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03.13.00 >> It appears that a "Bill the E-mailer" alerted Yahoo! Internet Life Net Buzz about the Don McLean self-parody he had found via Running Tally (and as Steve Knopper points out, it may not have been McLean -- it very well could be; what do I know from Don McLean, I've been listening to Autechre all day). Thanks, "Bill." ;)
Also to Steve K.: That is a good position to take. Score yourself big karma points.
"No, please, baby! Don't go, baby, don't... I'm sorry, I never meant to hurt you..."
"Forget it. We're through, I mean it."
"What are you doing with your ear to the vent?"
"Sshh! I'm listening to the downstairs neighbors fight."
"Is Laura saying she's sorry again? It's the same old story. None of their fighting does anything to change things."
There have been a sprouting of meta-weblog type things, lately, but they do have different focuses (foci?).
- M3tacubed is more a directory of directories, with links to the other three metabetas:
- Weblog Nation, which collects the most interesting links as seen by its creator, as compared to...
- ...Logspotting, which pulls journally quotes and commentary. One liners that will make us giggle.
- Then there's Webloglog, which logs the logs with accompanying loglike commentary, making it the closest to a lot of logs out there.
Four different products for your enjoyment.
Happy Monday the 13th.
03.12.00 >> Oh, hell yeah: BombHaus is back. (Amanda, go check out the fonts!)
Neale's Sims challenge gets a brief mention in Wired News -- proving that, even without his appendix, Neale's still got that sex-o-matic.
Also mentioned in the article is Machinima, a low budget style of 3D-rendered movie making, sometimes using games engines like Quake to do so.
They said, "Look, we know you don't like either of them. We don't like them either... but we hate Bush more, so just become a Republican for a few days and vote for McCain in the primaries. That way, in case the GOP wins back the White House, we get the lesser of two evils." Alas, it didn't work.
Be Gay for a Day, a la Choose Your Own Adventure.
Tracy's rhyming reminded me that you can play Frogger at shockwave.com, with the Shockwave/Flash plug-in. Somehow, it's a lot easier now than when I was eight.
Yes! Fairvue Central won SXSW's Best Student Website: Pre-College. Rock on, Nikolai!
03.11.00 >> To all those heading out to SXSW, have fun and stay sane. I may join you, if I manage to figure out this teleportation thing in the next few days. It seems unlikely, though.
I've been able to play with Blogger since Web Queeries started up, and it is pretty damn convenient if you don't have shell access (like I do on this site; I'm updating in vi). I liked the old site's look, but the new site's look is pretty clean in that sans-serif, hey-we-mean-business sort of way (and I really dig the album cover). What I really like is what they did with the new Terms and Conditions. Besides giving you the whole thing to peruse, they summarized what changed at the top, and highlighted the changes within the T&Cs themselves. Thanks much, gang, for that. If only my coworkers could follow suit when they need copy changes on one of our sites...
03.10.00 >> It's kind of hard to be happy about getting a raise when you're planning to leave the company, anyway.
This one is for Chuck: Don McLean disliked Madonna's cover of "American Pie" so much, he wrote a parody about it (requires RealPlayer).
So yeah, I hopped on the bandwagon. It's fun!
So yeah, I hopped on the bandwagon. It's fun!
I read a page on deja vu, and though I had my doubts, I read a page on deja v-- Um, wait...
So Eduservices.com is no longer on-hold. Great. I'm still told that "due to technical issues, you may not be able to access certain functions of this website." La la la la... la la...
03.09.00 >> Nikolai quotes the BlogIRC session. (Joing!)
It wasn't a mistake! What, you can't protect the nation in leopard print spandex and a pink fuzzy boa? Pish tosh!
And you thought that whole Mahir thing was over.
What the hell?!? I'm trying to find out if my last student loan payment was received and how much I owe this month, but according to whois.net, the domain that hosts the account information site is on-hold. What, not enough students are paying their loans off that they can't afford the $35 to pay off the domain?
(Note to Ephemera: Hi! This is what Neale meant by us being on to you. He just likes to be unnecessarily spooky on occasion. :) Neale, behave. Be as have as you possibly can. If you can. No, scratch that, we like you the way you are.)
Lots o' webloggers talking about this shirt, but in the end, it won't matter.
Aw, man... Charles Gray (you know, Chuck from Rocky Horror Picture Show) is dead. (courtesy o' pith and vinegar)
Sepia tone is just so damn sexy.
Kim Ficera gets carried away with "Who Wants to Be a..." mania with a vision of coming out on television for cash and fabulous prizes! (courtesy o' NeoFlux)
San Diego is starting to see ads targeting victims of same-sex domestic abuse, something that's usually ignored.
A new Fox sitcom will star John Goodman as a divorced, gay father.
The blue-collar dad's sexual leanings are not the focus of the 13 episodes already ordered by Fox.
"I don't know the exact tone," Goodman says. "All I know is that a couple of weeks ago, I was pitched by the Carsey Werner people I worked for at 'Roseanne' for 10 years. They said, 'John, what about another dysfunctional family?'
"I said, 'Gee, that's a fresh angle. What can we do to mix it up a little bit more?' "
This is kind of refreshing. Goodman doesn't fit any of the gay stereotypes that we've seen in prime time main characters so far, that I remember.
Once again, the Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization wanted to march in New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade. Once again, organizers said no. IGLO will be marching in an alternative parade in Queens (hee), supported and joined by Hillary Clinton.
(And this ends the repostings of what I shared on Web Queeries, but you've been reading it and therefore the above is old news... right?)
An introductory class for multimedia taught at Charles Sturt University has students creating weblogs and online journals for a first assignment so they can explore the limitations and the potential for text as creative online content.
03.08.00 >> Too slick: Weblog Nation. (courtesy o' MetaFilter)
Do this thing around 7pm CST: irc:irc.skunkworks.cx:6667/#blogirc
(Don't actually put that in your browser, it won't work. But it is BlogIRC night once again.)
Oh good. I'm not the only one who's thinking about emigrating.
Prop 22 got voted in. I'd like to be outraged, but it's just so typical.
03.07.00 >> When I saw the link to the demon-in-your-computer story on Metalog, I thought, oh, people are poaching links from me, dig that action. But no, a bunch of folks found it a day or two before me. That'll teach me to think I'm a trendsetter.
More bitter online chatbanter...:
Mich: ...I just had someone rattle off a class ad to me, and expect me to be able to count the fuckin' words while he's saying them.
Me: Ugh.
Mich: I'm not Word. I'm not even WordPerfect.
Me: heehee!
Mich: Holy shit...Mr Speedy just tried faxing the ad to our voice line. Now he gets it over and it is in 36 point text.
Me: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mich: Pathetic. Capitalizing common nouns, too.
Me: He's German and nearsighted.
Mich: He has 25 Yr's experience. I dunno what a Yr is, but I'll bet that they're pissed that he has all their XP.
Me: And he's taken the XP from 25 of them, too! He's a talented man.
Mich: Indeed.
Me: A real bounty hunter. Tamer of wild, uncapitalized Nouns.
Mich: Snerk!
Me: Gods, what a fuck! 25 years and he can't even abbreviate correctly!! What was he doing in those 25 years!?
Me: Tell me he's not a typesetter.
Mich: Desktop publishing, baby.
Mich: I'm sorry...Desktop Publishing, Graphic Design, Web Pages.
Me: AAAAGGH!
Mich: His name is Bob. Want his phone number?
Me: Bob the Desktop Publishing, Web Paging Graphic Designer, / he was a mighty Clown. / He'd russle up those Yrs / and upper case those Nouns.
Me: He'd call you on the Phone / in a way you couldn't relax / and if you couldn't count those Words / why, he'd send a 36pt Faaaaaax....
Mich: Ohjesus.
We're such ornery, misanthropic dorks today. Could just be one of those days. Is "Yr's" an actual abbreviation used in the publishing industry? I could easily be missing something. Often, I do.
I'm glad to say that I'm feeling much better. There are a lot of things going on in dorkland right now (like having to find a new apartment and a new job simultaneously, for example), and the stress had built up to new levels and instead of the usual ways it manifests with me (anxiety, sleeplessness), I ended up being pissed off and agitated all the time, even getting angry about being angry. I've been getting neck aches and headaches, and over the last few days, it all got unbearable and ridiculous.
Like Uncle Johnny said, anger is an energy (and didn't Jessica log something about him having a show on VH1? Oi), so I looked for what was making me angry and focusing the energy towards fixing it. Some things were obvious, like arguments I had had recently with people that never got resolved, and the fact that I can't work at my current job one more day without loathing it. But there was other stuff that I just couldn't pin down. I started looking to what in my environment had changed over the last couple of weeks. I realized that I had been spending a lot of time at the computer lately, and had changed the desktop background on both my office workstation and my iMac at home to this bright orange "lollipop" junk in an attempt to grok this fascination with orange that this guy I know has. Since color can affect mood, and thinking all this orange might be a factor, I switched my desktop to the soothing sky blue of Chu Chu Rocket. I actually felt my heart rate drop. Fuck orange, then.
As for the rest, I've resolved to just take things one step at a time. I'm going to stop being such a perfectionist, worrying about my (lack of a sizable) portfolio, and post my resume to Dice. Nearly anything's got to be better with the current job situation, which can accurately be described as devolving. I actually did get an offer for a job offer (i.e., they aren't in charge of hiring folks, but they want to get some work outsourced and asked what I was capable of, with the possibility that they may get those in charge of hiring to consider me if I matched up enough and if they could be convinced to outsource someone) from a kind reader who responded to my plea for work last month; we'll see how that pans out.
Sorry for being a drama queen. Maybe I just wanted to keep the drama junkies happy, I don't know. ;) I'm as back to as normal as I get (or at least, can expect to get with everything that's going on... the symbiotes are off my back - literally - and took off, saying something about their work being done), so I'm going to take time out to focus on something new, like making friends with the demon in my computer. Maybe I can catch it and make a quick buck or two.
Of course, once I got my anger under control, I wasn't able to sleep last night. Dammit... I would feel better about it if I had this one album by a band called either Army of Ulysses or Army of Odysseus. Something in their liner notes about sleep being the enemy, and fighting the tyranny of slumber. There's nothing I can find on the web about them, though. [Update: Mich corrects me: it's Nation of Ulysses.]
Back on the topic of orange, I found short blurb that said that orange helps soothe anxiety. For whom, I couldn't tell you, since two weeks of it was turning it into aggro-orange for me. "Reveals emotions" I'll buy. A more comprehensive resource seemed to indicate (through several bulletin board postings from other people) what I suspected: cool colors = calm, warm colors = stimulation. I guess I was overstimulated. (Try explaining that to people with a straight face.)
Searching for how color affects mood also led me to mood nail polish that changes color with temperature. Bored living through chemistry.
Something tells me that if this guy was for real, he wouldn't use words such as "footloose" in casual conversation.
There's a new minibanner for Running Tally, if you want it:
This happens in bathrooms everywhere. It really is a private, humbling moment.
03.05.00 >> I'm still pissed off for a number of reasons (though less than before), so nothing new to point out (except for what I've posted on Web Queeries). However, Neale is in the hospital after his appendix decided to stage a coup, and will be staying there to rest up over the next couple of days. Despite some of the things he's done which seem to piss people off, he's really a wonderful, sweet human being (ha, I've ruined the secret! I am evil! or something). Please send him your get-well wishes.
Of course, now the spambots that seem to find me from all the superfluous email links I drop on Running Tally will now find Neale. Sorry, bud.
03.04.00 >> The host body, "Jason," is in an incredibly pissed off mood. Updates will continue when we have had a chance to bring the host down to stable mood levels. Please remain calm. --The Symbiotes
03.03.00 >> Since my roommate's father is the lead singer and bassist for this band, I'm probably overdue for giving you folks the link to the Willies. Except the site's not 100% done, there's no music samples, and unless you're in the Chicago area, you'll probably never hear them or see them play. But nonetheless, they're still damn entertaining. Hell, the front page is even becoming something like a weblog. (And if you are in Chicagoland and like classic/oldies rock, you will dig this band and should check the site for performance dates. Their original stuff is great, and their covers sound better than the originals.) [End shameless plug.]
Email from friend Stef:
Don't know if you've seen this yet but there's a new TV spot running for Microsoft's Internet Explorer E-mail program, the one that uses the musical theme of the "Confutatis Maledictis" from Mozart's Requiem. "Where do you want to go today?" is the cheery crawl-line on the screen. In the background, a chorus sings "Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis..."
This translates roughly to "The accursed having been damned, convicted to the flames of hell..."
Stef got this from a friend who got it from some friendly spam, so I can't vouch for its legitimacy, but it's a fun thought.
Wow, I am incredibly frustrated. I found an old project I did in college using Director, and I've been trying to convert it into a Shockwave file here at work so I can put it on the web. First I had to update my scripts and score to Director 7. Fine, no problem. Then I find that version 7 only works with Quicktime 3. Turns out that there's an update to 7.0.2 so it can work with Quicktime 4. Fine, I updated, but now I'm still getting the errors when trying to view the Shockwave file, saying that it needs some Quicktime 3 thingers in the Xtras folder. Rassum frassum fucking annoyances.
Some time ago I read about little pager-like thingers used in Japan to help single people with similar interests hook up when they passed within a certain range of each other. I thought, wow, something like that for the homo crowd could really take off. Lo and behold, the inventor of the Japanese devices markets a gay version in a couple American cities. The name? (You see this coming.) Gaydar.
More Dr. Laura wackiness. John Aravosis, president of Wired Strategies, has started the protest site StopDrLaura.com, a grassroots movement to let Paramount Studios know that the move to give Dr. Laura a television show won't be taken lightly. (courtesy o' wetlog)
03.02.00 >> I love fortune cookie programs. Even if the quotes are slightly off.
Fans of a certain BBC sci-fi comedy will dig this one. My friend Heather submitted a list of vanity license plates to see which ones she could get, and the only one that came back as available was the one that she was sure they wouldn't allow: SMEG.
Ye Olde Archives be here.
03.01.00 >> It's early yet for another other-weblogs update, but I found a spanking new one that I like already: Ooine.com. I'm partial to giant mecha, maybe that's it.
Does it seem like I keep sending you to other weblogs lately? It's kind of like Macy's sending you to Gimble's. Lately I've been busy, and other than other weblogs, most of what surfing I do get in has been turning up some really dry, boring, unloggable stuff. It feels like the part of the road trip where there's nothing to see but miles and miles of corn.
To the People of Sam: Uh, dude? I don't remember how long that yogurt was in the fridge and I really hope you checked the expiration date. If I don't see you at work today, I'll know what happened.
So my friend Ray, who is currently out touring, emails me with an update on how he's doing. I felt bad for not having emailed him sooner, so I figured you could help me out. Today, instead of another silly email link for myself, I'd like to give you a chance to email Ray and tell him how wonderful he is. You guys do that, and I'll worry about how he's going to kill me for doing this.
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