05.25.99
Posted in General
at 3 pm
May 25 Tue (09 PM)
I’m in San Francisco and it’s awfully nice so far. The trip was a bit heavy and my feet hurt, but I’m sure it’s nothing a good soak int he tub wouldn’t cure.
I’m missing Amy, especially when Arron took out his cigarettes… Djarum Supers, the same that Amy likes.
anyway, I’m leaning on the hospitality of Arron’s roommates, so I’ll make this short. I’m keeping a more detailed log of the trip on slim. Assuming that i don’t run out of the 16k of memory, I should get a chance to upload the files to Daniel’s powerbook to keep them till I get home.
Permalink
05.24.99
Posted in General
at 7 pm
May 24 Mon (07 AM)
As I get ready to head off to SF for the Macromedia UCON this week, I’ve gotten a little friend ready for me to take along for notes: my Tandy Model 102 Portable Computer. I’ve dubbed him: Slim.
Oh yes… Manufactured in September of 1985, this little machine is quite the show piece. I picked Slim up from an ad I saw about 5 years ago. Built-in Basic, a Text editor, a terminal program and schedule and address book are just a few of the features built-in to take advantage of the whopping 16k of RAM. I can achieve up to 1200 baud straight out of the serial port for when I’m transfering files out of it into my Mac.
I just picked up the serial cable for it yesterday from The Computer Store, and am typing this directly on the little machine and having it dump directly into ZTerm–just ’cause I can.
Hopefully I can find a real practicle purpurpose for this thing down there. I know I can take notes with it and such but I’m hoping to basically use it as a conversation piece. I’m not good at making lots of initial contact (though better than some, I suppose) so this will be a great way to meet people at this conference (which is 75% what this conference is for.).
So I’m typing away at my little Model 102, enjoying the hell out of it.
Now if I can just find the manual…
Permalink
05.22.99
Posted in General
at 12 pm
May 22 Sat (12 AM)
This morning I was at work at 7:30am. Wow. The last time I did that was… Tuesday. Well that was for that seminar, but today I actually got in in order to get some work done.
Boy did I have work. I’ve been swamped this week, particularly for trying to get things out of the way for next week.
This week’s problem was a situation where I felt inundated with this particular client’s media. We’ve got just a small sub-section of an overall corporate site to rebuild, but between pulling data out of a couple of PageMaker documents, a PDF, a few dozen random pieces of imagery in all sorts of formats, and a nearly impenetrable ‘outline’ of a ‘page’, I was feeling awfully overwhelmed.
As I’m apt to do, instead of admiting that I was feeling in over my head, or at least tackling the thing ahead of time, I ended up waiting for the last possible day (though I was procrastinating with real work (the aforementioned Perl tools)) before establishing a beachhead on this war.
Step one was to classify all the media: 8 different image subjects, text and layout files, spreadsheets, and ‘project management’ documents (including e-mailed instructions and file descriptions, and an outline of the content).
These were then all uploaded to a proper work folder on the Network so that they backed up properly.
Once the media was sorted (or Wrangled to use an old Creative Multimedia term) then I could get down to figuring out how the site will be structured.
I took the incredibly rough outline, and knocked it around. The various line items were grouped, and sorted in order of precedence, This gave me a nice tight outline with just 4 major sections: Catalog, Details, Accessories, and Documentation.
Now I can work up a menu. Once I have this menu in place I can start setting up subdirectories for each section.
That’s where I stopped tonight (because at this point I could figure out what needed to be translated to Spanish and handed that off to the Translators), but at this point I can start going into each section, using the main page as the template for the new page, and start pulling out the inforamtion that I need from the media that I sorted earlier. This process revolves around pulling pieces of text out of the PageMaker and PDF files, and slapping them onto the pages.
As I move forward coding each page, I can drop in the graphics from the rest of the media: images, charts, etc. Usually I’ll develop an image treatment on the fly: various border styles, a consistant bounding box (or at least proportional), and color balancing. I’ll pick one final treatment that I like, then record as much of it as I can to a Photoshop Action. This way I can reapply these effects on demand.
That last paragraph is repeated time and time again, page by page, section by section, until I’m done.
This verison leaves out the brainstorming/design process that happens with sites that I have more control over. I’ve tried my best to document this process, but it’s very organic, and very dependent on the project.
Of course, I’ve worked on a wider variety of sites that most people have (I think), so I may end up making my format too broad, too inclusive. I really ought to narrow it down into a standard for commercial sites.
Oops, it’s Saturday… I think I’m a pumpkin.
Permalink
05.20.99
Posted in General
at 11 pm
May 20 Thu (11 PM)
My flight reservations for the UCON trip has been confirmed. I’ll be in SF on Tuesday through Friday. This is really exciting. I’ll finally get to go to 1) a Macromedia conference (one of only 3 conferences I’d really like to go to) and 2) See Arron!
Arron and I went to high school together, one of my few, close, friends then. I’ve been kicking myself for losing contact with him over the past couple of years, but I got some contact information from a mutual friend. I got his e-mail address and now we’ll get the chance to hook up (hopefully on Thursday night).
I’m swamped at work. (Did I say that before?) Esco, Adidas, Gango, 4 seperate internal projects, plus a bunch of Perl tools and such to build. Outside of work, there’s a possible class to teach (for money!), if things go right.
Amy and I just finished watching game two of the Blazers/Jazz series. Wow, what a game. That’s twice this week that I’ve actually yelled out loud. (I’m reserved to the point where yelling out loud, unintentionally is extremely rare.) (The other time was at The Phantom Menace, the final saber fight scene.)
During the Blazer game there was a play by Jim Jackson, a really quick steal that was great. Brian Grant really held in there against Malone. Amy wasn’t impressed by the overall play, but I missed the first half and thought it was a great match.
Wednesday night was that ‘Summit’ of a bunch of creative/ad/design types at the Govenor Hotel. It left quite a bit to be desired, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re trying to pull such a diverse group together.
I saw Geordie there, but he didn’t seem interested in talking. That’s too bad. It seems like I could have taken a step closer, made a bit more eye contact. But I guess it’s just not going to happen.
Permalink
05.18.99
Posted in General
at 2 pm
May 18 Tue (02 PM)
Today has been the busy and it’s just the middle of the whirlwind.
This morning was a conference in Lake Oswego which was okay, but the best part was contacting a few people that I hadn’t seen in a while, including a guy that I’ve known from when he was at Northwest Nexus and is now at Transport Logic, and another guy that I met at a web developer’s get-together that Imagina hosted a couple years back. Oh, and I designed our company’s extranet interface. Flash and Generator… Yum! 🙂
Later today is another seminar, this one’s downtown and should be pretty good, but I’ve got to buzz out of there to the Gus Gus concert, and then (if there’s time) it’s off to the Star Wars opening. I’ve got some tickets coming, but I’m not sure which theater, and at what time…
Busy busy…
Permalink
05.15.99
Posted in General
at 6 pm
May 15 Sat (06 PM)
v ccccccbvg gggiugiuiuiiuu99999999u9hjhujjhujjjijjjjjjjooooooontrgf;.////4”355 ‘s65TYmk,,,jiku8mhyggggggggggg
Permalink
05.14.99
Posted in General
at 9 pm
May 14 Fri 09 AM
Good god, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Between e-mail piling up (mostly for the XSSI Library, though some Nick Cave stuff as well) and a lot of heavy creative design stuff at work, I fell like I’m under a lot of pressure lately.
But it’s not a light-less tunnel that I’m in. There’s just a number of cycles that are converging here on me in the next few weeks. A number of projects are achieving a bit of maturity, and some others and just hitting their stride.
I’ve got to remember to breathe deeply, keep organized and confident. This seems to be a critical time for me.
Looks like I’ll be moving the Cave Inn to a new domain in the next few weeks. And now it will be stable. Yay!
Permalink
05.12.99
Posted in General
at 12 pm
May 12 Wed (12 AM)
I love Newsradio. It’s on at midnight each weekday night. It’s really funny.
Permalink
05.11.99
Posted in General
at 11 pm
May 11 Tue (11 PM)
Last night I caught Scott Adams on Charlie Rose. He’s just what expected and less. Don’t get me wrong, I like Dilbert as much as the next office drone, but this was not a charisatic man.
The most telling comment was when Rose noted that Charles Schutz said that Charlie Brown was 60% himself and 40% creative license.
Adams replied that Dilbert was one third himself, and two thirds other people he knows.
Hmmm… No room left for creativity, it seems. And that’s the thing, and I think Adams himself would agree, Dilbert is not a creative comic, just an exageration.
If any of you are going to Macromedia’s UCON, drop m a line and we can meet up there. My work is sending me, flight, room and entrance. Woo hoo! 🙂
http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/events/ucon99/
Permalink
05.09.99
Posted in General
at 10 pm
This morning I installed a new video card into Amy’s 6400 Power Mac. The built-in video would only run millions of colors at 640×480, and let’s just say that Photoshop is a mess at that size.
Using a borrowed ATI Xclaim VR PCI card, Amy can now run 800×600 at millions, and now the monitor is the problem as it won’t run anything larger, though at 15″, i don’t think she’d really want to squint that much during the day.
This was another of my to-do list line items. It was nice to get that one done. In the long term section I added the line ‘Document Prague Trip’. After getting all the photos put on Kodak PhotoCD (it’s a bit of a waste: make sure you pick out exactly the photos you want transfered ahead of time.) I really should take advantage of the material. It would be a shame not to.
Keboard update: The only key that’s not working: The tilde… What’s a webmaster to do with out his tilde?
Permalink