BrentButler.com
Blog, etc. Weather Cubs Drumline
Thursday, June 21st, 2012
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Blog Entry Posted at 10:17:05 PM CDT
Updates to the Site
I don't know that I ever really stop messing with my site, but I've made a number of modifications since the last time I posted about them. I think it's about time to catch up.
  • Lincoln Drumline
    Now incorporated into the general design of the rest of my site. I'll slowly be going through and centering a lot of content as the left-align on some of it just looks ... off. I'm still debating reincarnating the Guestbook.

  • Blog, etc.
    • Incorporated my Foursquare check-ins as an entirely separate content type, complete with text and photos of the update, and quite a bit of information about the check-in venue (address, phone number, Twitter handle, web site, etc.). Only check-ins with some sort of text description are displayed.
    • Tweaked display of Tweets to be more consistent with the display of other content types.
    • Media is now automatically embedded when a Tweet contains a link from:
      • Twitpic
      • YouTube
      • Vimeo
      • TwitVid
      • certain JibJab content (it might work for more than I think)
      • MLB.com videos
    • Optimized main calendar drawing on month summaries (see May 2012 for an example)
    • Created new database of thumbnail images to be used in the monthly summaries that includes content from:
      • Pictures
      • Videos
      • Blog entries
      • TwitPic images embedded in Tweets
      • YouTube videos embedded in Tweets
      • Vimeo videos embedded in Tweets
      • Foursquare

  • Cubs
    • Scoreboard section
      • Now utilizes a data feed directly from MLB
      • Improved update frequency
      • Now includes additional information (venue name, team records, TV/radio broadcasters, etc.)
      • Created mini and large display templates from scratch
      • Updated layout so that 4 days of games are displayed
      • Changed behavior so that games do not cycle to next day until 10 AM (matches MLB.com's scoreboard which cycles at 11 AM ET daily)
      • Updated so that each of the following game types will be displayed:
        • Cubs regular season games
        • Cubs spring training games
        • The All-Star Game
        • All post-season games (this will probably look like a mess during the divisional round, so this behavior might be modified)
    • Standings section
      • Now utilizes a data feed directly from MLB
      • Improved update frequency
    • News section
      • Now utilizes a data feed directly from MLB
      • Improved update frequency
      • Re-arranged to allow for more visible details
      • Split stories up by date posted (Last 2 days, then "older")
      • Cleared-up several data accuracy bugs
    • Photos section
      • Resurrected for first time in a few years; utilizes entirely new data feed (not from MLB as they don't appear to have one available)
      • Dramatically altered display so that pictures are automatically resized to fit a pre-defined square
      • Included a number of regular expressions to truncate unnecessary text from description. Description will be cut off after a certain number of characters if it's still too long.

  • Weather
    • Switched data sources to Weather Underground's API, which was an absolute joy; I sincerely wish I'd done it eons ago.
    • Improved update frequency
    • Replaced local TV station's weather warning information (which was primarily limited to just a map) with warnings provided in the Weather Underground data (alerts, messages, advisories, watches and warnings all included with issuance and expiration times, and a complete description of the alert)
    • This hasn't been done yet, but I'd like to display major warnings at the top of my site, similar to how breaking news or recent Tweets are displayed.

  • Home Page
    Updated to reflect inclusion of Foursquare check-ins in Blog, etc. section.

  • Whole Site
    • Included Foursquare logo/link at bottom of site
    • Updated some Twitter logos to reflect their logo "change" (insert eye roll here). I technically still need to update logo at the bottom of the site, but Twitter's new logo guidelines actually say not to use the Twitter name in a logo representing them. Go figure.

  • Miscellaneous
    I updated my error pages (see the 404 error and 500 error) with some images provided by The Oatmeal
I think that's it. So, yeah, not much. Not much at all.
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