The website went live

It's been a while since my last post so let me catch up on what I've been up to. The biggest thing that happened was that the website I was working on finally went live. I'm glad it did because now I can get back to animating. I'm sort of glad I got to work on the website because I had an excuse to learn PHP and SQL. Now I'm planning on redoing my portfolio site while everything is fresh in my mind. Besides learning server-side scripting, I also learned AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML). If you're not familiar with it, AJAX lets you call functions on your server after a page is loaded, and then update your page without reloading it. I used AJAX to make a live search feature which gives you suggestions for searching while you are typing. My live search is mostly based on Google Suggest.

Since my last post I have also done a couple things to entertain myself. A couple weeks ago I decided that I needed a hat and since I know how to crochet, I decided to make one myself. But, instead of buying a crochet hook, I thought it might be interesting to make one myself. So I went into the woods and found a thick branch and started carving it with a box-cutter knife. It took two evenings and two attempts but, I created a hook. After I sanded it a bit with a nail file I found it was reasonably smooth and worked like a charm. I made a hat with some wool I got from a nearby town. After it was done I decided it looked more like a woman's hat and I gave it to a friend.

Another day I decided to make a Tomato Soup Cake to have a bit of fun. It was a real scavenger hunt when I tried to find all the ingredients I needed. Sugar was especially hard to come by, but I managed to get everything I needed. It was delicious ( tastes like a spice cake).