Cokemachineglow.

Cokemachineglow.
Looks a lot like Stylus (used to), reads about as well as Pitchfork, but has its own twist on new music.

The Presets.

The Presets.
I copped “Girl and the Sea” from MFR last year and I love it.

Side Benefits Of Strong Cold Medicine.

Well, I’m thinking I should probably lay in a year’s supply of Sudafed Cold & Cough Liquigels and just start popping them like M&M’s. The amount of business development stuff I’ve actually accomplished this afternoon has been amazing—in between sneezing, blowing my nose, and hunting for clean tissues, I’ve emailed a whole slew of people on freelance leads, switched over my old pre-2001 Quark-based identity to the spiffy new InDesign version Jen designed for me (with rollout on the website to come), done two hour’s research for a consulting client, invoiced another job, and cleaned off the to-do list in front of me. All without succumbing to the siren call of NetNewsWire or Craigslist or the internets in general. It must be the pseudoephedrine or something. Unfortunately, the pills I took at 9AM wore off at about 4PM, because that’s when my nose-faucet started running again, so I’m back to a cycle of blow nose, sneeze, blow nose, sniffle, blow nose, sneeze, repeat.

It was because of this mucousy hell last night that I took two tablespoons of off-brand NyQuil at 9PM, and it felled me like an elephant gun—one minute I was talking coherently, and the next I was grunting at Jen as I passed out on the bed. I can’t say it does anything for sleep, though; I was half-awake at 3 AM having spacey, rambling dreams about aliens and my old neighborhood in New Jersey, and I suddenly woke up with a crystal-clear solution for a UI project I’m working on. It’s funny what cold medicine will do to the subconscious.

An entry Jason wrote reminded me to post a few of the pictures from our trip to the salvage warehouse a few weeks ago. I’ve been remiss on my Flickr duties lately, so I’ll have to get back on the job. Sorry, folks.

That Hit The Spot.

We went down the street to the Rite Aid for some cough medicine. My throat was feeling more and more gravelly, and my voice was getting lower and lower. We bought the off-brand NyQuil knockoff, and I took two tablespoons when we got home.

At this point, I’m feeling less and less able to function cohesively. It’s getting lighter and spacier in here, and I feel pretty groovy. I think I’m signing off now.

Weekend Wrap-Up, or: Mulch, Food, Shopping, and Phlegm.

Jen took Friday afternoon to rearrange the living room to where four people can sit comfortably and chat with each other, which is a huge difference; it’s really refreshing to have some feng in our shui, at least where that room is concerned. It would be great to make major structural changes in there, but just about everything we want to do will cost major cash, which we don’t have on hand right now.

Saturday we hit the Home Despot and spent a little cash on supplies for the house. The yard here at the Lockardugan estate has been the bastard stepchild since autumn of last year; after the elm in the backyard was felled and all the rest of the trees dropped their leaves, I’ve ignored it completely. Meanwhile, the neighbors in back have a little senior citizen dude they hire in who shambles around with a rake and a broom, and over a few weeks’ time he got their yard cleaned up to where it made us look like trailer trash. (He mowed their lawn in January. They’re fucking with us deliberately, I know it.)

The first order of business was to rake the leaves, which were slowly oozing into (and killing off) our already anemic back lawn. In about fifteen minutes I put a mulch enclosure in, and got the majority of the leaves off the lawn. Next, Jen and I started pulling up some of the English ivy that’s overtaking the southwest corner of the lawn. English ivy is sort of how I imagine kudzu would be—pulling armfuls of it off the lawn only reveals more armfuls underneath. Apparently the Doctor was all kinds of hot for English ivy, because that shit is all up this be-yatch—there’s ivy hanging twenty feet off our trees. We cleared a section measuring 15′x30′ out (five bagfuls, total) and moved the existing logpile to the back corner. Next, we got the debris from the felled tree that was still spread across the lawn up, and stacked it in line with the rest of the wood, leaving the huge crosswise cuts that can’t be lifted for a date with a chainsaw. I’d imagine we have at least two cords stacked right now and another two cords in unmoveable wood to go. Then, I stopped over at the Cauzzis’ to help push the Galaxie back into the garage. That car is too damn fine (and rare on the east coast) to wind up looking like my Scout. Despite a low front tire, little battery power, and a soggy trunk, we were able to push, pull, wiggle, and coax it into the garage, where it should stay dry. When little Callie decided her Uncle Bill was just too scary to deal with, I packed up the Saturn and headed west for dinner: Potato-leek soup, which was mouth-wateringly good the first time Jen made it and better this time. I even sprung for a six-pack of Harp, which went down very well after the day’s activity.

I also picked up a pair of cheap Hi-8 cassettes for the Thrift Store Camera and within five minutes had tape rolling of our cats wandering aimlessly around the living room. Sears carries a no-name battery for $17 that I have to go back for this week that the engrish website claims will work on this camera. If I had a video card with RCA-out, I could rip it digitally, or use the camera as a webcam (hot geek webcam action!) but for now, I’ll keep it plugged into the wall.

Sunday we took a fistful of gift certificates to various home-decor stores in the mall and browsed through all kinds of expensive stuff we can’t afford. Who pays $350 for a set of bedsheets besides Liberace? I mean, really, what’s so different from a $40 set Martha Stewart hawks at the K-Mart? It ain’t the thread count. Maybe the Restoration Hardware kind is woven with golden silk or some other bourgeoisie thing that sounds good on the little cards they use to rationalize the 700% markup. “Handmade by a blind Nepalese monk with genuine free-range mountain yak assfur—as everybody knows, mountain yak is the smoothest, gentlest assfur known to Man, and worth more than its weight in gold.” In the evening we decided to make a dish Jen found called Scallops Charleston, which cost us all of about $10 and tasted wonderful, even though I didn’t broil it as well as I should have. Feeling pious after our day’s work in the yard, we busted into our remaining bottle of red wine—Mmmmm, red wine—and ate like grownups at our dining room table. Then, we enjoyed a glass of port on our couch in front of a blazing fire.

Meanwhile, the sore throat I woke up with on Saturday morphed into post-nasal drip and a rocking good head cold for Monday morning. Swell. I felt awful about infecting my consulting clients this morning (and considered rescheduling), but as it turned out, the wife of the pair has the same cold. They watched me do battle with Verizon and Quicken 2006 for a few hours, and fed me homemade chicken soup for lunch. Verizon won (their DSL modem is hosed) so I’ll return Thursday to fight the good fight. Also, Quicken 2006 for the Mac seems to be a big bag of shit, so I’d recommend staying with the 2005 version until Intuit gets they’ head out they’ ass.

Presidate.

Presidate.
Great spoof.

The Art of Copper.

The Art of Copper.
I don’t read this comic, but this step-by-step tutorial is real nice. I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing. (and I want to try a Crow Quill pen again…)

Identifont

Identifont
I’ve written about this before, but I couldn’t find it in my own archives. It may take a while, and it’s weighted towards upper-case letters (difficult when you have a lower-case-weighted example) but it does an excellent job.

Uh-Oh.

I’m going to look at a Scout in the city this afternoon. From what I hear, it’s pretty rusty—but it’s a 1980, which means it was galvanized at the factory and (most likely) Ziebarted. It’s also a diesel with A/C. I don’t know where I’d put it, how I’d afford it (them checks still aren’t rolling in) or how I’d even get it to the house, but I’m going to look at it.

update: If there ever was a Scout in worse shape than mine, this was it. Basically, I could salvage the axles (Dana 44′s) and the transfer case (Dana 300), the transmission (possibly a B/W T-19), the rollbar, possibly the engine, the A/C unit and ductwork, and the tailgate. If I had a garage to part it out, which I don’t. Other than that, it’s a basket case.

Font Explorer X Follow-up.

Imagine if Suitcase loaded all your fonts and didn’t crash? Imagine if it didn’t take fifteen minutes to preview one single font face? Imagine if it was able not to crash when loading a corrupted font (or if it featured smart enough logic to prevent loading a corrupted font in the first place?) You’d have Font Explorer X.

Add in a vastly better UI, an ability to buy fonts a la the Apple Music Store (if you can use iTunes, this will be very familiar to you, but the available selection for sale is currently very slim), and stability, simple basic stability, and you have a killer font app. This software is beta, so caveat emptor. I have a library of 5600+ fonts, and Font Explorer X handles them all like a charm.

Goodbye, Suitcase. It’s been great knowing you, but it’s time to move on. Don’t call me-I’ll call you.

Album Of The Week 1.22.06

Album Of The Week 1.22.06
Beck, Guero. An excellent follow-up to Sea Change. Varying syles, subtle use of sampling (dig the backbeat in E-Pro) and lots of lush texturing. I like it more each time I hear it. Bonus: Check out “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime” from the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack.

Small Victories.

So I’m up last night (Monday? Tuesday? What day is this?) at about 1AM working on my design portfolio in hopes of getting some new work. My initial idea was to lay the whole thing out in CSS and be all propeller-head, but my brain has been very soggy lately. After a few hours I switched to a table-based layout, and I was still having issues up until midnight. (I started in the early afternoon.) By 12:30 I was feeling very discouraged and blocked, so I turned to the internet to do some reading for a break. One of the first things I saw discouraged me to the point of crushing depression. I’m not going into the specifics here, but it made me look back and my own work and feel very worthless. At that point, I tried to rally but I just didn’t have it in me—it was like watching either of those two playoff games last weekend as a Denver or Carolina fan: nothing was working like it was supposed to, and by the end it was just embarassing.

I dragged ass to bed and laid awake for another hour and a half, attempting to convince myself that I was still a valuable commodity (actually, staving off panic is a better description) and finally drifted off to a troubled sleep. Every year or so, I get into a funk where I start measuring my life by all kinds of evil yardsticks—where I thought I’d be by now when I was 21, my life compared to other people I know, my career compared to other people’s careers, etc. Usually the results are the same: I’m upset and depressed and scared, and it takes many beers or some good news to get me out of the rut. It looks like this year is no different, and I got caught up in the self-flagellation thing again.

However, there are bright spots. Jen made chocolate cake two days ago, and it’s made sitting in the office for twelve hours at a clip much easier.

Today I woke up (at 10:30, ugh) and had a new idea on how to approach the structure of the site; by 4pm I had it mapped out and most of the bugs de-bugged. I uploaded everything at 12:30 this evening, and hopefully it’s working correctly in most browsers.

Behold: the new design portfolio, four (five?) years in the making. Still to do:

Check in older browsers. This is a CSS-based layout, so I’m hoping it doesn’t puke all over itself in Netscape 4.X or whatever old shite browsers are still out there.

Fix the timeline. there’s one page out of order with the rest.

Fix the footer. I wanted the footer to head all the way to the bottom of the page, but CSS footers are a big pain in the ass without using tables.

Link up all the damn pictures. eventually, the thumbnails are supposed to switch out with the main picture; I don’t have the energy to size down all the damn pictures right now. I’d also like to have the bottom of the tan area stay at a fixed position—but that’s for another day.

This also marks the unveiling of my new design identity, the first one in five or so years. Jen did a wonderful job distilling my identity down to the basics, and developing a cohesive design for the “brand”—design will have a separate identity from illustration, which will make both distinctive and different. I’m waiting for some checks to roll in so that I might be able to get the business cards printed, after about four years of having none.

* * *

We decided to hit the Gooch this afternoon at lunch to get out of the house. The Gooch is the local thrift store, right inside the city line, and sometimes the pickings are good. I poked around the books, looked through the clothes (nothing) and then found the “Electronics” section—usually a shelf or two of computer monitors and old inkjet printers. Today, though, I found a Sony CCD FX510 video-8 handycam sitting on the shelf, with an attached DC battery pack (meaning it plugs directly into the wall.) I futzed around with it for a few minutes, plugged it in, and fooled with the controls until I got a picture in the eyepiece; the tag said $9.95 as-is. I figured that if it powered on and made signal to the eyepiece, it was worth $10, so I snagged it. Miracle of miracles, Sony still has it listed on their site even though it’s analog tape—but they do have a scanned PDF of the owner’s manual. So all I need now is one Video-8 tape to test the record function. Update:I can get tape for $4 and a battery (providing the tape mechanism works) for as low as $20.

I also found three books in the circa-1954 “Made Simple Self-Teaching Encyclopedia” series: Astronomy, Physics, and Mathematics. They’re sort of the “For Dummies” books from the Eisenhower era, and they have a cool vibe to them. Obviously some of the information is dated, but I figure the basics of astronomy and physics haven’t changed at all, and they’ll make for some fun reading.

Django Project

Django Project
I’ve not used Python before, but this looks like it’s interesting.

Busy…

…working on a whole new design for the design section of my portfolio site. It’s going to take some time, but I’m excited about the sketches. Special thanks go to my lovely wife, who helped whip an idea into an actual design—no small feat, given what I started with.

CSS Wiki

CSS Wiki
Good information here.

Font Explorer X.

Font Explorer X.
I’m testing out an alternative to Suitcase-a free utility from Linotype for managing fonts on OS X. More to follow.

Saying No To Wal-Mart.

Saying No To Wal-Mart.
Everybody and their grandmother has linked to this, but it’s a great story. The plastic chairs thing is a fascinating touch, and I wonder what it’s supposed to convey to the vendors—humiliation or humility?

Intel/Mac FAQ.

Intel/Mac FAQ.
Good information on the switch. I’m going to have to read up on all this stuff…

Flatbed Scanner Photography.

Flatbed Scanner Photography.
I have GOT to try this. We have a UMAX scanner sitting in the basement collecting dust…

Minolta Quits Camera Business.

Minolta Quits Camera Business.
WOW. I have a Minolta X-700 (35MM SLR) from fifteen years ago, and it’s a bombproof, reliable camera. On the heels of Nikon getting out of the film-camera business, this is big news.