I have been given the task of rebuilding my company’s website. I will not have to do the design work, as we have a full-time graphic designer, but because he does not have much web experience, I am responsible for putting his design into code. I’m not too concerned about that, but what I am concerned with is the content and structure of the site. I have emphasized to our management that it doesn’t matter how good the visual design of our website is if the structural design and content are lacking. This is a problem I have faced many times before, but this time around is different. You see, the people putting together the content for the site are not going to be able to give me a clear site map diagram for me to begin building the site from. Sure, they have an opinion, but I don’t believe they can create a sitemap by themselves. That’s ok, because I’ve created sitemaps before for people who just don’t know where to begin, but I’m concerned that if I take that responsibility, they will come back and want me to change something after the graphics have been created and navigation put in place. So, in considering this, I came up with an idea. I was already using OmniGraffle to do my sitemap diagram which I was going to use to show my boss to have him sign off on. I thought OmniGraffle had an XML export option, so I envisioned writing a PHP script which parsed the XML representing my sitemap and generated a collection of html files with links to each other according to the diagram. This would essentially be a skeleton website with all the html documents I needed with the link navigation I needed. I then planned to pull that into Dreamweaver to apply my template. You may be saying to yourself that this is a bit of overkill, or there may be a better way to accomplish this using existing Dreamweaver techniques or plugins. And you know what? You may be very right. However, I love using OmniGraffle and really liked this idea of translating the visual representation of a website into some actual useful code. What I discovered, however, is that OmniGraffle 2 does not have an XML export feature. Only OmniGraffle 3 Professional does. So, I almost gave up, but not quite. I discovered that OmniGraffle is a scriptable application. Now, I know very little AppleScript. Up to this point, my only exposure was modifying an iPhoto AppleScript to work with the image gallery database of JonandJolene.com. But again, I really liked this idea, so I figured this was an opportunity to learn some more AppleScript! :) I have been working on this project a few hours a day for the past 5 days or so and I now have a working script that creates an html document for each shape whose url contains “html” and adds links to each which point to the other documents that are connected via outgoing lines. The script needs a lot of polish, and there are many things I want to add, but it’s more or less working at this point. I just wanted to write about it here on the blog in hopes someone may find it interesting. When I get more work done on the project, I may release it on this site, or see if Omni Group would be interested in putting in there community contribution section. Anyway, wish me luck on the completion of the project. (and that it actually does save me some time in the long run)

Jolene and I recently visited my family and I discovered my old set of Tie Fighter disks at their home. I became nostalgic as I am prone to do at times and decided to take the disks home and see if the floppies still worked. The first floppy appears to work just fine, but it does not want to install on my Windows 2000 computer. This obstacle gave rise to a great idea — incorporate this old classic into my home entertainment PC! I began researching DosEmu, and DosBox to determine whether either would run Tie Fighter. It looks like maybe Tie Fighter has problems with these two DOS emulators for Linux, but I plan on trying, anyway. It will take some work, but as I get the time, I plan on trying to add a “DOS Games” section to my Freevo menu.

Apple II nostalgia has also struck me recently. The Apple IIc and //e were the first computers I recall ever using. I used to check out BASIC programming books from our elementary school library and deligently type in the program code character by character. In 4th or 5th grade our school built a computer lab full of new Apple IIgs machines. It was wonderful! I learned quite a bit in that lab and when we added a few Mac LCs, I began to learn HyperCard. I always wanted a IIgs at home, but we ended up getting a 286 instead. Years later I was given several IIgs’s, one of which was fully loaded. I needed money, so I sold them on eBay. Now I’m pining for them again. I would like to add some Apple II’s to my collection now. My wife says my gadget budget is spent for a long time now that I have my new PowerBook, :) so I guess I’ll have to make due with a good emulator. I’ve found a lot of great Apple II sites out there, and I’m currently working to get a good Apple II emulator working with my Freevo setup.

I’ll post more about it when I have either Tie Fighter or Karateka running on my game machine.

I just came across one of the most amazing things I think I have ever seen. I appreciate the Internet all the more for making this possible. Also, I appreciate the brave people that provided these unbelievable images. I was absolutely fascinated as I went through the entire series of pages. Perhaps I am making to much of this. Go check it out for yourself here. (I hope this link remains good. It is hosted on angelfire, after all)

Ok, I’ve now got KEGS running on my Mini-ITX box. I was able to install GSOS 6.0.1 on a hard drive image along with several games (including Wolfenstein 3D). I have downloaded many of the IIgs disk images available and am able to play many of the classics I remember and some I never had the opportunity to play. I’ve incorporated the Apple IIgs disk images into my Freevo configuration to allow selecting games from within that interface just as I do with my other video game emulators, but KEGS does not allow me to pass an image file in on the command line. Instead, it operates using a conf file which specifies which image to load. I plan on writing a script that takes the image file argument and inserts it into the conf file before starting the emulator. I think that should work pretty well. As for now, the emulator starts up from Freevo, it just boots off of the hard drive image. I can switch disks from within the emulator. I am enjoying having a IIgs around again, sort of.

I found it interesting that Slashdot ran a Chernobyl headline just a week or two after I ran across this site that I commented on in my earlier blog entry. I was fascinated at the time with the story of Chernobyl, (which I knew very little about previously) and thought it would be interesting to see it someday. Then Slashdot runs this story about tourism to Chernobyl. Anyway, I just thought it worth comment.