Forever Geek

February 27, 2004 | View Comments (49) | Category: 9rules

Summary: The launch of Forever Geek.

I will freely admit that I am a geek. I love all things involving computers and am constantly searching the web for discussions and topics that interests me. I visit Slashdot only to catch the more "mainstream" geek news and avoid their discussions at all cost. There has been more than one occasion where I wished to start a discussion here concerning a specific technology, but have restrained because I would like to keep this site focused on aspects of web design and development. So what is a guy to do in a situation like mine? Well you guessed it, start another website. Introducing Forever Geek, it's like Slashdot without all the discussions and tables.

This site is not another rehash of Slashdot or the other geek sites. I will make it my focus not to post links that are already posted on Slashdot because nobody needs another rehash. I will focus on sites/articles that geeks may find interesting, but were not aware existed.

As usual I decided to release a site before it is completely done. Sorry, I just get too excited. However, Forever Geek is pretty much done with the exception of some IA issues that I would like to tweak. I was aiming for a Scoble-type site, but with some style (sorry, last Scoble joke this week...promise). Anyways, if you are a geek like me I think you will enjoy the site.

Also, if someone could solve a problem that I am having with IE that would be really cool. The problem is that IE doesn't show the Google Ads. They show in Opera and Firefox, but IE refuses to show them. Weird.

UPDATE: If anyone is interested in becoming an author for Forever Geek let me know.

Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/161

Comments

Hmmm, ads work now. Weird.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

Indeed...

Where do you find all this time? You must be extremely busy, posting once a day, starting a design contest, releasing a new site every other week... Wow!

Anyways, I wish you success with your new site. Eventually you'll crack, I know it. ;)

Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)

It doesn't seem like that much when I don't think about it, but then you have to go ahead and remind me of how much stuff I really do and I begin to stress. I am sure I will crack one day. Just not now :-P

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

Suggestion: the contrast is very, very high. Is it possible to make it a bit easier on the eyes? -- M.

Moose (http://www.literarymoose.info)

love it! simple, but not white and looks loaded with great info ... i too hate all those cluttered sites, so thank you!

chuck (http://geocities.com/threendg)

Hey Paul, one suggestion, if you don't mind:

The site 'makes me look hard' to get info, nothing jumps out at me, or to put it a third way ;-] I can't scan for info.

Can you do something to help distinguish title from category from post etc.?

(I was simply thinking a font-size difference here or there).

Mike P. (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com.com/sandbox/weblog/)

Oh, and of course (implied in the previous message but not stated...):

Well Done! and good luck with the new site!

Mike P. (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com.com/sandbox/weblog/)

"It doesn't seem like that much when I don't think about it, but then you have to go ahead and remind me of how much stuff I really do and I begin to stress."

Haha, sorry about that Paul. Keep up the good work. :)

When I look at it, I would tend to agree with Mike P. A font change on the header, maybe some added...whitespace... Looks great though; you got that color from the Vault, didn't you? Yeah, I was watching for your next site after I saw that Vault entry. ;)

Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)

Hi Paul!

Wow! My first thought was where on earth do you find the time to do all these things? Chris beat me to it though :-|

Very impressive though ... I like the dark overall tone although tend to agree that there needs to be some sort of clarity with subtitles / article headings.

Keep up the hard work.

Blair (http://doepud.tk)

#10

Looking forward to watching the site grow.

I second Mike P's comment though - nothing really stands out. So, some suggestions:

Colours: Different colour for the title and the link would be nice. I know they are different colours already, but they're so similar I'm sure it doesn't stand out as well on lesser monitors/laptops.

Permalinks. Perhaps making the title/header a permalink, and having a link to the actual article/website elsewhere.

Not sure I really like the position of the category ("Category: Programming"). Doesn't seem as important as its placement might suggest.

Maybe a different background for the ads? Something to help differentiate them from a regular post (aside from the different margins).

kyle

#11

hmm.. can you change the font to a nice lime green console font, maybe lucida console... then stick the underscore *after* forever geek and have it blink.
hehehe
and wrap text at 80 characters. :-)

Forever Geek -- Mainframe Madness!

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#12

JC is right. The background color (very nice btw) is reminicent of the old washed out monitors of yeasteryear. You know, the ones with the green text. I can remember being introduced to BASIC and Pascal on them (Apple IIe - yes pre-mac although macs were available) in High School. The headaches from those classes were pretty bad (from the green - not the code). As such, I don't think I would want the entire site in green, but using it in a few sudtle ways would really expand on the effect. Of course, I suppose it would get ugly as well. Ok, maybe that is a bad idea.

waylman (http://www.achinghead.com)

#13

I was kinda kidding, actually. Though it might be cool. Why not have a selection of color accents...? green, amber, and very light grey. :-)

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#14

I of course agree with everyone's suggestion about differentiating title and body and stuff and have been thinking about it ever since I started with the site. This goes along with one of the IA issues that I wanted to work out. Another part that I am still working on is how to best handle the archives.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#15

I want to have sex with the site's design. Reminds me of Daring Fireball. I want to have sex with that site too. Sorry, but I am a faithless web design slut.

(Alanna: bringing it down a notch since 1982!)

Alanna

#16

I want to have sex with the site's design...

Okay. I used to think it was kinda cool that my office was literally spitting distance from you - now I'm thinking it might be time to relocate...

Sex with a site design...I'm too old to even create a visual for that. ;)

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#17

I.... I just don't see how anyone can continue the discussion after that. Paul, you've obviously achieved a masterwork here.

On the other hand, having seen some of the people and/or artifacts some women of my acquaintance have become intimate with... maybe not. ::grin::

Thanks for the laugh, Alanna. Mark... watch out for spit... or, uh, any other projectile fluids.

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#18

Does this mean I should get Forever Porn out as soon as possible?

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#19

Perhaps you should create a new category for your geek site - naughty sounding css tags and phrases -

(Snorf) Hey Alanna, you can..uh..span my uh (snorf, snorf, snort) header...uh...anytime (snort, snort, snort, snorf)

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#20

Oh, dear. I occasionally forget the power of my words. This one time in middle school when a boy and I were joking around and I wrote a love note to Satan. After that one, I was practically crucified by the girls basketball team. But I don't love Satan. I love chocolates and web design. And sometimes when you combine the two, there are orgasms.

Okay, okay. There is a reason why I want to create an Onion-like news site on web standards. There is just so much fuel for the fire of my perverted love.

Surely I'm not the only one that has dreams about CSS? Like, dude, how many times have I hidden from monsters by using display: none;, I just can't even count.

Alanna

#21

Oh my goodness!

Yep, time to pack up the ole office - perhaps a high perch in the Williams' Tower overlooking Bellaire.

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#22

I remember reading somewhere that you like simple design. The Forever Geek design is just a little to simple I think :)

Andri Sig (http://www.sigurdss0n.com)

#23

Ahhh, but Andri look at the content. The content dictated the design, not the other way around. I think it fits nicely. Form and function.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#24

"uh-huh - she typed orgasm..."

"yeh, she's got the fire down below...fire...fire, fire...fire"

Sorry, I'm done now.

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#25

Seriously though, if anyone wants to jump aboard and become a poster for the site, I am all for it. I can't find all the geek stuff around.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#26

I think the form / function argument would work better if you used a style like "text browser emulation" or "nostalgia" that you can set in Opera - or even a parody of most badly done engineering / geek type sites - only done correctly in CSS.

I think someone suggested a DOS-like interface - that'd be cool too.

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#27

Mark, my formative years may have involved Beavis and Butthead... ;)

Alanna

#28

Now paul, you know better. You can't hide behind form and function. There's a difference between that and aesthetics, and you know it. You've built it to be functional, that doesn't preclude a little flourish somewhere.

Looks better now that the text isn't all the same color.

Have you played with this?
http://www.pixy.cz/apps/barvy/index-en.html
someone posted it here a few weeks ago..
Base color: #364C4D
soft contrast
gives you these colors:

364C4D 8DA5A6 C3D2D2 293333 141919 576666 535959 7E5958 BEA2A2 DFCECE 544343 2A2222 7F6C6C 7E7575 7E6F58 BEB3A2 DFD8CE 544D43 2A2722 7F776C 7E7B75

might be fun to play with. :-)

Of course, because that's a dark blue and that color thing bloody sucks for dark blue (it thinks it's teal for some reason) those might not match that well.
heh

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#29

And I'd be willing to be a poster if you outlined the kind of stuff you wanted and didn't mind if I didn't post too often. :-)

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#30

Yeh, I suppose..if you've been kicking it down a notch since '82 because that's when you were born.

I too have been kicking it down since '82, but that's because that's when I graduated high school.

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#31

Wow Alanna, you really jacked this thread up!

I have had dreams about web development in general. One time I was in bed at 3pm after a bad all-nighter. I was awakened by some people who stopped by the house. I heard them knocking on the door in my dream, and said, "Activate your cookies, Chris."

I responded, "Audio or visual cookies?"

"Both, you idiot!"

So, I activated my cookies and suddenly remembered that I was supposed to do something with my friends that day. Then I woke up.

Strange? Yes. That's what it'll do to ya.

Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)

#32

Right now with few links its pretty easy to read and look at it, how do you see this working when you have 100+ links in an area?

Brian (http://savedbyzero.org)

#33

Here's a geeky question.

Why does it show 32 comments for this post on the index page, but only 30 on this page?

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#34

Never mind, it cleared up.

Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)

#35

Brian: That is one of the IA issues that needs to be worked out. Time to get creative.

JC: I will email you the details soon.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#36

I think your next Version2 should be for Forever Geek.

I have a hard time differentiating headers (H1's) from body text, so even with the dividing lines it's difficult to tell where each news item begins and ends.

In fact, if you want to give me a head start...

Joseph Wain (http://www.penandthink.com)

#37

yay. i posted something. :-)

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#38

To follow up about this contrast. A lighter shade of gray came to my mind. A screenshot

Moose (http://www.literarymoose.info)

#39

He's already lightened it once I think. It's not grey, BTW, it's a dark and mostly desaturated blue, which the cream colored text goes well with. I think it was grey this morning though.

The contrast is ok now, but the font is a little bit too small. I don't know how the hell scrivs can even read it on a 21 incher set at 1600x1200, I have a hard time at 1280, and I just got new glasses this week so I can't blame it on that. heh.

One really minor item... I really dislike bold-on-mouseover. It can upset the format of the page. I usually keep links underlined, and add an overline on mouseover. Just a personal preference though.
Another minor thing... it should probably be either /Geek_Resources or \\Geek_Resources depending on whether you're going for unix formatting or UNC. Or is it supposed to imply 'comments'?

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#40

How about sub-categories? Especially for the programming area.

Brian (http://savedbyzero.org)

#41

Nice content thus far!

Mike P. (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com/sandbox/weblog/)

#42

Brian: I think I am going to have the move the thing over to a larger-scale CMS as I can see this outgrowing MT in oh about a week. I just didn't want to mess with another program's templates. However, subcategories/more categories is something that is definitely going to be needed as this site grows. Hopefully, I can control it's rate of growth.

As for the little aesthetic intricacies that everyone is pointing out, of course I will take a look at all of them and consider doing some minor tweaks. Its just not going to happen right away as I kind of have to prepare for the end of a redesign contest and catch up on the Vault.

Mike: Thanks.

JC: Killer entry.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#43

Since the syndication feeds link to the individual entry archives, it would be a nice touch if the actual outbound link was there: feedreader to individual entry to main page to linked site is a rather awkward path ;)

Phil Ringnalda (http://philringnalda.com)

#44

Ah, you just getting lazy on me now Phil :P Fixed.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#45

Paul, do you ever sleep?

Ruth

#46

Yeah I sleep. I wish I didn't have to. It's all about developing a routine Ruth. And being sick in the head...

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#47

i'd like to be an author...