02.25.99
Morning Humour
Feb 25 Thu (08 AM)
Descartes walks into a bar.
Barkeep: “Would you like a beer?”
Descartes: “I think not.”
Then he disappears.
Thanks Micha 🙂
02.24.99
The Vent is open
Feb 24 Wed (12 AM)
Gotta get to bed, but I wanted to get an entry in first.
Today was good and bad at work. The morning was taken up completely by a fruitless meeting that was going reasonably well until the client started complaining about the value of the site he got vs. what he paid. What’s the diplomatic way to say “Your friggin’ site was designed in literally hours, developed in less than 5 working days, deployed in less time than most paper airplanes!”
Then there’s the frozen veggie company who’s design firm doesn’t have the slightest clue about how TABLES, FRIGGIN’ TABLES work! They don’t even know about the Superscript or Subscript tags!
Good lord, these things are just wrong.
02.20.99
On Fonts
Feb 20 Sat (12 AM)
I finished off the logo for work today. The one that I had been using wasn’t ‘final’ as described by Dan. But yesterday and this morning, I think we got it figured out.
I’ve nailed down the display face (SperpentineICG) and the body text (GillSans Light). It was difficult to pickout a body type to work with Serpentine, because, like Optima, it sits right in the middle of the serif, san-serif camps, so you can’t just pick out a nice font from the other end of the serifing spectrum. I picked GillSans to go with Serpentine because it balanced out well in regards to the stroke weight. It’s a bit light-hearted, I’d like something a little more formal, but I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t a done-to-death screen face or Helvetica. So GillSans it is.
I really like working with type. I think the graceful forms of most faces are some of the most beautiful blendings of form and function of any artwork crafted by human hands. I’m not talking about the highly stylized display faces that have been 90% of type designer’s output in the past 10 years. I’m talking about the older faces, particularly by Zapf and Goudy that came out earlier this century. But they generally worked with serif faces, and I wanted a san-serif face.
Weekend is here. Tomorrow I’m going dancing… 🙂
02.19.99
The Sigh of Relief
Feb 19 Fri (09 AM)
Ah what a change a paycheck can make.
Particularly if it’s the first full paycheck you’ve recieved in three months. Yeah, this is the first full, two week, 80 hours of work paycheck that I’ve received since the middle of November. That’s just bizzare for me to think about.
But when I got home today and showed the check to Amy and we did a little jig, there was an almost physical change in the air. I feel less tension, more stability, less worry, and more optimism. I think Amy may feel the same.
For now, it’s back to the grindstone. Websites to build, Flash to sharpen up on, and stuff to move forward on. That little bit of life clicked back into place.
Sigh… 🙂
02.17.99
Undercover / Peepholes
Feb 17 Wed (08 AM)
It feels like I’ve been keeping a low-profile these days.
I haven’t gone out dancing, haven’t been going out with friends, or anything. Amy and I have generally been staying home, and conserving resources. It sorta feels like we’ve been hibernating.
But I’ve got a number of projects lined up, I’ve got websites galore to work on and build out. I’ve got the Browser Black List to get the word out about: http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/browserblacklist/ I’ve got to start getting my taxes together, clients to meet with, phone calls to make.
Stuff to do, but no life. No fun. Work, work, work. Perhaps once our cash flow starts flowing again (first paycheck comes this Friday!) and we get out from under some bills, I’ll be able to relax, and have a bit of enjoyment. Someday soon.
There was an re-run of Seinfeld on last night. It had a story thread about Kramer and Neuman reversing the the peephole on their front doors. That seems an awful lot like what people with online journals are doing.
02.16.99
Fixes
Feb 16 Tue (01 AM)
Just when you think you’ve got it right…
I played with Bad-Seed.org again tonight, still trying to get the menu just right (which it isn’t even close, but it’s an interesting exercise to optimize something that’s flawed at it’s core) and I tried the Goodson Subscription/unsub/info form and it was broke. But it was only broke on the interface level… the actual command still got sent out to the list.
After an hour and half, I finally tracked it down to the Sendmail that I _had_ tested it against (on a Sun box) was different from the one on the Linux box the thing was running on presently. I simply don’t know how to hand code the proper RFC defined mail headers off the top of my head.
It’s the little things, really. This would have kept me up all night, if I didn’t get it fixed. I would have been worrying over all the people who thought their subscription to the list didn’t work, but all the while, they’re sending in the same commands, 4 and 5 at a time. But it’s fixed. For now.
Why the hell do I get so wrapped up in this? It’s not like my web pages provide some sort of IV drip for someone waiting for a transplant. They’re just scripts, right?
But I feel so responsible. Just like I feel for other parts of my life, which I have no control over. If the car breaks down, it’s my responsibility, if not my fault. I should have changed the oil, put in this fluid or tightened that bolt.
Of course, I have virtualy no idea how to actually fix a car, and only theoretical mental models of what it actually does. So if something goes wrong, it would be more likely to be due to general auto-ignorance rather than malicious neglect.
And yet the respondibility, the guilt, is there. It really is a driving force in my life. It’s some strange monster, green, scalled, and slimey, with dagger canines and yellow eyes. Boublous, overstuffed and heavy, it sits next to me, crawls on top of me, grabs my skin as it hefts its weight onto the top of my shoulders like a boy getting up on the shed in the backyard, standing tiptoe on a bucket.
It’s good and bad. It’s good in the energy and drive that it provides. It’s bad in the lack of control I have over it. Amy and I have talked about it extensively. It’s a real albatros at times. And it’s always there. Always.
I wish I could re-write that piece of code as easily as my Bad-Seed.org perl scripts.
02.13.99
The Browser Black List
Feb 13 Sat (08 PM)
I put up the first page of the Browser Black List Project. I’ll see how much interest I get for it, and gauge whether or not I should publicize it, and build it out further. I’ve e-mailed a few people, and I’m considering dropping a note to the Mozilla Project, and a few other lists. http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/browserblacklist/ (Sorry about the length of the diretory name, but that’s what I wanted it to be, so there.) 🙂
I’m wondering if this is a good idea. I was really proud of it when it came to mind, but now I’m at the point where I’ve written the idea down and don’t have the energy to actually build the thing. I didn’t actually have the time to write down the idea, but I did theat…
I promised the Goodson list that I would get the news section of Bad-Seed.org up an running again this month. I guess I could do that tonight. Shouldn’t be too bad.
If any of you out there have any comments on the Browser Black List, please let me know. I’ll be posting about it to a few lists and sites on Monday. Thanks.
02.12.99
Incremental
Feb 12 Fri (12 AM)
I messed with the archiving section of the script last week, but didn’t notice the problem until tonight. Ah well it’s fixed now. I was gong to work on my Fight Back project, but that’s on hold till this weekend I think.
$i++;
How could I forget the $i++; ?
Nothing…
Feb 12 Fri (04 PM)
Sitting Target…
Sitting Waiting…
Anticipating…
Cliiiients,
Cliiiiennnnts.
What am I trying to do; what am I trying to say? I’m not trying to bore myself out of my head before a client gets here, 2 hours late. It’s given me the chance to get the site reestablished in a template system, but it’s taken forever… He was supposed to here at 2:30, and it’s now 4:00.
The site is coming along really well, and I’m actually becoming proud of it. Soon I’ll be figuring out how to make it easier to navigate, and I need to see the font sizes on a Windows machine, but it is coming along.
I held off on lunch for this guy. Sounds like he’s on his way in…
02.11.99
Thursday… already?
Feb 11 Thu (11 PM)
Did you hear? The US Congress got stuck off the coast of Oregon. They had to set them on fire. The President was found in bed with Po, the yellow Teletubie. And Jerry Falwel was video taping them… for Linda Tripp!
Another day, another web site. At work I just got a client to pay the first of three payments on a rush job of a web site. It’s pretty small, but it has to be done by Tuesday. It’s coming along really well, though there’s a lot of details that I’ve got to work out before it’s finished.
But the client is _very_ cool. It’s a company that produces fully spherical films and movie files. 12 cameras all hooked up into one feed. The main guy gave me a demo, and it rocks, even on a laptop. It’s Intel-based, though the guy wants to do it on the PowerPC when it gets the AltaVec instructions, due in the G4s. Very, very cool.
6 web sites in under two weeks. I’m getting to be _really_ good at DreamWeaver…