August 2002 Archives
It used to be that working in the web industry was fun and exciting. People didn't know what it was when I told them what I did, and the folks that did had the same energy for what they were doing as I did. Those days are long gone and now there are "mainstream", non-snow boarding types doing web design. These days there are courses at community colleges teaching "web mastering." These days money must be had, and people don't care, and project budgets get smaller, while expectations grow. These days it just isn't as much fun. These days I don't have people I can count on, people who are dedicated as I am. As I am? I am...
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Is the love gone away then? Mostly, yes. For the first time ever I considered shutting down Alt Text - well maybe just an extended hiatus - what, it already isn't on hiatus you say? No, but I am cheating each and every visitor of my site by not being in love with what I do - not being in love with sharing with everyone.
Latley I have been feeling very much like William H. Macy's character from
Magnolia. Not because I used to be smart but now I's stupid, but rather because I have had the same song on repeat in my car for the last 5 days. Lately, the song,
Women's Realm on Belle & Sebastian's
Fold Your Hands and Walk Like a Peasant CD. (were you expecting "Dreams" by Gabrielle?) just seems to get me going in the mornings when I am driving to work. And after putting in an underappreciated day's work, it again picks me up on the way home; me singing along at the top of my vocal range.
I have been thinking about taking voice lessons or perhaps having a voice instructor coach me. I don't have any notions that I have a good voice, but I think I could improve it. I would do this for the sole purpose of being able to sing better when I am alone in the car.
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The links to the music above are to music downloading site,
eMusic.com. There are others like
getMusic.com, and
, but
eMusic.com happens to have a ton of artists that I like. I just hope that of there "over 900 label partners"
Matador decides to stick it out as these bands that I love are on it: Belle And Sebastian, Guided By Voices, Mogwai, Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Modest Mouse, and Frank Black.
Other artists you can find at
eMusic.com (and download teir whole albums for just $14.95/month) are: Apples in Stereo, The Get Up Kids, NOFX, Rancid, The Promise Ring, Violent Femmes, The Lemonheads, Helmet, They Might Be Giants, Echo And The Bunnymen, The Owls, Skatalites, The Dandy Warhols, and Less Than Jake.
Download and burn two albums per month and you have more than made up for your monthly fee.
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"No, it is not dangerous to confuse children with angels." - Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, but in
some cases it *is* disturbing.
I have a lot of explaining to do. I have yet another project that has me working 14 hour days or more. Arbitrary deadlines are fun!
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Is
Fear.com not the worst looking movie you have ever seen? And is it really a good selling point to say it is from the creators of House on Haunted Hill? That movie reeked. Plus how lame is it that they could get the actual domain, fear.com? Of course none of this means I won't see it. I don't think there can be anything web-related that is scarier than looking at nearly 2 full weeks gone by without a post at AltText.com
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One good thing about being so busy on projects is that I don't have time to surf other sites ... oh wait that is a bad thing.
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My house is finally going to be built. The date of the ground breaking is now set for this Thursday.
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I just got back from a recent trip along the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota and Canada. No West Nile symptoms yet.
I like driving. A lot. But it isn't the act of driving that I like. It is really the time I get to think. That is a luxury I don't often have (or rather take advantage of).
This isn't as true for long drives. Then the monotony sometimes gets to me, but rather when I am toolin' about town running errands or, what have you.
A downfall of doing my best thinking in the car is that I am also pretty damn forgetful and 8 out of 10 times I think of something great, be it a post, an idea for a project, etc, I forget it before I get to do/post/talk about it. (I actually had a great idea for a post in the car today before I began congratulating myself for such great thinking, but subsequently forgot it before I could make the post - and it was sooo good too!)
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Related note: One of the other reasons I love driving is that the best sound system I own is in there - somehow music in the car just sounds better. Perhaps its the wind through my hair and the sun on my face, I really enjoy it. Perhaps it is just that I can play the music really loud and not have anyone care.
I can't turn away from
this Leonard Nimoy video. I don't know whether to thank
Jason or curse his name. I had a hard enough time with the old Shatner songs.
For the first time in nearly 4 years I forgot (for a split second) that I changed my last name in 1998 and that my initials were no longer what they used to be. It was very odd, I was quickly entering some form data with my initials and there they were B-P-S. Something more substantial coming tomorrow If I can remember that.
This parody of the Apple
Switch Ads pretty much sums up the last of my grudges against Apple computers. (that and they really stuck it to my family with the IIgs back in the day - $4000 for a computer that was only relevant for about 6 months. Bastards!)
As a
Big Brother I am... frustrated, out of my league, looking for ways to connect, needing a break.
As a "blogger" I... am looking for my groove, trying to give Alt Text a voice, unsure about what type of information to present, perhaps preoccupied with my "audience", perhaps not as conscious of my "audience" as I should be, frustrated, lazy, in need of a mission-like statement, planning, optimistic.
As a home builder I am... seeing a ray of hope, settling disputes, breaking ground, relieved, impatient, excited, not accepting it all as real yet.
As a friend I... am not as good as I should be, demanding, am "high maintenance", need to reach out more, should require more of myself, will let my friends know they are important to me, cognizant that I need to be a better friend.
The new look we developed for the new
client website was approved at 4 pm yesterday afternoon. After giving the "go ahead" to develop the site, the client asked that it be completed and launched sometime the next day. Needless to say I wasn't thrilled. The 3 weeks of design revisions/scope creep that led to the designs not being approved until a day before this previously unmentioned deadline wasn't fun. Of course then I went ahead and put the design in place anyway.
This was made possible by the letters "C" for content (being the same as it was and not needing changes), "P" (for the client promising that they will do a "real" redesign soon and that we can fix all the garbage and assorted poor aspects of the site later) and by the number "2" (the number of templates - more or less - that were needed)
It remains to be seen if we can ever get our hands on totally reworking the Galyan's site, but feel free to look at it as is - just remember we didn't get to touch the content (defined here as anything in the white area) this time around.
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Getting my "hands dirty" and coding pages again breathed a much needed life into my work life. I needed that fast-paced, deadline-driven project to get my mind going and in the process my project partner and I came up with some ideas for cool technologies that should be available to us now.
1. The first thing we thought of was a need to be able to compress and optimize different parts of the same image in different ways. I don't necessarily mean that there could be jpg compression in one part while using 16 color gif optimization on another (though that would be nice) - I guess we were just looking for a way for images to be smarter. Good news is the png format is now supported in Mozilla/Netscape and Internet Explorer and so I am going to start using them soon. Watch out now!
2. The second thing we thought would be cool and make QuickTime VR movies more realistic is if you could have layered QuickTime movies where different elements of the scene could be placed at different depths and so would "move" in relation to the viewer at different rates like they would in real live. I think that this could be done - I wonder if anyone has done it yet?
The good ol' days of the web? You can have them again at
DejaVu.org. At Deja Vu you can surf today's sites with yesterdays browsers without all the hassle of installing them on your computer. Through the magic of "emulation" you can surf Yahoo the way... well the way it is still designed to be surfed.. with an old browser. Choose from NCSA Mosaic, Mosaic Netscape, Netscape Navigator (1.0), Lynx, Internet Explorer (2.0), HotJava, and something called a line-mode browser that was even before my time. Pretty cool.
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I am starting a
fund for new computers for the FBI. Yes the largest U.S. investigative bureau in the U.S. is currently using "50's and 70's vintage computers", use no mouses (or is that mice?), and do not have email or internet connectivity, in large part.
I
heard about this on NPR [
Direct link to Real Media file] and was shocked at what I heard. I have computers collecting dust in in my garage that look like supercomputers (are those still fast?) next to the average FBI agent's computer.
So in the interest of national security, please, donate those old 486's and Pentiums now, those poor agents cannot stare at those green monochrome screens much longer. Drop them off at a
field office near you.
The period of time between the NBA and NFL seasons is always the hardest for me. I must admit this and I feel a bit guilty doing so, but I really enjoy watching pro football and basketball - particularly the Vikings and Timberwolves. In fact, I can't, even now in the off-season, get enough news about my two favorite teams. Some look at this as a sign of weakness in my character...those people are probably right, but here are a few sites that I have found helpful in feeding my addiction, maybe they will help those of you with like maladies:
Real GM - Some great tools like the
Trade Checker that validates trade ideas you may have against current salary caps and rules.
NBA Google Group - Lots of speculation and noise by fans, for fans. [
Wolves specific]
Inside Hoops - Great place for all the latest NBA (and other - including street) basketball rumors and news.
TWolves Central - Great site for news about my ever-teasing Wolves.
Google Group for the NFL [
Vikings specific]
Some people, even good friends of mine, claim to have no interest in politics, and indeed avoid the subject at all costs. Most of these people are intelligent and care about issues and humanity in general but somehow distance the "issues" with politics. Either that or they just don't give a damn. I don't really get the idea of not caring about social reform, sentimental conservation, and global peace just because you don't want to think about who to vote for. Sure that is your right, but at whose expense are you exercising it?
Because I am not afraid to enter the occasional political discussion, I present the
Smirking Chimp. I think you all know what you'll find there. [Via
CamWorld]
I have always liked choirs. It's something about many voices singing together - it never fails to gives me the good kind of chills. I particularly like childrens' choirs or any choir that makes extensive use of rhythm and/or percussion in addition to voice. That leads me to be particularly fond of music with African origins and not so big on the "classical" style (or is it called Baroque?).
I hope to go to some of these concerts - but he prohibitive cost to attend these may stop me as you need to pay to be a "delegate" (some are free). Here are some I am going to try to make:
Here is a
complete schedule.
If you're into that sort of thing and in Minneapolis between August 3 and 10th you can check out the
Sixth World Symposium on Choral Music
[Source:
MPR]
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Sound waves can be sent directly "into your head" while the person next to you doesn't hear a thing. [Source:
MetaFilter]
I was planning on organizing a
Fray Day this year for a Minneapolis venue but due to my problems with building my house, moving twice and having none of the venues I desired return my calls, I am apologetically bowing out of my bid to bring Fray Day to Minneapolis. If anyone else wants to answer the call you would need to have a venue in place by the end of next week.
