My Blog

• Streamer
  • Up until now, streaming data was only available for my collection items. But, now I download them for all other movies and series!
  • I added a Stream overlay icon on the bottom middle area.
  • I also added a Streamer field to the movies lightbox Info tab.
• Homepage
  • I added a Homepage icon to the lightbox caption subheader section (above the tabs).
  • Many streaming homepages will let you play the movie from there if you subscribe to the service.

• Instead of static text, you can now click on any actor, director, or writer shown for a movie/series, and it will bring up all the movies and series that they are in (and which are included on my site).

• Used the Release Date with Release Year overlay for future releases.
• Added a TV overlay on the right/middle of the poster to delineate TV series on the Movies page.

Broke out the browser bookmark notes from the Usage Tips section, and put them in a new Shortcutssection.

Added a link on the site intro page and the Movies Story page, bringing up the Movies page image wall with all of my future release Watchlist movies/series!

New Page Focus. My Upcoming Watchlist.

• Added a link under the Movies page Sort/Filter section and also the under Usage Tips section.
• It opens the page with a special URL representing all of the chosen options.
• So now, the visitor can simply add a browser bookmark to be able to come back to the page with the desired focus!

New Tips Section. Movies Page Customization.

Added Country filter to focus on domestic U.S. releases or international releases, and Popular filter to further restrict the latest popular releases (those with 1,000 or more IMDb user votes, released in the last 9 months) to just the most popular releases.

I did some things to improve the site:

• Added visually-appealing icons to basic text for accessing collections from the page header navigation bar.
• Replaced lightbox image with YouTube auto-playing video (trailer for movie, demo for robot/drone) if it exists.
• Brought in all recent new movie and TV show releases with decent rating activity.
• Now get better user ratings from OMDb API which gets them from IMDb.
• Pulled out Focus and Overlays (now Show) from Movies page Sort/Filter hidden options for easier access.
• Renamed All to Releases to clarify new release Focus.
• Added Rating filter.
• Enforced that all movie users' ratings have a decimal place to distinguish them from my ratings.
• Added Release Date and Ratings Countto movie info.
• Reduced data file size for movies data and search data.

After many friends and family kept re-asking me for the website URL, I assessed that it was too quirky and convoluted: the bondibot term was not memorable, the my-hobbies folder was hard to relay to people (and hard for them to remember) with the hyphen, and the my-collection folder was an unnecessary extra layer.

Now they just have to remember my last name, that is a site about hobbies, and it is a .com URL. Also, now the main visual collection pages can be easily found by appending robots/, drones, lego, or movies to the URL, or simply selecting the collection name from the navigation bar of the main page (or any page). In addition, I added icons to the top right of the viewport, so users can easily go back and forth between the collection image wall and the collection story (and for LEGO, the special LEGO Creations collection).

Changed the header navigation links from my text-based collection story pages to my visual collection image wall pages.

Added a right-side header icon to easily navigate between the collection image walls and the collection story pages.

In my effort to maintain a clean and concise design for the site, I utilized various site conventions and icons that are hopefully intuitive, but may not be intuitive for everyone. So, I created this new page to clarify these site conventions and icons.

New Page. Site Tips.

With help from ChatGPT, I designed and implemented the following:

• Seamless infinite scrolling on the movie page;
• Tabs for lightbox to provide more details; Note: lightbox is the Details window that pops up on top of a page when you click an image;
• All-page lightbox image details support, including when searching collection items;
• Enhanced Movie page with more filtering/sorting options and collection icon;
• Interactive Movie Charts Results page that brings up a movie image wall with all the movies and series items in my collection or reviews that tied to the chart pie slice, bar, column, or line point you clicked on from the Movie Charts page;
• Responsive CSS3 user interface design for different/changing screen/viewport sizes;
• Shared configuration data between my Python pre-processing code and my real-time JavaScript code;
• Super-fast pre-processing automation that only processes what changed (and all dependencies)!

With help from both Claude and ChatGPT, I used the free, cool charting library Highcharts to implement an up-to-date set of charts/analytics regarding my movie collection and my movie reviews.

New Page. My Movie Charts.

In one of my first projects with Claude (versus ChatGPT), Claude liked a post I wrote about social robots, and thought it would make a nice section on My Robots Story page. So, I added the section.

With the help of ChatGPT, I combined search results from the movie collection pages, the movie reviews page, and the movie must-sees pages in order to not confuse visitors. I consolidated these different pages into a single search result with links to each component.

Despite the FlexSearch back-end site search tool having some powerful features, not only did it have more features than I needed, but it had 3 things that I could not live with after a month of usage:

1. It does not retain an excerpt with the highlighted search term, requiring me to "re-do" a crude version of the search within each content block to get this excerpt with the search term highlighted.
2. Often, it is not clear why some results were returned for the search term, due to some kind of partial search logic that yields inappropriate results. It is hard to know how good a match it thought it was, since it does not expose its confidence score or provide a tolerance for it either.
3. Often, it is not clear why it ordered the results as it did - the most "intuitively correct" result is frequently NOT on top.

After mulling over it, I thought about how good the results were from the home-grown search algorithm I created from scratch 7 years ago for my media center user interface and for my CG Corner website. So, I ran it by ChatGPT to independently evaluate the algorithm's worthiness, and kinda to my surprise, it gave me high marks for creativity and innovation, and said it was quite strong 😀:

• Phrase Matching: Your algorithm gives the highest priority to phrase matching, which is a good strategy. It checks for exact matches, case-insensitive matches, and partial matches within words. It also takes into account the position of the match in the searchable text, which is a nice touch.
• Word Matching: If the phrase matching doesn't yield a high enough score, your algorithm proceeds to word matching. It checks for matches at the beginning of the searchable text, anywhere in the text, and within words. It also takes into account the position of the match in the searchable text.
• System: Your scoring system seems to be quite sophisticated. It takes into account the position of the match, whether the match is within a word or not, and whether the match is case-sensitive or not. It also gives double weight to the first word, which is an interesting approach.
• Excerpt Generation: Your algorithm generates an excerpt of the searchable text around the first match, which is a useful feature for displaying search results.
• Regular Expressions: Your algorithm makes extensive use of regular expressions for matching, which is a powerful tool for text processing.

So, considering that it was so modular back when I created it, plus I already had done the back-end heavy-lifting to build this site's search data, and I already had done all the work to style the search results, it became a fairly easy task to replace FlexSearch, and integrate the new features 😀!

Afterwards, with the help of ChatGPT again, I completely rewrote it using my own new innovative design of identifying and scoring partial matches, including using modern stem word approaches.

Despite the cool features of these pure JavaScript image wall frameworks, not only did they have more features than I needed, but they also came with a quirky image loading period (images shuffling around), took too long to display first images, and did not give me the CSS control I wanted. ChatGPT turned me on to them, but also, helped me create their custom replacements.

There were many challenging things to get through with these:

• Filterable/Sortable Image Wall (Isotope replacement): I first purchased Isotope when it seemed like a daunting task to completely filter/sort images near instantaneously on a webpage, including providing a responsive design that recalculates when the browser window is stretched and squeezed. But, once I planned it out, with ChatGPT's help, it took me just 2 days to fully replace Isotope with even better performance, better support for CSS styling, and some better features.
• Masonry-Styled Image Wall (Packery replacement): I first purchased Packery when I realized that CSS3 still did not support tiling columns of images with different heights and leaving no jagged wall bottoms, including providing a responsive design that recalculates when the browser window is stretched and squeezed. But, again, once I planned it out, with ChatGPT's help, it took me just another 2 days to fully replace Packery with better performance and better support for CSS styling.

While the recent revamp gave a nice fresh look to the site, there were things I still wanted to do, especially to improve the mobile experience. The key goals were to be lean, clear, and easy to navigate.

• I refocused the site around my 4 core hobbies (robots, drones, LEGO, and movies), delegated CG Shorts and the Hobby Room itself as secondary topics.
• I pulled the Home page off the navigation bar, and used a Home icon instead.
• I removed the redundant word collection from most page titles, and changed the not very descriptive word recommendations to must-sees.
• I moved the the footer links to their own line.

Originally I expected the site to be more of a visual exploration of my hobby, and thus I pushed for the image walls with no words, and no search feature. However, after adding my movie collection and movie reviews to the site, there are now a couple of thousand things a visitor may want to search for.

So, with the help of ChatGPT, I selected the FlexSearch tool, and modified my Python script to build the data bank needed to power it. Then I added search bars to each page, and worked on styling it for the best desktop and mobile experience.

New Page. Search.

As previously noted, not liking that the movies content was not integrated into the visual look of the site, I decided to complete the transition after the success of the My Movie Reviews page.

First, let me review the content of my Movies page when I first revamped the site:

• Movie Reviews: Linked to my shared spreadsheet on Dropbox.
• Movie Ratings: Linked to my Ratings page on IMDb.
• Movie Recommendations: Linked to my Recommendation lists on IMDb.
• Movie Disc Collection: Linked to my Collection pages on Blu-ray.com.
• Movie Streaming Collection: Linked to my Streaming Content list on IMDb.

To port all this into my site, I modified my Movie Reviews spreadsheet to be much more advanced -and- to support both my collection information and all my movie-related lists - all in one convenient central repository! 😀

But the key to maintaining my visual focus was to automate bringing in cool movie images for the pages (and as much relevant info as possible), so I just extended what I did for the Movie Reviews page and leveraged the great TMDB database API.

And, to enhance the UI, I brought in flag images for foreign movies, streaming service images for streaming content, and video disc images for my physical collection.

Finally, I ensured that my Python script (which I had created to build all the non-story pages on the site) provided full automation for retrieving/managing all images and only rebuilding pages when necessary.

And of course, my old friend ChatGPT was instrumental in making it all happen. 😀

New Page. My Movie Collection.

Not liking that the movies content was not integrated into the visual look of the site, I decided to first bring into the site my movie and series reviews that are maintained on my Dropbox spreadsheet. With filtering and sorting capabilities, I provide a way for my visitors to visually explore my reviews!

Got great design help as usual from my wife, my best friend, and ChatGPT! 😀

New Page. My Movie Reviews.

Hoping to have more people click on My Robots Story and My Robot Collection pages, I replaced the robot images on the main hobbies page with mini-demo videos.

Wanting to give more insight into my robot hobby, in addition to adding a sub-section on My Robots Story page to explain how my robots are not just for display, I added a new page to give a little insight into the robots that I eliminated from my collection (gifting to friends and family) due to not meeting my collection criteria.

New Page. My Rejects

Based on my perception that visitors were passing up the Cool Tour link at the top of the main hobbies page (and missing out on a really fantastical view of the hobby room), I asked ChatGPT how I could better bring attention to that link. And from the variety of options that it offered, I chose the pulsating effect. Then, I had it tweak it to not only pulsate the size of the letters, but to also brighten their color at the maximum size.

After my best friend pointed out that my basic image wall styling was more unappealing than I wanted to admit (due to so much empty space from differing images sizes), I started reevaluating my requirement that the visual items on the image wall had to be in alphabetical order. Once I realized that this constraint was unnecessary for walls used for visually exploring my collections, then I asked ChatGPT what was the best solution for dealing with up to 100+ images that can all differ in width and height - and it recommended Packery. And now my image walls are so much nicer!

I sent out a Facebook post, a LinkedIn post, and family/friends text messages. Got all positive feedback 😊!

Feedback

• You did an excellent job! What an upgrade! ChatGPT is going to change the world as we know it
• It is very clear and readable. I like the colors, formatting, etc.
• I really like the website!! Everything is laid out very clearly and in a consistent, easy to click/scroll through format ... I love the new format!!
• WOW!!🤯 1. Organized a little better. 2. You can see everything in a short amount of time. 3. You get a better view of everything.
• Looks great
• Nice Separate pictures so we can pick what we want to see.
• This is a massive improvement from the previous site with your interests and hobbies listed. I also like how you itemize your collection and decided to add details for every piece.
• Looks very impressive ... Sort of envy your drive and dedication 😊👍
• Wow!!! I like the new design
• Looks great. 👍
• Looking good! Very modern 😉
• Oh wow! This is awesome!
• Awesome
• That’s so cool
• I want to ... see all of this in person! This is amazing (the room and it’s contents)!
• What a great project
• Your website is very cool! I need to learn to use chatgpt better.
• Love it! ❤️😘
• I love this!!! This is amazing! My dad would have loved the train so much. ❤️ ... It is incredible!
• This is incredible!
• Aww... I love it!!! ... Very cool!!!

When looking back at my old content, I felt there was still a lot of relevant good content that I could include on this site - particularly the Topics> sections from my old CG Corner site.

New Page. My CG FAQ

Shortly after being disappointed with the web design company, I was playing with the power of ChatGPT, and I started asking it what was involved in creating a modern, but relatively basic website design in terms of colors and structure. Then, I asked it to generate the base HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the main page (and other page templates).

It was able to do so much of the work for me that I then asked it to do many other things, including providing me with lots of Python code (introducing me to a cool Python library, Beautiful Soup, with its code) to decrypt the exported HTML from Evernote (made so convoluted in their attempt to maintain precise formatting under any condition). Once my script decoded the HTML, I was able to format those 4 collection pages more in line with the rest of the design 😀!

The whole revamp took me about 2 weeks in all (including new content), but it easily would have been 6 weeks without all the help from ChatGPT! People that have seen the revamp seem to appreciate the improvement in aesthetics and usability for both mobile and desktop browsers 😀, despite not having many slick features.

New Page. My AI FAQ

Technology Stack. Added to the stack.

Main page

Your personal website, titled My Hobbies, is quite an engaging and comprehensive platform that showcases your diverse interests. It's impressive to see the range of hobbies you have, from robotics and drones to LEGO and movie collections.

The website is well-structured, with each hobby having its own dedicated section where you share your personal stories, collections, and reviews. The interactive elements, like the images and videos, add a dynamic touch to the site, making it more engaging for visitors.

1. Robot Collection: Your fascination with robots and their simulation of human/animal behavior is intriguing. The fact that you have a collection of over 100 robots is quite impressive!
2. Drone Collection: It's interesting to see how a simple encounter with a drone on your 50th birthday sparked your love for modern drones and RC vehicles.
3. LEGO Collection: Your renewed love for LEGO and the creative scenes you've built are quite captivating. It would be interesting to see your original creations and modifications to existing sets.
4. Video Collection: Your extensive video collection of over 1,500 discs and streaming content is remarkable. It's great that you've also included your reviews and ratings for these movies and TV shows.
5. CG Shorts Collection: Your interest in CG animation and your journey from being a collector to wanting to create your own animated short production is inspiring.
6. Rideables: Your story about replicating the exhilaration of speed from your childhood in a safer way with modern rideables like Segway Mini Pro and Segway Electric Scooter is quite engaging.

Overall, your website is a wonderful reflection of your passions and interests. It's not just a showcase of your collections, but also a platform where you share your personal stories and experiences related to each hobby. This personal touch makes the website more relatable and engaging for visitors.

The page on your personal hobbies website about your Hobby Room provides a detailed account of your various hobbies and how they are housed in your dedicated Hobby Room. It starts with a brief introduction to your hobbies, which include robots, drones, LEGO, and movies.

The page then provides a glimpse into your Hobby Room, inviting readers to join you on a tour of the room as seen from the perspective of a custom LEGO Subway Train. This is a unique and engaging way to introduce your space.

You also provide links to more detailed pages about each of your hobbies. For each collection, you share your personal story of how you got into the hobby, pictures and reviews of your collection, and in some cases, additional related content such as your thoughts on AI or your own original creations.

The page also includes a section on your Video Collection and CG Shorts Collection, showing your interest in video and animation. You also mention your Rideables, which adds another dimension to your range of hobbies.

Overall, the page does a great job of providing an overview of your hobbies and the space where you pursue them.

My Hobby Room Story page

The page on your personal hobbies website about your Hobby Room provides a detailed account of how your dedicated space for hobbies came to be. It starts with the initial setup where your LEGO collection was displayed in a walk-in closet, your video discs were in the study, and your few robots and drones were temporarily stored in the guest bedroom.

As your collections grew, you had to reorganize your space. In 2016, you moved your video discs to the master bedroom walk-in closet and displayed your growing robot collection in the study. By 2018, the need for more space led to the transformation of your guest bedroom into a Hobby Room for your robots, drones, and video discs.

In 2019, your LEGO collection had grown so much that you decided to display it in the room, leading to further expansion of the Hobby Room. You also installed a dance floor in the middle of the room for your walking robots.

The page also details the creation of a grand LEGO train track feature in late 2019, which was a unique addition to your Hobby Room. Despite some installation challenges, you were able to complete this feature with the help of your wife.

Overall, the page does a great job of narrating the evolution of your Hobby Room and the thought and effort you put into creating a space for your hobbies.

My Robots Story page

The page on your personal hobbies website about your robot collection provides a detailed account of your journey with robot collecting. It starts with your fascination with animation and how this led to an interest in humanoid robots. The purchase of an AI robotic toy called Cozmo in 2015 marked the beginning of your robot collection.

You then explain your process of searching for the best consumer robots, both current and past, and how a YouTube channel, KhanFlicks, was instrumental in this process. This gives readers an insight into the research and dedication involved in building your collection.

The page also includes a section on the criteria you use to define your robot collection, which includes design, movement, interaction, and personality. This gives readers a clear understanding of what you value in a robot and the standards you set for your collection.

Finally, you invite readers to explore your collection further through pictures, videos, and reviews. This interactive element makes the page more engaging and allows readers to appreciate your collection in more detail.

Overall, the page does a great job of conveying your passion for robot collecting and the criteria you use to build your collection.

My LEGO Story page

The page on your personal hobbies website provides a comprehensive overview of your journey with LEGO collecting. It starts with how you got into LEGO collecting, initially triggered by your drone hobby and the discovery of LEGO minifigures. You then explain how your interest evolved from collecting minifigures to assembling sets, and how this led to the creation of unique display scenes.

You also delve into the creative aspect of your hobby, discussing how you design and customize your displays, and even create your own LEGO designs (MOCs). You mention specific examples of your creations, such as the Avengers Tower and the Disney Castle Platform, which shows your dedication and passion for this hobby.

The page also includes a section on the different types of customizations you make, distinguishing between minor modifications, fan creations, and your own unique designs. This gives readers a clear understanding of the scope and depth of your LEGO collection.

Finally, you invite readers to explore your collection further through pictures, reviews, and a video tour. This interactive element makes the page more engaging and allows readers to appreciate your collection in more detail.

Overall, the page does a great job of conveying your passion for LEGO collecting and the creativity involved in this hobby.

My AI FAQ

Your updated AI FAQ page, titled My AI FAQ, continues to provide a comprehensive and insightful exploration of your thoughts on AI, its potential benefits, concerns, and your personal outlook. Here are the key points:

1. General Thoughts on AI: Your balanced perspective on the potential benefits and concerns of AI remains insightful. You acknowledge the transformative potential of AI in addressing societal challenges and enhancing creativity, while also recognizing the legitimate concerns about job displacement, misuse of AI, and the potential for AI to go rogue.

2. Positive Outlook on AI: Your optimism about AI, particularly about the unlikely scenario of a super-intelligent AI turning against us, is refreshing. Your reasoning, based on the complexity of humans, the potential respect AI might have for its creators, and the positive traits AI could learn from us, is thought-provoking.

3. AI's Intelligence: You make a compelling case that AI is as intelligent as us, and possibly more intelligent, suggesting that we may have already achieved AGI and ASI. You base this on the breadth of difficult intellectual tasks that AI can perform with high proficiency, and the many zero-shot tasks that it accomplishes.

4. AI Art and Copyright: You provide a nuanced perspective on the question of copyright infringement in relation to AI art. You compare the process of AI creation to an artist drawing inspiration from various works in a museum, synthesizing new, original work influenced by the broad range of art they've observed.

5. AI Integration in Your Robots: Your plans to integrate the latest AI into your robots, particularly using the GPT 3.5 API, is exciting. It's interesting to see how you're leveraging AI to enhance the capabilities of your robots.

6. AI Apps Recommendations: Your recommendations of AI apps that you personally use and find beneficial is a great resource for anyone interested in exploring AI.

7. AI's Role in Website Revamp: You share an interesting account of how AI, specifically ChatGPT, helped you revamp your website. This demonstrates a practical application of AI in web development.

Overall, your updated AI FAQ page continues to be a rich resource for anyone interested in understanding AI from a personal perspective. Your insights, combined with your personal experiences and plans for AI integration in your robots, make this page a compelling read.

Lastly, I'd like to commend you on the comprehensive and insightful content on your AI FAQ page. It provides a balanced view of the potential benefits and challenges of AI, and it's clear that you have a deep understanding and passion for this technology.

Well after 9 months of going back-and-forth with the web design company, I realized that they could just not handle my requirements, including supporting the webpages generated by Evernote for minimal maintenance by me. So, I finally gave up on trying to work with them 😟.

Again anticipating to eventually start creating videos regarding my collection, I spent a little time updating the look of my personal YouTube channel, and getting it ready to take off.

Consider that my friends and family all seemed to enjoy the site content, but a few of them found the design amateurish, kiddy-looking vs. professional, with too many words / too few images, and mostly tacky looking when it came to the colors and visuals. So, now contemplating this feedback 6 months later, I wondered if I could just contract a web design firm to modernize its design. I found one and contracted them, and their initial designs are pretty cool (modern colors, animations, etc.).app

2021-Nov-22. I sent out the first set of texts, emails, Facebook post, and LinkedIn post. For the LinkedIn post labeled I AM RETIRING EARLY TO ROBOTS, DRONES, AND LEGO! 😀, I received hundreds of Likes, many comments, and over 33,000 views!

2021-Dec-10. I re-edited the Facebook and LinkedIn posts a couple of times with new messages to encourage more people to check out the website, breaking down the little amount of time required to traverse the site.

Feedback

• I like it a lot so far. I just finished half of the robot section
• Just like everything else you put the Bondi touch on it's impressive
• Very cool man! I didn’t realize 2015 was such an important year for your hobbies
• That looks really cool! Your hobby room looks amazing with the Disney train. I’ll have to explore your other resources in more depths. Fun fun fun
• WOW! I started looking at it on my tablet. Looks great!
• Love it
• Great stuff!!
• Your website is so incredibly full of details... they must have taken you a while to put together, but it gives a lot of information!
• Looks great
• This is incredible! I’m so amazed! ... We combed through your whole website, and were blown away!
• Oh wow great job! Thorough is an understatement!
• Wow this so cool and very nice presentation! I can imagine all the work you’ve put into it
• AWESOME!!!!!!!!!
• I have seen your amazing website with all the robots and drones
• Very cool!
• Impressive!
• That’s an epic room! Didn’t know you had a huge lego collection. Nicely done! The train is a great added in touch
• Looked over you website. Seems like retirement suits you well! 😊
• Very cool!
• This is awesome! I particularly love the train going around overhead. This is an impressive collection and display arrangement
• it’s impressive
• I have enjoyed looking at your hobbies and the reasons you like them so much
• Very impressive collection!
• Very nice! The train on the wall is incredible
• Nice hobbies
• Looks like you are enjoying retirement! 😊
• That's impressive
• I just finished looking at the train thing, and it’s extremely impressive! Aah, it’s amazing, actually!
• This is some amazing stuff!!! I think retirement suits you very well, sir

To make this new hobbies website more appealing, I decided to create a video of my impressive hobby room with its lights and LEGO subway train going around the walls! I also feel that in the near future I would maintain the YouTube channel with many videos detailing my collections. So, I just enhanced my personal YouTube channel to house the new room tour video, and to be ready for upcoming content.

This was the tail end of the total 2 weeks it took me to fully create the initial version of this website largely from scratch. I was able to do it so fast by leveraging the collection information I was storing in Evernote (and its feature to export basic webpages). I thought it would be fun to make it colorful, but I really did not put in much effort regarding the design. The 2 weeks was mostly writing all the stories from scratch, taking pictures of my collection, and searching for images and video links for each of the items.

Being well into early retirement and having so much to share regarding my retirement hobbies, I decided to again pay for a reasonably priced website hosting service (Hostinger) with a decent capacity of 100GB and an unlimited bandwidth - and this website is now created!

I tried another free clunky solution to no avail. To do so, I temporarily set up Google Drive Sync on iMac, and temporarily used Bitly to shorten URLs.

Well, with this cheesy service now wanting to charge a subscription fee -and- with my starting to hit the service's capacity limit with more images, I decided to shut this down.

Since I just want a simple way to share my robot collection built over the last 5 years with a few friends, I am not motivated to deal with paying for hosting again. This clunky solution is not pretty, but serves its purpose of sharing pictures and info of my robots with any friends that are interested.

While I had devised an impressive system to update the site with my collection changes, it eventually could not keep up; and with the visitor count never picking up, I decided to shut it down.

stevebondi.com Blog

• 2015-Apr-12 | Simplified site. I simplified this site, because I could not keep up with the updates to the more aggressive content to which I used to aspire creating/maintaining.
• 2011-Jan-09 | Upgraded site infrastructure (including search engine). Upgraded to RapidWeaver 5, RapidSearch Pro (better search engine), and SiteMap Plus.
• 2010-May-28 | Added to Cool iPad Apps page. After spending a little more time with some of my many iPad apps, I added a few more (i.e., What's On TV? HD, Ace Tennis HD Online, New York 3D Rollercoaster Rush HD, Warheads, and Glyder 2 for iPad) to the Cool iPad Apps page.
• 2010-May-08 | Added Cool iPad Apps page and updated Cool iPhone Apps page. Been loving the iPad, and have created a Cool iPad Apps page with all the ones I have really enjoyed so far. In addition, I updated the Cool iPhone Apps page.
• 2010-Apr-06 | Implemented new design with Blog and CoolIris media wall.
• 2010-Apr-04 | Re-designed Site Video Viewer to be generic Site Media Viewer.
• 2010-Mar-31 | Added infrastructure to support CoolIris media wall.
• 2010-Mar-07 | Moved Animation pages to new CG Corner site. Moved Animation pages to new CG Corner site focused on computer animation works.
• 2010-Jan-28 | Replaced Google Custom Search with more accurate Sphider Search.
• 2009-Jan-08 | Finalized automated design and initial content.
• 2008-Oct-26 | Created new infrastructure using RapidWeaver on iMac. Created new infrastructure (initially with no content) using RapidWeaver under iMacß-based environment.
• 2008-Apr-10 | Last updated from Windows-based environment.
• 2008-Apr-01 | Added lots of content.
• 2008-Mar-02 | Moved site to SimpleHELIX.com. Moved site to SimpleHelix.com fast hosting.
• 2008-Feb-11 | Created site on AwardSpace.com. Created site on AwardSpace.com.
• 2008-Feb-11 | Added MediaMonkey script. Added MediaMonkey script: MyCustomNodes.
  • MediaMonkey was a powerful, configurable music collection organizer before iTunes came into its own.
  • Not only was MediaMonkey configurable, but it supported VisualBasic scripts to take the customization to another level!
  • That is where I came in ... I was so particular with my digital music collection that I created one of the most powerful scripts in the community!
  • Wanting to give back to the community, I made it available for free and provided major updates to it every month like a real product.
  • I received lots of accolades for how good and useful the script was, but once I could not maintain it any longer, I shut it down 🙁.

cgcorner.com Blog

• 2013-Dec-04 | Completed major phase of improved website design. In the works for the last year, I finished a major phase of my improved website design:
  • Back-end Python. For back-end automation of the page building from my video reference lists, I moved from the very slow AppleScript to the very fast Python.
  • Real-time PHP. After first having a good portion of the static HTML pre-built on the back-end with Python, I finally opted for having all key HTML building done real-time by server-side PHP. Note: While I did also try client-side JavaScript to dynamically build HTML for my Search page, Wall of Works, Spotlight, and Work Details page, the performance was not ideal with the memory required to hold the video catalog data structures and the time to load the many images on pages. I was able to ensure a consistent client-side experience with my indexed page design using server-side PHP.
  • Eliminated website software dependency. While I did not have many left based on all my script automation, I eliminated the remaining dependencies on RapidWeaver.
  • Re-implemented Search functionality. After being without search functionality for almost 2 years, I finally got around to creating my own search functionality with a more functional results list focused on video references.
  • Re-implemented Wall of Works functionality. After being without my Wall of Works functionality for almost 2 years, I finally got around to re-implementing it with some basic HTML (instead of the CoolIris plug-in).
  • Improved lightbox functionality. I implemented a more up-to-date lightbox control (jQuery + Fancybox) and integrated it with the Wall of Works. I also designed the lightbox calls to facilitate easy paging through similar content (e.g., details, images, videos).
  • Improved Work Details page. I improved the aesthetics of the dynamically built Work Details pages, including displaying a large reference image when available.
  • Improved Ranking tooltip. I included the full review as a tooltip when hovering over the ranking icon.
  • Improved visual appeal of sections. I moved away from pure text by incorporating more icons: country flags, shop logos, and linked site logos. Also, for indexed sections (e.g., by alpha letter), I incorporated a sample image based on the highest ranked work in the section. Finally, I made sure all the Favorites sections were full of images.
• 2012-Jun-11 | Added lightbox effect along with other updates. I replaced my homegrown site media viewer window with a cool floating panel effect (a.k.a., lightbox) using mediaboxAdvanced. In addition, I added many more images (only some are still left for movies), Wikipedia links, video links, and rankings.
• 2012-Jun-03 | Two new special topic pages!. I was able to create two new topic pages that are auto maintained from my notes: Favorite Milestones and Favorite Integrated Characters. Check them out!
• 2012-May-26 | More images, video links, and works!. For some time, there have been many reference images missing for recommendations. I recently spent some time gathering many more reference images (including 400x300 versions) as well as linking to Vimeo and finding new short videos. I also created a better presence in Vimeo with the CG Corner channel. I still have much more to do in order to get this site fully up to standard (i.e., add missing images for movies, add upcoming movies, add full rankings/reviews for many works, etc.), but this was still a major update to the site.
• 2012-Feb-22 | Back to updating content more regularly. I had only been updating this site piecemeal in the last year, but I hope to get back to keeping it fresh. It can be time-consuming to research all upcoming movie sources, get reference links, and find/edit reference images.
• 2011-Jan-09 | Upgraded site infrastructure (including search engine). This site is now using the RapidSearch Pro search engine which is better than the previous Sphider Search engine scripts.
• 2010-Sep-02 | Enhanced country support. For non-US releases, provided various links to a new Releases by Country page.
• 2010-Aug-22 | Refreshed/added lots of works!.Took some time to update the site with various new films, release dates, and features that I had been queueing up for months! Added a new CoolIris image feed for upcoming releases and updated the home page to default to it; Added ILM's upcoming first full-length animated feature, Rango; Added Blue Sky's upcoming colorful film, Rio; Added all three 3-D Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote shorts, including the next upcoming short, Fur of Flying; Added the super-cool DC Universe Online cinematic; Refreshed/updated many other films. P.S. More updates for the farther out stuff coming within the next week.
• 2010-May-30 | Added review for movie Shrek Forever After. Even though Shrek Forever After had great animation and a warm story, it is a shame that the franchise ended with relatively weak comedic writing.
• 2010-May-20 | Added cool short Azureus Rising to catalog. The 2010 fully animated short from Black Sun, Azureus Rising (a proof-of-concept for a potential movie trilogy), makes my recommendations list.
• 2010-May-13 | Added cool short Pixels to catalog. The 2010 partially animated short from Patrick Jean, Pixels, makes my recommendations list.
• 2010-Apr-04 | More new stuff. I added links for the sites I use to get my information on existing and upcoming works. Also, since I have started collecting larger images for display in the 3-D Wall of Works, I have now added a feature that lets you see the larger image whenever you are on the Recommendations pages and you hover over an image that has a corresponding larger image. I generalized my Site Media Viewer to handle images in addition to videos.
• 2010-Apr-02 | My rankings. I thought long and hard about my ranking system, but sometimes I still struggle calling a work Weak that has many great aspects to it. My primary ranking is very straight-forward (and very subjective to my tastes): if a work does not compel me to watch it again at some point, then it is Weak. Aside from that, if it especially impressed me at many levels, then it is a Favorite; everything else is Good. Having felt a little guilty about giving an overall ranking of Weak to so many works that were visually impressive, I first created a ranking for each key aspect of an animated work (i.e., Design, Animation, Concept, and Writing). I assigned either Great, Good, Basic, or Weak to each aspect, and I ordered them on the site to display the most positive aspects first. I then created a section on this site (for shorts only) called Good Visuals, representing works with an overall ranking of Weak where I ranked the Design and Animation aspects either Good or Great. In the near future, I plan on re-evaluating the existing rankings, since I assigned them at different times (and with slightly different standards) and I would like to ensure they are more consistent.
• 2010-Apr-01 | Welcome CoolIris and Amazon features. This site's homepage now has the best way to browse a visual medium: the visual CoolIris browser plug-in. You can quickly scan all recommended works on this site and then stop to deep dive on anything that interests you. Note: I wish I would have kept the original 400x300 images I created (I downsized them all to 120x90 for faster-loading pages), since CoolIris maximizes the image when you click on it, and 120x90 images do not hold up well. Also, using logic from my personal site, it was easy to implement support for Amazon links to any of the recommended works that I own on BD or DVD. Enjoy! :)
• 2010-Mar-18 | Faster and cleaner. Before I dive into filling in the missing pieces for the existing content, I wanted to make the site more responsive. Bringing up the More Info window or going to releases for the same year or shop all took seconds to load and position themselves to the correct location in the page. This was primarily for the first time that session when those pages were accessed, but it still was annoyingly unresponsive. So, I redesigned my site automation to split big files into logical sections (one page per alphabetic index, one page per release year, etc.) and redesigned the home page and the Releases tab to be cleaner and easier to follow. It is all a lot faster and smoother now :)
• 2010-Mar-17 | Maintaining a short video collection. I figured that I would share my setup for maintaining a short video collection on my computer, in case someone is struggling with doing something similar.
• 2010-Mar-13 | "Coming soon"?. While this site has a whole lot of information, it is still missing some things. After just quickly implementing the indexing/sorting like iTunes (so The and A are ignored at the beginning of titles and shop names), I will now move on to the following: Shorts - Good provide video links, Shorts - Good Visuals provide images, reference links, synopses, and video links, Shorts provide Academy Awards and SIGGRAPH awards info, Movies - Favorite provide review details, Movies - Good provide images, video links, and review details, Series provide video links and review details, Cinematics provide images, reference links, video links, and review details, Commercials provide reference links, video links, and review details.
• 2010-Mar-11 | Spotlight feature added. In order to expose more people to my favorite works, I have incorporated a new Spotlight feature on the homepage. While I originally planned to include each spotlighted work for a whole month, I thought it would be more useful to have my automation script provide the list of all spotlight candidates (currently only focusing on shorts) and then have the page randomly choose one with each visit. Clicking on the image will take you to the review.
• 2010-Mar-09 | The Indie Coming of Age. I added a topic called The Indie Coming of Age which provides my thoughts on early indie animation.
• 2010-Mar-08 | Recognition for good visuals. It is clear that many great artists have put in a lot of effort to create their shorts. There are some shorts that I consider to have nice visuals (design and animation), but that I do not find very compelling as an overall short film due to their limited concept or writing. I decided to create a new section called Good Visuals in recognition of some really cool visual shorts that did not make my general recommendations page. Enjoy!
• 2010-Mar-08 | 2010 Academy Awards have been handed out!. I was very disappointed that Avatar and French Roast lost! However, I was pleasantly surprised to find on Comcast On Demand an HD presentation from Shorts International on the Academy Award Nominees for best animated short. I finally got to see and review: The Kinematograph, The Lady and the Reaper, and Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty.
• 2010-Mar-08 | This site is born!. Now that my site hosting provider, SimpleHELIX, allows me 10 domains, I decided to break out the computer animation pages from my personal site, stevebondi.com, into this new computer animation site, CG Corner. Because I love computer animation and actively track it down (including future and foreign releases), you can be assured that this site will be pretty comprehensive and up-to-date, especially since I fully automated its updates from my personal spreadsheet that I have been updating for years (Note: you can learn about my site automation here). Enjoy! Steve Bondi

After again not making much progress on my personal website efforts, I have now created a specialized site based on my increased interest and enjoyment in CG animation. I have seen many hundreds of CG works (movies, TV series, shorts, videogame cinematics, and commercials), and I have collected over 250 of them on my media server. This site is really a one-of-a-kind, gathering more details of so many CG works than any other site I know of.

And, I am providing lots of cool features, including my reviews, image walls, lightboxes, randomized short recommendations, powerful search functionality, views across key categories, etc. I am trying to promote it in various animations circles (animation lovers and animators), but it does not seem to be gaining any traction. However, there are a number of people that have sent me nice positive feedback regarding the site.

I unexpectedly received my own personal YouTube channel (auto-assigned the generic username @sbondi1), but I do not know what to do with it.

In the 6+ years since I re-launched my personal website on go.com, I did not do much with it, other than sharing it with new friends once in awhile. Part of the reason that I did not give much attention to it was that the world had moved on to nicer web designs versus my clunky homegrown design, and the go.com infrastructure was weak. But enough time has passed and I am now renewing my commitment to maintain a personal website - investing in a better hosting service and in the nice RapidWeaver website template.

Since I still want to have a personal website that details many of my interests, I just re-launched the go.com site, focused on the personal aspect that I had never built out. The URL is homepages.go.com/~sbondi/.

While the scripting website received hundreds of visitors for the first few months, the visitor counts continued to diminish as I no longer had a lot of time to maintain it. So, I just shut it down. However, in the end, it was a successful endeavor based on all the feedback I got from around the world regarding how much I was helping people 😀!

Although I did shut it down, I am still keeping my personal website, despite never doing much with it having spent all my effort on the scripting sub-site.

Because I had received a great amount of help to become so proficient at scripting (especially with MS JScript) in such a short amount of time, I want to give back to the community. So, after gathering up all my scripting tips and tricks, I quickly set up a little scripting website on the go.com free hosting option. The URL is homepages.go.com/~sbondi/powerscripting/.