This weekend was an interesting one, we got the email notifications in. However, (of course) after a number of bug checks and deciding to roll out the feature to the rest of the world we noticed the email bound messages couldn't be formatted the same way the internal message system messages were. This effected the comments and add-friends messages.
I noticed this when I was at my good friend Joey's house in West Hollywood. He signed up and we we're adding each other to our friend lists when we discovered the link in the internal message was no longer active. In an attempt to prevent this from ruining our evening I decided to tackle it later (but only after obsessing over the issue a bit too much). I got home an hour later and was able to determine where and how to separate each message with unique html tags for each message.
This trial and error feature roll out left me slightly unsatisfied and so I decided to continue plugging away at other unfixed bugs. The most notable to me was the friend list (if you have more then 4 friends - instead of starting a new row in the friend box the friends were pushing out to the right). It was an ugly error that was soon to plague the format of anyone's profile/account pages once they had more then 4 friends.
Jeff and I have been talking about the friends per row manager and taking small stabs at it but without luck thus far. It helped that there is already a working version of this functionality in the photos box but since the friends array script requires friends and their profile photo it wasn't going to be as easy as duplicating the images script.
I should interject this story with the fact that Briana and I went out to Manhattan Beach and body surfed Sunday afternoon. Surfing like many sports and focus demanding activities clears your head, washes out distractions, and unites your mind and body. The state of mind produced by surfing has been compared neurologically to that produced by Buddhist Monks practicing zazen. Before we had left for the beach it was very difficult to walk away from my new born baby website. But it helped dramatically. Ironically, sometimes the best way to get the job done, is to take a break and return with a clear and ready outlook.
Late Sunday night I made what seemed like the 30th try to have the friend images start a new row after the fourth friend. Thanks to our chilly but wonderful afternoon of riding the waves (only in Southern California could one surf in December!), a moment of clarity was with me and as though the answer was obvious from the start, I fixed the friend's per row issue. As an added bonus in a related but separate problem, I immediately saw why the number of friends count in the title bar of the friend box wasn't displaying the right number. Bam! Two problems fixed in one swing.
This pretty much accounts for my weekend, two problems fixed, one feature added! As I am typing our items system is getting an overhaul. Hopefully, by tomorrow users will be able to add as many photos to their items as they would like. And they will be able to list the item price in any format (Briana's request).
More to come folks don't go away.
I like to think the universe frequently throws us a curve ball, especially when its the last thing we need. A cruel type of humor... possibly. Anyhow at this time I'm referring to Ekaweeka's server at about 7:50am this Tuesday morning (11/29). Here I am having some coffee getting ready to tackle the myriad of upgrades and bugs on the site, and I open up our lovely home page only to find a less then friendly "server not found" message.