I just finished moving CornerPixel’s main website to ReliableSite.Net’s hosting.  Originally I had www.cornerpixel.net hosted on IXWeb Hosting.  The draw to IXWeb hosting was the unlimited disk space and unlimited SQL 2005 databases.  IXWeb hosting was good for a little while, and I was some what happy with their services and technical support.

Soon however things got slooooowwwwww.  I found that all that space was too good to be true.  Everyone else was jumping on the bandwagon and doing things like FTP was horribly painful.  My site being mainly just static content seemed to perform okay.  I also had several DotNetNuke sites on IXWeb hosting and they loaded fairly okay.  I was also having issues trying to install new DotNetNuke sites because the SQL server was so overloaded that the process would time out and fail.

So having said all that, I have moved www.cornerpixel.net to ReliableSite.Net.  The site is zippy and so far the support has been good. 

My next step is to move the blog.  I think I will use this opportunity to change from Das Blog to WordPress.

~Michael Silva - MikePixel

As you all know I have been working with Deki Wiki and having a blast.  I am learning how Deki Wiki works and how to skin it.  I have been working on a few skins just for fun and they are getting closer to being done.  When I get them completed I will be offering them as a download for free to the MindTouch community.

If you want to see the three skins I am working on and the one I do in the future, feel free to surf over to deki.cornerpixel.net.  You will see in the navigation, links to all the skins I am working on.

Below are the screenshots of the skins I am almost finished with.  I have one for Spring, Fall and Winter.  I will eventually get one done for summer, and then work on more corporate looking skins.  For now here ya go.

If anyone likes them, just submit a comment.  That way I can show the comments to my wife and she might forgive me for spending all my time skinning Deki Wiki.  I guess I should spend a little time with my family.  They are pretty cool.

Oh well, I hope you enjoy the skins,

~MikePixel (Michael Silva)

As I am sure many of you know, twitter can be a very addicting thing and can make you do dumb things. A couple weeks ago I was gently pushed into becoming a twitteree by my supervisor and by the end of the same day I was up and running on TweetDeck.

Long story short, I saw a tweet by Aaron Roe Fulkerson, CEO of MindTouch Inc. In his tweet Aaron had a link to his blog in which he displayed a fine picture of himself in a suit that is remarkable similar to the one Oliver Young was wearing in an avatar picture.

For those who don’t know Oliver Young is the Forester researcher for Web 2.0. 

Okay, not to be outdone, or just because I love Photoshop suits and ties, I decided to post my picture in the same suit.  What do ya know, I don’t look too bad in that suit either.  I took my photo by the flag for that Presidential look.

Below are the three of us for your viewing pleasure in the following order; Oliver Young, Aaron Roe Fulkerson, and Michael Silva.

~MikePixel (Michael Silva)

About two weeks ago I was asked to dig into Deki Wiki so that I could help my customer build an intranet site from Deki Wiki.  There had been a lot of research done on what CMS/Wiki to use for this companies intranet site, and it finally came down to Deki Wiki. 

At first I was a little worried about Deki Wiki.  I hadn’t heard much on skinning the application.  I am a type of person who likes to skin CMS’s and hate to be boxed into a solution that I can’t make prettier.  After I got a chance to look around I was impressed with the way Deki Wiki was built.  It was created in a way that allows a lot of customization and skinning options.

After messing for a little while I found out that you can do all sorts of modification and it’s even pretty easy to create your own skin from scratch to include the markup and php code for the layout.  I decided however that for this intranet site that I would stick to just tweaking and changing a skin that comes with Deki Wiki.  I decided this for the simple fact that I wanted the site to be safe even through future Deki Wiki updates.  I figure it will be less work this way and less pain for the customer.

I ended up choosing the fiesta skin to play with, and I had a lot of fun changing things around.  There were a couple things that were frustrating through the process, but that could be because I started by changing the PRO skin instead of the wireframe.  Below are two screenshots of the skins I have done so far.  I plan on doing many more.

The next step will be trying to figure out a way to install or have multiple Deki Wiki sites on one server so I can display different skins rather than just the fiesta skins I create.

You can see these two skins and some skinning guides soon to come at deki.cornerpixel.net.

~MikePixel (Michael Silva)

Way back months ago when I finished CornerPixel's website, my wife told me that it wasn't very pretty.  I told her that I didn't care about pretty and I just wanted it functional and clean.  (markup and CSS especially)

She didn't really like that answer, so I am thinking about refreshing the site and having a couple links (buttons) at the top of the page for people to click to change the sites appearance. 

I think this will accomplish two things. 

1. It will be an exercise in CSS and web standards because I won't be changing any markup, just CSS. 
2. It will make my wife happy.  Well okay a little happier.  It probably won't make her as happy as changing the site entirely, but it's better than nothing right?

The only problem I have with this is that when the user clicks over to the blog, the style will change right back to the old style.  That might look more unprofessional than if I just keep it all the same. 

Oh well, stick around and maybe in a couple months I will have my first button up for the users to push.

~Michael

Okay as you know, the site is called CornerPixel because I want it to eventually be known as a place for web professionals to come and use resources which are grounded in good standard practices.  Well evidently you won't come to this site for spelling help.  The site has been up for at least 4 months and a friend of mine just pointed out that I had misspelled CornerPixel in the banner. 

"WOW, how did I miss that?" I thought.  It was right at the top of my page.  Oh well, it is fixed now, but I did do a quick print screen so that I could post it here.

There you have it.  We are officially not the CornerPixel of Spelling.  I might even have to make it a point to misspell words in the future just to remind you all of that.

~Michael

Okay this is going to be a quick read for all of you.

I just wanted to inform you that I added my first portfolio page.  It isn't much but it is a start.  You will find on the right side of the LLC page, a link to a TouchPoints Ministry portfolio page.  Once there, you will be presented with a link to the customer's site and a little information from me to describe the process, project, website or customer.

Also thanks to Mr. Turner, a moderator at CSS Creator for pointing out a spelling mistake on CornerPixel's home page.  It turns out I am NOT a spelling genius.  I fixed the mistakes, but for all those grammar teachers out there, feel free to pick apart the website.  Just make sure to send me a nice email telling me all about my mess ups.

~Michael