Polly don't need no cracker  |
I seem to have a terribly hard time on just staying focused on one specific task and bringing it to its conclusion. You know why? Because I invariably want to follow every branch that comes along. Everything seems of interest. Imagine a huge tree with hundreds of branches and your goal is to climb it. If it were me, instead of simply climbing to the top and enjoying the reward of the magnificent view I was originally after, I would instead be distracted by every damn branch along the way. So of course I would have to follow every branch and before long I forget my original goal is up, not sideways.
This website is no different. I had a simple idea really. I just wanted to make a site for my extended family to share. Birthdays, events, things going on in their lives. A central place to organize all our etherialized stuff. Did I just make up a word? For example, I have sons that play music and make videos. The stuff is out there on youtube and facebook and bandcamp and a dozen other places. I wanted to organize it all in one place. That’s just one example of course, but you get the idea.
A family site where any of us could go anytime and feel like home.
Anyway, if it seems like this site is out of focus, that’s just because it is. As I learn about how to build it and play with the limitless number of tools and toys and ideas out there, I’m on the tree again, crawling down every darn branch I find. Some of them prove very useful, like making it so that a user can use their facebook or other social media account to log in instead of having to remember yet another site username and password. That’s cool use of technology, but guess what? It’s not as easy to implement as it is to use. First off you have to make your entire site SSL secure. That’s a big branch that carries you sideways for a while. Then, each of the social media sites has a lengthy process to gain approval, such as meeting technical requirements and passing through myriad hoops. A simple thing that just caught my eye has suddenly consumed me for 2 days.
And so it goes. I love it all. The exploration, the frustrations, the challenges. I throw away more than I keep and that’s ok. But it does sometimes make the original goal obscure, and the truth is I’m not even sure anyone in my family gives a rats butt or will bother ever visiting.
People have their own lives and their own things to do. Which brings me full circle. Trying to stay aware of one another was the whole point.
I’m trying to keep focused as best I can. I have a dozen plugins waiting on me to review, so I better get back to that. I did find three kinda cool things in today’s efforts.
The first is this little diddy that lets you build ‘find the words’ type applications. Below is an example I made to test out editing skills.
The second one I found was a cool application that allows you to make those funky find the word crosswords. Easy to make and you can even let users make them and publish them. I made my first one simple. Just find a few fruits.
Loading the crossword has yet to start.
{{crosswordData.name}}
{{loadError.error}}
{{msg}}
Find these words in the riddle: {{crosswordData.description}}
- Difficulty level {{crosswordData.level+1|localeNumber}}
- Word directions: only to the right and down any, including diagonal and backwards
List of words that should be found: visible before found hidden before found
Mark the words:
You have found {{count.solution|localeNumber}} of {{count.words|localeNumber}} words You have found all {{count.words|localeNumber}} words!
-
![]( "{{localize(word.color)}}")
![]( "localize('grey')")
{{word.fields | joinWord}}
Authored by {{crosswordData.author}}
The marked word {{message.word | joinWord}} is not part of the solution.
Congratulation, you have solved the riddle!Congratulation, you have solved the riddle in {{message.time | duration}}!
You have found {{message.solution|localeNumber}} of {{message.words|localeNumber}} hidden words during the alloted time.
Please be patient for the crossword being loaded.
Last, but certainly not least, I found the old classic space invaders, which you can use to simply blow up everything on the damn page that you don’t like! Don’t believe me? Well go ahead punk, and make my day.
You can expect to find messes around here for a while yet I’m sure. But I will eventually reach the top of the tree and when I do, I hope it’s a place worth visiting.
