Stuff from July, 2002
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on July, 2002.
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on July, 2002.
All children are so awestruck with the world around them; it is truly an amazing thing. Have you ever seen a small child walk up to a balloon and admire their reflection in it? Upon viewing themselves in this colorful mirror, they reach out to the balloon, gleefully grasping it and bringing it closer to their amazed faces. The expression on their faces is one of such intense joy it’s amazing. If you smile at them they will, unavoidably, smile right back at you. Everybody would be helped by a little wonder and joy in their life. To wake up in the morning and take a moment to breathe in the day, to look around and thank God for all that he has blessed us with, great or small and to see the world through a child’s eyes. This wonder increases one’s range of emotions. To wonder at a balloon can add a refreshing dose of joy to a day, but to wonder at the suffering of others or the evil in people instills a crippling amount of pain. Increasing one’s range of emotions seems pointless; why increase our suffering even if we do experience joy more vividly? Concentrate on the joy. You see, we already experience enough pain; increasing our range of emotions means adding joy, adding smiles, adding glee, adding unabashed silliness to our lives. Calling for more joy and wonder in one’s life is easy to do because its always easy to point out problems but challenging to create solutions. Thus, skeptics ask; what’s one good way to work towards a more joyful life? Answer: buy a helium balloon.
When one is not searching for answers to anything in particular, random bible quotes sometimes help to ease stress or tension by taking our minds off worries and helping us think along a different path.
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Mt 6.31-34)
This is the “new” Elvis song. A DJ with the interesting name of JXL has remixed the Elvis song “Little Less Conversation.” It’s really catchy; apparently number one on some chart in Europe. These Euro people seem to write, produce, and perform far better electronic and dance tracks than the US ever does. Europeans simply know what sounds good on a dance floor and thus their club music exceeds most US offerings. But the real focus is this song:
Is is possible for anyone to be completely and utterly wicked? Doesn’t everyone have some redeeming quality about them? Thus the question, does this Psalm speak to the truly wicked people or the wicked aspects in us all?
But to the wicked God says:
“What right have you to recite my
statutues,
or take my covenant on your lips?
For you hate discipline,
and you cast my words behind you.
You make friends with a thief when you
see one,
and you keep company with adulterers.You give your mouth free reign for evil,
and your tongue frames deceit.
You sit and speak against your kin;
you slander your own mother’s child.
These things you have done and I have been
silent;
you thought that I was one just like
yourself.
But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge
before you.
Most times we look for a way to feel redemption after a mistake; we know we have broken a rule and search for a way to change direction. Many times we are not able to put into words our desire for forgiveness and our resolution to act in accordance and harmony with the world and its rules. Reading this excerpt from Psalm 51 is just the remoseful eloquence that a can help clarify one’s feelings.
Don’t call it techno. Don’t ever call it techno. Techno is merely the grandfather of many ‘new’ genres of electronic music. One of these is called ‘uplifing trance.’ Want a taste? Of course you do; DJ Encore is the Denmark native who mixed an outstanding trance cd featuring the angelic voice of another Denmark(er) named Engelina. This extraordinary album contains one good song after another. From the pulsedriving Open your Eyes to the uniquely orchestral title track Intuition to the unreal tones that Stay paints onto ones aural canvas. If you haven’t bought a CD for a while, go give the music industry just a little money and buy it.
This is an interesting random quote to stumble across. Only trouble with randomness is that it can be tough to tie into one’s daily life. For example, you might sit there and reload the front page of this website until the random quote shows what you are looking for. Or you might go off and drive randomly somewhere and discover you feel no better than when you left and all you did was waste some petrol. Anyhow:
In the past month this site has gone from nothing, to a little more than nothing. But, the foundation is being laid. mySQL is being used to allow for truly dynamic design and content possiblities. Additionally, only two sections remain to be opened; links and pictures. The future is looking pretty good as there are literally hundreds of quotes in queue for addition and innumerable sources containing inspiring thoughts for that section. The links section promises a fair selection although some time will need to build that up. The pictures section holds some exciting possiblities, possibly some 35mm prints or negatives will be converted to digital galleries. In the meantime, the the old designs of this site will be uploaded to that section as well. On top of that, some purely digital ‘art’ will be added as well in a small little gallery. Hopes for the future: themed sections of the picture exhibition. For example, the flower shoot, the moon shoot, the landscape shoot, and actually in the works right now; the car nameplate shoot. So, thats the scoop, more PHP coding and more database dabbling and the site will be in the next month. Your traffic is anticipated greatly.
waferbaby - Waferbaby is the product of the mind of a creative, entertaining, unique, [Australian] man by the name of Daniel, aka d. The entire waferbaby website uses no caps and no pictures [unless they are in photo galleries or fusions]. Waferbaby’s elegant combination of design [the pixel work creating the 3-D effects is truly understated elegance] and technology [CSS, PHP, and mySQL always win] looks elegant both on the screen and inside the code. Unique features and offerings on the site include brainstorms [one question, many user-contributed answers], cards made by Daniel, a section called corner where web personalities are interviewed, fusion [its like the game ‘telephone’ except with pictures and e-mail], howto [user-contributed step-by-step guides on how to do nearly anything], hummer [a wonderful idea that generates random thoughts], pixhell [hilarious, wonderful, unique animations - nay - mini movies], and wallscrawl which is a board where one can write - and then post - any thoughts at all. Other, more typical, offerings include a daily log of thoughts from Daniel, an archive of past updates, hosted sites, a customization option, and a users section outlining the 1000s of members of waferbaby dot com. A broad user base combined with extraordinary ideas such as brainstorm and pixhell coupled to a powerful and dynamic backend make waferbaby a large and fun, but very personal website.
nickd - Nick Disabato has a site called nickd.org - to say he runs it would be inaccurate. He owns it, updates in spurts, and occasionally completely changes it. Nick was formerly the primary news updater on a site called ticalc.org; his profile at that sight linked to his personal webpage. I can tell you I remember my days of forays into the TI calculator world with great fondness. Many people from the ticalc.org community wandered to Nick’s website via his profile and perhaps this is how the webpage developed a large following; I honestly don’t know. Strangely enough, it seems as though the website’s near-exclusive purpose is to communicate with Mr. Disabato’s close friends and family. Nevertheless, it is consistently interesting. I especially liked nick’s post from August 13th, 2000: “Today is the thirteenth. Since not everyone yet knows about my vehement superstition related to the number thirteen, let me tell you a few brief points: My great-grandmother died thirteen days before I was born. My grandmother died thirteen days after my thirteenth birthday, on the thirteenth. Now I don’t usually believe in superstition, and there’s always the chance that all this is coincidental, but… DAMN.”