Sephy’s Platzish

First off, yes, I am posting this after 4pm - it’s been a bit of a busy day these last couple of days, so I haven’t had a whole bunch of time on the computer.

We got a lot of random housework done (including putting all the VHS tapes into two shelves of a bookshelf, two deep), and over the weekend we should be getting a bit more done.

One of the projects that we’re working on is cutting a, well, bush which has turned into more of a sprawling tree back down to its size. Just as a gauge of how bad the tree is entangled in itself, I cut a branch that goes over my head apart. However, it didn’t fall, in fact it didn’t move at all. However, the next branch that gets cut will loosen both branches.

I’ve already run once to clear a falling branch, I can do it again. I hope.

I’ve talked about the fact that I live by the railroad, and that there is a box right here. In the last few days, they’ve been doing some work on the box apparently. The other day, I heard a train go through and the box announced the temperature as minus 42. Now, a crew truck has shown up in the same place that it had back in July and they’re doing some repairs to the box.

I say repairs because as there is a train going over the sensor, it put out an alert only seconds after the engines crossed over it. I think the fella manually turned it off to keep everyone from hearing the beeping for the duration of the train.

I’m heading out to walk now, since the train has a caboose on the end of it!

A couple of weeks ago, I read a blog post about an offer of Free Hosting through a company (which I had not heard of at the time, but they claim to be the “World’s Leader in Hosting Services”) called EasyCGI. At first, I was sure there was a catch, but when I checked out the page which outlines the promotion, they say that there are “No gimmicks or hidden costs.”

My experience, however, has not been as smooth as their promotion would have it make out to be.

After doing a bit of searching and finding out that they were on the up-and-up, I decided to take the plunge. While the first step of entering my domain name, and telling them to keep it on my current registrar was quick and easy, my whole experience fell apart on the second step - giving my credit card information. The first time I provided the information, my card was declined. I thought that, maybe, I made a mistake on a number, or on my expiration date.

However, all of that was correct, so I did it again. Once more, my card was declined.

I should have given up at this point and contacted support concerning the problem. However, I tried it a couple of more times, and instead of getting a card declined message, I received a message saying to contact support.

So, I then contacted support using the web form that they have available. After submitting my message, they said that I would get a reply within 24 hours.

Sunday passes, and there is no reply from them. However, I did hear from my credit card provider - the fraud department called asking to verify that I was, in fact, the person who was trying to use my card with EasyCGI. I had asked them what the issue with the declinations was, but they could not give any information on that.

Then, on Monday, I decide to call EasyCGI’s toll-free support line. I get through to one of their staff and told him about my situation. He said that they don’t handle their own promotions and that there is some outside vendor who provides them, but he’d look at the situation and send an email to me about it.

On Monday night, after receiving no email back from that person, I then attempted to contact the “24-hour” support, only to be sent to their messagebank. Based on my experience with the web form, I decided that it would be better to keep trying to call. Then, I went to the Live Chat feature on the website. I told the person about my situation, and the immediate reply was to call or email the support department. I did some more looking around the website, and spotted a note that said if you weren’t satisfied with the service, you should send an email with a subject line directing the email to a manager.

I then sent this email -

To whom it may concern,

I have been attempting to sign up for the August 2007 Free Hosting for
1 year promotion (details here - {snip website address for promotion} )
with your company since Saturday. The first two times I attempted to
sign up, my credit card was declined. After that, I have received a
generic error, with the only remedy being to contact support.

On Saturday, I contacted support via the Web form, and was informed
that I would receive an answer back within 24 hours. That time came
and went without any reply from your end.

I then called support this morning, spoke to, I believe, {an employee} -
I didn’t make a note of his name, but he was decent to work
with. After informing him of the issues I had and giving him my email
address, he informed me that he would send me an email about this
issue. It has been over 16 hours since I called and have not heard
anything further back.

I would like to sign up for the hosting service, but I am unsure if I
will be able to. I would like to have some answers to my issues before
I attempt to sign up again.

I then waited a few hours, and after about 12 hours with no reply to my email, I decided to call the toll-free number once more - this time going through the Billing Department. The lady I spoke to was polite with me while I explained my situation. She looked up my record (by email address) and noted my call on Monday. However, what she said and what I was told on Monday had changed into two different things. She said that she had spoken to the person I spoke to on Monday, and he said that I was supposed to contact the vendor sponsoring this promotion, and that there was nothing about an email being sent to me.

When I asked about why I was still receiving the error, she said that I had been put on an IP blacklist for trying to sign up numerous times with “bad” information. She suggested that I send an email to the support department with the last four digits of my card, the IP address I used, and my email address. She also surmised that changing IP addresses might work to allow me to register.

So, I decided to change IP addresses and tried to sign up again, only to get the same generic error to contact support.

A couple of hours after that, I received this reply to my email:

Hi,

Your credit card ending in ‘xxxx’ was automatically blocked by our system after numerous failed attempts. We have removed this block allowing the signup to go through on another attempt. This ordinarily happens if there is a decline on an authorization attempt for the initial amount on the credit card. While our billing does not run until the first of each month, on the initial signup, the credit is checked for available funds. Additionally, there are conflicts in contact information that may also cause these errors. While our agents cannot extend a promotional signup, if you continue to encounter related errors, please contact one of our helpful support representatives toll free at 1-866-xxx-xxxx (internationally at +1.xxxxxxxxxx) for further assistance. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please let us know if you have additional questions.

To be honest, it makes more sense to me that the card would be blocked rather than my IP address. However, I find the explanation of the decline for the credit card a little mystifying. This being a free offer, and my not requiring the services of their domain registration, it would be more than reasonable for anyone to think that they would only need to have the card number for future billing - i.e. after the free offer finished. As far as checking for available funds - it’s a common practice for gas stations to put a hold of up to $75 on a card when you go to buy gas, then refund the amount that you didn’t spend after a couple of days.

I will also note that there is a minor inconsistency between my actual contact information and my “card holder” information - my address consists of four words, and the one on file with the bank has three, and my card uses my middle initial. I’ve never had a problem with the contact information in the past for other online vendors I’ve worked with, however.

As far as the information I was given on the phone, I’m still curious as to who this “vendor” sponsoring this promotion is, as I have found a bunch of sponsored posts, all of which link to a page at www.easycgi.com, which in turn redirects to the promotion page. The more recent posts about this have had links that go through tinyurl to EasyCGI’s promotion page.

I’d contact the vendor, but I’m fairly certain it is EasyCGI who are sponsoring it - since when you go to sign up for their service, they have information about the promotion on the signup page. In fact, it’s the first thing you see when you go to enter your domain information.

At this point, I’ve been through quite a bit of frustration, but I need to stand up for myself and for the fact that there are a lot of people out there promoting what is, really, a once-in-a-long-time opportunity. I’m sure that I am not the only one who has had similar issues with trying to sign up for this promotion.

Last Thursday, I sent a copy of this post, along with the note below as a reply to the support person who had written to me on Tuesday.

Thank you for letting me know. Unfortunately, I have had such a difficult time with signing up for the promotional offer that I will be letting everyone know about my situation. This includes posting the text below on my personal blog, along with visiting as many blogs as I can that have posted about the promotion and letting them know of the issues I have had.

Is there anything that you might be able to do to get this situation sorted out? If so, please get in touch with me as soon as possible so that we can make it so.

However, I have not received a reply to that email in a week, so now I am posting about my experiences. If you’ve tried to taken advantage of this offer and have had a similar experience, I’d like to know about it. Also, if you have signed up for the service, I’d like to hear how it’s been going for you.

Honestly, I’m surprised that they weren’t able to find a solution to the problem. I went into this wanting to be a customer of theirs, but after all of this, I can safely say that I’ll stick to some of the more popular hosting services out there.

This week’s Hump Day Hmm is all about school. There are a lot of stories that I could tell about my days at school, but I want to take a different look at going back - the school supply list. It’s one of those things that are a big flashing sign to tell you that it’s time to go back; they have the lists available at most major stores now, unlike in my day when they’d just mail you a list and you’d get on with it.

Of course, this is designed for the parent who lost their shopping list sometime during the summer (or for the parent of the kids who didn’t want to go back to school…I remember being terrified about going back to school for the second grade, each year after that got better though…until college ;)), but anyone walking by can grab one, two or half a dozen.

I can not honestly remember ever having a list of things required for school as long as they have for this school year. Of all the junk I’ve kept over the years, I’ve not kept my school supplies lists, but I’m going to try to do a comparison based on what I recall.

4K

This stands for 4-year-old Kindergarten. When I started school, they had a different term for this - “preschool”. I didn’t go to preschool, but I’m guessing that the required supplies were minimal - maybe a small bookbag and the occasional snack for the class.

Now, you have schools giving these toddlers (really, I think 4-year-olds are still toddlers) lists of items to bring in that include scissors, folders, backpacks, and even glue sticks. There’s one school that is giving parents the option of bringing in gift cards to Wal-Mart for photo processing. Last time I checked, photo processing at Wal-Mart cost 19¢ per photo - 100 photos would then be $19. It makes me wonder how many photos they’re going to print out over the year…

Kindergarten

I think when I went to kindergarten, we might have had to have a backpack, but it was rarely, if ever, used. We might have needed to bring in a pack of crayons, but other than that I don’t remember a big shopping list like they have today. Then again, when I was in Kindergarten, it was only in the afternoon, not an all-day affair like you have today.

I think it’s mostly due to that single change to all-day school that the schools are now asking for a list of items that you would normally see for first grade, or even second grade. The schools are now asking for kids to bring in upwards of 25 glue sticks (the rationale is that buy them now when they’re cheap - that makes sense actually; it’s something you see across many of the supply lists).

As you move up through the grades, there are some interesting similarities. For example, in first grade, schools are now asking that the pencils all be sharpened so that the teachers can give out pencils as the students use them. During the six weeks I was in first grade (which is a story for another day ;)), I was allowed to have my own pencils; if we needed a new one, we just got up and sharpened it, if it was a new pencil, we just had to sharpen it for a bit longer.

I also remember that by the time I was in third grade, we were allowed to have erasable pens - blue or black, however, most of us chose to stick to pencils; now, you have to be in 5th grade before being allowed a blue or black pen, but if you’re in 4th grade, you have to have a red pen (or pencil). Ahh, the days of “hand your paper to the person behind you; here are the answers”. I don’t know if it was just me, or a lot of people, but there was a distinct style of writing 100 on a paper - you made the one, and then wrote the “00″ as if it were two capital Os, making something that looked like this -

Another trend that I’ve noticed is that schools are now asking for color coded folders. What happened to getting just x number of folders? I remember getting folders of different colors, then labeling them with the subject; we all used different colors, and different designs. I guess that the concept of individuality is now frowned upon in schools?

Moving up to Middle School - grades 6-8 in my area - you have pretty much the same requirements as elementary school, but there are some added items. For example, they tell you the exact calculator you are to have for school - TI-30X IIS Advanced Scientific, needed for all 3 years; I had a Casio calculator that did the same things; I bet it was cheaper as well.

In 6th grade, you need to have a 3-ring zipper binder (so much for all the prohibitions of trapper keepers for all the previous years, now they tell you that you need one!), also 2 dry erase markers and a set of highlighters. 7th graders are required to bring 2 inch-and-a-half binders, a compass, graph paper, and a composition notebook. In 8th grade, you need to have two binders - one at 1½ inches, one at 2 inches. They also require a jump drive - at least they haven’t said how big it has to be, but it is an improvement over a floppy disk.

I think I made it through middle school using maybe 2 binders - a small one in 6th grade, then a larger one in 8th grade. Interestingly, there is no prohibition on the type of paper that students can bring for middle school - it used to be that you were only allowed to have wide rule (and it is still that way for students in elementary school). Of course, I always went to college rule since it was more efficient, and my teachers never made an issue of it

Fortunately, by the time you get to high school, there are no lists of things to bring for class. You’re pretty much expected to have a general idea of what to bring. If you’re needed to bring other supplies in, the teacher tells you. As it is, one of the common restrictions - no wheels - was one that I ignored in high school, being one of the first with a wheeled backpack (which I later abandoned for a more traditional bookbag, one that I use every day now when I go out to walk).

What I’d love to know is what were you asked to bring to school when you were there - was it the laundry list, or just bring the basics? If you have kids in school now, do the required items seem ridiculous compared to when you were in school?

Here’s a quickie for those of you who want to add a Google search box to your blog or website. It’s a lot easier than one would think.

I finally got the right idea of what I was looking for after haggling with Google’s Ajax search API - if you want to have an almost fully functioning mini-Google on your site, definitely go ahead and install that. I will warn you though, it can get a bit confusing.

Instead of that, I finally found what I was looking for - a Google search box for my blog. This code is based on the code that is posted on Dave Taylor’s site; I’ve modified it to put the Google Search button on the bottom, after the option section, instead of between the search box and the options.

To add the code to your Blogger blog - if you’re using “New” Blogger - make a new Widget - an HTML/Javascript widget and give it whatever title you’d like. Edit it and put this code in, substituting your site’s address (without http://) and name where indicated.

<center><form action=”http://www.google.com/search” method=”get”>

<input maxlength=”255″
value=”" name=”q” size=”31″ type=”text”/><br/>
<input value=”" name=”sitesearch” type=”radio”/>
The Web
<input checked
value=”YOUR BLOG ADDRESS” name=”sitesearch” type=”radio”/>YOUR BLOG’S NAME<br/>
<input value=”Google Search” type=”submit”/>

</form></center>

If you find that the search box doesn’t fit into your site’s style (i.e. it’s too wide, or too narrow) - just make the number in the size section (currently 31) larger or smaller, depending on your needs.

Save the changes, and you’re set with a Google search box on your blog!

One of the most common criticisms of Blogger templates is that they’re somewhat plain. This is somewhat true, however, it is also one of the biggest misconceptions. If you know where to look, you will find that Blogger’s templates (yes, even the ones in the Templates screen) are almost infinitely changeable to suit any style you might want to have for your blog.

The easiest way that you can change the look of your blog doesn’t even involve changing templates - you can change the colors and fonts used on your blog by using the aptly-named Fonts and Colors screen in your blog’s dashboard. There, you can change literally anything from the color to the text on your page to the color people see when they put their mouse over a link. Each template will have a different set of items that can be changed; for example, on my template (tictac blue) - I can change the text colors, but the background color is set.

When you first view the Fonts and Colors section, you will see the list of changeable elements on the top, and your blog on the bottom. The really cool thing is that when you change something in the top, it is automatically reflected in the bottom half of the screen. These changes, unless you click Save Changes, are only seen by you - not by people who happen to visit your blog at the time.

If you don’t like the changes you’ve made, you can clear the edits you’ve made, reverting your blog back to how it was when you started, or you can revert it back to the default colors for your template. However, note that this will revert all the colors to the defaults set out in the template code.

You can also use the Shuffle blog colors link to take the colors that you’ve used already and shuffle them up. To be honest, I think you’d be better off manually choosing colors than using shuffle - I’ve done it a couple of times and haven’t liked the resulting look.

Something that deserves some special attention is the section in the middle where you select colors. There are two “special” groups of colors that blogger puts in to give you a bit of an assist - Colors from your blog and Colors that match your blog. To the right of that is a set of 65 colors which are generally good colors for a blog.

To the right of that is the Edit color hex code box - that’s if you have a specific color you’ve chosen - likely from one of the great color-picking sites out there - and have a hex code for it. The range of colors that you can have in hex goes from #000000 - black to #ffffff - white, with all other colors represented in between.

Further down the list of items that you can change, you will begin to see some Font-related items - generally, Text font, Page Header, etc. Here, Blogger gives you a choice of six basic “universal” fonts to choose from - Arial, Courier, Georgia, Times (New Roman), Trebuchet (MS), and Verdana. While these fonts are alright, a couple of them are somewhat plain to me - Arial and Courier. Arial is one of those “I see it everywhere” fonts, and Courier makes things look like a typewriter generated it.

Aside from the actual typeface, Blogger give you the option of setting it to bold and/or italic, and you can change the size of the font to be as small or as big as you want. Of course, though, you don’t want to have your font so small or so large that it’s unreadable by your visitors.

Edit HTML

However, Fonts and Colors is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to changing up your template. The quickest (and for a lot of folks, most intimidating) way to change your blog’s look is by using the Edit HTML screen.

The reason I say that it can be intimidating is that this is the raw code that is used to build your blog’s page. If you make a mistake, you can throw off the whole appearance of your blog. I know that even though I have experience in fixing blogs, I’ve made things disappear completely from blogs while editing templates!

The first thing that you should do when you’re working on the edit HTML screen - especially if you’re doing a major change to your blog’s design - is Download the Full Template. This will give you a file that contains everything in the Edit Template box, so that if you do make a major mistake, you will be able to reupload your template from your computer and be back working again in almost no time.

In the future, I’ll explore some of the more advanced features of the new “widget” based functions of Blogger code, but I’d like to feature some of the more common requests I get about templates.

Changing your blog’s width

There are a variety of reasons why you would want to change the width of your blog - it might only be taking up a small part of your screen. You may have a header graphic that is too wide for your current template, causing it to “hang” over the rest of your blog.

One important thing to note is that all templates are different, so the exact text that you’ll find in your code will be different to the code that I have. However, there are some key words that should be in all templates.

For this example, I’ll use the code from my blog’s template as it is today.

The section that contains my blog’s width information is called “layout structure” - there are a number of subsections here that outline the styles of various parts of my blog.

The first section - #outer-wrapper - controls the overall width of the blog - on some templates, it may have a different name such as #content-wrapper. In general, the width of this section will be the largest number, as it is for the whole blog.

My template has a special background (to the left), so there is a separate #content-wrapper section to tell your browser that, while the blog is 847 pixels wide, the content can only be 763 pixels wide, otherwise it would cover the background image.

The next sections are based on the width set out in your outer or content wapper sections. #main (or #main-wrapper, #main_wrap) is the area covered by your blog’s posts, and #sidebar (#sidebar-wrapper, #sidebar_wrap) is for the sidebar. If your template is a 3-column template, you will have two sidebar sections - called either left/right_wrap, or sidebar1/sidebar2_wrap.

Generally, the widths, along with the padding and margin numbers across the main and sidebar sections will add up to the width in the outer or content sections. In my example, there is actually a space of 4 pixels in the page somewhere.

To change the width of your blog, you need to make sure of a couple of things first - that you don’t have a template like TicTac which has a background image that sets the width of the page to a specific dimension, and that you have an image of what you want your blog to look like.

For example, when I was editing a template from fixed widths to variable widths (you can check out what it looks like here; it is on a dark background), I sat down with a piece of paper and drew out the page as I wanted to see it. I then calculated the various percentages I’d have to use in order to make the page look good.

Another tip is to check your blog’s stats to see what resolution your visitors are using - the vast majority of users now are on either 1024×768 or 1280×1024 pixel monitors, at least for my blog. You might have a situation where a majority of visitors are using 800×600. If that is the case, then you should design your blog to be around 785 pixels wide, so that people don’t see the horizontal scrollbar.

Now that you’ve determined the width you want to set your blog, it’s time to save your blog’s template to your computer if you have not done so already. After saving, you can then begin your changes.

When I adjust a blog’s template, I always start by changing the outer-wrapper or content-wrapper (the largest width in your template). That lays the foundation for the rest of your changes. For the purposes of this demonstration, I’ll change the width in my blog to 1000 pixels.

This is what the blog looks like in preview, after just changing the outer-wrapper to 1000 pixels. You’ll notice that the whole page has shifted to the left, but none of the content has moved.

The next change will be to make the content-wrapper 916 pixels wide (the reason is that the left and right sides are equally off-set by 42 pixels to accommodate the background graphic.

Here’s what it looks like after that change. The main blog has not moved, but the sidebar has gone all the way to the right - that is caused by the bit of text in the sidebar code “float: right;” which tells the browser to put the sidebar as far right as is possible.

Next, I’ll change the main section to be 635 pixels wide. (1000 - 84 - 259 (sidebar) - 20 (sidebar padding) == 637, then I rounded down to have a more “round” number).

This is what it now looks like - the main blog now runs into the area that used to be the sidebar, while the sidebar still has the end of the background image going straight down the middle of the graphic. All in all, it’s not a good look. And even at 1024×768, there’s a horizontal scrollbar - that can be attributed to the fact that the window isn’t maximized, so there are a few extra pixels being taken up by the window border.

For comparison, this is what the page looks like at 800×600.

The important thing to note here is that if you were to have come to my blog while I was doing this experiment, you would not have noticed any changes. This is because I always, always preview any changes I make to my blog before saving the template. Since this was just an example of how to change your template, I can now go and click the Clear Edits button, and confirm that I want to discard all the unsaved changes.

Further Reading

These are a couple of guides for colors, you can put the hex figures into the colors and fonts screen under color hex code:

• Hex Hub HTML Color Codes - they’ve got the colors split into different groups, such as warms, greens, blues and purples. There’s also a color mixer, but it doesn’t work in Firefox.
• VisiBone Webmaster’s Color Lab - here, you have what is known as the 216-color Webmaster’s palette, or 216 colors that are “web-safe” - they allow you to see how a combination of colors works as each color you choose is set as the background and the foreground for any other colors you choose

For some more insight on how to put together your template, check out Snoskred’s article Blog Design - Open Your Eyes.