08.04.00

A Dream Fulfiled

Posted in Tech, Transport at 9 pm

It’s finally happened. I have a new VW Karmann Ghia. Well, new in the sense that I got it on Monday. In reality it’s a ’73 Covertible. It’s a convertible. Did I mention that it’s a convertible?

Silly little sound system in order to keep people from wanting to rip through the cloth top, a motor that sounds like only a Volkswagen can sound, and an aura that makes people compliment it as they walk past it.

I’m extatic. I smile each time I walk out of a long day at work see what I get to drive home in.

<http://www.insurgentcountry.com/cake_prolonging_the_magic.txt>

‘But under my hood is internal combustion power…’

04.25.99

Dree-ee-ee-ee-ea-m, Dream, Dream Dream.

Posted in Apple, Dreams, Tech at 10 am

Apr 25 Sun (10 AM)

I’m in some big city, mid-afternoon. I meet a famous movie star who looks like Dustin Hoffman, but it’s not him. He’s registered under the name ‘Tom’ at a large hotel made of white marble. He invites me to the party their having that night. I asked him what time? ‘Whenever’, he replies.

So I’m walking out of the hotel lobby and down the street. I’m wondering ‘Would it be okay to bring Amy to the party too?’

…

I’m one of three childen in a Chinese family. I’m European and Asian. Suddenly I notice that I’m not so much walking as I’m gliding about a foot off the ground.

I think to myself, ‘Well this is interesting.’ I want to go higher and suddenly I’m at the same height as the street lights, the ones that are used over freeways, about 100 meters tall. I think to myself ‘I’ll go higher still’ and I start drifting down, towards the backyard of my Asian parent’s house. The more I think and try to will myself into the sky, the closer to the Earth I go.

I start realizing that I need to be Zen about this: I need to ‘want’ to be off the ground, as opposed to telling myself to fly is a particular direction.

I’m rising off the ground a bit again when a puggy asian friend of my asian parents comes into the backyard, which has a tall wooden fence around it. I don’t want him to see me like this, but there’s nowhere to hide, so I zoom up into the night sky and hover over him. I get a really good view of his bald spot.

I notice that it’s late and I’ve probably missed the party at the hotel.

———————

Those dream sequences were this morning. Yesterday I had a dream that I had this incredible Mac G3 setup, including an unreleased Apple 17″ flat-panel display.

Then I woke up. I was upset that that it was dream. I walked into the living room, and there it was. The entire setup, just like in my dream! The translucent plastics and all. It was mine! I really did have this whole package.

Then I really woke up. [Sigh.]

03.31.98

SuperBoy

Posted in Career, Media, People, Tech at 6 pm

Slow day today, though it should have been more busy. Got my machine at work set up to do some file sharing over the net, though it doesn’t work perfectly for plug-in file transfers, but I like the graphics that I worked up for it. http://orion.omsi.edu/

I also started a small page for a friend of a friend. It’s just starting out. Can you tell where I stole some ideas from? Why develop two sites when you can just make one? http://www.omsi.edu/~rosso/superboy/

I was also looking through some of the work I’ve done before… like the one I made for Amy. http:///sorry.it’s.private.com/:)

I renamed my hard drives to Betelgeuse and Bellatrix, after the stars that make up the shoulders of the constellation Orion.

I still haven’t put together the archiving solution for the page… It’s on the to-do list. Along with the Forest Puzzles to-do list and the Cave Inn to-do list and the Zoo to-do list and the PSU to-do list… Need I continue?

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03.26.98

avant-garde

Posted in Apple, Career, Media, Tech, Web at 6 pm

I’m slowly transfering my work machine to be based on MacOS 8. I’ve had it the 2 gig sitting in my machine for quite a while but have been slow to transfer over my preferences and set it as my startup disk. I finally moved my TCP setup over and I’m starting to get Malph re-setup piece by piece.. I know I could just copy over the Preference files, but it’s nice cleaning things out by hand. Though time-consuming to be sure. But damn, it’s _so_ responsive. Of course I haven’t installed all my fonts yet, either… 🙂

Forest Puzzles is looking good. In fact, here’s the URL for it: <http://www.omsi.edu/~rosso/forpuz/> That’s not the final place for it, so don’t bookmark it. However Busytown has reached it’s final destination at: <http://www.omsi.edu/busytown/> which is aliased to a longer more logical pathname as the site structure goes. It’s still got to get through Paramount’s okay (they own the rights to the characters), but it’s looking good.

I’m switching over to Netscape 4.0 as well. I’ve been sticking with 3.0 for a while, because I use the mail client to read my personal e-mail (and Eudora for my business mail). I really feel that Communicator is way overblown. I wish you could install just the parts that you want. For me, it’d be the browser and the mail client. OpenNS 5.0 perhaps?? Maybe I’ll try to find a different e-mail client, though Eudora is such a landmark, it’s hard to think of another one to use. Wait, didn’t Bare Bones come out with one? Time to do some research.

Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space has been a constant soundtrack for my life lately. It’s really a beautiful CD. VW recently used the title track in a commercial. This fits in with the concept that TV commercials are more (avant-garde) musically than commercial radio. Isn’t that sad?

This week shaped up to be pretty active and productive. These are two words that haven’t been part of my vocabulary for a few weeks lately. Winter doldrums? Hopefully I’m looking at an upturn here. I’ve certainly got enough projects that could use some work. And a partner who could use some attention.

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Community Design

Posted in General, Tech at 4 pm

<http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/design.htm>

Interesting. I haven’t finished reading it, but has some good thoughts.

Time for lunch!

Busy day. Forest Puzzles is actually moving along!

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03.19.98

Postcard Postoffice

Posted in Career, Tech, Web at 10 am

Took a warm bath last night. It was nice. Did a little reading. (The Art of Human Computer Interface Design is a 600 page large format tome of a book. I really gotta get it finished soon.)

I’ve just about finished of the Busytown site. It’s a part of the Busytown exhibit which OMSI built about the Richard Scarry characters. It’s a very playful site, though there’s not much depth. It’s somewhat of a side project. It does however have a cute little postcard postoffice facility that I’m thinking of re-purposing for the OMSI site. I’m thinking it needs cool shots of the OMSI logo, the building and famous scientists. If you know any good repositories of famous scientists portraits, drop me a line. I’d appreciate it.

I think I’ve just about got the the archiver for this journal thought through. Piece by piece, it’s coming together in my head…

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03.16.98

Quake Army Knife

Posted in Career, Media, Tech at 10 am

Ah Monday, day two of my workweek. Slow morning, though I’ve got a dept meeting at work at 11:00. Gotta get going.

I installed and played with a demo version of Quake last night. I think I’ve got a feel for how the game works, now I just gotta check out the tools for building custom maps. There’s a util call QuArK (QUake ARmy Knife) which looks like a good place to start. I wonder if I’ll have to pony up the money for the full version of Quake II to make this work. I hope not.

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03.15.98

Unix Memorization

Posted in Career, Tech at 12 pm

Sunday morning and time to head into work. I’ve been seeing what I can set up on OMSI’s site that I can do maintenance wise from home. It’s amazing, this thing called UNIX, though I still have a lot to memorize. I would say learn, but really no one learns UNIX, they just memorize it.

The JavaScript redirect on the OMSI error page has really cleared up a bunch of bad hits. I’m really happy with it’s performance. No, it’s not as fail safe as using a server command redirect, but it’s much more flexible. I really feel like I’m cleaning the error logs up.

The RatCam died again, but I can’t say I’m surprised…

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03.13.98

I Believe in Desktop Patterns

Posted in Apple, Life, Media, People at 6 pm

Friday morning/Afternoon, and I’ve finally gotten caught up on my e-mail, somewhat. At least it’s down to under a screen full in my general in-box. My Nick Cave stuff is still pretty heavy though.

It’s been nice expect for the construction work outside. I’m planning on spending the day with Amy, trying to relax. Yesterday was pretty busy, so when I got home, I debriefed Amy on it for nearly an hour straight. I’m not usually talkative, but I just wanted to get it all out of my system. I’m glad she’s so patient with me.

On my “I Believe” pages for Apple I added a few desktop patterns for people without web pages. They’re pretty garish as desktop patterns go, but some people like them. <http://www.zephyr.net/rosso/believe/>

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03.12.98

She's a Peach

Posted in Career, Life, Meta, People, Web at 7 pm

Toady I’m doing part of a teacher workshop put on by OMSI. These are teachers with little or no experience with web development, and I’ll be giving them the basics. I’ll be trying to show them a way of critiquing sites so they can understand the difference between good and bad design. I’ve only got half and hour, so we’ll see how it goes.

Amy and I had a great night last night. Details unavailable. 🙂 “She’s a Peach…”

I got caught up on my e-mail back to about late Monday. I’ve still got stuff back to early last week… 🙁

I finally got a counter on this page. It will be interesting to see how many I’m getting. As well, I implemented that new error page for OMSI. It’s working really well from what I can see. The only problem is that if it works well, then no one will know it’s there… :p

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