M L A P P I N . C O M

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September 12th, 2008

My best friend Nate:
wait... nevermind.
That is all

August 15, 2008

Okay I got the redesign colors and such all sorted out. Strictly trying to stay with a css design base. This web site is basically just going to be a tool for me to store things, write and maybe keep things organized. No fun Drupal or php for this guy, I got too many other things to worry about.

August 14, 2008

Updating the site to be more a tool for me than a blog. Changing some CSS. Sticking with simple CSS and HTML.

March 3, 2008

Just a quick note about Bret Favre, since this is a day of new things or at least the ending of old things (this web site - the redesign using drupal, do you see my logic? Yes? No?) I just need to share my feelings about #4 of the green and gold. I'm only 26, but I can honestly say that I have never known the NFL without Bret Favre in it. He was the reason why I even got interested in football (it also coincided with my falling out with baseball and MLB), so the announcement that he's actually retrying is a bit of shock to me. It was just as surprising as when Michael Jordan retired the first time and maybe even the second time too. It'll be strange to see Favre in anything other than in a football game, that's if he decides to go into commentating or becoming an analyst for ESPN or something. That being said, good bye Fav-Re!

March 3, 20008

Seriously this is a bit of a joke. I know it is. I stop, I start, I stop again. It has been a bit of a roller coaster ride when it comes to my personal web site I have nothing to blame this on except on loss of inspiration. Not really laziness, but more my concept and want for this site far exceeded the technical skills or know-how. The fact that I couldn't decide on relying on Dreamweaver, trying to figure things out with wordpress or trying to learn .php or perl. I did learn a lot about web programming and web-design, but it was a such a disjointed learning experience that I could never put together a proper site that was functional, efficient, effective and of course sexy. So I'm not promising anything this time around, except that for once I'm going to start from the beginning knowing my limitations and knowing my goals (goals which I think are definitely attainable and feasible). This time around I'm not going to worry about learning .php or web-programming languages, since why try to remake the wheel? Things are already out there already developed and tested and work. My wants are not novel and are not unique, I am not vain enough to think that is the case. So, while this site stays up, I'm going to working on a new mlappin.com using Drupal. Stay tuned.

August 28, 2007

It's been a while since I've been on my personal site. Haven't really made that progress I was hoping for, but maybe this will be another start. First thing I want to talk about is sports related, and in fact this might turn into a more personal blog space. For those of you who know me, you know that I'm such a larger Manchester United supporter. I was able to get more friends into the English Premier League (though now it is called Barclay's Premier League) and was able to gloat on the success that Manchester United had last year winning the league. Over the break, I met more people that I found had a love for soccer, and English soccer to boot (pardon the pun). Sadly, many of these friends are supporters of the arch-rival, Liverpool Football Club. The 07/08 season started up 3 weeks ago, and to my shock and to my friend's glee, Manchester United is struggling while the other 'Big Four' teams are near the top of the table. That being said, I'm still saying that Manchester United has a great chance of defending their league crown, and I'll be trying to keep this site updated. You can also follow more of my sports related post on The Bay Easy, but I'll also put up my picks of the week on here and try to keep my running record of correct and incorrect results.
Anyway, enjoy the updated posts.

July 05, 2007

I hope that everyone had a wonderful time over the July 4th Holiday and stayed safe, ate lots of hot dogs, (though probably not as many as Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi) and saw some fireworks. Though I didn't eat any hot dogs I did have a good time over the 4th. It's just nice to have your work week broken up in the middle, though I must confess it was very hard to get up this morning. Before I start to get into the changes I've made on the web site, I must recommend a movie. You may think it is Transformers, but being that I haven't seen the movie yet, I can't recommend it. Instead I am recommending the Pixar film Ratatouille. I thought it was a wonderful film, with some great laughs. The fact that my friend Will worked on the sound design for the movie, made it even more enjoyable. Anyway, I recommend it, you should see it if you have a chance this upcoming weekend.

As for the site, I've fixed the photo page, by adding some thumbnails and links to set found on Flickr. I think it makes it a little more personal than just sending you straight to my flickr page. I hope to get more pictures up soon, and I really need to get some design stuff up, though that section is definitely taken longer than I had expect. Instead of working on design, I've been delving more into web programming. I also put up the "aboutme" section with just a little blurb about me. It does have seem like a myspace page or something, but I wanted to get something up that showed a more personal side. That page will be updated soon enough too.

Speaking of web programming, I've purchased a new book dealing with learning .php, Spring Into PHP 5 by Steven Holzner. I know it is a bit daunting, but I hope that I can really get a good handle on .php and then really give this website more life. My hope is to turn this front page into more of a blog, with maybe some comment features similar to that of The Bay Easy.com but not dependent upon the WordPress application. Anyways, that's the news for now. Have a great rest of the week!

July 02, 2007

Well, there has been a lot of things going on since I last updated this site most importantly which is the launching of my work's website. You can visit the semi-final product at CableTimeUsa.com. There is still some issues to weed out from that site, plus the whole Market System Page issue of displaying an interactive map to showcase the systems that the company is partnered with. That site is all css/html based with some small javascript apps that was shown to me by my friend Mitch. Mitch is just a genius at webdesign and web programming. He's company just launched a new site, Whitepapers.org, that I think looks so clean and so fresh. My hope is that eventually I could create something very similar. So within the next few weeks, I'll be bunkering down again in the books and pestering friends in the hope that I'll be able to learn and then implement some .php programming in this website, and more importantly on the work's website. I think by using .php, it'll solve some of my issues I'm having with setting up that interactive map. Also, I hope to get more javascript going on this site. As you can see, I've change just some minor athestic items - or maybe you can't remember the change becuase it's been so long since I've updated this. Well, there are some changes. Trust me. I'll be putting up some pictures, I promise this time soon enough as well as maybe adding a new page dedicated to sports blogging, similar to the BayEasy.com site. Stay tuned!

April 12, 2007

It has been exactly one month since I last took a look at this website. I have purposely left it alone while I was working diligentily on my company's website (www.cabletimeusa.com/mockupCT.html). That site is still not up, and there are still some good amounts of items that aren't finished. The delay is largely due in part because I have not received the content nor the necessary feedback from my boss. I have though, started working on some javascripting, or at least I've been shown some javascript and saw how it worked and then put it in the company's wesbite. Thanks Mitch! I now have a pretty good idea of how to set up a fairly simple website using CSS, which was my goal in the beginning.

So what did I do today for this site? I cleaned up all the code, changed some things slightly and have started to think more about how to expand some of the sections - maybe even use some of that javascript I learned. For right now, I have changed the photo's link to my flickr account and I hope to put up at least a quick and easy file for a resume. I know I say it all the time, but I'm going to be keeping a better tab on this website and maybe venture away from my blogging about the process and I may just start blogging about anything that might pop into my mind! Till next time (whenever that might be!)

March 12, 2007

March has been a little bit busier than I thought it would be. I've mainly being working on the structure of my work's web site - using a lot of what i learned on this site to get it more streamlined. The result was that I've been working on cleaning up a lot of the code that was used in this site - though I have not made any real progress in the development of this site. I'll hopefully remedy that problem later this week. I still need to figure out how I'm going to display those photos, but my friend who uses Dreamweaver was telling about how he made frames to have the full size picture "pop-up" when a cursor is hovered over the thumbnail. That seems like a great way to do some of what I'm hoping to achieve. Still haven't gotten back into Illustrator enough to get some picture graphics up, but I'm taking my time and trying to do it right the first time. I'm like the Larry Brown Pistons - Doing it right.

March 01, 2007

Happy March!

So I purchased a wonderful book in the behest of my friend Alexis - who's a genius in these matter - to help me in my CSS design and layout of this web site. The book is entitled HTML UTOPIA: DESIGNING WITHOUT TABLES USING CSS by Rachel Andrew & Dan Shafer. I've only read a few chapters of it, but I'm learning a lot. It has already given me new ideas that I want to start up on this web page. Mostly getting ride of the borders and the boxes, and make my layout feel more connected. All, in all though, I have a lot more work and learning to do.

On a lighter note, me and my friend Charlie - referred to as Chachee by most - have started a second web page. A group project with the hope of spreading our whacky and mostly unfounded opinions on sports, games, entertainment and maybe even politics or religion. You can visit that site at www.thebayeasy.com. Because, you know, living in the Bay Area is easy. We have BART!

February 26, 2007

Alright. I got the structure of my web site all set. I like the color combination. I like the layout. I like the navigation. I like it a lot. I want to change banner design, and put more photo graphics up. Give it a more real look. I need to start working more with CSS to get the feel less "cartoonish." I was also able to start setting up the About Me and Photos section. Of course if you check it out, there isn't much to see. Soon though, this web site will be banging!

February 23, 2007

Well the banner definitely has to be changed. Gotta fix the log, and maybe put some photos up around here. Still working on the color scheme, and then put up some borders or something to surround the whole site. Make it a neat and tidy package. I'm looking forward to getting my new CSS book so I can fix some of these small bugs that I can't figure out.

February 22, 2007

Just working on some pretty superficial things on the old web site Changing colors, working with the banner, just trying to find some focus really. Keeping the nose in the dreamweaver/css books so that soon I'll really be able to get some cool things working.

February 21, 2007

Hey hey, look at me. I got some interesting things going on in here. Started setting up the web site using CSS layers because I was told that Tables are so Web 1.0. I'll be working on this constantly, trying to refine my CSS, html and Dreamweaver skills. I'm getting excited.