Spider-Man 2 : June 30

You may have noticed a few changes around the site. Let me tell you what, I have been busy on this thing. If you can’t tell, the theme is “Spider-Man 2”. I am a big Spider-Man fan. The more I watch it, the more I love it. I know that there are a large number of philosphical and instinctual reasons for my inherent love of the Spidey story, but there are also cool stunts, which never hurt. Unfortunately, there is Willem Dafoe, which does hurt, a lot. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that his name was made up specifically to play villians. If you say it fast it becomes, “Well, I’m the foe.” I wonder if anyone’s picked up on that on his fan sites.

The changes I’ve made to Awayken.com, some not permanent, should be as exciting and breathtaking as Spider-Man 2, itself. I’ve read a review as printed by Newsweek magazine which raved about how good the second film is. It’s nice to see that Sam Raimi, the director, hasn’t forsaken quality, emotional movie-making for a quick blockbuster-style action flick, as the 4th of July weekend is prone to seeing (note: Independence Day and Men In Black).

One of the things you’ll notice first is the theme. Titled “Spidey”, this theme incorporates colours and graphics reminiscent of the Spider-Man franchise. Look at the top picture. I got that from the official site. I love the way Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s colours bleed into the rest of the site. In order to fully appreciate this, you need to get Mozilla, Netscape, or, my personal favorite, FireFox..

Another change is my recent fascination with PHP. PHP is a web programming language which helps make dynamic pages. It basically combines C or C++ styles programming with regular web HTML. Like my blogging software, PHP, given some of that programming, only needs one page to look different every time. As I look more into it, I may (in fact) change my entire site into a PHP site, perhaps even getting rid of the CGI-based Movable Type, but I’m not sure yet.

One of the PHP goodies on my site is some (very simple) polling code I found on a site called Fat Scripts. I’ve messed with it, skinned it, and finally come up with decent look for it. So, if you want, you can take it. You can only vote once, and it works on IP address, so if you wanted, you could vote and then move to a new computer and vote again. I hope you don’t though, because I want my first poll to be accurate. So, if you’re ready, you can:

The final change is a more permanent one. This one is Spidey-themed, PHP-based, and site-bettering all in one. It’s the new image gallery also from Fat Scripts. You can click the “gallery” link under “Awaykened Works” or just click here to access it. Gone is the old, crappy, javascript run pop-up image gallery of yesterday. This new code makes it much easier for me add in new images. I just upload the images and thumbnails and it does the rest. The code is all dynamic. It uses the folder names as the name of the gallery, so if I changed a folder name, when I refresh, the page is changed.

I’ve added some galleries to the list, also, and you might enjoy them. For one thing, the pictures from my room are there complete with descriptions as before. And now, if you look at that entry, you will not find the pictures, but a little note asking you to visit the gallery instead. It looks like the rest of the site – beautiful in design and temperment. Here is where you’ll find a gallery entitled “Spider-Man 2 Exclusive” which features exclusive scans from the Newsweek I bought and some buddy icons from the official movie site. Check it out!

Within the gallery you will also find my wallpapers. In fact, you’ll find all of them, 1600×1200, somewhat organized. No more simple links to deviantART. Here’s my plan – I keep the big wallpapers on the site for you to download, and if you want the small + big zip files, you can go to deviantART. There is also a set of new wallpapers. They should have been Spider-Man 2 wallpapers, but they’re 28 Days Later-inspired wallpapers. Every one of my wallpapers, including the “rage” set, has its deviantART descriptions included at the bottom. THAT was a lot of work. So were the thumbnails. But that’s for another day.

NOTE: The gallery looks 3,000 times better in Firefox than in Internet Explorer. If Internet Explorer got their act together and rendered transparencies correctly, then it could look great in both. As it is, it is functional in IE and fantastic in Firefox.

With so many changes to the site, what is there left to do? Watch Spider-Man 2 of course! I’m off to the movies. The deluxe DVD I got at Wal-Mart for $20 has a free Spider-Man 2 ticket included and I’ve already redeemed it. I just hope Megan finds a way in to the theatre, too.

… June 30 is today!

2 Replies to “Spider-Man 2 : June 30”

  1. AWESOME movie…ok company (j/k).

    And yes, I found a way into the movie…actually you gave me the free thing remember…You ordered your ticket off of Fandango/I’m so “cool” I preorder my tickets.

    Cool..real cool.. ;)

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