I cannot stress enough that what you’re seeing here is subject to change. When you come to this website these days, you are stepping into my laboratory. You’re watching over my shoulder as I teach myself how to do this thing all over again. The current era of using geometric building blocks and “plug-ins” to customize webpage design has evolved greatly since I began my online hiatus a few years ago. It was picking up steam then and was one of the reasons I stepped away. It seemed like too much to learn, and there were a lot of things going on in my life generally.
There are still a lot of things going on, but I decided to try one more time. Many moons and many brain cells later, I am teaching myself the nuts and bolts of this business of making something out of nothing. It is, alas, the future. It’s been mostly technical so far; I have only dabbled with design and content, the fun stuff. So please be patient. Please put up with the maintenance messages. Please put up with the buggy oddities that crop up daily. Please put up with my constant harping on the subject. I will try to reward you. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
18 responses to “The Only Constant”
A little bit from you is like a whole lot from anybody else (well, except Brian Crane, maybe). We’re happy with whatever you can offer. I know from experience that all the time-saving and non-sensical additions to website management over the past few years have greatly added to the workload.
Thank you! I don’t mean to sound like a cry-baby about it. It can be fun, but it can be all-consuming of one’s time and energy. That’s the way I roll, though.
Jimmy, I’m with you for your voyage of discovery. Tackling the new stuff helps keep us going. And what nobler cause than using it to share more A&J! From one in his late 60’s teaching himself the Python programming language. Cheers, Dan
“I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.” – Douglas Adams
We need a ‘thumbs-up’ button!
Yes, but . . . priorities. Just having the site up is enough for now.
I love it! And it is so true. It’s always “if I learn this now, it will save me time in the future”. Uh, sometimes.
Thanks, Jimmy. It’s much appreciated!
No problem, I know the feeling. This stuff can be overwhelming, but once learned it gets easy. I just keep pushing buttons until I get what I want! I’m old, and privileged!!
A Gen-Z’er recently asked me “Are you tech savvy?” I replied “I was until about 1990.”
That’s when my Fortran and DOS skills began to be of little use. I started using a piece of software (Lotus Improv) that required Windows and it’s been downhill ever since.
I retired June 1st this year after teaching 34 years. It has been an adjustment. I knew that I would need something to fill the void so I started up an old hobby. As a kid I loved building the scale model kits. I would just build them as they were in the box and then my buddies and I would meet and shoot them with BB guns. I jumped back in last May building my first model in 40 years but this time I paid a lot more attention to detail and bought stuff to paint and weather the models. Now I was not a very good builder as a kid and I am sure not now but when I look at the modelers on social media and their creations I realize just how much I need to learn. But the point is that learning should never stop. My new motto is growth to the grave and I use every day to learn new things and build skills that are new to me in every aspect of life, not just modeling.
So jimmy, just keep learning and getting better. It will keep you around and in the game longer and we will all benefit from that.
Hail State, Roll Tide and War Eagle. Some good games today.
And a message back to you, Jimmy – Please know you are not alone. If you have questions or issues, don’t be afraid to poll the studio audience. It’s a fair guess your readers cross a wide array of demographics, including various degrees of technical knowledge. Some of us might know the missing ingredient to your recipe. Use us.
I can sympathize…
I used to feel fairly computer-savvy…. until I wasn’t any longer!
Glad to see you forging ahead into the “new age”!
Mark/TTown: Your surmise about that April 12, 2012 “mysterious message” strip is as good a guess as I’ve seen, but I still wonder what JJ meant. By placing this message here, perhaps a few others will chime in – perhaps even our Village mayor.
These last few months I have switched from doing crosswords to solving cryptograms. I am sure both can exercise my remaining aged brain cells, albeit different groups of them. Always thought, had I been in the military, that I might have been assigned to decoding or similar. Out of 2000 done since the end of April, only about 5 have truly buffaloed me. One volume of cryptograms has citations from anyone from Socrates to Yogi Berra, from Voltaire to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; it has been quite educational. Hurd is right about keeping the cells in use.
I’m working with a website that was created before Smart Phones and just getting the screen to size correctly took me weeks.
You work at it until it’s right, right? And that’s why A&J is so good! I mean Walt-Kelly good—-though A&J is a rather different style. A&J doesn’t fill up so full quite as many word balloons . .
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Jimmy, I hope you can install a screen to prevent this kind of thing from appearing! 🙂