Do to popular demand (well not really, to date one person's asked me about it), I've added a section about my choice of domain name (tildefrugal.net).
If you're a computer geek, you probably already get the reference and that it's sort of a rip-off of slashdot. In both regards you're right, and you can probably just skip the rest of this section.
Now if you're not a computer geek then you're probably really wondering what I'm talking about now (or you've decided that it's just a geek thing and you've skipped ahead or been turned away from the site entirely).
On UNIX systems (as well as others), every user has a home directory. That directory can be anywhere on the system. The home directories of all the users don't have to be in the same location. Usually, this will be /home/<user name> (where <user name> is your user name on the system). Computer geeks are generally a lazy bunch of people. Well actually, more accurately, they tend to be willing to put insane amounts of time into programming something in order to save them a few keystrokes on a task that they perform frequently. In this line of thinking, someone created a shortcut for referring to users' home directories. You could just type a tilde (~) and then a user name, and that would represent the whole directory path to the user's home directory. That's not that big a savings if your home directory is just /home/frugal, typing ~frugal might take you just as long unless you can actually touch-type the ~ key (I can). But, if your home directory is something like /csuite/home/13/ac213 (my home directory on the Chebucto Community Net, then can start getting some time savings.
This convention (if it can be called that) has also extended itself to the web. Often, you'll see that the address for a user's site (say on an ISP's web space) will be http://www.isp.com/~user.
So I took the idea that ~ represents someone's personal space (either on a system or on the web) when I was thinking up a domain name to use for my site. I often use frugal for a user name (it's a nick I picked up in high school and that's all I'll reveal on that subject) so my personal space is usually at ~frugal. Since this site is supposed to be my personal space, I thought that using ~frugal would reflect that (well at least to other computer geeks and people that have read this page). Unfortunately, ~ isn't a valid character in a domain name, so I wrote it out instead (tilde). That got the tildefrugal part at least. As for .net, well that was more just an aesthetic decision. I was originally throwing around the idea of using .com, but it didn't really feel right, I'm not planning for this site to be much of (if at all) a commercial venture. As for .org, well I'm not an organization either. .net seems to be the most nebulous of the major top level domains. I would've liked to get frugal.ca or tildefrugal.ca (that's Canada, not California) but CIRA (the people that run the .ca domains) used to be really tight on their regulations for them. They've since loosened up the regulations on the .ca domains but by that time I'd already registered tildefrugal.net and frugal.ca was already taken.
This home page is intended to be a complete redesign of my previous home pages, both in content and layout. As well the design philosophy has changed and I am aiming for a more simple layout that is focused on content over style. One of the major changes you will notice is the lack of frames in this version. I couldn't think of any good reason to keep them (other than simply to save me a bit of coding time) so I have removed them. This page is designed to be viewable in any browser.
A lot of the philosophy around the design of these pages has come from my own experiences in web design over the years. While I haven't taken the time to really write down much of my thoughts on web design, Philip Greenspun has written a book which agrees with many of my own thoughts about web design and publishing. While his book focuses a lot on creating relational database backed web pages, his ideas regarding site design are definitely worth reading regardless of the size or scope of your web site. The other nice thing about Philip's book is that it is all available online for free (as are many of the tools he discusses in the book).
I'd appreciate any feedback on the page, I can be reached at frugal@tildefrugal.net. Let me know what you like, what you'd like to see changed, and what you'd like to see added. I intend to keep these pages as current as possible. One of the best ways to encourage me to put new material on these pages is to tell me what you think about my pages. The more feedback I get the more of an indication I get that people are actually reading my material.
All text and photos presented on these pages are copyright © Andrew Dacey except where otherwise indicated. For more information you can read my copyright terms.