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Saturday, March 31, 2001A Rainy Day In Seattle@ 03 pm | PermaLinkThat Morning, to get in the mood, I put on "Two Lectures" Nick's spoken word release which is punctuated with solo versions of a wide range of his back catalogue. West Country Girl comes on first. "With a crooked smile and a heart-shaped face It's angry, ugly and worn down to the shaft. Nick says "I have seen it grow and mutate with time." It's evolved into something new. By the time our drive from Portland to Seattle ended, it was 6:00pm, and Amy and I went off to forage for food in the rain. It was that light Seattle rain that mostly hangs in the air waiting for you to fall on the drops, not the other way around. We returned to the theater area and tried to meet with Leslie and the Coil fans but the Cloud Room had been closed because of over-crowding. Having never been to the Paramount Theater, I had no idea that it would hold such a large crowd. For me, Nick Cave has been packaged up in little plastic discs, or presented as pixels. He's never had a physical presence. 8 years of listening to a ghost. Ghosts are lonely. Listening to ghosts is a lonely experience. "Who is this?" my co-workers ask. "Nick Cave." "Who?" Seeing the crowds in front of the theater spooked me. I figured that it would be me, Amy and Leslie and a few people she met. About a dozen of us in a small bar sitting around listening to Nick and a few people he met. Scalpers. There were scalpers. Like a fun house mirror, my view was mutating, warping. I couldn't believe that Nick Cave, a plastic pixel man was having his tickets scalped. That only happens to acts that have a large enough draw to be profitable. Walking inside, I realized just how lucky I had been. 50 rows in the theater, another 30 in the balcony. 40 seats across. 3000 people? There must be some mistake. Amy and I find our seats at the front row. After the opening act, Neco Case, the lights begin to dim. 8 years of listening to a ghost. And then the song became flesh. Nick stepped out on to the stage, winced from the spotlight and waved. He quickly sat down with his note-stuffed copy of King Ink II and launched into West Country Girl. Heavy chords began the concert. Clearly I had missed the other dimensions of this man. I've read transcripts, heard bootlegs and retyped interviews till my fingers smoked. This was something far more interesting. Moving on, Sad Waters and Henry Lee graced the ear, soft. Then... The Mercy Seat. Shivering goosebumps. God Is In The House gave a much lighter touch to the concert. Wild World was unrecognizable, but Warren playing Rowland playing lead guitar was perfect along with the aggressive lighting. Papa Won't Leave You Henry, Do You Love Me Part II blew through too fast for my poor heart to take. No More Shall We Part followed by Stagger Lee provided ample time to look at the ornate ceiling and walls of the theater. But then it was back into the fray with Into My Arms and Love Letter. Melodic and hypnotic. People Ain't No Good and Ship Song were the first encore. Of course Amy and I had been waiting for the dogs and the moral grounds. The second encore was a quick little spin through Empty Little Boat and Nick was gone. --- Amy waited patiently with me at the back door of the theater. An hour later, Nick and Warren came through the door, waiting for the van to be ready. He took the time to sign everyone's materials. I had brought nothing. I simply walked up to him to shake his hand. I looked at him, that one second magnified into hours, and stuttered a 'Thank you.' He nodded. Amy took a few pictures. Thanks Nick.
Sunday, March 18, 2001Taxes and Archives@ 12 pm | PermaLinkToday will be such a fun one. I've got to get a start on my taxes. It's about time that I really dug into them. I've been putting them off until I got my PSU check, which arrived Friday, so now I have no excuse. Today I want to get those at least partially taken care of, and I want to get some of my archives from previous years available on the site. Both of these should be pretty easy to accomplish, though they'll probably take all day no doubt. Not that the skies are beckoning me outside. It's all cold and grey at this point.
Saturday, March 17, 2001End of the week@ 01 pm | PermaLinkWell, it's been a fast week around here. Work has been moving along with our new hire, K. He's got initiative, I'll say that. He's got a lot of good experience at some larger firms, and is really interested in getting our processes more cohesive and encompassing. I think it will be very interesting to see how things shape up from this point moving forward. I really hope that this will give me the chance to define my role more accurately. Ever since D. left a gaping hole in the leadership position, I've been drifting in and out of that role, along side A. It's been tough, and a bout of depression in the past few months has done nothing to help it. Had I been a bit more stable, I probably could have handled things a bit better, and ended up in a stronger leadership position. But I never really wanted to take that on fully, never really put my heart into it, for a number of reasons. I won't be teaching a class this next term, and that's kind of strange. But I did get my check for this past term. Now I've got to see how much of it will go to taxes. After that's paid off Amy and I can look at socking it away for a EuroTrip this summer. --- I think I've finished with version 0.9 of Aim and Fire. A&F is what I've named this pair of scripts that I can set up easy to modify web pages for clients. It grew out of a project for one of Amy's recent clients. I'm really quite happy with it. It may not be the most robust system, but I think it will work pretty well for most cases. --- I've been feeling a bit more creative of late. I really want to work up some more design. I did a new desktop image at work. These things are my most common method of doing something visual, graphical, creative. My journal entries give me the chance to do some self-directed writing, but they aren't a real creative forum for me. I'd like to expand more in that area. Yet another thing to add to the "I want to" list. Still got to get through my French lesson as well.
Wednesday, March 14, 2001NewU2PSU@ 06 pm | PermaLinkWe've got a new employee at work now. Person number 6 in our little crew. It will be interesting to see how my role changes now that he's here. I'm sure once he get's going, he'll be taking on a lot of the management stuff for the group as a whole, which is fine by me. I'll be glad to have someone dedicated to that sort of thing. --- I've been listening to "All that You Can't Leave Behind" nearly non-stop this week. 'New York' and 'Elevate' are two standout tracks. --- My class at PSU finished off last night. I've passed that class onto a new instructor, so I can zip up and file away all those files, I guess. It really felt like this class has been a struggle for me. I don't think I've given the very best class for the students, though the reviews that I get are fine. But it did push me in a few different places and made me examine some of the approaches that I bring to this digital media realm. I'm thinking of dealving into Flash far enough to teach a class in it. Looks like there are a number of openings in that area. I've played with Flash but never to the point that I felt comfortable in the environment. Perhaps if I put some more focus into it I'd do a bit better. (But I suppose that could be said of many thing in life, eh?)
Monday, March 12, 2001Synchronicity@ 04 pm | PermaLinkAmy and I were at Powell's last night, she looking for Holocaust literature, me in search of French instructional materials. After a couple hours there, we began walking to the check out. Out of the corner of my eye I see a display of maps and atlases. As I'm walking by and scanning the State atlases, I see the name 'Peter's Projection' printed on a rolled up map. I think, "Hmmm, that's interesting." I begin to recall the number of different projections of world maps that are available. But thought is fleeting and I'm onto another trickle of conciousness. No streams, just trickles. --- So this morning I'm at work and we're having a conference call with a client in New York. They're a world-wide health-oriented non-profit that we're building a web site for. Towards the end of the call, one of the guys on the client's side says, "On the Regions page, what map are you going to use?" I replied, "We'll pull a piece out of our clip art files. Is there something in particular we should be thinking about?" "There's a particular kind of map that our group and other groups use..." he trails off. "I can't remember the name of it, but..." I ask, rather innocently, "Do you want something like the Peter's Projection?" "Yes, that's the one, exactly." http://www.petersmap.com/table.html
Sunday, March 11, 2001Mac Memory@ 09 pm | PermaLinkOriginal Posting: 2/19/2001 09:40:34 PM I'm cleaning. I've been cleaning out my old Macworld magazines from 1992-1996. Now I know these aren't the oldest things around, but it's really a trip going through the older articles. Especially interesting are the product debuts: The Newton MessagePad, the Powerbook Duos, QuickDraw GX, and oh yes, Macworld raved about the IIvx. Ah how time flies. The PDA that was a bit too large and five years too early? The Duo docks that if in place now with FireWire and USB would be incredible for iBooks and TiBooks alike. QuickDraw GX was really striving to be Quartz, the layer just below Aqua in MacOS X. The IIvx? Well, let's let dead dogs lie... I think I'll keep one issue from each year for now. 5 copies ought to provide quite a time capsule the next time down this memory lane. Previously, that same day...Back To Blogger@ 01 pm | PermaLinkOriginal Posting: 1/20/2001 11:23:26 PM Well, after an abortive attempt to use a different service, I'm back to Blogger. I've been yearning to use a system, and I'm finally going to stick with Blogger for a while. It's easy to set up, it's already set up and I don't have to worry about it. The only thing I do have to do is get the archives of the last 3 years set up and try to get people to start using the new location. That shouldn't be to hard once I put a redirector in the old server. I've been collecting tons of stuff to talk about and now it all seems pretty pitiful. Maybe someday I'll turn off the TV and get back to living life. Previously, that same day...Building a Desk@ 01 pm | PermaLinkEverything is working pretty well at this point. I cleaned up some code that looked weird in Netscape 4, and I'm now posting this from that browser. I suppose I'll take a look at it when I get into work tomorrow with Mozilla 0.8. It will be interesting to see what happens then. I've begun taking advantage of the variable that are built-in and the ones that are customizable. Getting the Style sheets into their own 'macro' really cleared up the entry boxes for the templates and now I can see how the templates are set up. I'm still exploring the flexibility of the system. I think I've figured out a way to get an RSS file to come out of it, but I'm still working on that. In many ways, what I'm doing here is building a desk, a work space for writing. each tool is used in an environment, and the environment for my work (in this case writing) includes the physical space around my computer(s) and the virtual space that it's published in. So I'm constructing. What can I say... I'm a contruction worker. :) I should also note that Dwelling in it's first form came online 3 years ago. The first entry I have is from March 6, 1998, back when I was working at OMSI where I had full access to a server with PERL so that I could do lots of debugging and such. Three years of writting is a good start at a journal. It may not be the most revealing on a daily basis, but I'm doing this for two reasons: To improving my writing skills, and to keep a log of thoughts that I can reflect in later years. A link that I want to get set up is the 'one year ago' links. I use that quite a bit to remember and recall events. [This entry would have been lost were it not for a little control panel I have called "SuperSave". It's a simple little utility that captures my keystrokes and saves them to a file. Normally this doesn't do much for standard desktop applications. In BBEdit I'd just make sure that the Auto-Save feature was enabled and type along my merry way. However, with these Weblications, there's no auto-save, no real saving at all, until you've finished filling in the form. On small forms that's fine, but on these longer ones like a journal entry, or an online application you run the risk of a browser crash eliminating 20, 30, even 60 minutes worth of work at times. SuperSave prevents this situation from taking another 60 minutes to re-write all the stuff I typed. It's the little things, the tweaks and customizations that really turn a computer from a dull hammer to a fine tool.]
Saturday, March 10, 2001Apple Devotee@ 09 pm | PermaLinkWell, this is a new one... photo Previously, that same day...Another couple of hours@ 07 pm | PermaLink(I've figured out how to force the database to post-date an article. Now I can go back through this year's entries and add them into the system. Not that I'm in a rush to do so. However I promised some non-journal notes and I'm going to make good on that now.) It's become more and more apparent that I'm bringing back important things into my life. I'm back to having a journal I can rely on, a place for me to write. I've been listening to music more than I have. And *listening* to the music, not just collecting or sorting MP3 into their perfectly ordered libraries. The flash of creative inspiration I had last night pushed along into the interface you're seeing now. I took a long, hot bath and didn't get upset at myself. My class is almost finished and I think we're going to get something good out of it. I'm enjoying my relationship more as well. Let's leave it at that. ;) This new-found confidence is serving me well. Assuming that it's sustained, I think we're going to be looking at a very good summer. Previously, that same day...No, really, I mean it this time.@ 02 pm | PermaLinkYes, I've just spent another half hour tweaking this thing. I was getting some weird run on stuff in IE with tons of extra space at the bottom of the window for no apparent reason. I figured it was something in the HTML so I started validating it against 4.0 Transitional. Once I got mostly through it (Still have backgrounds set with the BACKGROUND tag rather than the Style tag, gotta get rid of the MARGINX commands in the body) the spacing issue resolved itself. Good for now. I've removed the table borders, but I still want to work on the side bar and the image map, etc. etc. Okay now I'm really stopping. Previously, that same day...About 4 Hours Total@ 01 pm | PermaLinkIt's taken me about four hours to get this all set up. I'm sure I could spend another 8 just looking through all the templates, and another few hours getting all the navigation and arcives in place. But this will do for now. Of course there's a few things I'm already seeing that I'd like to change. It's little stuff, like popping out an RSS file and a Netscape My Sidebar file. (Still kept the documentation that they sent out to people who were running feeds to the old my.netscape.com portal. That was pretty cool and I'd like to do something similar still. It's just a matter of getting this GreyMatter to open up and reveal it's secrets to me, Perl wise. Oh and a copy of the entries ought to land in my mail box. That was a life saver when I was working on the original script that I used for Notes. Perhaps this system will be robust enough for me to not have to worry about that. Then again, I worry about everything. Next time I'll add some more personal notes. After all this is supposed to be a journal about a person, not about the journal. Previously, that same day...Quite New@ 01 pm | PermaLinkI told you I was changing this thing. Powered with a new engine, and now with a new look, I present Dwelling: Chasing My Own Tale. This is the latest development in my journaling exercise. I'm not laying any permanent bets on this system, but we'll see how it works out. So far the system is pretty damn robust. My JPEGs that I've used on the template are enormous, The Archives are nowhere near working, and I haven't event tried the layout in any other browsers yet. Hang in there, we'll get this ball rolling. (This entry will stay at the top of this page for a few weeks until my regular visitors have all come on over to the new URL. New entries start below.)
Saturday, March 8, 2001Testing@ 01 pm | PermaLinkTest
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March 2001
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