Website update
2-7-2015

As part of my continuing quest to re-invent the web stack one part at a time, I moved all of my hard-coded HTML files into a simple site generator. Most of the web pages are now generated based off of some settings and a big old XML file. This should make it easier to get a consistent look and feel for the pages, and it should make it easier to make further style changes in the future. It's also helpful since now I can write an update for Chant Savant, and have it automatically placed on both the home page and in the Chant Savant page. I don't have to repeat myself and deal with the same content in multiple locations. Oh! And I have pagination and footers now, so that the content is broken up across multiple pages and I don't have 5000 lines of text on a single page. It was not yet a problem for the home page, but the size of the pages was becoming an issue with the Book Review page. Especially when trying to use the NeoCities online editor to modify the thing. You could just hear my CPU regretting its life choices each time that the web editor fired up for the Book Reviews.

Ok, so that is all prelude. The original, main motivation for the move to a site-generator is that I wanted to insert a step in the generation where the program would analyze my text, and then auto-generate meme pictures to include in the text. Unfortunately, that part of the change didn't work out. I wasn't able to find a text summarizer that gave decent results. Either that or I just don't write very meme-able sentences. So, as a consolation prize I decided to add cat pictures to each of my entries. I initially tried using some of the cat-place holder sites, but the ones I tried didn't generate new images on each reload. Rather, you get an image based on the size of the placeholder you request. So, you'd be stuck with the same boring kitten picture associated with the same entry for all time. To improve this I added some simple javascript to each entry in order to add a random cat-pic out of the selection of cat-pics that I uploaded. Now you get a constantly changing stream of cat pics each time you reload. I feel like this is more in keeping with my water-school of philosophy, which embraces the flow and process and everchanging nature of life.