Well it’s been almost a full year since I last blogged, and blog spam finally made me ditch my custom blogging solution for WordPress. I’ve had several WP versions installed hidden on my domain for a while, but I kept holding off until I “could make a custom theme”.

Well several months and tons of comment spam later for my Optimus Prime cake posts, and it was time to just finally migrate. All my old posts since way back in August of 2001 should have been migrated, and I also added 301 redirects for my old URLs to point to the new shiny WP clean URLs. Gotta keep my page rank up for “optimus prime cake” you know.

So right now, if you are catching this site while it still has a temporary WP theme; you are viewing FloatingCat.com version 2.9. Hopefully staring at someone else’s theme installed on my site will force me to finally upgrade this thing to 3.0.

In addition, an easier blog solution like WP should allow me to blog easier and therefore more often.

All the non WP pages such as Ask the Floating Cat, should hopefully still work and if they don’t please send me a line.

Ten years ago the very foundations of this site were built.

Using a Mac application called Claris HomePage, I built my very first web page called oddly enough, “Andy’s Homepage”. There were tons of self created animated GIF’s, stupid pictures, and bits of dumb text. It was very ugly, but it was also hidden behind a FTP server for a few months while I cleaned it up.

Here we are ten years later, and some of the content is still available on this site today.

It’s kinda crazy to think that I’ve been working on the web for more than a decade. Wow.

Well mostly for my own use, and just so I could research it a bit more, I’ve added an RSS feed to this site. Since FloatingCat.com runs off of its own blogging software written by yours truly, there wasn’t a default “Add RSS” option for my site’s posts.

So I spent today adding a bit of code that generates a correct RSS 2.0 feed. Available from both FeedBurner and directly off of this site, the RSS feed can be used for a number of things. Information about RSS can be found here.

So if you like, you can add the feed to Google Reader or your favorite feed reader of choice. The amount of posts here should increase soon, and the feed should make it worth your while.

I’ve added a small navigation bar to the homepage right underneath the main logo, which currently links to the About, Features, and Archive sections.

In the Features section, you’ll find classic FloatingCat.com content like Ask the Floating Cat, Little Yellow Guys, Avocado: The Whole Truth, etc. If you can’t find something that used to be on this site, chances are it’s listed there. Future content will also be listed on this new page.

As far as the rest of the site, I still have to add a galleries section, as well as an updated contact form. I want to do some more visual tweaks to the pages as well (I’m looking at you blog comment form).

So I’ve been sitting on this here design for the past year and a half it seems. Regardless of whether the subsections are done, I’m gonna post it. Was really getting tired of the only flash home page.

So now I have a basic custom scripted blog, with updated sections coming soon (yeah right…). Only other part that is new content is an ‘updated’ About Me page. Buttons are forthcoming, but until then you can click on the link above.

Well not an important content related announcement, I’ve now moved the website’s hosting to Dreamhost. Now I’ll have the ability to use PHP and mySQL where I previously had not been able.

In fact, this update was made and stored in a database.

float·ing (flõ’tîng) adj.
1. To be suspended in or move through space.
2. To move from place to place, especially at random.

cat (kãt) n.
1. A small carnivorous mammal (Felis catus or F. domesticus) domesticated since early times as a catcher of rats and mice and as a pet and existing in several distinctive breeds and varieties.

float·ing·cat.com (flõ’tîng kãt dot cöm) website.
1. A personal website built by Andrew Green that is rarely updated.

*whew*

Jessica and I finally finished our backyard (and some frontyard) landscaping. Lots of brickwork, lots of concrete, lots of desert rock, and lots of late evenings after work. The final product is pretty amazing. I should have pictures and more details about it coming soon.

In website news, I’ve added an update section which keeps a log of my site updates. I also built a cool little FlashMX effect with Cheetoe on that page, so be sure to take a peek. You can get to the page by clicking on the little colored box on the front page.