Website News

Photos from my summer vacation have been posted in the site's photo gallery. New albums include Congaree National Park (SC), Fort Sumter (SC), Myrtle Beach (SC), and Mammoth Cave National Park (KY).

The photo gallery now has a total of 900 pictures.

On Monday, March 3, 2008, I will be starting a new position as a Business Systems Analyst with PNC in downtown Pittsburgh. The employment section of the website has been updated (and will continued to be updated) to show information about this new position.

My last day at MSA was on February 22, 2008. Although I will miss working with everyone at MSA and their products, I am looking forward to tackling the new challenges that await me, too.

The Employment section of the website has been edited/updated along with a general style update (background, banner, email picture, etc.). More minor releases will be out soon, which will include improvements to the Introduction and Education pages. The plan for the next major release includes this blog and the photo gallery to become incorporated into new pages that will follow the master style sheet.

I uploaded 185 pictures from my trip to the Smoky Mountains (TN), Outer Banks (NC), and Shenandoah (VA) to the photo gallery. I'll be looking into upgrading the gallery application, so stay tuned for some changes.

I posted pictures from my trip to Dead Man's Hollow this past June. The park is located right past the Boston Bridge in McKeesport, and my family, on my Mom's side, has a lot of history there.

I've added pictures taken of my new 2007 Ford Mustang as well as from a day trip to Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. These pictures were all taken with my new Canon SD900 10MP camera.

About the Mustang: 2007 Premium Edition with the Pony Package & Interior Upgrade Option.

Over the past week, this blog was attacked by hundreds of spam trackbacks and comments. I've stepped up the security on the site with hopes that this won't happen again. I've disabled trackbacks for the time being as well as installed a new Spam Protector plugin that should help moderate the good from the bad. The previous blocker stopped 145 spam messages since March, but allowed 552 spam messages in the past week or so. Serendipity does not have a UI way of deleting massive amounts of spam; rather, each message has to be deleted individually. I logged into the database today and cleared out all of the garbage. Sorry for any offensive spam posts; this should not happen again.

After about three months since the launch of NathanPolnyj.com, I have completed the first update of the site:

What's New?

1. Updated information on the Introduction page (age, music, modified date).
2. Posted final Penn State grade results.
3. Much more information on the Employment page (*New* About the Company & updated Duties/Skills sections).
4. Added URLs to schools/employers that opens in a new window.
5. Changed main logo seen on each HTML page.
6. Changed titles of pages, so search engines can find the site easier.


What's Coming Soon?

1. A new Introduction page.
2. Penn State Portfolio Projects/Assignments.
3. A new look to the Photo Gallery (improved accessibility).
4. Additional photos taken with my new Canon SD900 10MP camera.
5. Changes with style, such as a new logo/color scheme.

I'm always open to suggestions! Enjoy the site.

I've posted pictures from my Penn State graduation, which occurred this morning. Photos were taken at the event, during the reception, and as well as a few at home. Click on the gallery link to view the additions. More photos will be added when I eventually trek up to University Park.

Today, I released what will most likely be the final installment of my Penn State Portfolio website. There were only a few minor changes and updates:

1. Final grades/GPA have been posted.
2. Contact information has been updated.
3. Link showing NathanPolnyj.com

To view this website, click below:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/nrp139

New photos have been added to the Gallery! I took a few pictures at the Pens game from Sunday as well as put up a few of my guitar. The Gallery is now 388 photos strong. Click the 'Gallery' link from the Navigation Menu to see the additions.

Finally, two weeks after registering the domain, my full website has launched. This website will replace my Penn State Portfolio website. Unlike that website, NathanPolnyj.com has much more to offer: photo galleries, this blog, and more information about myself has been included. Although sounding a little geeky, I coded the website completely by hand, making use of CSS to make load times quicker and maintenance easier. My plan is to regularly maintain the website by adding more content as well as add new features.

For the record, this website has been tested on Firefox 2.0, IE 6.0, Netscape 8.0/7.2, Opera 9.1/8.0. This website is best viewed with resolutions of 800x600 or greater. JavaScript must be enabled in order to view the counter on the index page.

Thank you for visiting!! Enjoy the site.

As I was tweaking the final few bugs out of the site, I encountered a major issue. Apparently, Internet Explorer displays my website much differently than other browsers such as Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera. The changes in IE were so large that the formatting of the page did not look appealing. The issue came with how IE applies previous paddings to list tags il and ul. This is a major concern, because the majority of Internet users, unfortunately, still use Microsoft's browser. I was able to correct the issue, but I did lose a little bit of time when I thought I'd be correcting other bugs. Before the site is launched, it will be tested in all of the major browsers. The full site is still expected to launch within the next six days.

A lot of progress was made on the website over the weekend. There's still quite a bit of work to be done, but I think there's a good foundation to build upon. I deviated a little from my overall plan for the upcoming release; I decided to polish all of the work that was on previous versions as well as include the photo gallery and this blog. There are a few minor bugs/design-issues to close, but hopefully, the full site will be open within the week.

The photo gallery, The World Unseen, is now 370 photos strong. Up for viewing is the bulk of what I've taken with my digital camera since 2003. I'll continue to add pictures of events, trips, and other stuff as they happen, so check back often. You can view the pictures by clicking on the 'Gallery' link in the navigation menu on the right side of this page, or by clicking here.