If you’re here at the website, you’ve probably noticed a different look to this blog. My portfolio website is also up and running, so I guess I’m introducing …

Glimbit.com

That’s where I’ve set aside some portfolio pieces and a bunch of different ways to get in touch with me. Hopefully everything makes sense and is easy to click around. Let me know what you think.

This look is an effort to simplify everything and let my artwork grab a little bit more attention. I also wanted to feature my new logo for this Glimbit business.

The Glimbit Lightbug

The Glimbit Lightbug represents a theme, not just of this website, but of a good way to be. It’s the notion of “a little light.” Enough light to illuminate, but not so much that one is blinded, or that reality is distorted by glare. A teacher once taught me about letting light in but keeping glare out, and though the idea didn’t stick way back then, it makes sense now.

More about that, plus my portfolio and contact information are all partying over at glimbit.com. Have some, won’t you?

Imagine my joy this morning when I saw that Tenacious D has commandeered my website and rocked it.

(Tenacious D, a comedy-flavored rock band, has a new movie coming out. Part of their promo website lets you give a website a rock overhaul. Special thanks to coworker Jamiroquai for taking Glimbit to funky town.)

(Three months later… )
I pulled a fast one this week and moved my website. Previously on Lost, I was using a high-falootin’ Typepad account which was very easy and slick but rather expensive for that sort of blogging service. This past year I learned more about creating my own hosted websites with various php/mysql components, so I started to feel like I no longer needed Typepad. So, since my Typepad account was about to renew this month, I cancelled it.

I use Dreamhost for my webhosting and I set up this new blog using their one-click wordpress install. I have a couple of websites that use this format. One is a new gaming blog and the other will be a webcomic. This morning I thought of one more I’m going to make: a blog for my go at the National Novel Writing Month in November.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, if you’re interested in trying to write 50,000 words in November, sign up at the website and make it go! If you do, let me know. I’d love to be a part of a novel-writing support group, and I have plenty of friends who write well. You know who you are. In fact, I just threw down the gauntlet to one friend who could write a killer novel with one side of his brain tied behind his back.

Was strolling through the park one day and saw this neat Boneville.com screencap in my Bloglines roll. The reviewer mentions something about cleanliness and spare, and that’s what we were trying to do.

But what I really like is how Jeff has been posting with great relish. He includes several great photos and artwork in each post - makes for great viewing.

Here’s the post at Lines and Colors (a blog about drawing, painting, etc…).

I just finished my first “website-that-wasn’t-for-me” website. It’s for Jeff Smith’s Bone comic. We mixed in a blog, a discussion forum and a bunch of pages and came up with something that seems to work pretty well, for now.

I used WordPress, an open-source blogging script that I’m really into. It’s very easy to use. Dreamhost is our webhost, and I would recommend them to anyone looking for a friendly, responsive host. The rates are decent too. We used phpBB for the discussion board. I’m so-so on that: It’s easy to set up and really functional, but the template engine stinks.

Within an hour or so of being live, Jeff’s first post received 5 comments, and the discussion boards received 4 posts! People love that Bone!

It was really cool being a part of this and learning more about being a real webmaster. Check out the website here: http://boneville.com

(The image above is from a prototype I put together for Jeff. The prototype established the look and feel, but we ended up changing it up a lot.)

After several days of messing with DNS, CNAMES, domain mapping and jimmy caw-caws, www.ericmsmith.com finally maps to my typepad blog. What that means is you’ll see my domain name instead of the slightly more complicated “glimbit.typepad.com”. No big deal really, more of a practice for me since I’m going to be doing this for other folks soon.

My domain registrar made it interesting. I had to resort to sending an email to support because it just wasn’t working, and after a lot of research on the web, forums, etc, I knew I had my stuff right.

Me: I’m hoping you can give me some peace of mind about my domain. Could you please check to see that the www CNAME is setup correctly to point to “glimbit.typepad.com“? I have been checking for the past day with nslookup and I get (the wrong url.) The browser goes to the (domain host’s) parked page. I appreciate your help!

First Support Rep: I am sorry, customer support is not able to troubleshoot custom DNS configurations. You have access to modify the A records and CNAMES for your domain through Total DNS, however as this is an advanced function
we are not able to assist with setting it up. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Now, this is crazy. Total DNS was one of the products I could choose to write for help about, for Pete’s sake. I was a bit p’eed off.

Me: Your response that Total DNS Control is not supported is disappointing. You should remove Total DNS Control from your list of sub-products if you don’t answer questions about it. My guess is that something on your end is not functioning properly. In lieu of your support, I’m going to try deleting the CNAME entry I added through Total DNS Control. Wait 48 hours. Re-add the CNAME. Wait another 48 hours. Is there anything more you can recommend that I do on my side?

I rewrote that last sentence several times, threatening to drop their service, etc. Not a real threat, since I signed up for a 2 year license on the domain. But in the end, as always, I went the less-nasty route. Then … a light shone in the darkness!

2nd Support Rep (Different than 1st): What we meant is that we do not provide assistance with you creating custom DNS records. If it is not working properly on our end, we will fix the issue … The DNS server is updated every few hours. Once you add the record to Total DNS Control, please allow around 5 hours for the server to return
the result.

This person was actually trying to help and this encouraged me. Now, the “5 hours” thing was new. Everywhere else it said 24-48 hours, which is why I was going to wait between attempting to reconfigure the CNAME. But this one was straight with me, and I appreciated it.

I set up the CNAME properly. I started checking my domain using an nslookup service on a website. No dice, my domain still pointed to the ‘parked’ page at the domain host’s site. FRUSTRATION. After 24 hours, I wrote back.

Me: I’ve been checking in on it, and just now (24 hours later) I saw that the canonical name is still “ericmsmith.com“. It should be “glimbit.typepad.com” right? This raises a red flag with me because it seems like it’s had enough time to switch over. Can you help me out? Thanks again for your helpful response before.

See, I’m trying to be nice here, but this is getting old.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

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Sincerely,

Amber
GoDaddy.com
Customer Service Representative

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Customer 12/07/2005 03:03 PM
Amber,

I hope this gets to you because I found your response very helpful. I
re-established the www cname alias and pointed it to “glimbit.typepad.com.”
I did this at about 5:30 or 6 EST (not really sure.) on Tuesday. I\’ve been
checking in on it, and just now (24 hours later) I saw that the canonical
name is still “ericmsmith.com”. It should be “glimbit.typepad.com” right?
Here\’s the response from the nslookup:

DNS server handling your query: PARK13.SECURESERVER.NET
DNS server\’s address:\t64.202.165.117#53

3rd Support Rep (yes, different once again): If you changed this within 24 hours, it will not have finished
propagation. This is why the www. prefix still resolves to our parked
page. You must wait a full 48 hours on this. Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Now, if you’re not following all this, basically what’s happened is: NO ONE AT THIS DAMN COMPANY IS SAYING THE SAME THING. 1 hour! 5 hours! 24 hours! 48 hours! And the kicker is … I had it right all along, as you’ll soon see. By this time, I’m really losing my patience. So many nasty things came to my mind when I wrote this, but I played it cool.

Me: My initial thought was to wait 48 hours (see my previous email.) However Amber B. said that I would only need to allow 5 hours for the turn around. Since it has been 24 hours, this tells me that something is wrong. Can you help me resolve this error?

Hilarious:

A Support Rep: The zone file normally
refreshes in that time - I had our leads refresh the file, and it is
now resolving. Our apologies for the confusion.

Well be sure and thank your LEADS for helping me REFRESH the friggin file. Wish they could have just done that in the first place, whatever the heck that means. I actually thought about writing them back to ask what exactly happened, but thought it would be more fun to write this post.

I promise never to rant like this again. *crosses fingers*

OH MY GOSH! Have you seen: http://glimbit.typepad.com ? It’s all here now

I’m experimenting with a new blog at Typepad. There are a couple of features (Multiple Authors and Trackback, namely) that I don’t see in LiveJournal. If I’m wrong, somebody tell me. I need these features for a thing I want to try with work friends.

Typepad is a little complex and it’s a pay-service. Boo. Might be able to get work to foot some of the bill, but not counting on it. I’ve got it for free for 30 days, so I’ll be able to see if it wins me over.

I’ll continue to post here as I go through my 30 day free trial with Typepad. Probably post some of my thoughts. If you have this liveJournal bookmarked, don’t worry about changing it just yet. I’ll add a link here if I post there, and let you know if I make the switcheroo permanent-like.

More about the word “Glimbit” later, but it relates to this post in some strange way: http://www.livejournal.com/users/gweeb/6013.html