My Joomla extension site (Phlooid.com) was hacked some time ago, and I just recently found the time to put humpty dumpty (mostly) back together again...just in time to move on to a new project.

Phlooid, in a permanent alpha state due to the startup that has kept me in overdrive for the last couple of years, was a great learning experience. However, in the short 2 years since I built it, things like Prototype.js, AJAX patterns, etc have matured quite nicely, so all the fancy custom Javascript that went into Phlooid isn't much use anymore. From all the feedback that I've gotten though, it seems that quite a number of people found something useful on the site - either the downloadable Joomla extensions, or maybe a bit of inspiration here and there.

In recent times I've turned my attention more toward the deeper architecture aspects of major web development, but every once in a while, I still get an itch to build a smaller site front to back. The stephenrsimmons site will be built using the CakePHP framework, which I've been using extensively...the next page in my personal web story...stay tuned for another breadcrumb...

A little update.

"Mambo" is now "Joomla"...and I am now spending my time at http://phlooid.com. The site is the result of merging several ongoing web dev experiments, and I've used it as a test bed for learning new technologies and development techniques.

There are also several Joomla extensions available for download for other Joomla users and developers, and supporting them has kept me quite busy

The site is currently only optimized for the Firefox browser - users of other browsers may experience problems...
Check it out.

when i first put this site together i was having a love affair with the Drupal content management system, but for reasons i won't go into right now, i have become a Mambo convert.

at some point i may post my full rationale for jumping the Drupal ship (and to explain my CMS schizophrenia), but for now, just a quick update: i'm in the process of redesigning my web site using Mambo as the foundation.

this site has been a nice playground (and if you've registered you may have gotten to see some of the goodies that lie beneath the surface), but for now i've decided to play somewhere else.

stay tuned...

Well, everything seems to be working...and my resume seems to sum it up pretty well...so, I might as well open this site up for public consumption. Not alot here yet, but maybe I'll have something to say every once in a while...

This site will always be in kind of a perpetual state of under construction as I try out new web goodies - There are a bunch of features I'd like to implement when I find the time.

Why not start by checking out the slide shows?

i started off thinking that i would display a dramatic splash page as the entry to this site...then i realized how much i dislike splash screens, so i abandoned the idea...

it's not bad though, take a look HERE.

well, here i sit...hobbling along in "safe mode, with networking" (press F8 on your computer as it boots, if you don't know what this means)...

at about this same time last year, my laptop hard drive started to exhibit signs of trouble...just before it exhibited signs of total failure...and signs of frustration to come for me. the drive would sometimes allow the computer to boot, but only for a few minutes or seconds before crashing again. this hard drive was about 3 months old.

after many fruitless hours on the phone with tech support, a couple days of troubleshooting and experimentation, and trying to rescue data that had not been backed up, i concluded that the drive was experiencing failure due to overheating. so i tried a new experiment - i put the drive in the refrigerator, then eventually the freezer for a while. after periods in the cold, i would get extended periods of life out of the drive - the longer i'd let it get cold, the longer it would subsequently work - sometimes hours, which allowed me to rescue all of my important data, and actually get some work done during the process. i repeated the cycle of work/rescue--then wait for drive to get cold for a couple of days until i didn't need the drive anymore - by then, the replacement had arrived, and i could start to rebuild. at a certain point i actually sat in front of the refrigerator like it was my desk, with the laptop on a nice cold shelf inside. this is a true story.

test to see if the flickr.com photo connectivity is working... here is sexy: sexy above correct api key fixed image link