I came back from the con, got back to doing stuff and will now proceed to forget to ever update this journal.

This coming weekend I'll be at A-Kon in Dallas, the great and large anime convention that I've been going to since it was way fewer people in a much smaller hotel. It's lots of fun with many great costumers! Follow me on Twitter (@joetweetguy) and Tumblr (joeartguy) to see my con pix.

I'll be at the Radio Comix table and taking commissions and requests if anyone happens to want some art. I usually charge $40 for inked pieces. I might take a couple or three after I get back too. There's stuff I need to get, and someone told me legal tender can be exchanged for goods and services.

See you at A-Kon if you are there and don't avoid me!

Geeze la wheeze I need to update my journals here more often. I just can't imagine people are all that interested in what I have to say.

You should just follow me on Twitter under joetweetguy if you're really interested in my day-to-day maundering!

I'll be heading up to Furry Fiesta later today, so I'll see anyone who's going there. I'll be at the Radio Comix table. Hit me up in the dealer's room if you want, I'll be drawing like crazy all weekend! With no cat interruptions either!

I just wanted to get the entry about A-Kon off the journal.

You can see my few photos from A-Kon, along with art and other stuff, at my Tumblr (also joeartguy). I treat Tumblr like a sketchbook I don't care about, so it's a good place to see sketches and other stuff I don't consider real art but which is still interesting. And stuff is still uploading to joerosales.com too.

I am at A-Kon 23 in Dallas this weekend, and if you're not looking at my Twitter (@joetweetguy) or Tumblr (joeartguy) feed, you're missing out.

After solving the more egregious problems, I turned my website back on. Finally.

It's at joerosales.com.

I thought I'd just tell you folks what's going on since I vanished back into Dark Code Forest. I know a lot of you are far better programmers than I am, so I dunno -- maybe you can direct me toward resources that allowed you to do something similar to what I'm attempting. Or, maybe what I'm asking for is crazy impossible.

To put it briefly, like most programs Wordpress has turned out to be smart enough to "help" me in ways I don't want or need, and too dumb to do the simply-conceived useful things I'd like it to. My hand-coded HTML pages with CSS buttons which work and behave perfectly when uploaded separately are completely unsuitable for use in a Wordpress environment.

I'm using the Addon Webcomic (http://mgsisk.com/webcomicms.net/) to control uploads. I'm very pleased with Webcomic; as a content management system it's excellent. My problems are nearly all at the Theme level, and it doesn't seem to matter much what theme I'm using. (I'm currently attempting to use the Inkblot theme, which is one of the approved Webcomic themes. The other is Archimedes. They're both linked from the Webcomic site.)

My initial goal is to create a static front page with some dynamic content. What I want is basically a few static buttons, and some fields which contain previews of the latest posts -- small preview images of the latest comic and gallery uploads, and the latest blog post. (The preview images are generated automatically on upload and can be called using PHP.) This is proving very, very difficult.

Firstly, I'm having a problem overriding enough of whatever Theme I'm using. My HTML and CSS is being crippled by the theme parameters, and I really need Inkblot or Archimedes running to run the rest of the site. But for my static pages, I'd just as soon turn off all the formatting (especially the ubiquitous 'wrap' field it draws down the middle of each page). I've created some custom PHP Template Pages to see what I can do about it but so far it's slow going. The Theme rules all.

Worse, I've been unable to find any way of easily embedding PHP content in a static page's layout. The PHP call is installed on a Template, but I can't find any way that the content could be set to load into a particular field of the static page on the HTML section.

Anyway, I've gone through two good instructional books (one on Wordpress and one on XHTML and CSS) and a fair chunk of the Wordpress Codex, watched hours of the Webcomic training videos (many of which are now hilariously out of date since they changed their code substantially with the last update, which was after they did the videos), and spent hours just playing with Wordpress itself according to the Codex tutorials. I went through a bunch of the purported PHP solutions like Exec-PHP, which do various backflips to make in-post PHP activate, and they didn't really seem like much use.

So now it's down to figuring out if I can do layout in PHP, which seems like it would be nightmarish, or finding some better examples, or throwing out an idea it seemed like Wordpress was made to do as completely unworkable.

For those of you who've read this far, there's a sample of the dummy layout I was working from at http://www.joerosales.com/SAMPLEfrontpage01css.htm . Yes, it uses internal CSS since it's just the dummy. Sure is pretty, isn't it? Wordpress despises it. As a static page I can't even reproduce the table, let alone get the nav bars running.

Anyone have any helpful resources toward my goals I may not have seen yet? Or coding suggestions to make Wordpress stop beating up on my left hemisphere?

My friend Don took time out of his very busy schedule (he works for one of those companies where at this point they've fired everyone they can), came over and with a combination of prior knowledge and technical savvy solved my arcane Windows 7 installation problems. Now I can install excellent new software on excellent new drives.

I though with my recent grousing and whineypantsery, you should know that things are not all bad. Thanks Don!

In case any of you were wondering, I'm not writing new material. I'm not doing art. I'm not coloring.

I'm waiting for high-end technical assistance to help me install a completely recalcitrant Windows 7, so I can use any of my thousand-plus dollars worth of new hardware and software. It hangs five minutes in demanding a CD/DVD driver, despite the hardware (including the CD/DVD) having the latest firmware and Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor assuring me everything is hunky-dory.

And I'm learning CSS basically from scratch, since despite everything I did to try to not to have to hand-code my site from the bottom up by myself like I did last time, I am now once again forced to hand-code my site practically from the bottom up by myself -- because Step 5 of every install is "To change anything, start editing the CSS, which we've changed since we wrote this so best of luck figuring it out. You know how to do that, right? I mean, all of us here do."

Over the years I've learned HTML, JavaScript, ActionScript, PASCAL (of which JS and AS are both versions), COBOL and FORTRAN just for fun. This is now at least the third, at most the fifth, time I have had to do this, and every time it's some new special flower version of an assembly language I have to learn to make everything run something like properly in a browser. It never gets any easier, and I teach it to myself because the few people who know any of it have their own sites to work on and anyway, if I'm reading a book or website on it I can't possibly have any questions can I? And I don't have anything else to do but figure this out on my own.

I estimate that I'll probably not be posting any art for at least another month. I've installed a server on my local machine so I can test my site's code before uploading. No, I'd never done that, but I read a bunch of sites and spent a day figuring it out by myself.

No, don't bother, I've probably got it figured out by now. I don't need to hear it.

I've spend most of this week watching tutorials and rebuilding my site using Wordpress, the Webcomic plug-in, and the Inkblot theme.

Back behind the white wall that covers my site, there's a version of the site running that has things going on, test comics uploading -- my old college strip Raymond, in fact. There's plenty of those, and they test the automated functions nicely. It sets up a lot of things nicely, including handling multiple comics (which I will very much need).

But the truth is, I'm running into the wall in terms of my CSS programming abilities. It's not that I can't learn it. I taught myself HTML; and then ActionScript and a good hunk of JavaScript, which are really both versions of the most hateful assembly language I learned, PASCAL. It's that the Manual for Webcomic amounts to notes the programmers made to remind them what they did, and the tutorials are all half-hour videos with sparse descriptions, meaning you may have to watch two hours of footage to find out how to change a header file.

Honestly, this is consuming an enormous amount of time and brainpower, and actually preventing me from uploading the art that this software is supposed to facilitate. If one of you knows Webcomic well, or at least has a better grasp of CSS than I do, and wants to see me get back to uploading art, I won't turn down some help. A small amount of expert consulting could shave off a large amount of time for me.

I'm heading out of town Friday, and should be back Sunday night. Perhaps my brain will cool off some by then.

I'm finally done with the brutal moving. I've gotten my computer put together and connected to the internet again, got my art board set up and wired for music (very important), and yesterday I found the right box and started unpacking all my non-digital art supplies.

Now at least I can clear out my backed up correspondence and archives and get back to work on raiding Firelands fixing up my old website. I have "Wordpress for Dummies" out and am watching the Webcomic theme tutorials, but I'm apparently to the point where I have to do some actual artwork. Darn you actual work!

I also found some art I had forgotten about while moving, so looking forward to posting some and finishing up and posting others.

Sorry about the lack of updates and art. I am moving. LJ: link

Before I left for A-Kon, I pulled down the font page of my website (like anyone noticed). Since I got back I've been tinkering with it behind the wall.

Just to let you all know, I'm gradually figuring it out and should have something up soon. But geeze, it's like learning to fly the space shuttle. Again. It's like this every time. I'll figger it.

I'm on my way to Dallas to attend A-Kon! I'll be at the Radio Comix tables doing art and other commerce. Say hi if you're there!

Obviously I'm posting stuff again. My new monitor is big and shiny and working great. Thanks for your patience.

I heeded the advice on my last post, since after I thought about it for five seconds I realized that even an hour of professional repair plus parts would cost me more than buying a new monitor. So I've ordered a new one from Newegg, a widescreen that's on sale, has stats I like, has a good rating after a lot of reviews, and isn't from ViewSonic.

The old monitor is not working with the VGA input either, so it's back to the phone. So I still can't scan or upload any of the art I'm doing, but at least I'll have stuff for when I get running again.

Good thing I went on hiatus from WarCraft even before this, so my guild's not missing me. Still, you can't make up jewelcrafting dailies. And my druid's baby raptor will take forever to grow up! Oh well. :D

Turns out it was not in fact my video card, but my ViewSonic monitor. Something's up with whatever translates an DVI signal inside it. I've got it working for a while with a converter jack and an old VGA cable, allowing me to plug into the monitor's analog input. But I don't know how long that kludge is going to last.

This monitor is over five years old, so I dunno -- maybe it can be fixed or something. The flat-screen display is still really nice, but I have no idea what the operational lifespan on an LED monitor is supposed to be. I guess I'll just see how it holds up.

Props to EVGA, for not being The Problem!

My video card has failed, so I'm offline for days at least until a new one arrives. Go go gadget iPhone!

Art is a rhythm and mine is off. I will keep tapping until it is restored.

I just had to get rid of the old post. Doing art art art. See gallery for details.

I'm leaving for it directly with  dustmeat! I just need to finish throwing things inside of other things. So, if you're going I'll see you there!

After I get back I think I might take a commission or two, pending the finishing of some more comic pages. I'll decide next week upon my return.

Yikes! I was digging through a pile of old art (there are many of these here, much to my chagrin), and found a piece that's a commission, marked as Paid. There's a name and address on it but no email, and I'm not keen about mailing it off without confirming the person still lives there.

Edit: I found who I was looking for! Thanks for the help, folks. :)

kathmandu gets his picture, with which I am not dissatisfied. Grats!

kathmandu won my little minicontest to identify the piece of art behind the 70s Artalope, and has made his request for a Cool Piece of Art. He provided some good directions and descriptions, and now it's up to me to take way too long to do it and then go overboard. Grats K!

Now back to WarCraft COLORING I MEAN COLORING.