Prairie Sable News

1-7-07

Sorry for all the problems over the last few weeks. First I had a power outage while I was a away on vacation and that knocked out the site for almost a week. When I got home I realized that the logic board on the computer had pretty much given up on me (no real surprise as I had been having power issues for awhile with it). So after picking up a nice new computer it took some time to get everything tweaked back to normal. Everything should be back to normal now and I hope to add more images to the site soon since I have a huge pile of cover scans that I have made over the last few months.

11-3-07

Aislinn submitted a new article to me last night. You can read it here.

12-1-07

I am very pleased to introduce some new content to the site compliment of Aislinn Rachelle Stephens. Aislinn works at the "local" comic shop that I go to and has become one of the people I have come to enjoy "talking shop" with (even about things other than comics). She has pointed me to some interesting reads over the last few years.

I respect Aislinn's opinions and I hope that everyone enjoys whatever she chooses to contribute. I know I am very grateful she accepted to give time and her unique perspective to my site. Thanks Aislinn!

20-11-06

I closed the online store as I recently sold off all of the issues I was trying to get rid of.

26-10-06

Sorry I wiped out the content of the Comic Cover Gallery. I am working on repopulating it. It should be done by the end of the week complete with several new scans.

3-9-06

Added 97 cover scans to the Comic Cover Gallery.

20-8-06

I decided to go live with the new store interface despite the fact that not all the comics having be re-graded via E-BIGS. Over the next week or so you may notice some grade and price changes.

3/4-8-06

The comic cover gallery has been migrated over to a new interface that will allow for a much more rapid uploading capability for me. Due to the nature of the coding the odd book will be out of numerical order. Images are also scaled down and the quality of the thumbnails is somewhat lower. In all you should like the changes.

Lots of cover scans have been added along with migrating over the old images. Have fun!

Look for a new store interface soon too. Many prices and grades may change when this happens.

28-5-06

Added 100 photos to the photo gallery.

14-3-06

I would like to announce that the Raised By Swans interview is now up for your enjoyment. Thanks to Eric Howden and his band-mates for their time!

12-3-06

I have added a review on Raised By Swans To the music section. I am very happy to announce, as well, that I will be posting an "interview" that I conducted with Eric Howden of Raised By Swans tomorrow or the next day. Please stay tuned!

16-2-06

Added 30 pictures to the Photo Gallery. They are all taken with a digital camera.

Also I have shortened the Playlist of the music stream while the Olympics are ongoing. The playlist is only Canadian talent in honour of our Canadian athletes. You should still enjoy a wide range of sounds even with the shortened list. The regular playlist will return after the Olympics.

28/29-1-06

Added 29 pictures to the Photo Gallery. They are all taken with a digital camera.

22-1-06

Added 20 comic cover scans to the Comic Cover Gallery.

16-1-06

Added 12 books to the store.

2-1-06

Added 20 new cover scans to the comic cover gallery.

27-12-05

Added 13 books to the store.

26-12-05

Added two more comic reviews.

18-12-05

Added a new Movie and TV section. This section will contain comments and reviews on various new and old movies and TV shows. There is already one review in their on the recent King Kong movie.

16-12-05

Dropped the title header due to display issues in some browsers. I realize that this site may not display properly in Opera and I have no clue why. If any web designers want to take a look at the CSS you can find it here. I welcome the assistance.

14-12-05

Add 10 new cover scans to the comic cover gallery.

12-12-05

Added 20 new cover scans to the comic cover gallery and some comments on Imogen Heap in the music section.

Congratulations to Danni Boatwright for winning Survivor Guatemala! Season 11 was one of the best and it was really capped by one of the nice guys winning. Danni won in style which is nice to see.

The gorgeous winner!

Danni is my total dream woman. She is athletic, strong willed/determined, gorgeous (even when way too thin), likes sports and country music, has the most amazing eyes and a smile that could stop time. Love you Danni.

7-12-05

Added two short reviews to the comic section and 10 new cover scans to the comic cover gallery.

30-11-05

Added 10 cover scans to the comic cover gallery.

27-11-05

Added 20 cover scans to the comic cover gallery and content to the music section.

26-11-05

Added 30 cover scans to the comic cover gallery.

23-11-05

Added a third party grading rant to the comics section. Don't send hate mail it is just an opinion. Look for some more content in this section soon.

19-11-05

Added 20 cover scans to the comic cover gallery and a few books to the store.

17-11-05

So everyone knows I now have a domain name for my home server. I will be setting up some things to redirect people using sarah31.ca or the old numeric IP. If you want to save yourself some time just go to http://www.prairiesable.com and book mark it for yourself. I will be starting to phase out updating sarah31.ca or it will be changed to something completely different.

15-9-05

I have been playing around at fixing things up with the hit counter which was own for quite awhile. I don't know if it will stick this time or not.

I added a Recently Played list to the right menu. Because of parsing php does not work with the code for the store it and a few other side menu features are not available in the store. Future upgrades of the the software should, hopefully, fix this. I have been waiting sometime for my upgrades.

30-7-05

Added an original art section. This is all that will be there for a long time. Unfortunately most of the images are not all that big. In time I will attempt to make larger images with more detail. For now though I am sure you will get an idea of the art.

29/30-7-05

Added 20 comic covers and several pictures to their respective galleries.

23-4-05

After a long absence I change the side menu images and added a short blurb about Lisa Brokop to the music section. I will be working on the music section, comic store and comic cover gallery in the coming days and weeks.

It would appear as though there has been a large number of people visiting the site this month. I believe the hit-counter flipped at about 9999 this month and is now working on another 10000!

3-3-05

Sorry for the delays in getting the Lisa Brokop article up. I noticed today that changes I had made last week had the display of the web site all messed up in Internet Explorer. I have made changes that have it all working on but you will notice that the centre content box is not completely aligned in either Internet Explorer or Firefox. There are still title bar display issues for Opera users but I am trying to work that out too. It could take some time.

2-3-05

Added a lots of music to the playlist. It now is 1.8 days long so you should not hear songs repeated very often. Added were Beck, Cassandra Vasik, Evanescence, Phantom of the Paradise Soundtrack, If I Were A Carpenter Compilation, Fefe Dobson, The Flaming Lips, Hawksley Workman, Leona Naess, Matraca Berg, Mercury Rev, Mindy McReady, No Doubt, Portishead, Sarah Harmer, Tori Amos, Van Morrison and The White Stripes.

27-2-05

Added a music stream to the music section. Please select the music link for info on this and other news for that section.

21-2-05

I added 10 more scans to the comic gallery. It is still alphabetical so you will have to browse each page to see the new images.

20-2-05

I added 10 more scans to the comic gallery. It is still alphabetical so you will have to browse each page to see the new images. I hope to add more tomorrow.

19-2-05

Sorry I have not been adding as much to the comics store as I wanted. I will try to get more up this week.

Later this week I will have a review/profile up on one of my favourite musicians. I am just waiting until around the middle of the week when I will be purchasing the streaming software that I will be using on the site.

12-2-05

The store is now up and ready. There is not that much in it at this time but I am trying to add about 10 books a day for the next little while. I should tell you that due to the manner in which my CSS templates are I strongly suggest that you use monitor resolutions over 800x600 or the layout of the store will not work very well. I will deal with this in time.

Remember you will need a PayPal account to purchase items from my store. I have done my best to set fair shipping rates. I will reconsider them in a month or two but I believe they are fair and should cover shipping and supplies.

The link will direct you to my local server and so you may note slight changes in things like loading times and the hit counter. Please don't be afraid to email me with any questions.

7-2-05

Added a hit counter.

6-2-05

I added lots of new pictures to the photo gallery. This will be all until I can get the remaining rolls of film I have put on CDs.

Paging through the galleries has changed. Now just click on the "<<" or ">>" to advance or go back a page.

I also looked into streaming audio. Likely I will be able to do this but not until I can get the money together to purchase the required streaming software. I looked at the demo of one today and it is likely the software I will go with but I was having some issues with figuring it all out. Hopefully it all works out but don't look for streaming audio for awhile.

After some computer problems late last week I am working on populating the store with items. I expect to go live with it sometime later this week.

I will also put up the first music commentary/review this week. I will keep you in the dark as to who it is. To those who know me will be surprised by who I have decided to discuss first.

30-1-05

I have added three pages of black and white photos taken in late 2003 and Spring 2004.

I have also decided to purchase some commercial shopping cart software. I wanted to get the store up ASAP and I have not been practicing my PHP enough to manually set-up the store. Should the commercial software prove to be "too limiting" in some way I will do the necessary coding.

I have to get back into learning/practicing PHP again though. The gallery paging can be handled better and I will look into this first after setting up the store. I desperately would like to add more covers to the comic cover gallery and I will likely do this before fixing the paging issue.

Of course I need to add content to the Music and Comics section. I have not really decided how I want the content to be. I would definitely like to stream some music to aide readers in hearing just what I love about a particular artist.

Many people have asked me about how many "hits" I get here, though with the lack of content I can't imagine I get very much. For their interest and mine I will add a hit counter at some point. As well, I should be adding contact information at some point so that you can cuss or praise the site or submit spelling or typing errors. (Actually in most cases it will be a typo as my spelling is far superior to my pathetic typing skills.)

That's all for now.

28-12-04

Sorry for the lack of new content in the last few months. My home was under going lots of renovation. Though I have been back home for the last month and a half it is still rather disorganized around here. Now that things are more organized around here I hope to get some work done on this site over the next few weeks.

I will add on to the photo gallery first. I had several more rolls of film put to disc and I will add those to the site very soon.

I also want to start adding the online store too. It will be a bit primitive at first. When you want to buy a specific item you will have to notify me. In the future it will become more automated.

6-9-04

I added another 30 photos to the photo gallery. This will complete the colour photos I have of my trip to Alberta this summer. I will be adding another sixty black and white photos then that will be it until I can get some of last years and earlier this year's photos put on disc to upload.

5-9-04

I added 40 more photos to the photo gallery. Enjoy.

Look for additions to the comic and music sections soon too.

24-8-04

I added 12 more cover images to the Comic Cover Gallery. Enjoy.

22-8-04

I added a photo gallery to the page today. I purchased a decent camera last year and have put it to good use and I will be posting the results in this gallery. Visit the gallery here.

I had to reduce the number of columns in the photo and comic cover galleries to two because the right content bar with the feature comic scan was getting overlapped by the gallery tables. As a friend pointed out the thinner gallery looks less ugly than the encroachment of the centre content area over the right.

20-8-04

I started on a comic covers gallery you can visit it here. There are only nine scans in there right now but I will add more as I get the time. If you click on the images you can view the high resolution scans.

19-8-04

I added a short blurb to the comics section and some scans to the right menu. The scans will change hopefully monthly.

For those who may be interested. I purchased the Wonder Womans earlier this year from Metropolis Comics in New York. The Donald Ducks came from The Bookshelf in Winnipeg, Manitoba.