Feb

28

The productivity department is that way —>

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 5 Comments

I am a lazy cow today. You’d think that thanks to working from home — doing things I love — that I would leap from slumber with the enthusiasm of a freshly released convict, rocket to my desk, and tap away gleefully at my keyboard, rarely pausing the pace for even a snack or the toilet.

That wasn’t even close to how my morning went. Truth be told, I got up a tad late, waited for Tesco to deliver some groceries (the heavy stuff again), and haven’t put my feet into anything more substantial than my zebra-striped slippers. Sure, I’ve done some coding. Sure I’ve done some reading. Overall, I’ve spent all day at my desk but have little to show for it outside of some comments left on other people’s blogs, a few emails sent, two fresh new Photoshop website mockups, and some scrawled notes on DIV structure and hexidecimal colours on paper. I did learn some stuff, but not enough for it to be more than feeble excuse-making (in my eyes anyway).

At this rate, I’ll have wasted today entirely, but mastered looking busy in the process.

I’m really procrastinating. I’ve got a particularly ugly issue in the tricky site interface I’m coding the CSS for and I have let it sit in open windows on my two monitors for hours. Luckily, my tummy is rumbling. I can go make dinner first (before I start work for the day). In my defense, I’ve been up past midnight for several days working. That enthusiastic steam is running low today. Instead of feeling like a freshly released convict, I feel more like the convict who has been doing hard time, made a break for it, got caught and is sat in his cell again. That’s how frustrating this code glitch is. I love what I do, just not the problem I have to solve right now. Time to straighten up and get productive. I do have a deadline to meet…

Food and coffee first. It’s gonna be another late night…

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Feb

27

I’m reduced to a babbling, carnage-hungry dork

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I’ve not been this excited about a first-person-shooter game in ages…
I must have Black.

To quote the EA promo blurb:

Bullets pulverise plaster and splinter boards; bigger ammo breaks down doors and shears concrete from buildings in fat chunks. When you finish a level, it’ll look like a tornado hit it. This is no simulation-based, covert action shooter—this is an intense action gunner set to revolutionise video game shooting, squeezing out more power than anything before.

Key features
>>Overt Action
BLACK operatives do not hide in shadows or sneak behind walls waiting for the right time to engage their foe - they destroy the wall, the enemy, and anything else that gets in their way.

>>The Guns Are the Stars
An explosive arsenal of bleeding-edge weaponry lets you experience the awe-inspiring power of the world’s most exotic lethal firepower.

>>If You Can See It, You Can Shoot It
Reduce cities to rubble in a world where virtually nothing is impervious to your bullets.

>>Get Your Blood Pumping
Adrenaline is your friend. Visceral, destructive action sucks you deep into the gameplay as you blaze and blast your own path through open-ended environments.

>>BLACK-Style Kills
Use destructible worlds and explosive objects to take out enemies in cover, frag multiple enemies at once, or just wreak massive destruction for its own sake.

Oh, yes. Oh, yesssss…

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Feb

27

It’s late and I’m looking at a suicide victim’s flickr gallery

Filed Under irregular, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

I’ve been awake too long today. I had the sense to take a late afternoon nap, but the coding has taken me into Monday morning… I’ve enjoyed it, but I ended up chasing my tail for answers and I know a clear, rested brain will benefit me tomorrow.

I decided to bring up my RSS feed aggregator for one last flick through my subscriptions. I found a post on a psychology blog/site that reported on a scientist who took his own life last month. There was a Wikipedia link for more information. From Wikipedia, I clicked on the link to his flickr account.

There is something undeniably morbid about going through a dead person’s flickr account. I saw him there, at work, holding his son, at a party. I saw his art, his books, the view from his window…

According to reports, the scientist blogged two posts about his impending death. His last photo upload was almost two weeks before he died.

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Feb

25

Sometimes you just need to add an f-word…

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 5 Comments

I’ve been rejected by Google AdSense! Wait, before you decide that I’m upset about it, I’m not. I’m glad…

In truth, I applied to the program to add a couple of tiny, barely recognisable, ads to my site on the off-chance I might make a couple of pennies here and there. (Stranger things could happen.) Turns out, I’ve been rejected for reasons unspecified and that “we may not be able to respond to inquiries regarding the specific reasons for our decision. Thank you for your understanding.”

Fair enough. So I inquired anyway. And I looked up (on Google, of course) what specific criteria could have put my blog at the bottom of the list again…

I think I know what it is. It’s that naughty little word that I like to express sometimes… f*ck.
(See, Google! I can censor myself… :P ) If it’s not that, I don’t know what it could be. But I’ll bet there’s some algorithm in the Google Labs that counts expletives (the policy says ‘excessive profanity’) and a post I did within the last month had several of the little f-bombs in a row to express my displeasure surrounding the loss of some of my critical writing work to the digital ether. I think I doomed my eligibility to whore products I don’t care about with my rather human reactions.

So it goes.

So I guess, if Google doesn’t want me now, that I’m free to open up the content Bacchanalia to include the other delights of Hades as well — bring on the porn, racial intolerance, hacking, drugs, gambling, pop-up ads, and page-rank shenanigans… Oh wait! They do mention alcohol promotion. That I have been drunk before (and admitted it in posts) probably counted against me too. (And for those without a sense of humour: clearly I have no intent on implementing content from the above list description. Duh. ;) )

Turns out, if I were to have Google Ads, I’d be censoring myself for the sake of commerce. In that light, I think I like things just the way they are. Long live honest and confessional blogging! (And the occasional, contextually sound, f-word.)

smooches~
jEN

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Feb

24

CSS and Drupal today

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Switching gears to a code frame of mind today.

I got the latest Drupal beta installed on my machine today and began playing around with it. Between my experience with WordPress and the custom CMS system that Neil built for a client, I at least have enough understanding to create and modify some guts.

My next big task (which I started today) is constructing some template CSS for implementation into the big publishing house contract he won recently. I’ve been doing so much writing-writing for my coursework lately that I’ve not been coding seriously for weeks. Tonight felt good. Code is fun. I’ve been at it for hours and now my eyes are stinging from too much time in front of the screens. I’m excited to delve into Drupal — I always love a challenge and learning how to take my CSS/XHTML and make it Drupal-friendly is going to be fun!

The CSS I’m coding is tricky since the design for the intranet solution requires perceived transparency over several content block areas. It’s a challenge, but I’m loving it. So far, so good on cross-platform and cross-browser too! w00t!

I love code. * content sigh *
Time for bed though…

smooches~
jEN

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Feb

24

TTLB and a fascinating art vs. religion debate

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

I decided to find out what The Truth Laid Bear weblog ratings (they call it an ‘ecosystem’) was all about and found the number one blog (several places above Boing Boing) was a female blogger named Michelle Malkin. Of course I clicked and started scanning through her website to see what all the fuss is about. She has published several Mohammed cartoons and promotes buying Danish goods. (It seems to all be in the name of free speech.) That’s fine, but I wonder if that controversial action is what has thrust her to the top spot… I’ve never followed The Truth Laid Bear stats before, but for a blog, Malkin’s seems to be just another political blog — albeit a well-done one — but not what I’d expect to be in the top spot.

One post on her blog I’ll draw attention to is from earlier this week regarding art curriculum in American schools with high Muslim student numbers. Evidently, it’s not just the artistic (or cartoon) representations of Mohammed that are offensive — to certain percentages of Muslims, any portrayal of humans and animals can be offensive under Islam. As an artist, this struck a nerve in me. It seems so oppressive and inexpressive to restrict what can and can’t be portrayed in art. I’m not talking about controversial, modern pieces meant to incite public response, but rather, what about children wanting to draw pictures of their mommies and daddies? I am not criticising a religion or it’s rights, just inexplicably dumbfounded by something that seems so alien to me…

In the interest of brevity, I offer a link to the post on Malkin’s blog, but will offer part of the original news story below. (Her post also included her opinions and photos — you can visit her site for that stuff.)
Here is the full, original news item from TwinCities.com / Pioneer Press
Here are some quotes from it:

Any depiction of God and his prophets is considered offensive under Islam, and disrespectful representations are even worse, as the recent worldwide outrage over the Danish cartoons has shown. But some Muslims also refrain from producing images of ordinary human beings and animals, citing Islamic teaching.
That presented a challenge for Higher Ground Academy, a K-12 school just west of Central High School on Marshall Avenue that has about 450 students. About 70 percent of them are Muslim immigrants from eastern Africa.
This fall, he [Executive Director Bill Wilson] hired ArtStart, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization, to offer more options for about 150 kindergartners through second-graders, including visual arts and drumming. But parents were still upset that their children were drawing figures, Wilson said, and some pulled their children out of art class altogether.
Out the window right away went masks, puppets and that classic of elementary school art class, the self-portrait, said Sara Langworthy, an artist with ArtStart. Revamping the curriculum “definitely requires stepping outside of the normal instincts that you fall back on,” she said.
Second-grader Hawi Muhammed said her parents don’t mind if she draws people once in a while, but “God … doesn’t like people to draw a lot,” she said.

This post (mine, that is) is not meant to spark any sort of religious debate, but rather is just something I had to put out there for my own expressive reasons. I am not Muslim or religious, but I am an artist and can’t imagine never rendering a human or animal in my work.

The world seems to be a shrinking place but ever expanding in its complexities.

**UPDATE** Thanks to Shaula, I know a little bit more about Malkin and her political agenda. For the purposes of retaining a coherent post with relative links, I will continue to include a link to Malkin’s blog. I do not personally subscribe to ultra right-wing rhetoric myself, but did find value in her post. As an expat, I’m pleasantly detached from the US pseudo-political blog and pundit wars. But saying that, for the record, I can’t stand that Coulter woman. ;)

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Feb

23

I’m The Flash… evidently.

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 4 Comments

Someone out there with more superior super-hero knowledge than mine will have to grade the accuracy of this quiz. All I know is that I used to dress up in a gymnastics leotard with my cardboard headband and bracelets with a ‘golden lasso’ of metallic elastic at my side for Wonder Woman every day after school. I sat on a footstool (which is still in my possession) as my invisible jet.
I’m not really feelin’ The Flash…
(click the pic to enlarge the irrefutable results)

Theflash
Get your own super-identity analysis here.
At least I’m also 75% Wonder Woman… that’s encouraging. :)

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Feb

23

I am so unnaturally round right now

Filed Under irregular, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

In case you wondered where all my body heat went, it went to my gut to offer succor during the digestion war raging mercilessly in my tum-tum. I’m so bloated that I actually made a tasteless joke about beaching myself in The Thames… (disclaimer: I felt as bad for the whale as anyone, so get off my back about it. ;) )

Anyway, the foods haven’t been out of the ordinary, nor have the quantities. I just seem to have gone all weather-balloon shaped between the upper and lower naughty bits. Dinner did me in. It’s freaky and for a minute I even caressed my bulbous girth as if I were with child. (This, for those new here, can never possibly happen.) I can only imagine that the hideous gas bubbles and demolition blasts of digestion are akin to what it must feel like to have a little squidsy growing in there. Fortunately, my gravy-laced ‘pregnancy’ will pass and I should return to a sensible size again. In the meantime, I’m gonna have to put some more layers on — I’m chilly!

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