%; on the <article> work content. This caused all the <article> containers to align next to each other in a line. But once one of those work content containers height goes above the others it’ll mess up the grid like so.

So my first thought was use David DeSandro’s Masonry plugin. After a little bit of frustration with it and not liking the idea that I had to use a plugin to make this work I removed the plugin and started from scratch.

Second solution was making each <article> element act as a table-cell through CSS. But that didn’t work out either.

Finally with enough frustration not figuring out any solution I opened up Firebug and edited the HTML manually to see what it’d look like if I added a horizontal rule. I added the <hr /> after three posts since that matched what I wanted to achieve with the grid like layout. But of course this was me manually doing this and not part of the dynamic work of WordPress. After some googling I ran into this clever snippet from that always resourceful css-tricks.com website. But the golden ticket was from one of the comments regarding this snippet on css-tricks.com. The commentator suggested what he had done that was similar to the snippet. His suggestion says to search for the current posts and if it reaches up to four posts add a class of “last” to the forth post.

if (!((1+$wp_query->current_post) % 4)) echo 'last';

This snippet looked like what I needed. But for me instead of adding a class I needed to add a horizontal rule after three posts. So I switched the 4 to 3 and ‘last’ to ‘<hr />’. Like so.

<?php if (!((1+$wp_query->current_post) % 3)) echo '<hr />' ; ?>

This snippet of code should go within the famous WordPress loop and before the end of the loop. This is what mine looks like.

<section class="content archive">
<?php
$wp_query = new WP_Query();
$wp_query->query('showposts=1000'.'&paged='.$paged);
?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<article class="post">
content...
</article><!--end post-->

<--Here is the snippet to insert a horizontal rule after three posts-->
<?php if (!((1+$wp_query->current_post) % 3)) echo '<hr />' ; ?>

<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
</section><!--end content archive-->

That’s the code needed in my example.

So no matter what height each of the <article> containers is, it won’t mess with the layout as long as the horizontal rule continues to be inserted after the third post. Like so.

Mark Boulton wrote a piece about web content named “Structure First. Content Always“. It definitely help me cement a clear idea of what web content is and how to handle it. It’s not an easy thing to do but it can certainly be done by understanding where your content is coming from.

It’s like getting to know someone. In order to understand them and know what they’re like you need to get to know them. It’ll have a lot of pieces to the puzzle that creates the big picture. Of course you can’t see it from the get go until you get to know some history about it. Until then you not only see where it’s coming from but you understand what the content is in a personality type of way.

This helps you to be able to introduce it in the best way like a presentation of a subject matter that you are a master of its knowing. Once you have that understanding of your content, you’ll know best how to output it.

The Debian version is the 6.0 codename squeeze.

I went the route of downloading a copy over the internet and then burning it to a CD which I would then boot from. You can get a PowerPC copy from Installing Debian GNU/Linux via the Internet page. You’ll be presented with a couple of ways to download but I chose the Small CDs section to get my powerpc copy.

Once I downloaded it I fired up Disk Utility and draged the copy to the side bar. I clicked burn and let it do its thing. After that process I ejected the CD and popped it into my iBook.

I have to say that I’ve been doing this downloading and burning from my 2010 MacBook. Thought I’d add that bit of information also.

Anyways, once you start up the iBook with the Debian CD copy you’ll be presented with a guided wizard. It’ll ask for location, language, network connection and setup of accounts. I did my install over a wireless connection that connected to my home network. It’s important to be doing this install from a good wireless connection. My first attempt of installing Debian on the iBook failed because of a weak wireless connection. Keep that in mind. The last set of instructions ask you whether you want to install a GUI (Graphic User Interface), web server and so forth. Since I only need this operating system to access the web with a browser I kept the defaults which included the GUI. I’m not much of an expert on the command line even though I do get excited when I work on it.

So once the installation setup finished the system rebooted and I was looking at a new operating system running Debian on my iBook G3. A second chance at life you could say. This iBook is for my parents to discover the world wide web just like I did back in 2001.

This must be done my by doing it and creating it. Not thinking it.

I’ve been taking it easy for a bit and getting away from looking for a job. It is in my head that I’ll need to get a job. But for now I have my savings and enjoying what it’s like to have free time. So far since being back home I’ve become my moms personal driver. I take her to work, shopping and to the groceries. It’s great to be of service to the women who gave me life. The least of what I can do for her. But I know soon enough I’ll need to start getting back into the groove.

That groove being a creative that I am. Something that has unfortunately dwindled because of where I’ve worked and also because of my own disinterest. If I ever have to describe myself I’ll usually include being serious as an attribute that defines who I am. But the only merit I give that is because I think a lot about random things. But most of those things are creative ideas that I want to do. I have a email folder designated to all my creative ideas. So if there was anytime to start bringing those into fruition, that time would be now. Now time isn’t the issue, it’s now about doing it or not. So I’ll be getting to it.

First on the list is finishing up my portfolio website http://cienfuegos.co. It’ll showcase my creative work. Currently I’m in the second phase of probably nine more phases to go. Truly, I really don’t know how many phases are left but I should be done with the website by the end of the month. Sounds reasonable since I don’t have anything to occupy my time (jobless). Second phase is the layout which is how the website will be structurally laid out. First phase was sketching my ideas out. Thats that!

Second task is install a linux version on my iBook and a PC box that I have. These two computers will be for my parents to discover the world of the internet! This is how I hope they’ll realize what it is that they’re little boy does for a living. For a while now I’ve always been curious about the linux world. So this will be a introduction I suppose. I plan to post how I did the installs on both computers. Feels like fun little project to do.

Well thats it for now since I can’t really think about what else needs to be documented. It seems short but that email folder that contains my creative ideas all relate to web projects that would be included into my portfolio website. So besides completing my portfolio website I’d obviously need to fill it up with content and thats where those other creative ideas come in.

I then thought “what if you stop believing in death, do you now only believe in life? To only believe that all you can do is live without ever thinking about your mortality again?”. What that means to me is you are now focused on things that perpetuate life and nurture life. So everything you do contributes to live. I know you can’t ignore death. What I think one can do is accept it and create your will now and when death comes it’ll be sorted. Right?

Well my main thing about this topic is about focusing on living and doing the best you can to do that. To live. Be ignorant of death but don’t dismiss it completely.