Hey Folks,

I’ve been sitting on this freaking computer nearly all day, dealing with stupid little keyboard characters and symbols to validate my website. What exactly does ‘validate my website’, I know you’re asking. Take a look at Website Validator if you don’t have much to do with your time. If you’re interested in spending days on your own website, for little gain, this is for you. I went through all of the main pages on my Expeditions Alaska website trying to fix stupid little “errors” that apparently needed fixing. Now, my website worked just fine before I did all this. I checked it on various browsers, on various computers and Operating Systems, and it worked just fine. However, the powers that be over at validator.w3 gave me a big thumbs down. My home page, which I still can’t seem to validate correctly, had nearly 40 errors on it. Sounds like a lot, eh? Well, no, it’s not really. Some of my other pages had over 70 errors on them.

What exactly is an ‘error’? Well, I’m sure there are all kinds, but a few of the ones I had to search for and correct were no ‘alt tag’ for an image – even a little image that is 1 pixel wide needs an alt tag. Or I had unclosed

tags, or tags that weren’t needed, or typd “onClick” instead of “onclick” in the javascript codes. Pretty tedious stuff, huh? I thought keywording was a pain. Keywording is a joy compared to this stuff. Compared to spending time on my website searching for little “<” signs and little “#” signs etc, keywording is like sky diving. The end of all this is that all my pages on Expeditions Alaska are now officially valid. I meet the internet standard, folks. How’s that? I’m awfully proud of myself. Actually, not all of them – as I said, the home page doesn’t reach internet protocol (but it’s fairly close), and none of the individual image pages do – I gave up before I got that far. I still haven’t got Skolai Images validated yet, either. But I’m still proud. Baby steps, remember? All things take time, and good things, along with w3 website validation, come to those who wait. Rome wasn’t build in a day, and if the Romans had been required to meet w3 website validation, I’m sure it would’ve taken even longer than the couple of thousand years they’ve been working on it.

I think tomorrow I’ll spend some time trying to get this website validated and correct a few of the things that w3 seem to get so upset about. Why do all this? I’m told it can affect your google ranking. Google is the lifeblood of a website, so I figure I better make an effort. Ya wanna know what’s REALLY funny about that? Go to the validator again and type “http://www.google.com” in the validate by URL box. Then click ‘check’.

Oh yeah, the photo. My friends Matthias Melcher and Gabby Campbell, whitewater kayakers extraordinaire, had sat their boats down here while they went to get changed or something (I can’t remember what). I took this shot, using a little fill flash for the shadows under the boats. Look at that river – ain’t the Futaleufu just beautiful??? More whitewater kayaking photos.

Have a good day.

Cheers

Carl