May 30, 2009 4:13 PM

The last few evenings, I’ve been redoing all of my websites. I figured that I once was a descent web programmer, but this was back in the HTML 2.0 days, over 9 years ago… (wow does time fly by fast). But in today’s world of AJAX, I need to brush up on several web programming languages, specifically CSS, Javascript, and XHTML.

Well, what better way to start than to take a look at what other people have written. Annieandrobert.com has been up for 9 hears now. It started as a generic webpage, then became a phpBB discussion forum (with tons of add-ins), to finally a phpNUKE portal… Well, all my friends thought the first site was the best, as phpBB and phpNUKE weren’t very intuitive to use. Also, I wasn’t very good at migrating the data/discussions from one site to another.

The last year, I’ve been hosting my personal blog (robertbarrios.com, where you are now) on http://www.wordpress.com. I’ve grown to enjoy using it, so I figured I’ll stand up my own wordpress server using the software from www.wordpress.org. Wow, the software was the easiest I’ve installed. No php code tweaking like in phpBB or phpNUKE. So at this point, you can check out the new http://www.annieandrobert.com page!!!

From here, I plan on playing with CSS and XHTML to develop my own WordPress theme. I’ve been highly inspired by Marc Mendel (http://www.marcsdesign.com/Portfolio/my-work.html). The blog sites he’s developed just have a great look and feel. I specifically like Andrew Mager’s page (http://andrewmager.com). I hope to have my blog look as good. In the meantime, I’ll be using the built-in wordpress themes.

Standing up my own wordpress server was necessary because the wordpress hosting service only allows you to use their built in themes. Once I get the hang of this, I’ll need to move this blog to my own server so that I can dazzle you with my web and artistic talents ;-).

Well, now about gadgets!!! The Palm Pre will be coming out in 7 days!!! Woohoo, because I’m about to throw, blow up, drown, my Motorola Q. I hope to have one soon, and I hear that my company will be listing it on our standards list. I’ve been reading www.precentral.net daily, and constantly getting more excited by every post.

Also, Archos plans on announcing their latest media player based on Android!!! I installed Android emulator and the SDK on my Mac earlier this week and have already begun building a simple count-down app, just to become familiar with the code. I hope to have this little gadget in my bag be the end of June.

So, a Palm Pre and an Archos Android tablet for the summer!!! I’m looking forward to it.

~rb