American Idle Archives

19 May 2007Time Flies
Has it really been two months? Wow! I can hardly believe it. It's not like I've doing anything special. Just blowing this site off for one reason or another. Sorry...
25 February 2007Comments Are Back
I've got the comments up and running again. You'll have to sign up for a Typekey account. It's a pain, I know. But it's the only way to keep the spammers at bay....
08 February 2007Packing it in?
Sometime I don't know why I bother. In fact, I can't be bothered to blog about half the month it seems and weeks go by with no posts. I have things i want to write about, but often I can't...
12 December 2006Comments Line Breaking Nightmare*
One of the benefits of insomnia is that it allows you time to tackle lingering problems that have heretofore gone unaddressed, such as the irksome line break issue in the comments whereas the lines would not break despite all the...
13 June 2006Busy Busy Busy
Sorry folks. I've been so busy I haven't had time to update the site. Lots has happened. There's tons of things I want to' write about and intend to write about. I'll probably back date everything just to keep the...
25 April 2006The Vitals...
... Have been updated, finally after so many years. Even remade the montage that disappeared when I moved from my previous vile host to someone respectful. Enjoy....
30 December 2005Comments Working
Things seem to be improving on the comments front. Here's what was going on, what I did to fix and what's going to happen moving forward: Basically, MT was tagging all comments as "Junk" and throwing them into a bulk...
29 December 2005Web Country Sucks Ass
When I first started this site, I was in the Peace Corps, had little money and needed to find a cheap web host and I found the cheapest, in more ways than one. I found 1dollarhosting.com owned by some company...
29 December 2005Spam Commenters with Class
I hate fucking spam, but you have to love some of the "names" of the commenters. Here's a choice sampling: cum on her face christina aguilera porn lesbians licking cum guzzlers ejaculate on the vagina hot tub hot little girls...
29 December 2005Comments Not Working
Sorry to anyone who has posted or tired to post a comment since I upgraded to 3.2. The comments are not working and I'm trying to find out what's going. Somehow spammers are still able to bombard me me with...
21 December 20053.2 aka Movable Tripe
After some fits and starts, I've finally got Movable Type 3.2 up and running, which means more stories and good spam filtering (or so I hear). There's just one minor issues. MT is making me login again after everything I...
10 December 2005No Time to Write
Sorry I haven't had time to write anything. Lots has happened, of course. Some good, some bad. I will try to fill in the blanks when I have more time back in San Jose early next week. We're in Montezuma...
01 December 2005TypeKey is Back
Sorry about this, but I've had to put TypkeKey back in action because I;m still getting swamped by spam despite my MT-Blacklist filter and I don't want to come back from Costa Rica and have to deal with hundreds if...
05 October 2005Filling in the Gaps
As a few of you have noticed (thanks for the emails, by the way) I haven't fely much like posting in the last few weeks. It's not because I haven't had anything to say or have been trapped under something...
01 September 2005Back in Business
The commenting problems seem to have been solved. Please let me know if you have any more trouble at all. Thanks....
31 August 2005Bounced
I haven't been posting much lately, but that hasn't stopped me from noticing that when people are trying to comment on the spare posts, they are getting bounced for what Movable Type calls "questionable content". Hopefully this isn't meant as...
01 August 2005Blogging Malaise
My posts have been very sporadic as of late. I don't know why, but I'm finding it harder and harder to sit down and write for this blog. I think about what I want to write all the time, but...
20 May 2005No More Preview
I finally got rid of the Movable Type plugin, MT-Approval, that forced readers to preview all comments before posting them. The plugin blocks bots from spamming the hell out of anyone's blog and on that account it worked gangbusters. But...
27 April 2005CSS Bug Fixed
I'm bugging me for a long time now, but I finally have this nasty CCS bug fixed. When I converted my site over from the old html tables layout and converted it to a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) design conforming...
27 January 2005Moving Right Along
It's not perfect yet, but it's getting there. At least the site looks more or less the way I want it to and most of the images are in the right place. I'm still having a few problems, most notably...
25 January 2005Housekeeping
Please excuse the mess while I make some changes including shifting my entire site which had previously been very generously hosted by one of my former colleagues in Peace Corps Samoa to my own host. It's a serious chore, as...
19 January 2005Firefox Hell
Pleas don't give me any shit about the way this page looks at the moment. I had the site looking all sweet and tasty after implementing CSS Design a few weeks back. It looked great in IE, but was totally...
07 January 2005Comments Up
Comments are up and running again, so, you know, say somethng....
06 January 2005More Tech Trouble
My comments are down again. This time I can't blame the spammers. I made a little adjustment to the site and I, like a the complete idiot that I am, I didn't test to see if it worked. I'll have...
30 December 2004Typekey, the Wave of the Future
Sorry to those few people who comment on my site regularly, but in the interest of stopping spam comment that have mine and many of of friends sites, I've set up Typekey registration for comments. It's really no big deal....
17 November 2004Out With The Old And In With The New
I couldn't figure out what was going on with the comments, so instead of banging my head against the wall, I just upgraded Movable Type from 2.6 to 3.121. It was relatively easy with a few minor headaches like exporting...
16 November 2004Comments not working
I'm not exactly sure what the deal is, but the comments are not working again. I think my site was hacked by spammers, because right before the comments konked out, the MT-Blacklist plugin that blocks "spomments" stopped working for no...
26 October 2004Look Ma, No Tables
I'm towards the end of the process of removing tables (except where intended such as tabular data) from my site converting American Idle over to a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) Design. My site is a very complicated mosaic of multiple...
19 May 2004Blase
It's becoming harder and harder for me to get up the energy to blog consistently. I don't know why that it is. It's certainly not for lack of time (I'm working only from 4-7pm most weekdays and on the weekends)....
13 April 2004Blue Sky Dreaming
My period of extreme laziness is over and I finally have a new gallery on the site. The pictures are scenes from Blue Sky Basin, the outermost skiing area at Vail and my favorite place to rip it up. I...
13 April 2004Lost Fonts
One of the residual tragedies of having my old hard drive crash is the loss of hundreds of fonts (which I thought I had backed up) including the one I used to make the header of the page (Berlin Sans,...
22 February 2004Sorry About the Lack of Posts
So much has been going on here and I've just been lazy about writing. I promise I will have lots of new content tonight with some great pictures including shots of the snowboarder faceplanting on the rail. It's worth the...
25 January 2004Online Above 10,000 feet
Sprint runs a communications center at the top of the Eagle Bahn gondola where I am now trying to thaw out my little toes. Internet connection is super fast and, best of all, it's free. So you can expect daily...
25 January 2004Where Have You Gone, Andrew?
Sorry about the lack of posts on the site since I arrived in Vail. It's not for lacking of anything interesting to write about. I just don't have the usual access to the Internet. Not only have I had massive...
05 January 2004New Pictures
It's been a long time since I posted any pictures on this site. It's not because I haven't taken any. I have taken tons. It's a combination of me being lazy and having some problems with my computer which I...
01 January 2004Happy New Year!!!!!!!!
I want to wish everyone out there in Internetland a happy and healthy new year. Best of luck in all your endeavors in the coming year. cheers, Andrew...
22 December 2003A Quick User Guide to American Idle Under the Increased Terrorist Threat Level
Now that former Governor Tom Ridge has raised the national terror alert level to "Orange" or high, up one level from elevated or "Yellow", here are some helpful tips to safe use of this website: 1. Report any suspicious...
27 November 2003Oops, I Forgot to Blog
You might not have noticed this, but between the 11th of November and the 24th of November, failed to log a single entry. It's not that nothing happening. Plenty happened. It's that I was away from the computer, didn't have...
11 October 2003Where Do They Come From?
Here are where the last 100 page views came from: OCTOBER 12, 2003...
12 September 2003Nobody Came to the Site
Yesteryday, almost nobody came to the visit American Idle. There were only 3 unique visitors when I usually average about 30. I guess people had better things to do on September 11th. It will be interesting to see what happens...
01 September 200327 Views of the Government Buidling
I love the government building. Something about its silouette is so striking that I can't help but take pictures of it. It was built as a gift by the Chinese government a few years back and is far and...
30 July 2003Coconut Blog
The Coconut Blog, a blog dedicated to "News, Notes, and Dispatches From Wherever Coconuts Grow" (Samoa falls into this category in a big way), has written up American Idle. How very cool. It would be nice if this, and a...
09 July 20034th of July Gallery
The pictures from the Peace Corps Samoa July 4th beach party are finally up. After a huge ordeal, It turned out to be a great day of sun, sand, & surf down at Lalumanu. There weren't any fireworks, but...
22 June 2003New Look
American Idle has been around for a few months, so it's time for a facelift. It's incredible how much work goes into making even the smallest change. This is mostly because I still have two sites that are merged into...
19 June 2003If You Read This, Please Comment
Hey, you! Yes, you. If you're reading this site, please post on a comment on this entry (or any entry that you find interesting). See that link right below here that says, "post a comment"? Just click on it and...
14 June 2003Trade American Idle
If you can beleive this shit, there's a fantasy exchange for trading "shares" of blogs. Someone set up a website called Blogshares where you can buy and sell virtual shares of blogs. Why you want to do this, I'm not...
14 June 2003Clock on Splash Page
dCol='000000';//date colour. fCol='000000';//face colour. sCol='000000';//seconds colour. mCol='000000';//minutes colour. hCol='000000';//hours colour. ClockHeight=40; ClockWidth=40; ClockFromMouseY=0; ClockFromMouseX=100; //Alter nothing below! Alignments will be lost! d=new Array ("SUNDAY","MONDAY","TUESDAY","WEDNESDAY","THURSDAY","FRIDAY","SATURDAY"); m=new Array ("JANUARY","FEBRUARY","MARCH","APRIL","MAY","JUNE","JULY","AUGUST","SEPTEMBER", "OCTOBER","NOVEMBER","DECEMBER"); date=new Date(); day=date.getDate(); year=date.getYear(); if (year TodaysDate=" "+d[date.getDay()]+" "+day+" "+m[date.getMonth()] +"...
28 May 2003"Flashed" with Success
I stayed up all night last night working on the flash intro to the site and it is working like a charm, finally (sort of - the images sometimes still get stuck loading, but at least they load in the...
27 May 2003Translate This Site
I just added a new translation feature to the site. You can now read these pages in French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and even Norwegian. I found this site Free translation, http://www.freetranslation.com/. I'd love to know if it's any...
25 May 2003Flash Intro
After struggling with Flash MX all weekend, I finally got a finshed product for my new intro page. It looks great offline, however when I put it online, the movie gets stuck after the second image. At least it does...
09 May 2003New Galleries
I've added three new galleries to American Idle. They are not completely done. The pictures are all up, but the pages have not been built, so there are no captions, but you can see all the images. TAUI PERLA AND...