Today marks the fourth anniversary of The Daily Haggis. I never thought I had four years worth of nonsense in me, but even I can surprise myself from time to time.
What’s in store for Year Five? Well if you’ve liked the content I’ve been discussing recently then you won’t be disappointed. 2007 looks like a great year for entertainment, and I’m looking forward to bitching about it.
Cheers!
This whole blogging thing began for me back in early 2002. I was spending a lot of time reading news about films and television shows on websites like Ain’t It Cool News and Dark Horizons.
Inspired by a few early blogging pioneers and my own love of sharing useless entertainment news and rumors, I decided to create a weekly newsletter that I would send to my friends. After a month or two, the mailing list had grown by a couple hundred members (thanks to a few friends and their donated address books) and I was getting hooked on the idea of developing the newsletter into a website.
Almost like clockwork, I received a warning from both Yahoo! Groups (who hosted the mailing list) and my ISP stating I was “spamming” so I decided to shut it down and move it all online. Luckily I had already made the transition and was ready to phase out the newsletter permanently .
The first version of The Daily Haggis (pictured above, sans a few pictures) used Moveable Type and very rudimentary HTML. Since the Content Management System (CMS) of MT allowed me to post several times a day without having to manually generate all my HTML pages (geek mode off), I decided that it would become “The Daily Haggis.”
This version was originally located as a sub-website of (the original) onefryshort.com. I didn’t purchase the domain name until the next April, where the second version of The Daily Haggis debuted.
Check back over the next few weeks as I continue down memory lane to the official blogiversary!
Welcome everyone to the brand new redesign of The Daily Haggis.
Why another redesign? For the Fourth anniversary of this little weblog, of course!
The change is to reflect the retooling of the content and topic of the website itself. The site is now much quicker loading, uses entirely CSS website design, and utilizes a number of new tools to add more maneuverability between current and past articles.
Here’s a few of the changes:
Plus several other under-the-hood updates and tweaks, and more coming over the next few weeks. Stay tuned over the next few days for a little journey back in time with The Daily Haggis in pictures, as well as some special features I have planned.
As I approach the impending milestone of writing this blog for FIVE years, I’ve been mulling over my inadequate and whiny posts as of lately.
Blah blah, no money, blah blah, no car, blah whine, change tampon.
Okay not so much the last one, but you get the idea. I’m looking to renew readership and discussion on my website, so I’m going to try a little format change.
I’ll still be discussing Entertainment related stuff, but with more of a sarcastic and funny edge to it. I realize that when I bitch IRL (”In Real Life” to those that have one) about things it’s generally pretty humorous, so it only makes sense to try to put this stuff on my publicly viewed site so I can appease my jaded and under-appreciated ego.
My first attempt at humor was yesterday’s post about my 34.02% complete life, although it got a little more technical than I wanted. If you enjoyed that, then you’ll most likely enjoy some of the future posts I have lined up. I can promise you that all posts from this point on will make you laugh, cure cancer, and give you a better sex life.*
I’m also going to attempt to increase the number of posts per week in an attempt to live up to name of the website (heh, “Daily” my ass.)
* Results not guaranteed. Offer not valid in Kansas.
What is 4orty-2wo, you ask? It’s the name of my freelance design company. I’ve recently gotten a couple of freelance web design jobs and needed a (new) moniker to design websites under, especially being i’m not “officially” affiliated with my old company.
After much thought, I chose the name 4orty-2wo Designs. Why the funky spelling? Because i’m a weirdo? I dunno, honestly I just thought it was a creative way to spell it, and it incorporates the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything in it.
The website is still waaaaaaaaay in development (read: I just bought the domain name today).. I don’t even have a logo yet but by the end of this weekend I should not only have a site but a logo and a full-on portfolio site.
I’m using Wordpress for the site design, of course, however i’m going to be heavily redesigning the standard layout. It’s going to be very art-centric and sharp looking, hopefully using some of the neat web design tricks i’ve learned over the past few months.
Going along the lines of my template A.D.D., I got tired of staring at that clean, white background with very little content on it.
I’ve been learning a ton of new tricks with CSS and HTML lately at work, so I really wanted to put them to the test with an updated look for the ole’ Haggis. The result is mostly done by Nik Iliadis, who did the original Wordpress template design (and what genius work it is), and I just modified the hell out of it and made it my own.
I really wanted something more artistic for my blog, which I feel has been missing since I refreshed the last time–at no fault but my own. I basically kept all the new sections and functionality from the last one (the mini-pictures, the archive section, most commented pages, etc), plus a few new features:
User Selectable Backgrounds
A bonus feature of using the skin, every visitor to this site can now pick their own personal background from the seven I have provided at the top. All seven of these images were photographed by me on my various journeys across the country. There’s a few from NYC, a few from the Bahamas, a few from the Rocky Mountains, and a couple from the Salt Flats in Nevada. When you select your background, the site will always display that image when you return. Neat, huh?
Related Articles
I had this on my old Moveable Type page around version 3 or 4 of The Daily Haggis, but it never quite worked correctly. This one works a lot better, plus has a lot more customizable options.
Flickr Link
I have taken down the Coppermine photo gallery i’ve been using for years. The upkeep and use I got out of it was minimal. I finally got around to uploading a lot of my photos to Yahoo! Flickr, so I am now linking to it instead of the previous gallery.
The Return of the Gravatar
If you haven’t noticed, you’ll see an icon next to my name when I make comments. This is a feature I offered once before, but took down when I changed templates last time. Gravatar is a free service that allows you to submit a personal icon to its system, and whenever you are on a Gravatar-enable blog it will display your picture when you enter the normal information to comment (ie email address, blog address).
That’s it for now. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the new look! 
I just can’t stay with a template for longer than six months it seems. I really liked my old template, but I could never get around to finishing all the sub-pages and excess bugs that came with it.
I came across the new WordPress Theme Viewer, and immediately fell in love with one of the themes provided: Wonderwall by Alvin Woon. The theme wasn’t exactly how I wanted it, but it came with a few new plugins and some enhanced content delivery that I just couldn’t pass up.
Six hours later the new template is up and running with several new features:
I’m still tweaking the graphics here and there, and a few bugs in the Archive pages (FULLY OPERATIONAL!), but otherwise this site should now be fully operational and searchable again.
Beautifully shot and written, this is a tale of small town superstition, tragedy, and one family's hidden secrets.
0.3
Terrible, stupid, and ridiculous torture porn. Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson should be ashamed of themselves for making this trash.
0.3
Decent semi-remake of Rear Window, starring the "IT" boy of the moment Shia LaBeouf. Seemed a little rushed, but decent ending.
0.3
David Fincher presents a frightening true story about the investigation of the Zodiac killer and the cartoonist determined to catch him.
0.3
After the kickass Iron Man animated film, I had high hopes for this. Not so much. It has its moments, but overall a complete snore-fest. And I *like* the Dr. Strange character.
0.3Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion...
2007-08-06 21:00
Zach is a maniac, and I can't stop watching. Brian Unger (NPR) interviews his twin brother Seth, Zach insults half his audience, and everyone gets the joke.
0.3
