Mobile version: Close to being finished! Which, given all the crap that's on there, surprises me more than anyone. I go back and forth on this every day, about how many supplementary options to include there at the mobile version; where does the line lay between usability and the avant garde? I want a mobile version that's going to really wow mobile users, which right now are a small but extremely vocal and passionate group, and full of the same people who professionally innovate in more mainstream areas of technology; I also want to present something that will motivate others with MT-powered blogs, and show them all the cool things they could be doing at their own sites for us geeky mobile users. But this is always tempered against the fact that...well, it's a damn telephone screen, anywhere from two to four fuckin' inches wide, and there's only so much information you can present on one screen before it just becomes all too much for that poor visitor. So what do I include? Which of the one gazillion options MovableType now gives me will be of real benefit to a mobile visitor, and which sound cool at first but then reveal themselves as having no real good use?

Like, I got rid of a list of categories, because it's just going to take up too much space; there's going to be like 40 or 50 of them by the time I get the majority of the archives imported. Mobile users will see what category that day's entry is in, and I figure they can always type the category into the search bar if they want to see more of that particular one. The last three or four entries have direct links in the mobile version too, because I figure that's an important one as well; I could see a lot of mobile visitors missing the last one or two entries and wanting to skip directly back to them. But, I'm thinking of getting rid of the archives listed by month, because that's going to get impossibly big too (in mobile terms, anyway) as more and more archives get imported. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this subject, more than probably most will ever know, and I've finally got it down to a list I'm fairly happy with. A couple more tweaks, and then this version will be frozen.

The Jason Pettus Instant Locator ™ Live! Displaying real-time information! On both desktops and mobile devices! Yeehaw! Actually, this setup was much easier than I was expecting it to be, but that's only because both blogs are being run by MovableType; I'm not sure if it'd be nearly as easy a process for someone on Blogger-powered sites or others. Basically, all I have to do is have two blogs running under the same user account (which my site host set up for me - thanks, Jimi!), and then have a piece of freeware called MultiBlog installed as well, known as a MovableType plug-in and written in Perl. This plug-in defines some new tags that your particular build of MT will now recognize, that basically gives you the power to simultaneously display content from all of your blogs on one page. And it can use all the attributes the usual <MTEntries> tag can use, which means it's a tag you already know how to customize. Pretty simple.

I've also got the promised "cool as fuck" standalone design for the JPIL up and live right now as well; isn't it cool as fuck? It's so simple that it loads effortlessly in both desktops and mobiles; but it's what I consider a really smart minimalist design, so makes people sort of jerk their heads and go, "Hey, that looks cool, man." It is so easy for those on MovableType to set up their own Instant Locator; the entire thing can be installed, learned and already being used in under a day. In fact, as soon as mine is completely stable and I'm sure I've gotten all the bugs worked out, I'll be writing the entire process up as one of my "How Do I..." tutorials.

Oh, did I not mention the "How Do I..." tutorials? I've been having to teach myself an enormous amount of new information this spring, not only the newest concerning HTML and CSS but also how to customize RSS feeds, program in MovableType, etc. A lot of this learning has come from specific needs I had for this site - like, how do I create dropdown menus in CSS? How do I display information from a second blog in MovableType? How do I implement HTML access keys in my mobile template? Before I quickly forgot the detailed solutions again, I thought I'd go ahead and jot down the information in plain language just in case I need them for future reference; and as long as I'm jotting them down, why not share them all with you as well?

The beauty is that I can simply add it right into my MT blog database, and make the essay series a searchable part of this site. The secret is simply to post them on days when I have a new personal journal entry to post as well, and to make sure that my journal entry is the last thing posted; that way it will still show up on the main index page as the newest entry, but with two or three new tutorials buried under it in the database as well. Then I simply create a new category ("Computers | How Do I...?") and file each tutorial in it; then, like the "recent entries" box you see in the sidebar, I create a recent entries box just for the "How Do I" category, and a permanent link to all entries in that category. That way I can promote it on the side of the page as a special series of standalone essays (which they are), and link to them within my main entries as I talk about them; yet they're embedded within the MT database, so are searchable and pingable, and will be indexed at places like Technorati and del.icio.us, etc. Best of both worlds, man - ah, how I love my new MovableType build! Anyway, I've now written tutorials on separating layout and content in CSS, creating rounded text-box borders for Mozilla browsers, and creating access keys in your mobile device. I'll definitely be writing one on creating your own Instant Locator, one on tweaking RSS feeds, one on creating the perfect print template, and one on special style considerations for mobile pages, and I'm sure more I haven't thought of yet. And sometime within the next week I'll actually start getting them posted, and create the new sidebar item where you can find the latest, and will be talking about them regularly here in the main journal.

And finally, I guess I should explain the problems I was having yesterday with cutoff text, and how I built this McGuyveresque runaround to the problem - but be warned that this gets into awfully nerdy territory at points. You know by now, of course, that the reason I'm pushing this new journal so hard is so I can finally start posting entries straight from my palmOne Treo, since it is the only regular internet access I have these days. Specifically, I use a program called U*Blog which has this really nice interface for those of us on MT - I can post entries, summaries, keywords, categories and even photos, all simultaneously to the website with the push of one button. What I can do, then, is write my entry from home as usual, import it into my Palm's Memopad, cut and paste it from there into U*Blog, and send the entry to you, which is how I've done it every day with my other blog [metafeed] since the day I started it. The problem, though, is that among the maddening arbitrary details of the Treo, the developers decided to give its clipboard a maximum memory of 1k (1k?!), even though the device ships with 24,000k of internal memory. There's a piece of freeware out there I use called "CutPaste5" which bumps this up to a more realistic 32k; but still, that's only enough to copy about 1,200 words at a time, no matter what Palm program you're in or what you're trying to do. So that's the problem with U*Blog - the maximum length my entries can be is about 1,200 words, while I've been averaging about 2,000 words per entry over the history of this journal.

The runaround doesn't fix the problem, but simply fixes the way the problem is shown to you, so that you think it's solved; I now simply present the last two journal entries on this page (desktop, mobile and print) instead of the last one, but don't show the title or date or anything else of that second entry that would make you think it's its own entry. That now gives me 2,400 words a day in which to tell my story, which should be more than enough for even talky little me; it's just that on my end, I have to post them as two separate entries, and make sure they're posted in a certain order (the top half being the one posted last). Admittedly, this will cause certain problems with the archived versions, and in search results; but not really as much as you might think. See, usually the entries at my personal journal cover a whole range of subjects anyway, so it's going to be easy to split the entries into two; in fact, my usual MO is to talk about one main subject for about half the entry, then throw a bunch of random little notes up in the other half. That first half will have the title you'll see displayed at the top of the page, the trackback info at the bottom, and the entire content of that particular subject; the second entry will have all the random notes, and will be named "Random notes for [that date]." When you search on a certain subject, then, you will get the full text of that particular subject, but merely half of everything in general the live reader read that day when the entry was the newest one here. And when you search by a particular date, you will of course get both entries returned to you, which is just as good as having one big one returned. So, I'm not too worried about having to post my entries as two separate files; the important thing to me is that it can actually be accomplished in the first place, and that I'll finally be able to go back to updating my personal journal once every two days or so, like I did when I had a day job.

Okay, that's finally it for today! And even more, more, more updates to tell you about soon, I'm sure. I do hope that you'll take the time this summer to start getting into the habit of coming here, instead of my Geocities page - I'm merging the content of both in just another week or so, although both versions will still be updated until this MT one is finally official. I'll be adding a lot more content here this summer, on top of the usual journal entries - importing my old entries, it turns out, is going to be a lot simpler than I thought it was going to be, so I'm hoping to really get chugging on that as soon as these templates are finished. Then, of course, I start releasing the brand-new reorganization of all 15 books of poetry I've published through GAD, complete with new pieces, new introductions, new notes and a new layout, and I've also got to completely redesign the GAD website to reflect its new mission (primarily to promote my travel books, also to offer all the old poetry and essay and novel stuff I used to do), and get a cool-ass mobile version going as well. So, yes, there's going to be a whole lot of work going on here from now until the end of the year, and by 2006 this site is going to look completely different than it ever did before. (Plus, it will finally become that long-awaited central clearinghouse for all things Pettus - no more having one site for a journal, and another for the books, etc. Pettusland Uber Alles!)