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Front Page Rumblings for May May is a weirdcool month. Things get warmer, people head outside for sports and stuff, and women seem to freak out over how their bathing suits are going to look. I'm not sure if May is my favourite month, but I've done some realy cool things in my life, in the month of May - like going to Europe, camping with friends (see partycamping), graduated from University, moved out on my own, and much more. So what will happen this month? Saturday, May 31 Today's rant is going to be a bit different. Normally, I tend to broadcast observations here, not introspective stuff. That's why I don't consider this a "diary" - it's not a daily rant about my feelings and emotions. I keep that stuff to myself normally. Well, Today's different. But first, some observations! I have a new online friend, Stephanie, who is pretty cool. We chat via ICQ, and she features me on her excellent new front page (which hopefully goes live soon), so I'm deeply humbled. Steph is a West Coast wannabe, but I doubt the west coast she's thinking of includes Vancouver! Yesterday was a hectic, busy day. I working on a new mock up site for a local Vancouver fashion designer, Leigh Morgan. Hopefully, I do a good enough job to land the real contract - right now, I'm making a token amount for setting up the dry run. I also had a lot of bad news and some good news yesterday. My friend Bob in Calgary seems to want to set me up for some web work, and though I'm not complaining, I think I made it clear to him that just because I did a few graphic optimizations for him, I don't expect anything in return. Though, it's still nice that he thinks my work is good enough to recommend me to someone. Which leads me into my deep stuff. I was pretty depressed yesterday over the state of my business affairs. You see, I do design work for a couple of companies. Two of them I cannot legally mention - my contracts with them specifically state I cannot publicize my connection to them, or publicize the sites I worked on for them. It's a common clause in this business - graphic design firms don't want their clients to know they occasionally get outside contract help. This didn't used to be a problem, but now it is because the sites I can publicize, through my association with onedot, are all either dead of fucked. In other words, there are no commercial sites currently on the net that I can point potential clients to. I'm very upset about this. I've designed in whole or in part over a two dozen sites in the last year, and I can't point people to any of them, either for legal reasons or simply because they aren't there anymore. In this business, without a portfolio, you're fucked, plain and simple. So I was very depressed about this. To add to my depression, I lost two potential jobs in the last two weeks because the middlemen boosted the prices they charged the potential clients far too much, in my opinion. Those of you who read my rants regularly know I'm not very high on my own skills. I know I need a lot of improvement and I know a lot of designers and webmeisters out there are a heck of a lot better than I am at these things. But what really depressed me more than anything last night was when I found out that someone I know, with a LOT less skill than me, got a paid job at a local ISP doing web work. This person's skill quote is absolute nil when it comes to design ideas. I really got to me. It's times like this I would kill for a steady job doing this shit. Instead, I have to constantly hustle, and now, without a portfolio to show, it's even harder to do. One good note out of all of this, and it shows I've met some really decent people on the Net. Last night while I was all in my funk, My online friends Stephanie, Dave, Mike, and even Zannah tried to cheer me up and open options to me me. And in some ways, they did. Oh and on a completely different note, I still think Lance Arthur is fucking with my brain.
Friday, May 30 First of all, I'd like to announce that Lance Arthur is fucking with my brain. Big time. Lance, if you're reading this, you know what I mean! :-)
I worked into the wee hours last night modifying stuff for this site, as well as creating the pages and graphics (well, modifying them) for a new story, called Making Snow for the Fortress. It's a story about the worst job I ever had. I also spent way too much time dicking around with new section title graphics, navigation graphics and the like. I sort of finished the section graphics, but I'm not entirely happy with them. As for the navigation graphics, well everything I did so far sucks (IMO), so I put them off for now, and I'll get to them soon. I might ditch the mouseover effects for them though... eats up system resources, and a bit of a pain to code.. we'll see though. I have an observation to make, and it's strange: Felt has damaged the fine game of Backgammon. It's true. I'll explain: I've been playing backgammon for years, but always on a typical game board you get here in North America - you know, the briefcase style game - it opens to reveal the backgammon board, covered in felt, with little vinyl pieces of material to show the elongated triangle lines. You roll the dice, move your pieces, etc. Well, when I was in Europe, I played on (and owned for a while) a real backgammon game set - one made out of wood. No felt, no vinyl. When you roll the dice, it has a real tactile feel to it, and the clunks of the dice as they hit the sideboard adds to the atmosphere of the game. Since coming back to Canada, I've missed that. I own two backgammon sets, and both are lame. I miss the dice sound. I miss the wood. I miss the cafe atmosphere of playing it on a lazy afternoon while drinking shots of turkish coffee. And my game sucks - you see, if you play strict backgammon rules (which I do), if your dice land on top of your pieces, or if they land on an angle against one of the sides, the roll doesn't count, and you lose your turn. With wood, the "landing on and angle" isn't much of a problem - the wood lets the dice slide so they land flat. But on felt, that's a different story. I lose, on average, about 2 rolls per game when playing Jeanette. It sucks. I wish I could find a nice wood set here in Vancouver, but so far, the only one I found was so-so, and cost a fortune. Maybe I'll make one! I know it's a bit weird. When I told Jeanette last night that I was going to write about this... she goes "lame!" Thursday, May 29 Well, today has been busy, full of ups and downs. I had a very long chat session with a customer, which was neat - I worked on stuff while chatting, live-fed him, and got instant gratification from the whole process. And the best part? I got paid for the whole time! I also had a lengthy chat session with some online friends. One friend was in a weird mood today, so I hope we got him/her cheered up (not gonna tell, not even the gender!). I also was introduced to some very cool sites today that I haven't seen before. One of them is a link on my main page, Improproganda. I also got e-mail today from a guy over in Britain, Simon Pritchard. His site is awesome, and that's how I felt about it before I read his review of my pages. One of his links is to Paul Mew's homepage, which contains a well thought out rant about counter-culture, as in, net counters and trackers. Made me think a bit about them, and their use. The only problem I had was that Paul displays all these flashy SiteBuilder, ActiveX, Microsoft etc banners on his pages. I view that as a bit of a conflict (though the RealAroma banner is a riot!) As for my own shit - well I'm a tad bit surprised, and maybe even a bit upset that I got so few responses to my pleas for help with finding a good fix for the front side graphics. I got a total of four, yet over 100 people visited this page yesterday. I just want to make it clear that I value every opinion on this, so don't be shy. Visit my archive, check out the graphics (which will be white boxes on the teal background) and send me your commentary! Don't be shy! :-) Wednesday May 28 I need your help today. A few people have told me that while they like the new front end look, they find it hard to read the right side link graphics. Because I was dealing with a special kind of font in a small size for my graphic, I was limited in the types of effects I could use. The mouseovers look fine, but the problem is with the way it looks in non- javascript 1.1 capable browsers. Here is what the current graphic looks like, and my fix for it:
Now here's where you can help. Do you think the fixed graphic on the right is good enough for most people to read? If not, I have the following images, listed below, that use light Netscape 216 colors for the solids. I would prefer to not use solid colors, since it's not the effect I wanted, but do you think any of the images below work better for you? Keep in mind that the effect I want to achieve is a minimal graphical presence until the mouse is hovered over the graphic - then color explodes. That's why I've chosen mute colors for below, and that's why I still prefer the all white version, like the "fixed" one to the right above.
Please e-mail me with your choices. If you could list which one you like best, followed by your second and third choices, I'd really appreciate it. And if you think the current graphics are just fine, then e-mail me telling me that too! Tuesday, May 27, Part Two So far, the new look has gotten good reviews, though one person has written me telling me the white with shadow effect graphics for the 6 side links is hard to read on her non-javascriptie browser. I'll look into that and I appreciate the feedback, as usual. I would love to hear from anyone concerning the new look, so e-mail me! A woman named Megan filled out my survey form today, but unfortunately, didn't provide a return email address. Well, thanks for the comments Megan, and your suggestion about more Canadian content is right - I should have more. I do have one story on tap, called Making Snow for the Fortress, about my life and times as a snowmaker at Fortress Mountain in Alberta. I also have another long story about travelling across Canada, but I'll have to shorten that first before putting it here, or serializing it. Anyway, thanks Megan, and write to me again with your email address (the form won't tell me it unless you enter the info - the form is mailed to me by geocities, not by you). I also have some thoughts about writing a section on British Columbia, the beautiful province I live in. It's raining in Vancouver today, so I can't go to the local bagel shop and sit outside enjoying a coffee and bagel. Oh, and my predictions for the Indy were sorta true - I said I bet only a dozen cars would finish - I was close - 15 finished out of 35. Also there were a lot of stupid accidents, like single car spinouts that shouldn't of happened, but no bloodbath really (darn!). Overall, I'm bored as heck today, because some jobs I thought I had lined up are now on hold, and I'm sitting here scratching my ass while trying to find things to do. Maybe I'll go play Civilization. Or maybe a long bath. One of the cool things about working at home is that I can plop down and take a nap in the middle of the day, or a bath, or go for a walk. One of the bad things is that sometimes, I have too much free time to do these things... while waiting for cheques and work to arrive. Tuesday, May 27 So what do you think of the new look? Please let me know, and much more importantly, let me know if the new front end doesn't look very good in your browser. I've tested it with Netscape 2, 3 and 4, MSIE 3, and even with Mosaic, and it seems fine for me, but I would like to know about any problems you might notice with it. There is still a lot to do here, so if you notice the following, don't sweat it. Things I still have to do include: changing all the navigation bars on the bottom of most pages to include the new web workings section; changing all the graphics (but not colors) on the second level sites to reflect the new graphic look I'm incorporating; changing the second level top navigation graphics to include the new web workings section; get the web working section up and running; transfer stuff from other sections that will now be in web workings, and a few other tweaks and twists. I plan to have all this done by mid week. Hopefully today the Indy 500 will finally be run. Maybe the rain gods are telling scanky Tony George that first, he's endangering the lives of many racing neophytes; second, that he's a loser (which most of us already know - just Tony doesn't); and third, that maybe it's time to actually let the best drivers and best cars in the world compete in the the race that's supposed to be the fastest and the best. Well, if they do run today, my prediction is a lot of accidents, and maybe less than a dozen cars finishing, due to the inexperience and the weak engines. As for other news, there isn't much. I've been working on this stuff, and I've also been working on paid work. I'm really getting upset now about something that happened last week, though. I prepared an estimate for a print job that would have made me fair money for the work involved. The middleman who brought the work to me basically doubled the estimate and then gave it to the potential client. As a result, I'm pretty sure the client was scared off. This shouldn't have happened. Monday, May 26One person reported to me over the weekend that since I started testing a new stats generator / counter for this page, the layout has been screwed up, with images loading in weird places. If anyone else is experiencing this, please let me know. No Indy 500 race again today. That sucks. I wanted to see the bloodbath, but the rain gods are probably sensing disaster, so they poured from the sky again today. And in other newz... I'm still working on my new "concept" for this site. I'm testing out my graphic changes, etc, and if you want to see a very early example of what's to come, it's right here. Though it's Memorial Day in the States and everyone's home for the fun family value times, in Canada, it's just another work day for most. Jeanette's off to work and I'm once again doing some cold calling to drum up work. For a few moments there, I actually wished I had a regular, 9 to 5 type job with a steady paycheck! hmmmm... nah!!! Sunday, May 25 Very busy weekend over here in Vancouver. Saturday was: work, watch CART race, work, work again, phonecalls, work, go for coffee, work, go to Jeff's house for some pretty angry Scatagories playing with a bunch of people - we couldn't agree on what should and shouldn't be allowed (apparently, russian, french and hebrew words were allowed). Sunday has been more of the same, though Jean took me out for ice cream. Yum Yum. I've officially decided to trash YAWT 3.0b3 in it's entirety. If you want one last look, it's here. I've been working on a new concept, and so far it pleases me, so I hope it is nice eye-candy for all of you. I was planning on watching that joke called the Indianapolis 500 today (just to see all the crashes and maimings) but it was called because of rain. The wimps. Meanwhile, good ole Jacques Villeneuve won the Spanish Grand Prix, so it's been a good weekend for Canadians so far. Paul Tracy won yesterday's CART race, and JV today. Woo Hoo. Oh, I might be changing ISPs soon. Our news server all of a sudden has 2 day expires on all newsgroups (down from 1 week or more), and I find that really unacceptable. If I do change, I'll make sure I give advance notice here and via e-mail to all my net buddies. Saturday, May 24 No Friday update. Sorry. And this one's early for a Saturday. Oh well. I'm beta testing a few counters throughout this site. In fact, one of them is on this page. If you wanna see the stats, check here. I also was offered another "award" yesterday. <groan> I guess they haven't read the awardie page. This one wants me to link to a bannervert - filled page that makes the guy money! Oh well... I wonder how long I'll be on his list for... Which brings me to my rant - commercials on private web pages. I think that personal pages are personal expressions, and that they should not be commercialized. Some have called me a hypocrite because I have a link to my company at the bottom in 1 size print. Well sorry, I still don't see how that compares to running Link Exchange or any other bannervert off your personal page. If someone likes my work enough to hire me then fine.. but nowhere on this site do I force people to generate income for me. My mantra: I think all personal pages are works of art, and commercializing them with bannerverts only takes away from the medium of expression. Thursday, May 22 A crashed hard drive really sucks. I lost some fonts I snagged recently, my entire outbox for my mail program is gone, and I'm missing some little programs I've grabbed over the past few months. I had a couple of read/write errors from my tape backups, so that's where I lost the info. Grrrrr. Oh well, without the tapes, I would have been really screwed. Busy day for me, doing little jobs. In between, I'm working on Jeanette's pages (check her daily update today... it won't look that structured once she starts coding them!), and I found the time to write a story about ScooterBoy, Shopping Cart Man, Dave and Me, which I submitted to Alexis over at AfterDinner. If it gets on AD, it won't be for a month or more, but look for it. Daily Linkage - Whoops... I was going to feature this site, and forgot. It's the Estrogen Pages... featuring a fresh interface, which is often modified, and a very neat thing - she changes her daily diary's look each day, mimicking another diary site's design. It's her little tribute to the web diarists around the world. Wednesday, May 21 Sorry. Sorry. I'm falling behind. Here's the reason for my late updates. So far, I haven't gotten a lot of responses from my online Quiz. What's the matter? Too hard? Too lame? Let me know, or fill it out! Tuesday ended up being a very bad day for me. My hard drive crashed, and I had to get a new one. I do almost daily backups, but it had been over 22 hours since my last one, and as a result, I lost hours and hours of paid work. Then some bastard stole my ciggies while I was at Benny's. With packs costing about $5.50 these days, it sucks. Maybe I should quit! :-) To make matters worse, I probably lost a potential job because the middleman quoted too high a price. Oh well. In the end, I tried to make it a better day by cooking a nice late dinner for me and Jean. We filled ourselves, then went to Benny's for late night coffee and backgammon. Jean beat me two games to one. Daily Linkage - Still haven't surfed much lately, so check out either Jeanette's site, which is growing by leaps and bounds every day, or take the Think You Know Mark Quiz. Tuesday, May 20 Kryst... another month flying by. Stop time, stop! I'm getting too old!! I was a coding fool last night. A coding madman. I coded for hours and hours and hours. In fact, I spent a lot of time on one particular piece of code. Many thanks to Terry for suggesting this hell ride I coded... I'll get you for it buddy!! :-) That's right... I'm gonna go down to Vegas and force you to code 50 completely different variants of a sheep counting cgi-script! :-) Yes, this is going somewhere. Thanks to a rather unique suggestion from Terry, I spent hours coding a quiz of sorts for this site. Think you know me inside out now? Think you've read it all? well then take the Think you Know Mark? Quiz today! Just follow the simple rules, and I'll tell you how you scored, with the high scorers getting mention here! So far, Jeanette got 19 out of 29, and Zannah got 21! Which kind of scares me, actually.... Daily Linkage - Forget other links, go take the Think You Know Mark Quiz right now! This instant! Don't cheat! Monday, May 19 Yikes... it's late. It's late. I know. It's technically now Tuesday, but I'll write another one tomorrow. Well, I was gonna dedicate this entire rant today to the word "savory" and how no one ever uses it in normal speech - in fact, the only people who do us it are marketers, packagers and advertisers. Then Zannah, bless her little annoying heart, informs me her buddy Dio uses it all the time to describe cool stuff. Damnit. Today I've been very busy working on lotsa web stuff. I have all the second level of Jeanette's site done, with more to come soon. In fact, i hope to have it all done by tomorrow night. I've also been working on my own site contents, including 5 new stories, a new look, new sections and more. They are coming soon. I promise! Oh, and I really, really enjoyed my secret vice today. Daily Linkage - Two sites of note today. The first one is a personal site of a new person I recently met over the net. Her name is Stephanie, and yes, she's cool. The second site is, well, unique. I can't promise you'll love me after going here, but try it anyway. Sunday, May 18 It looks like I have to rebut a fair amount of stuff! For those of you who missed it, my friend Zannah wrote this section on Friday, and it's now here. First, it's not a shrine! At least that's not my definition! :-) Second, it was Zannah who kept me up till all hours on Thursday night.. and she plied me with alcohol too... yeah, that's the ticket. And third, I don't think The Net magazine is trash - though it has gone downhill since they stopped getting Drue to write for them. But Z. is right in that she read a LOT of pulp fiction net magazines! She's a trash junkie! :-) Other news - I've spent a lot of time this weekend writing, editing and coding. Stay tuned early next week for a LOT of cool stuff around here, including a new look, new stories, and new sections. Also, after designing half a site for my girlfriend Jeanette, I wasn't happy with it, so I trashed it and started over. Take a look. Daily Linkage - Hmm haven't surfed much, but I did check out two very cool sites. First is the Disgruntled Housewife, by a woman who's bad side you don't want to be on. The second site, called UpLoaded, defies all description except to say it involves Brits, and sex-starved ones at that.May 16 - Guest Shot! hi, this is zannah, your friendly rumblings guide today. i'm the one mark has built a small srhine to. mark is too busy to write for you, his faithful readers, today, because he's working diligently on jean's page for her. so i was given the opportunity to write this little rumbling for you. i'll take this moment to tell you that mark sometimes thinks that in an alternate universe, i could be the love child of he and jean. why, you ask? because i have so many things in common with both mark and jean (especially where they don't mix - like jean's piano playing and comic collecting, and mark's Red Alert obsession). daily linkage - mark has just discovered ICQ, a cool little chat program. we used it last night to talk until the wee hours of the morning. it is especially fun when mark is slightly intoxicated. he says the darndest things. also, since this is my one opportunity to pervert mark's audience, i think you should all go look at the online version of one of my favourite 'net magazines (those that mark calls trash): the 'net. and while we're looking at "trashy" 'net mags, how 'bout internet underground? oops! i think mark is sharpening his wooden knife.... back to your regularly scheduled web site! Thursday, May 15 I've said it before - sometimes you meet really neato people on the net. This morning, I check my mail, and I have some from Angela Gunn, columnist for various ZD magazines. I've read some of Angela's columns before on the net (here's the latest), and I really like her style. She also wrote the "gwarsh"-inducing review of my site for YIL. Now for Yet Another Web Thing, 3.0b2. I've been hacking the script for that page ad nauseum, and then this morning, that genius of writing and javascripting, Jen Worden, sent me e-mail solving all my problems! Jen is AWESOME! Check out YAWT 3.0b3 to see it in action. Once I build the structure for the new second level pages, that's what you'll be seeing here. Comments? UPDATE: iSTAR, which is the backbone for my other pages, has been down all day, so the link to YAWT 3.0b3 might not be working. Daily Linkage - A few twisted sites for you. First, there's Kevin's Oddly Different Story Time - you have to see it to believe it. And, dying to get that Tamagotchi, but it's sold out cuz opportunists have bought Walmart's entire stock so they can sell them on the web for 5 times the price? Fret not - try the Virtual Tamagotchi! Wednesday, May 14 I am not a Zannah Groupie! Just cuz I happen to talk about her here, and rant a bit about her here, and feature her here, and talk about her several times here, and here, I am not a groupie! In fact, she's my groupie! Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket. She follows my every word! :-) And I think she will do it even more after she finds out I've been listed in Yahoo Internet Life's Guide to the Best of the Web. The writeup makes me blush, and I might have to change my idea about YIL being a fluff net magazine. That what I tell Zannah it is, - but that's only because I prefer the techie mags like ZD Internet, Web Techniques etc. Well, version 2.2 of this page is a bust, so it's shelved. I've been working on version 3, and if you want a sneek peak, it's here. Also, all you javascript experts out there, I'm having a problem with a new script, and I'd appreciate it if anyone could debug this page for me - I spent hours trying. A big time hero biscuit to the person who figures it out! Tuesday, May 13 I have to make one thing clear. I am not a friend of Doug's. I have just seen him around the Kits neighbourhood. He's a cool guy, easy to approach, though like any celebrity, I can tell he doesn't like undue adoration. I don't think he remembers my name, but we shoot the shit once in a while because we share interests - writing. More Benny's saga - I was there yesterday, and a woman had an epileptic seizure. I know first aid, so I helped out - which apparently freaked her friend out even more. I laid the girl down, made sure she wasn't choking on food or her tongue, and let it ride out. They took her away by ambulance as a precaution. I've also made some changes to what others, not me :-) have called the Zannah Shrine. Daily Linkage - Wanna speed up your net connection? Check out this little trick fix. And I'll feature it again before Adobe kills the site - it's Adobe Magazine! Monday, May 12 Some cool people live in Vancouver. Yesterday, I was at Benny's Bagels on W. Broadway, enjoying the sun, when one of Vancouver's more famous authors comes and sits next to me. I won't say who he is, but I will say he coined a phrase describing my generation (and we hate it). Anyway, we shoot the shit a bit, with him telling me about his new project, and me talking about my theory on a new style of writing, inspired by the web. So I've been busy. I'm pitching an idea to a big CEO of a national ISP. I'm building things. I'm writing. And I've got a new page up. Regular readers of this page know I'm friends with a wacky girl named Zannah. Well, I did a page dedicated to her, and no, it's not the Church of Zannah. Daily Linkage - Like Microserfs? Check out the author's official page. He even works on it, supposedly! And for something completely different, how about GameSpot, an excellent Vancouver-based gaming site. Sunday, May 11 A good / bad day for Canadian racing fans today. First off, Paul Tracy and Greg Moore (good BC lad) finished one - two in the CART Rio 400 today, marking the first time in a long time that Canadians finished in the top two spots in an Indycar race. The bad news is that Jacques Villeneuve didn't finish the Monaco Grand Prix, and stinky Michael Schumaker finished first. Jeanette's been spending the day blowing bubbles out of her office window. And generally annoying me. I don't like to be annoyed when watching racing. It's another beautiful day in Vancouver, and this afternoon, I'll probably be going for some long strolls around the neighbourhood, especially since our next door neighbour has decided to put his speakers up against the wall and blast us with some rap music. Daily Linkage - Into sim racing, Like Nascar II, IndyCar II and Grand Prix II? Check out Sim Racing News. And for the best fun you can have on the net, check out Bezerk! Saturday, May 10 Got mail from Glenn at ProjectCool yesterday - his tracking indicated I got over 2000 hits during coolday, not the 850 or so I thought. woooo. I'm still getting mail from other mountain bike enthusiasts, which is cool, since I might build up a network of endo-freaks to ride with! This weekend, I was going to work on Jeanette's site, but now that's trashed. Instead, I'm going to continue finishing off my new company site. If you want to take a look at the beta, it's here. My poor friend Zannah had a bad day yesterday, and as such didn't write me much (we usually exchange a dozen messages a day sometimes). She has a baddog network engineer over at HappyPuppy. Hope she's over it! Daily Linkage - Are you a dog lover, like me? Then haul your ass over to DogDaze, an excellent site by Mike Shuey's dog! And yet another wonder from the world of Lance "glassdog" Arthur, check out the complex and informative Design Tank. Friday, May 9 Yesterday's rants were lame. I promise I'll try to get back to some semblence of normalcy. Today looks to be a good day. I have work again, so I won't be around much today, but at least Jeanette will be happy that money is flowing in again. I got over 850 hits on this site yesterday, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. I also spent a good portion of the day answering e-mail, and I discovered a ton of cool new sites. I'm featuring a few of them below. I have also added a new page about cool things on the net, and I modified the awardie page a bit. One neat thing about the award yesterday was that I met a lot of neat people, including many who love mountain biking as much as I do. Do you like shredding a trail? Daily Linkage - I liked all the sites I visited yesterday, but two stand out. First, there's Bob, whose sense of design is great, and theres Mike Hurley, who is a starving artist type with awesome talent. Thursday, May 8, Part II A friend pointed out that my previous update today makes me sound like a gushy schoolkid, so here's part two. If you want to see part one, it's here. It's still my brother's birthday today, so happy birthday James! So, to continue, I was awarded a CoolSighting of the Day thing from Project Cool. I like it. It's like getting my paper media honored in Print Magazine. Too Cool.
The ZannahCam is still alive and well, so you'll find out how late she gets to work today! Zannah is great, and her pages are worthy. Thursday, May 8 Part 1 Today's my brother James' birthday. Happy birthday James! So I wake up today, and fire up Eudora and Netscape. Eudora is downloading over 60 messages. Slightly unusual, but considering the mailing lists I'm on, not by much. Then Netscape loads - this page is my default page. I look at the hit counter. What's going on? 250+ hits since midnight last night? Then I scan my mail headers - "congratulations...", "cool stuff...", "I like...", "no way...", titles like these in the headers, all from people I don't know. What's going on? Then I see a few headers mentioning ProjectCool. No... can't be. No way... Yes way! ProjectCool has named me as a CoolSighting of the day. I can't believe it, and I certainly don't think I deserve it. I visit PC almost daily, checking out the excellent examples of design and content that they feature. I think PC is one of the best sources on the Net for a graphic designer to get ideas and to get motivated, and it's a site I feature often here when I'm stuck for daily linkage. I don't think I'm in the same league with the typical CoolSighting, but you know what? I'll take it. At least it's not your typical awardie! Wednesday, May 7th Well, from fast paced weekend to a slow Tuesday and Wednesday. Oh well, today's a food day, so I can eat some stuff other than just fruit. I've been hitting the PhotoShop for Complete and Utter Idiots book, and now I'm up to the part where I learn about all the brushes, like Mulitply, Exclusion, etc. Neat stuff. I'm finally into the meat of this book. This morning Jean and I went to SuperStore today to do our monthly shopping excursion. We bought a lot of bulk stuff, including about 3 kg of boneless, skinless chicken! SuperStore is cheap, that's why we go there, but it's so huge and so far away, and the people shopping there are all like zombies, so we like to refer to it as StuporStore.
Tuesday, May 6 What a day yesterday. Lets see. I got mail from one of the best writers on the net. I whipped up another 4 or 5 stories, some of which will go here soon, some of which will go to other sites. I did 6 miles on the Gazelle. I finished off a job with a finnicky client, leaving him happy. I bought two new CDs - the No Doubt releases. Today, is a bit slow. Now that I finished up a flurry of work from the weekend, I'm generally bored. I'm hitting in earnest the PhotoShop for Dummies book Jean bought me, and hopefully I'll finally be able to tackle this anti-Mark program. I really like the Dummies books, except for the first few chapters, when they tell you what windows is, what the close button looks like, how explorer works, how to open and close stuff, etc. That is the dummy part, for sure! After all, if you can afford PhotoShop, or even know what it is about, you must know how to use Windows95 (or a Mac), and you surely know how to open and close files! Daily Linkage - Here's a excellent writing zine - it was a CoolSightings site and more - AfterDinner. And, to toot my own horn, here's a story I have up at OLIO. Monday May 5 Sorry. First time since I changed to this new format that I skipped a day for this daily update. But a lot has happened. Yesterday was busy. I did the Gazelle thing, I went out shopping, I did some work, I re-arranged the house, and I played about 3 hours of C&C Red Alert with Jeff over the modem (after having me on the ropes early on, I kicked his ass). I finally got around to changing my wall calendar to May. I ignored the net for the most part. Today, I found out I was inducted into comoflow. It's ironic that only a few days ago I put this story online. I am thankful that they recognized my pages - comoflow rules. Thanks to whoever submitted me (Did you do it?) Daily Linkage - Well, I didn't surf the net much yesterday, but here are a few sites for you. There's Backstory and Bullshit, another comoflow inductee (with a better writeup than me!). And for something completely different, send your mom an online Mother's Day card here. Saturday, May 3 I've done a lot of updating on this site in the last few days. Newest is a story, called Award This. The stories page got changed a bit, as did the Mizkellanius page. I added a Tippy Turtle tips page yesterday. I also tightened up a few pages, moving things around. Today Jean and I went shopping for mother's day gifts. I hate shopping for gifts, but eventually we found something. We bought some lunch at the foodcourt, and got into an argument with the girl there because she gave us too little change ($1.50 short). I hate arguing over such a small amount, and normally wouldn't but the foodgirl accused us of short changing her - in other words, she called us liars and thieves. That got my dandruff up. The manager came over, made a big deal about having to count the till, etc., so I nearly lost it. They gave us our money back. Daily Linkage - Time to toot my own horn - I'm published once again!! Check out O L I O And look for my story, Lost Friends. For another cool online writing site, check out GlassDog - filled with humour and angst. Friday, May 2 Did a couple of changes to some pages inside. I added a Tippy Turtle Page, I changed my archive structure a bit, so it's now monthly (so far there's April and May), and I did some tweaks to the Mizkelwhatever page, the stories page, and a few others. I'm still ruminating. But I took a break yesterday from it to work out on the gazelle (did 5 miles yesterday, and I am SORE), and to play a cool new game on the PlayStation. I rented Need for Speed II, and you know what's really cool about that game? Not the $900K McLaren, not the $600K Ferarri... nope. What's really cool about that game is the racetrack called Pacific Spirit, which takes you through downtown Vancouver, over the Lions Gate Bridge to North Van, then surprisingly along Spanish Banks, then on the Sea to Sky highway, then miraculously over the Second Narrows Bridge, through the Highway One tunnel, then right into downtown, zooming past Science World and BC Place stadium. Wicked Cool. (Yes Z., I also said that growing up) Daily Linkage - First, the publisher of Need for Speed II - Electronic Arts, based right in Burnaby BC. And, like most games these days, Need for Speed II has its own web page. Thursday, May 1 OK, no more tax rants. Taxes are done for another year. Today, I've been ruminating about life decisions. I've made a couple of good ones, a couple of bad ones, and a few doozies. I'm getting to that age where I should be more settled than I am, and I feel like I don't have much to show for my time on earth. I spent a lot of my early 20s travelling, going to school, etc., when maybe I should have started settling. For instance, I gave up a plum job, one that paid me over $30K per year, to travel through Europe. If I still had that job today, I'd probably be making closer to $40K today, with perks. Oh well. I'd still be back east too, probably shivering through another winter and a cold spring. Daily Linkage - I found a neato site that stores a ton of Urban Legends. If you don't know what they are, just visit it. The only annoying thing is the ARGH! forced Muzak! And check out Happy Puppy, a content-rich site about anything having to do with games. Check out the April 1996 rumblings Click here to get back to the Mizkellanius Page |
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