Here's an Idea....

I am currently teaching myself the new version of PHP 6.0, which is a computer programming language designed specifically for structured query language enabling the creation of dynamic web pages with content that changes depending on certain programmable parameters.

I have been using 5.0 for several years, but the release of 6.0 has opened up a whole new set of programming tools designed to take advantage of 3G mobile networking, certain I-phone applications, web 2.0 and especially the new web 3.0, and a whole lot more. I am using this in tandem with the open source Apache server environment, which has now become the standard, and probably will be for awhile, due to the absurd instability of the Windows server environments.

By the way, if I seem like I am somewhat negative toward Windows, and Microsoft in general, well I am. Frankly, Microsoft produces the absolute crappiest source code in existence that serves nothing more than to use up absurd amounts of disk space and memory. I really do like their Microsoft accounting program, and a few of their games, but that's about it. And, from a programming point of view, I absolutely cannot stand Windows as an operating system. Not 3.1, windows '95, windows '98, windows 2000, Me, XP, Vista, or even 7, even though Windows 7 is pretty snazzy. Want to know what I am talking about? Try a Mac. Better yet, download a copy of Linux, and use it on the computer you use now. You will be amazed. By the way, Linux is free, Windows costs $299.

Anyway, I have also been using Drupal, which is an open source content management system for designing and implementing web page design, both in an Internet, and intranet situation.

The reason I bring all this up is I would like to expand on Zach's Boxed Lightning Blog. Almost like a social networking site within the family. Boxed Lightning of course would be the primary blogging tool, but we would add our family intranet site for everything else.

We could blog (boxed lighting), do pictures, music, video, email, Geoff and I and anyone else who wanted to could jam in real time over the Internet, watch movies, play games, you could have your own web-page, whatever. And it would be our family intranet, in other words, our own closed Internet environment, and only we would have access to it.

This would serve two purposes. One, it would let me practice my programming skills, and two, you could log in, and access anything from one domain.

For example, you would log in, then you could post to boxed lightning, or you could upload pictures of our Superbowl party to our picture department, or have your own web page, or anything you want. Plus, everyone would have their own email account so it would be really easy to email each other.

We could have a chat session where we all chat at the same time, or video conference, or anything else our little imagination might come up with.

More than anything, this gives us all a unique but effective means of communication which I desperately need because I have such a hard time keeping up with everybody. Plus, it provides a history of our family activities and an ever expanding evolution of what our family does.

I have started the site now, and you can check it our here. It is going to say access denied so log in with these settings:

Username: user

Password: password

The site will probably be WWW.BRABUR.US (not .com), unless anyone has a better name. Please let me know as soon as you can and I will reserve the domain name.

I will set it up so that everyone can be an editor which means you can create pages, stories, upload pictures, etc., etc.

Also, you can have a new e-mail account if you wish which would be like EDCOX@BRABUR.US. You know who Ed Cox is don't you?

This email address works like any email address, but it really works good for communicating back and forth within the intranet site. You would have a complete set of tools like an address book, a calendar, and the works. This will allow me to continue to improve my skills on email site programming which I really need to do.

Let me know. I think we can have a lot of fun with this. By the way, as I'm sure you guessed the website name BRABUR.US is for Brackeen - Burch. The .US extension is for us, I thought that might be a neat twist. But, if you prefer, we could have .com, .net, .org, or whatever you want.

Oh, one more thing, I would love it if Zach would design a logo. Go to the site and see what I mean. This would be a logo for the top of the page.