A colophon?  A colophon is a symbol - a typographic recognition of the publishing house usually placed at the end of a book.  They're disappearing in type, but they're growing in the blogosphere allowing bloggers to add a bit about themselves to their site.  I often wonder about who the voice is behind the post when reading some blogs and colophons help solve the mystery and add more community to an already connective group.

Site History

We started publishing Sillypuppies in the later 20th century (around 1997) after getting tired of changing e-mail addresses each time we changed ISPs.  Of course, having a domain didn't mean we had less changing to do, in fact it meant more.  Sillypuppies has been hosted with several different providers and for a time, was hosted from our home - before dynamic IPs were all you could get at a reasonable price.

Since 97, we've gone through several iterations of front pages as well as pages for family members and started blogging in February of 2003.  On March 12, 2003 we began using MovableType, a publishing system developed by Six Apart Ltd. to publish the content of our web logs and photo journals.

Content and Management

This site is an ongoing work in creating a visually appealing site that is also standards compliant, accessible, and still usable in older browsers. I support WaSP (Web Standards Project) and the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) and would like to see a web that can be used by all, including the blind and the physically challenged.

The entire site is moving towards XHTML 1.0 because standards are important - besides, it's kinda fun in a pailful sort of way.  The site also uses  CSS 2 for all layout and formatting, so it may look weird on outmoded browsers. RSS feeds validate to the RSS 2 specification and conform to the XML 1.0 specification.

Graphics were designed and photos were cleaned using Paint Shop Pro 8.  Site layout was created using NotePad, however some portions were created using FrontPage 2000.  I am considering a site design that uses MovableType for the entire site's design - if I ever have free time for a project like that.

Our blogs use MovableType with several excellent plugins:

Blacklist (Jay Allen)

This is an incredible program that helps in the fight against comment spam.  All MovableType installations should have this as a standard plug-in.  More comments on this incredible plug in can be found in this post.

Scripturizer (Dean Peters)

Used to automatically hyperlink Scripture References to the BibleGateway

regex (Brad Choate)

This plugin allows you to define search and replace parameters for elements you produce from Movable Type templates. Works like MT-Macros only in Templates rather than entries.

MultiBlog (David Raynes)

Used to combine entries from several blogs into a singl page.

Macros (Brad Choate)

Used to create all sorts of nifty shortcuts.  For example the icon after the external links in Jesse's blog, or the TiVo icon after links that will program your TiVo.

IfEmpty (Brad Choate)

Used to display or hide MT variables, such as my category descriptions within Category Archive pages. For more information, see also MT’s support forum, MTIfEmpty, MTIfNotEmpty, General-purpose IF tags for templating.

Notifier (Chad Everett's)

Allows users to subscribe to indivudual posts.  Unfortunatly, this plug-in doesn't work with the new version of Blacklist and is not currently being used here.

blackliststats 

Uses the MT Log file to provide statistics on Blacklist activities.

MTAmazon (Adam Kalsey)

Allows the use of Amazon Web Services with MT.  For example, the booklist on Jesse's site is pulled directly from Amazon using just ISBNs.

BookQueue (Jacob Hesch)

Uses MTs database to keep track of reading lists based on blog authors.

BookQueueToo (Byrne Reese)

An "update" to the above plug in that has more features and a nicer user interface.  I'll be upgrading to this if my hosts install XML::SAC on the server or I find a work around.

Netflix Suite (Oscar Hills)

Used to display Netflix information.

Supplemental Category Tags (Brad Choate)

Provides additional category tags.  Used to create individual-looking category pages.

MTLastModified (Kevin Shay)

Adds a Tag for showing the modified_on date.

MTStripTags (Kevin Shay)

Removes HTML from an entry.

MTApproval (Kay Seae)

Creates a hash on preview that must be sent for comment to be accepter.

The Name

Actually, the way sillypuppies was chosen is quite unremarkable, yet it is often asked.  When we moved to a personal domain for e-mail, we needed to select a domain name.  We had considered some of the standard things that are tied to our names - all of which were taken.  We also tried a variety of other thoughts, but finding a unique domain name is a challenge.  At the time, we also had 3 dogs, which we often referred to as Silly Puppies because they were border-line nuts half the time. The name seemed like a good thing to go with and even better, it wasn't taken.

The Authors

Mainly we're just two geeks who like to share our thoughts with friends.

Jesse has worked in a few different fields including management, database design and analysis, intelligence, web and network design, and currently serves as a minister at Berwyn Baptist Church.  Though stressful, the work is quite fulfilling and uses all the skills from prior jobs.  He has lived in California, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York and currently lives in Maryland.  He's also a very proud father of Kevin.

Teri has also served in a variety of jobs and is currently serving in the most important position anyone could have.  She spends her day socializing a homo sapien in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that he might be an instrument for the transformation of the social order into the teleological prescribed utopian inherent in the echelon that God prescribed.  She also teaches and serves at Berwyn Baptist and has lived in all the states that Jesse has, except Pennsylvania.

Content

We're two different people so our blogs and web pages will naturally differ, however, our posts are primarily:

• 'Traditional' use of a weblog; linking items of interest, adding comments. This original use of the medium actually is the core of it all; it enables readers to get acquainted with the blogger and filter the information accordingly.
• We also live near the nations capital have access to a vast array of cultural activities.  Occasionally we recommend real-life events, exhibitions and other cultural activities.
• General rants and goings-on.  Sometimes we dip into politics, but not too often.
• Books.  Teri is an avaid reader of non-fiction and posts occassional reviews, Jesse just tries to keep up.
• We both enjoy movies and television and readily share our opinions on movies we've seen and some thoughts on popular TV shows.
• Jesse also dips into thoughts on web design and geeky gadgets from time to time but more from a hobby aspect.
• We both love God and want to share His love with others and we post about spiritual and religious topics as well as our struggles with faith.  We hope that others can use our thoughts in their growth and will share theirs to help us and others grow.  Sometimes this opens us up to attack and we'll do our best to ignore those that chose to attack rather than share.

Copyright and accessibility

The text and code contained within this blog are published under a Creative Commons license.  If you want to know about a specific feature or any coding done on the site, just ask - more than likely I'll be happy to tell you.  All original images are copyrighted © Jesse Smith and do not fall under the CC license.

 Unfortunately, there is no set of mandatory web standards and browsers and other devices tend to do what's best for their company, not for the web community.  However, with that said, I think web standards are a good thing and have tried to make all of my sites as accessible as possible. Here's a list of access keys we're working to implement through out the site (ALT + an access key on Windows; Control + an access key on a Mac)

Access key h

Individual Blog Home page;

Access key s

Search box;

Access key 0

This list of accesskeys;

Access key a

Archive;

Access key c

Colophon;

Access key s

Syndicate;