There is a tendency in life to focus on those things that we almost had, but somehow were just out of our grasp. Perhaps it was the off-color remark that made us miss the chance of a date with someone special or that glare of sun in our eyes that made us miss that perfect gaming winning catch. Whatever it is, we tend to focus a great deal of energy on thinking about what it would have been like had we not missed that moment. What does this have to do with role playing? One word….Underground.

Let me take you back to the mid-90’s, a time when my closet was filled with flannel shirts, and Pearl Jam (shiver) ruled the airwaves. I was in college back then. It was the summer of 1993, and I was staying at school, spending the summer working in a research lab. I had seen ads for a game called Underground in Dragon magazine. The ads were edgy and gritty, and the reviews I read had piqued my interest. All of those adds led me to the local game store and put the rule book in my hands. Read more

Just a quick update. Spent some time this weekend getting things working on the site. Most notably is the theme is now running and the Encoded Designs logo is installed. I had to make some adjustments to the CSS and and some of the PHP files to get the logo installed correctly, and to act as a link back to the main site. But there is a wealth of info on the WordPress boards for how to do these things.

Just to ring my own bell, the Encoded Designs logo, is hand-made by me in CorelDraw. I have some basic CorelDraw skills that I first learned from a book back in 1993, when CoreDraw came on floppy disks.

Also this weekend, I wrote the About page. So look up above the logo for the About link and give it a click. There you will find an explanation about who I am, how I got the name DNAphil, what it means today, and just what are Encoded Designs.

I am planning to put up some real content later this week…so make sure you subscribe or come on Friday.

Last night and into the early hours this morning, I worked on setting up the new Encoded Designs site. My ISP offers an Installatron script for installing WordPress with a click of a button. The install was a snap, and in 5 minutes I had a site up and running.

DNAphil 1 ; WordPress 0

Then I tried to install some themes to give the site a look and feel that would be more to my taste. I found a number of great themes available and grabbed one to install. When I did, the site went blank. Nothing. No content, just a blank page. I have tried to find a solution for this online, but have not had much luck. I wound up falling asleep in front of the computer, and woke up and dragged myself to bed, without resolving the issue. So for now, the site will exist in it’s default theme.

DNAphil 1; WordPress 1

I have posted a question on the WordPress forums, so hopefully someone can come to my rescue and help me get a theme up and running.

Epilogue (11:28pm):

So 20 minutes after I posted on the WordPress fourms, I got the help I needed.  With a few posts going back and forth, a helpful WP user keyed me in that my problem was likely an FTP issue.  I did a little checking, and sure enough all the PHP files that I had FTP to the site were blank.  So I downloaded FileZilla and did a much better push of the theme folder to my website, and now we have this cool black theme.

Since it was my fault and not the WordPress software, I am taking their point away from them.

Final score:  DNAphil 1, WordPress 0

If you are one of the three or so people who have been following this site for the past several years, you know it it has undergone a few changes. Well today is the third major iteration of this site. DNAphil.com is now the home of Encoded Designs, a blog where I will be talking about a number of topics that enjoy:

• Role Playing Games (Table Top not Computer)
• Technology
• Lifehacking
• GTD

Over the next few days, I will be configuring the site, so make a note to keep visiting the site and see how this site evolves.