Returning vistors may have noticed a series of changes lately. That was one of the projects intruding on my writing time. But the futzing is finished (I hope). I think I’ve finally nudged the site layout into its last incarnaton. (Where have I said that before?)

The main menu in the masthead is new as is the page selection menu on the northwest roads pages. Sidebars were added to all pages on the site giving a common look and feel. And the color scheme was softened slightly.

I have used and praise the work of Stu Nichols at cssplay.com. He makes publicly available a wealth of information and code for creating beautiful effects using only css—no images or javascript.

These blog pages sport a number of changes. I upgraded to the new version of Wordpress software and added a feature called “lightbox.” Click on any thumbnail image with dotted side border and you’ll see what it does. Another addon allows you to view comments “inline” on the page without jumping to the comments page.

I also savaged the sidebar entries, significantly reducing its length. The sidebar list of recommended blogs has been moved to a separate page and I added notes about each site. Highlighting of sidebar entries along with captions below the masthead now show you where you are as you navigate the blog.

For readers new to the world of blogs I added an explanation of feeds and what subscribing is all about.

So it’s a wrap for tinkering and back to my other project and working through my backlog of articles.

I spent today with Google, checking each of 1,000 links for “motorcycle safety.” I created a new links page with the worthwhile results. There is not a great deal of good information on the web for this subject. Most links point to the rider training programs in the various states. Tomorrow I will visit with Yahoo search to see if any different results can be found, though I doubt it.

2/18/06 I added a number of new links including links to examples of public service media (radio and TV ads, booklets and leaflets).

In 2004, the year I returned to riding, I scoured the web for information about Pacific Northwest motorcycle roads. I found some road sites but none had an extensive list of roads for the region. So that winter I set out to develop my own list of roads to explore. I obtained road atlases, county maps, National Forest maps and studied them all. I also bought a copy of Delorme’s Topo USA mapping software to create maps highlighting motorcycle roads.

A while into the project I decided to share the results of my efforts and created some web pages of the maps on my site. But I soon became disenchanted with those pages. They just were not very good or easy to use. So a few months ago while revamping the layout and style of the site, I scrapped those pages and set out to create a better and more useful series of road pages.

Today I am publishing the first parts of those pages—the western Oregon road map and the northeast and northwest road listings of that region. Go to NW Roads to view the road pages.

Although there are other northwest road pages, notably Motorcycle Roads Northwest and Oregon Motorcyclist, I believe my pages compliment them rather than compete with them. Their orientation is providing in-depth reviews and description of selected roads. My pages are oriented to answering the question “what roads might I possibly ride if I go to a given area.” To accomplish this I am identifying all roads that may be of interest to motorcyclists then marking them on a map and listing them with brief comments and links to more information. If another site has a detailed review of a road I include the link in the road’s listing.

I am now working on completing the road listings for the other sections of western Oregon. Following that will be maps and listings for Washington and the remaining Oregon regions. Then Idaho and western Montana. It is a large project and to keep from throwing up my hands in despair, I take it one little section at a time.

If you are a northwest rider I would like to receive your comments about the road pages. And I hope you can find the time to help me fill in the blanks in the completed sections, correct any mistakes I have made and provide information about roads for the sections to come (the further away from Portland, the less personal knowledge of roads I have).

Happy riding and may all your rides be enjoyable and safe.

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It’s winter and I hate riding in the cold and rain. So with time on my hands I am doing a lot of cleanup of the web site. The blog is done so you are looking at the new layout and styles. I will do the other sections page by page.

After reading this Bikes in the Fast Lane article I decided to review my website logs to see what oddball web searches had brought users to my site. Here are some that left me scratching my head until I repeated the searches to see what pages they pointed to and why. Then, seeing the search engine results page, I wondered why they went ahead and clicked on the link to my site. My conclusion is that many people have no clue as to how to construct searches to get good results.

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The last one really startled me. I have no nude womman (nor any nude women) on my site but it seems one of my humor pages had a typo (”womman” in the page title) that I never noticed. So thank you Mr random searcher for allowing me to correct that mistake.

In an earlier post I stated I was done futzing with the journal. I lied. Just added asides code for short snippets that don’t warrant a full post, such as this entry.

I’m done futzing with the journal layout. It was a good exercise. By making all the changes to the base system and integrating it into my website I learned much more about CSS styles and PHP programing. But now it is cast in concrete, no more tweaking, and it is time to move on to other aspects of my life that I have been avoiding—namely getting back on the saddle again after my accident.

I discarded the blog theme I was using, went back to square one using the WordPress default theme and have started customizing it. As of this post I have modified everything to my taste except the comments page. Still working on it.

Goal: finish this damn thing today then get out and begin riding again.

Well, I thought I had the installation and customization of Word Press completed then I checked the site using IE and discovered it was not displaying correctly. I’ve been fighting that to no avail. I may just start fresh using a different theme as the foundation for the journal. Until I have it figured out, I have switched to the default theme so that the journal posts will display correctly in all browsers–not that I expect anyone is reading this yet, but ya never know.

I gave up on keeping my journal on plain html pages and installed :xlink:Word Press blog software. But this doesn’t mean I’m jumping on the blog bandwagon. This is a jounal, not a blog! :)

I chose it because (1) it is free, (2) it is one of several packages available from my web host that can be automatically installed by pushing a button, (3) it is actively supported and upgraded by the developers, (4) there are many easily customized themes available, (5) there are a zillion plugins for it should I want to get even fancier, and (6) did I mention it is free?

The install and customization process was much easier than expected. A good understanding of HTML, CSS and a little knowledge of PHP is necessary for customizing it but you don’t have to be a guru. I am certainly not. I had previously installed version 1.4 of the :xlink:Gallery photo album software and customizing it was much more of a chore.