Greater Decatur

The Blue Grass Man

2008-05-09T07:52:00.000-07:00

Terry had been waiting all week for Saturday. He'd polished his chops, polished his dobro, and had a few songs ready to introduce to the boys. He'd imagined their praise, both for his improved dexterity, as well as the cleverness and craftiness of his new creations. It was to be a great pickin' day, indeed.

But upon his arrival at the community center, a sign on the door stated that the Bluegrass jam had been cancelled! Something about Hank having a sickness in the family. Poor Hank! Poor Terry! His spirits deflated, he slowly sludged back to the truck. Today was not to be the day.

Ever since his move from Kentucky, Terry had felt a bit isolated, like a fish out of water. Finding this Bluegrass group that jammed every Saturday was like finding a lifeline. Steady, reassurring, it kept him on point. But now, he'd have to go another week without his compass. A week of mowing lawns, the whole time his mind on the upcoming Saturday. A sad, dreary week. Fuel for his art, you might say.

The rock he kicked on his way back to the truck could attest to the weight of Terry's disappointment!

And Now For Something Completely Different...

2008-05-09T07:47:00.001-07:00

OK, OK, OK. I haven't touched the website for months, nor the blog. Part burnout, part having a new baby in the family, but I don't even think we can call it "back burner" any longer. Greater Decatur has been tossed into the sink, and I haven't even bothered to rinse it off. BUT - it still lies there in the sink, and is chugging (somewhat) healthily under its own steam. Ready for me when I return. So that's good. I was just thinking this morning that I need to maybe narrow its focus - that might bring me back into the fold? I'd probably focus on the music aspect - that's kind of what made me want to start it anyway.

So, until I get a spark of re-ignition, I'm going to use this blog for something slightly different. I've always "dreamed" of being a writer (that might be stretching things a little, but I do like to write), but I lack the patience, endurance, and drive to actually create something substantial. The best I can come up with is a funny and/or intriguing dialogue and/or plot. So, until I have something to say about GD, I'm going to use this spot to write my "tidbits" down. Don't expect much - its probably going to be something like one or two lines, and may not be worth a damn. But it will be there/here. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Movie Posters

2008-02-27T17:36:00.000-08:00

I happened to be tooling around last night, and noticed how bland the Movies page looked. We're already linking to IMDB, so I figured I go ahead and toss the movie posters up there as well. To use realtor-speak, they really make the page POP! IMDB has links to Amazon for all things related to the movie, etc - I think I'll probably add that here as well. Maybe pick up a nickel or two from an Amazon referral...

Obligatory Post

2008-02-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

My last post was a lament about how I haven't been focusing on the site, and here we are 2 weeks later with an "obligatory post"!?! I'm only posting to let you know that I haven't posted!?! What is wrong with me?!!!

We've got a few things on our plate here at the homefront, so I've honestly just been distracted. Wrapping up construction on our new home, preparing to sell our old home, and about a month off from Baby #2. Unfortunately, Greater Decatur has to settle for table scraps in the meantime.

I do have some ideas around content - I want to give people more of a reason to come regularly to see the site (ie, "THIS WEEK IN DECATUR") type of thing. I want to do it right, though - going to add something to my admin tool that lets me select some choice upcoming events, and generate the HTML for the front page appropriately. The ultimate idea would be to have the front page dynamically generate it's content from some sort of backend data feed, but not sure it's worth the extra effort at this point.

That's it for now - back to home building, home selling, and pregnant wife supporting (and toddler chasing). Hopefully once things settle down, I'll have some more substance for you, the Loyal Greater Decatur Reader. BTW, if you ARE reading this, and don't mind dropping me a short comment (or email at marty@greaterdecatur.com), please do. Wouldn't mind knowing whether I'm shouting into the wind or not...

Apathetic, Lazy and Fat

2008-02-11T21:14:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been a while since my last post, and work on the site has dropped off some. I have no one to blame but myself, the guy that invented TV, the guy that invented M&Ms, and lots of other people, I'm sure. They have all contributed to my laziness - I am but a small factor.

Alas, not true. It's not so much laziness, as it is "I don't want to look at, work on, or think about the site for many days". I'll go full bore for weeks at a time, and suddenly (and unpredictably) hit a rut where the thought of the site almost makes me nauseous. In the past, I've tried to work through these funks, but I've found that the best cure is to just give it a few days. Let all the boiling froth simmer down a little, and recharge for the next bout of ideas.

Tonight, we went live with "Local Color". This is planned to be a series of articles about great (and potentially unknown) places in Decatur. It's being planned and written by my friend Jen Thomas. She's a crafty writer, loves Decatur, and has alot of hopping ideas for places to highlight in her series. Here's to looking forward to future articles!

http://www.greaterdecatur.com/Shop/OBB/OldBookBarn.aspx

I'll

Shop away, you Shopping Shopaholics

2008-01-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

I'm taking baby steps into shopping. On the shore of the ocean of e-commerce, I'm dipping my toe in the water. Shivering, not sure if I can survive the currents. Distracted, I chase a shiny piece of functionality down the beach. The ocean is still there. We're ignoring each other.

But I'm back again at the shore, dipping my toe. I'd sure like to swim in this big ole' body of water. Splash a little cash back to shore. Maybe haul in some treasure.

Clicking on the "Shop" button will now take you to Greater Decatur Shopping. I'm not happy with the navigation - I think it might confuse people. Basically, you start on this page (kind of just the "main page"):

Clicking on the "Shop" button on the left will give you a categorized list of shops:

Clicking on the Greater Decatur logo at the top WHEN IN THE SHOPPING AREA will take you back to the Shopping "Main Page".

I can't put my finger on it - it just seems slightly confusing. However, when I think about it, it's laid out the same way the main site is (ie, the only way you're getting back to that main page is by clicking the logo at the top).

Is this just another shiny distraction preventing me from taking the plunge?!

More things in Food...

2008-01-26T18:01:00.000-08:00

I had a few ideas for the title of this post - I wanted it to include some clever food reference....

Food for Thought?
Chewing it Over?
A Matter of Taste?

Finally settled on "More things in Food". Deliciously void of pun, satire, or wit.

I've been cranking along in the Food area, and am a little happier with where things stand now. Some of the new features include:

1) Ability to view by Category OR Alphabetically - earlier in the week I introduced the Categorical view, and while I'm still happy with it, it made certain types of lookups harder. Mainly, if you were looking for a particular restaurant (IS IT A BISTRO!?!). Now, you can switch between both.

2) Ability to look for delivery places - for those late night munchies.

Here's a screenshot on how these new items are chosen/depicted in the Food Locations view. Not sure I'm 100% satisfied with the navigation mechanism, but it's doing the trick for now. Hopefully not too confusing...basically, click "A-Z" for the alphabetical view, and "Has Delivery" to see Delivery options. The Delivery one is bothering me a little - feel like "Delivery" might have to have it's own button somewhere...

Check it out

Down wth Disease

2008-01-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

We've been pretty sick around the household this week, so my work on the site has stalled a little. I'm feeling better here at the end of the week, so here's to hoping that I'll go into the weekend itchin for battle. Come out of the woods of the internet, dragging the corpse of some intractable problem, bloody C# dripping from my mouth. A maniacal look in my eye, sleep deprived for days. Looking out the window at passerbyers, convinced they're government agents getting ready to move in on me. Church on Sunday, back to work Monday.

In the depths of my feeling like crap from being sick, I found myself dispirited (is that a word?) about the site. What's the point?!@!#$ No one cares!@(*@#$ I managed to do a little stuff here and there, and kept up with the piles of fan mail, but that's about it. I've found myself that way a few times without being sick also. I guess enthusiasm ebbs and flows, and sometimes it's hard to see the vision when you're down in a trough. Gotta keep treading water, brutha. Gotta keep treading water. Because when you're up on a peak, that vision is oh so beautiful.

In the past couple of days I've had some thoughts about the "Food Locations", and have been working on that. Starting with better categorization - I've got them organized by type of food (rather than alphabetically). Currently, the categories are:

Asian
Bistro (I hate this one, because I'm not even sure what it is. I just need a catch-all for "restaurant". Ideas appreciated.)
Buffett
Fast Food
Italian
Mexican
Pizza
Seafood

We're a little lean on the Seafood category right now, so you may notice Long John Silver's made the cut. Long John has a fleet of ships out there right now, scouring every nook and cranny of the ocean, looking for the finest catch the great blue has to offer. His sailors are hardened, and will kill you just as soon as look at you, but they know these waters. Captain Silver only allows the finest of what they bring back to be served in his establishments. Little plastic packets of "Tar-Tar" sauce served on the side, complimentary. Ahoy!

Zazzle

2008-01-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

A buddy (and featured artist on Greater Decatur), Jon Griffin, discovered a pretty cool site for creating custom tshirts, coffee mugs, etc - http://www.zazzle.com/. There are a couple of great things about them:

1) Their merchandise designer - you can upload pictures, add text, etc, and see what the end result will look like. Their designer is pretty amazing - real-time updates to the photos as you move things around, change text, etc. You can see how it will look on different models, etc. The attention to detail is pretty remarkable - some of the shirts are slightly wrinkly on the models, and the text looks as if it's actually on the shirt (ie, it wraps around the wrinkles, etc). Very cool from a technical standpoint
2) Their provisioning system - they basically take care of everything, and give you a percentage of the sale. You can even name your percentage take (the final price will rise/fall accordingly). One huge thing here is that they produce the merchandise in a JIT fashion, so you don't have to buy a bunch of stuff up front. With other TShirt endeavours I've launched in the past, we've had to buy like 50 shirts up front, then sell them to friends (using any form of persuasion at our disposal - pleading, guilt, threats). With Zazzle, there's no up front cost - design your products, and let Zazzle do the rest.

Here's my buddy's gallery on Zazzle:

http://www.zazzle.com/jiveafro

And last but not least, you too can own a Greater Decatur tshirt of your very own!

Greater Decatur TShirt

Adwords....I BELIEVE!

2008-01-18T06:30:00.001-08:00

I'm becoming a believer in Google AdWords. It's pretty addictive - you sit there and pick out the search terms you'd like to advertise, name your price, and they start showing. You can also set your maximum monthly spending limit (I've got mine set at the minimum, $50 a month). Decatur, IL seems to be a fairly cheap market for advertising, so the cost per click seems pretty low. I HAVE noticed that suddenly alot of my word selections have become more expensive - makes me wonder whether Google dangles the word out there, and the first time someone starts paying for it, they JACK up the price?

It's like that commercial with the drug dealer initiating his new "seller" before school.

Dealer: "First, you give it away for free. Those that come back..."
Kid: "THAT'S when I start charging."
Dealer: "You're a smart kid!"

I'm just a small, innocent kid sitting in Google's car before the school bell rings.

It IS nice to see the numbers go up, though. Another cool thing with AdWords is you can associate it with your Google Analytics account. Analytics does a great job of tracking stats on the site, including page views, unique visitors, etc. And the proof is in the pudding - since starting with adwords, Greater Decatur's numbers have shown definite growth. Still in the minor leagues, but we movin on up!

Introducing...Champbana.com!

2008-01-16T06:35:00.000-08:00

The road to world domination winds onwards and upwards...today, we pass through a quaint little place called Champbana. The people are friendly here, there are all sorts of fun things to do...kind of like Greater Decatur! In fact, it's so similar that the chicken car has paid a visit. The only difference is that it's full of events and fun in Champaign/Urbana, rather than Decatur.

This was my first test of "more than one city". The framework was written to support it, and Champbana is the first proving ground. There were a few issues when Champbana was first added, but it wasn't all that bad. There will surely be more bumps and kinks along the way, but for the most part, we're there.

One concern is whether the code that distinguishes between GD and Champbana is going to be burdensome to the server. The site uses .Net object to track user configuration, and deserializing it from a cookie. This happened before Champbana, but is happening alot more now. There are probably ways to improve this, but it seems to do the trick for now. Performance as a whole is something simmering on the back burner, but isn't loud enough yet to attract a whole lot of attention.

One of the main problems with the addition is that the caching wasn't granular enough. This reared it's head on the Movies page. It was showing the same set of movies for Decatur and Champaign (it would cache the first time shown, and then show that cached version for either city). That's been corrected, but I'll be on the lookout for any other problems.

Still have a decent amount of work to do with the content (no events, not all movie theatres are showing up, ads that aren't really relevant to Champaign/Urbana), but the flag is in the ground. We will be focusing our laser sharp sales and marketing forces on C/U before long. Might have to put our name on something soon. The "Champbana Assembly Hall" has a nice ring to it.

This process has made me think alot about "do I want to do a great job in 1 city, or a pretty good job in a bunch of cities?" Multiple cities will make the ad footprint bigger, but I'm worried that it will turn the site into a watered down quasi-ad-parking-lot. My philosophy on this will have to evolve over time.

Band Interview

2008-01-11T18:19:00.000-08:00

One of the things I'm wanting to add to Greater Decatur is more band information. One of the ways I'm trying to accomplish this is through interviews with local bands. As I'm ramping this process up, I'm realizing that I've never conducted an interview with a band, and have never written an article about a band. There are some things to do that I really didn't consider.

I'm starting the process by contacting a few bands. Emails along the lines of "Hey, I've got this website, and want to feature local bands..." If they're receptive (both I've asked have been), I'll send them a list of questions by email. I feel like a jerk doing that - it's pretty impersonal. Like some sort of census questionairre. I thought my first band had given up on me after receiving the list - didn't hear back for a bit (finally heard back today). The second band expressed interest, but hasn't replied to the questions - here's to hoping they can look past my inexperience.

While the emailed questions suck, I'm having a harder time picturing myself giving an interview in person. Asking a question, then sitting there with that interested look of concentration (kind you see on TV). Chin in hand, nodding head, UNDERSTANDING. I'm not sure I'll be able to pull that one off - I'm trying to come up with other ways of doing it. Reading magazines like Rolling Stone, you get the impression that the interviewer hangs around the band for a while, popping the occasional question. That's probably not going to happen at our "local" level. I may try to flush a rough draft with what I've got, and hope that blank spots inspire further questions.

If I'm going to write an article about a band, I'm going to have to get out of my house to see them. There seems to be a need for some "hang out time" there as well, but I'm worried it might be awkward. "Uh, yeah, that's the guy that wants to interview us. He's just going to hang out." Me looking like an idiot for a while, stammering the occasional question. No time for getting to know each other, horribly uncomfortable, home to write the story.

BUT, going and watching them play would be fun. I've halfheartedly tried to find the music "scene" in Decatur for a while, and this seems like a way to do it?

I need to pick up a few music magazines for a refresher course. Work on my rock n' roll journalist imitation, then just wing it. The "just wing it" part is probably most important. It's coming, I'm going to write it, so no point in overthinking it.

Bands - please forgive anything that comes off like a stilted attempt to be cool.

Automated Testing

2008-01-11T06:57:00.000-08:00

I finally bit the bullet last night and spent some time investing in an automated testing framework. Currently, my QA department is pretty minimal (ie, me when I feel like testing), so I didn't have a great way of testing new code. Until last night, my deployment strategy consisted of the following:

1) Code anywhere from a few hours to a few days, locally
2) Use FTP to copy the changed files up to the server. I'd use "Last Modified" timestamps to identify the changes
3) Go watch 30 Rock
4) Realize 8 hours later that I'd broken the Login
5) Run upstairs, and fix issue
6) Repeat

At the very least, I wanted something to do a quick sanity check of the overall site. This would be fairly cheap, and would knock out 90% of the "HOLY CRAP"s I've experienced from time to time with the site.

Here's the screen...it's a part of my overall "command center" (more on that in a later post):

Nothing too complicated. Basically, click "Go", and it will ping all the pages in the list. As they're hit, it will look for a particular error phrase in the output (this would appear if the site's error page is displayed). If not found, the test succeeds, and turns green. If found, the test fails, and turns red.

The light is green, the trap is clean!

Resizing and Shaping up

2008-01-08T15:42:00.000-08:00

Just smacked myself in the forehead. I had damn near 80 pixels that I wasn't utilizing width-wise. 80 PIXELS!#*)#!* You can bet that I resized that sonofagun right quick. I'm trying design the site around 1024x768...many people have more, but I think that's the defacto standard right now? Anyway, at that resolution is where my 80 pixels were being wasted. No more.

It sounds funny, but when designing sites like this, I usually find myself falling into the sinkhole of minutiae. Spending 15 minutes on shifting something around a few pixels. I'm not sure whether this is time well spent or not? On the one hand, the site usually looks better, and I learn something about CSS and HTML. On the other, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THREE PIXELS!

Along the same vein, the Firefox/IE thing is a major pain. Anyone who's developed in the web knows that pain. I think I have the site looking reasonably good in both - if you see something off, please give a shout.

Is this thing on?

2008-01-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

Hello world! This is the first of many entries that will be chronicling the ups, downs, heartaches, and triumphs of greaterdecatur.com. Greater Decatur (hereafter referred to as GD) was created in order to shine some light on the cultural events going on around Decatur, IL. It was created sometime around Thanksgiving, and was “unveiled” over the Christmas break. Now, we’re just adding pieces! Look for new areas to explore, as well as some better content (local stories, local musicians, local artists, etc) in the near future. Thanks for tuning in!