UPDATE: 11-22-2008
It has been over three months since I have updated the news here. Do not take that to mean that nothing has been done around here. There have been some new additions and tweaking. Somewhere along the line I have even messed up the layout of the place. Oh, it looks just fine (mostly) in Internet Explorer but in Mozilla it is a bit skwewey. The content is still accessable though so life goes on. I know it is a misplaced <div> tag but it looks ok to me so I have kinda gone "back-burner" with the fix. (sorry - I know - I hate faulty css too)
I, for one, have been enjoying the content here and hope you have been doing likewise. Today I gave a feature block to GNOOZE (the G is silent). It is a fun look at the news that I came across while on a visit to blip.tv and it is so cool that I had to syndicate it here - enjoy! There have been many new user submitted weblinks added (which is always a good thing.) There are also a few web links here that appear to have given up the ghost and may have to be yanked. I will give them a while to see if they come back online.
Waiting in the wings are some new additions to the theme song page and the need to catch-up with Sceptical Inquirer covers and articles. I will be tinkering with the doorways when I can. So many other projects are begging for my time. For instance, there are a few places around the internet that I try to be a regular contributor to. My day job too, is about to ramp-up it seems so I just wanted to jump in here to let you know infinitelyremote is alive and well.
Oh yeah... perhaps the biggest news of all. AT&T has seen fit to turn up my bandwidth while at the same time turning down the bill. (yea-rah-team!) We now are getting around 2400 pounds IN and 435 pounds OUT. Hopefully this will be something you will notice while you are here.
Thank you for being here. Now how about pitching in a little? Just do a blog post or hook us up with a "Smokey Link". We ain’t askin’ fo’ much!
-Mike
UPDATE: 8-14-2008
Join the Action in the ARCADE! I hope you enjoy the latest addition to infinitelyremote.com - The Arcade.
While exploring the World-Wide-Web I discovered an open source (free) arcade portal that fit right in with this server setup, so I installed it. It is called PHP-Quick-Arcade version 3.0 . It is a nice, relatively simple, software package to run a flash game arcade. You must first register as a user so it can keep track of your scores and favorites etc.. When you register for the Arcade, use the same user name that you registered here on infinitelyremote.com and you will be logged in automatically whenever you go there.[ NOTE: if you visit the arcade and you are not automatically logged in, refresh the page (press F5) and you will be.]
I have been selecting games from the thousands offered by http://www.ibpdownloads.com/. Check them out if you want. You can try out the games on their website and if you find one you think we should add here let me know and it will be installed.
Good Luck & Enjoy!
-Mike
UPDATE: 7-19-2008
Those of you who have been around for a while will no doubt recognize some new features here on the infinitelyremote website. One that I am excited about is the "SmokeyLinks" module. This will allow anyone with at least USER rank add a link to the page. Let's try to keep these interesting and unique. When you enter a link the"http://" portion will be added to the link you provide (so just start at "www" or whatever.) Be sure to add a brief (under 100 char.) description of the site. The discription will go to the "title" tag and will show as tooltip on mouseover. If you happen to submit a link and something is wrong with it, go ahead and try it again. I'll clean up the code and remove the bad parts occasionally or sooner if you let me know.
How about those doors up there? The RED door. The BLUE door. The GREEN door. You gotta have a key to open the doors. Each door has its own key and (for now) you can only have one key at a time. The keys are hidden around the site and you can pick one up just by doing something. In other words - certain actions you perform will endow you with a key. The door status is shown on the bottom of the main page but the page will need to be refreshed to update your keys. Click on the "Check Keys" button or any of the "Change Picture" buttons for the refresh. This action will also change all random content on the page. It is always fun to change the page anyway but now you might be rewarded with the ability to open one of the doors. Let me state here - for the record - I am not always in control of what is on the other side of the doors. If you find or suspect content of objectional nature please let me know so I can take care of it.
The available features on the other side of those doors will be subject to change and will be restricted if abused. Please enjoy your visit. Thanks for stopping by!
-Mike
UPDATE: 6-27-2008
SHEESH! I Finally have a somewhat respectable DSL connection. (At least now I'm getting the speed I'm paying for.) I'm now looking at 1315 DownStream and 330 UpStream.
A tornado blew through here at the first of June and took out several big trees and several powerlines as a result. This turned out to be a 20-some hour power outage for the ol' homestead. The webserver however had a little more trouble getting back online. To make a painfully long story short I will just tell ya I ended up having to replace the DSL modem, the router and the wireless access point. AT&T also had to supply a new "copper pair" (what I was on had voltage and they said it was amazing it ever worked for DSL.)
I hope you find things working a bit smoother now. I have decided to do embedded videos on a randomized rotation to speed up the page load. I feel better about that because I don't have to worry about growing the page by continuing to add more "embededs." Now more than ever - you should find something new each time you visit (and I thank you for doing so.)
-Mike
UPDATE: 3-18-2008
For some reason DtDNS (my domain name server) has been on the blink lately. That is on top of AT&Ts usual blinkishness. Since infinitelyremote.com is hosted over my DSL, if there is the slightest interuption in service my internet connection is assigned a new (dynamic) public IP address. I have always depended on DtDNS to keep track of those changes. I have even written a script that will check my IP and if it changes it reports the change to DtDNS.
If you go to http://infinitelyremote.dtdns.net you will be redirected to my address de-jour. When you go to www.infinitelyremote.com you are actually going to a GoDaddy server that redirects you to the DtDNS server for the final redirection to HERE. I have been doing a bit of image hosting for MySpace etc. and when this server chain is broken those hosted images go away until the route is back (a bit embarassing - but that's life.)
For your information I also run a backup IP tracker service through dynDNS. If ever you can't get through the primary route you can usually get in via http://infinitelyremote.dyndns.org. Since much of the site has been designed on the DtDNS framework you may find some functionality issues with the dynDNS connection.
I am - of course - very sorry for service interuptions and I am formulating a method to track my ever changing IP address that does not involve those third party solutions. While I am gratefull for the free services of DtDNS and dynDNS I think if I had my own tracker in place any outage would be shorter lived. Anyway, tech support will then be a local call . :)
- Mike
UPDATE: 2-3-2008 -
Well, let's try this again. I've disabled the browser detection script and installed a test version of the style sheet. I need now to get around and try some various browsers to see how it's working. If you are looking at a wreck on your browser, I'm sorry, but why not drop me a note and let me know what your using. If you want to see the site without the style sheet click this link.
I have been working with access permissions and content control. If you cannot access features or pages that you think you should, please let me know. I am trying to debug when I can and when I stumble across errors I try to attack them at that time. I have recently revamped the menu system in the media center and I know there are still some issues with that. I'm really happy with the menu script though (particularlary being able to see file sizes now.)
For some reason I have not been able to play media files without saving them first. If you are having trouble getting files to play directly try the ol' 'save target as' approach. This may be an issue only for my local network. I will test this too from the outside world when I can. Again- Please let me know of any issues you come across.
- Mike
UPDATE: 12-10-2007 -
I finally got to check the layout in the Firefox browser on Linux and - as I feared - it all goes to crap. The Magic CSS Boxes all pile atop one another making the whole webpage unuseable. So in the meantime I have implemented a browser detection script. If you are using IE5 or better you get to see things as intended - with style. If not you will be deprived of the style sheet and will see only unstyled content (think of it as the "palm pilot" version.) Oh well, this gets into the reason for CSS in the first place; I can detect a problem browser and feed it a custom style sheet without having to go in and muck-up content.
...live and learn. That's the plan anyway...
- Mike
12-9-2007
Sorry if there seems to be some bugs in the works, but I am in the middle of converting this site from a table based layout to one that uses CSS (cascading style sheet.) If you want to see the previous page, I'll keep it around for a little while.
You see, CSS places all the layout information in a separate file called a style sheet. There are many advantages to this way of doing things. Basically this is the wave of the future (probably.) Anyhow, check out this example I call "The Magic CSS Boxes". It shows the basic building blocks of this page. Open it an try changing the size of the displayed window... pretty cool eh? And if you view the source of the page, it's like - "how'd he do that?" ... It's all in the style sheet, man
It has been pretty tough, learning to let go of tables and frames. But the further I get away from those, the more I think I might be getting somewhere. But really, I'm only trying to get infinitelyremote.
- Mike