Wednesday, August 31, 2005

ABOUT ME

Welcome to my personal webpage. My name is Mark Wilkinson. I am an undergrad at UHCL studying Business Management in MIS.

I previously worked for AIG American General as a Consulting Systems Analyst. I currently work as a freelance consultant and operate my own web hosting company.

I am married but have no children. The picture to the left is me with my wife, Bonnie. She is the Kindergarten GATE teacher for Travis Elementary.

On the right is a picture of Bonnie's dog, Max. He's our extra mouth to feed.


I graduated summa cum laude from the University of Houston - Clear Lake in May of 2006 with a 3.93 GPA. My degree is a Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems.

I have been around computer technology since the 1980's. My mother owned a computer training school which introduced me to computers at a time when the Compaq 8088 was $8k. All I could do was play games on it (death sword, MS flight sim I, etc). But I quickly learned how to write code in BASIC. My father introduced me to Assembly language at a young age. I didn't get it at first, but later when I learned to debug applications, it really started making sense to me.

When I first started college, I wanted to be a programmer. I took classes in C, C++, Pascal, and COBOL as required at the time. But I soon became interested in robotics, so I switched degree plans and began taking electronic classes. When the realism of having to get a real job set in, I went into the field of computer repair.

My understanding of programming allowed me to automate most of the mundane tasks assigned to me, and the recognition allowed me to move up quickly in the world of corporate computer maintenance. Before automated deployment tools were around, I created an automated system to deliver patches, updates, software installs, etc. These scripts saved the technicians hundreds of hours normally spent maintaining equipment.

I moved to an enterprise position which allowed me to get some hands-on work with networks and servers. Working as a top technical employee in a large global company gave me the knowledge to handle many situations, and resolve issues requiring a complete understanding of the technical details involved.

So now I'm done with school, and consulting to make a living. If you need some technical advice, feel free to ask. If you are interested in web hosting, visit my hosting page at www.wswebsolutions.com. I offer many talents, and have created a group of friends with talents in many other areas.

That's it for my about me page. It will change as I continue my life, so check back and get the latest news right here!

Max Power

Here is a picture of my wife's dog, Max. He was dropped off in our neighborhood by some heartless jerk. He's a great dog. I'll write more about him as time permits.

Links

Background Music

A friend asked me how to embed music in the background of a webpage. I've left the page up for anyone that is interested.

The original article reads:


Background Music


This page uses the embed tag to play a .m3u list of .mp3 songs.


My .m3u list was created with a standard text editor with entries like this:








music/cryin.mp3

music/why.mp3

music/tears_in_the_rain.mp3


The .mp3 files were stored in a music subdirectory relative to the .m3u list.


Then I added the following tag to my website to play the music in the "background".








<embed src="play.m3u" hidden="true" loop="true" />


Because some browsers do not support the <embed> tag, you might want to add the <noembed> tag as an alternate. The <bgsound> tag doesn't support the .m3u playlist, so the alternate would only be able to play a single background .mp3. Other options might include the <object> tag, or consider direct links to each .mp3 as alternatives. Direct links could be set up to work like changing the channel on a radio.


This is the full source using the <noembed> alternative.








<embed src="/play.m3u" hidden="true" loop="true">

     
<noembed>

          
<bgsound src="/music/cryin.mp3" loop="infinite">

     
</noembed>

</embed>


So to set up your system, follow these steps:



1) In the same directory as your .html page, create your .m3u list as shown


2) Put the .mp3 files in the appropriate path according to your .m3u file. (mine was a subdirectory called music)


3) Add the code shown above to your .html page. Include the <noembed> tag pointing to a single .mp3 for unsupported browsers.



A few notes:



  • To stop the music, you can click the STOP button on the browser (usually next to the REFRESH button). :)
  • I added the embed tag at the end of the .html page so the page can load and be read before the music starts. It gives the user something to do while waiting for the music to download in the background.
  • The artist used for the music is Joe Satriani. The songs come from his 1992 album called The Extremist
  • It would be polite to leave the hidden="true" parameter off so users can change tracks on their own, or stop the music.
  • Some versions ( 6 & 7 ) of Netscape do not support the <bgsound> and the <noembed> tags.


That's It!



<br /> <bgsound src="/music/cryin.mp3" loop="infinite"><br />


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BP AMOCO Explosion (3/23/2005)

I've posted some photos I received via email of the BP Amoco explosion in March of 2005. If you prefer to download the pictures, I've made a .zip archive of the files available here.

Site Redesign

I've redesigned the site. I'm converting all of my old pages to the new format. This new site uses css, and is implemented in a blog format.