I leaned back in my chair and looked skyward through my window. Up, up, up, my thoughts soared. Then they settled easily amongst the warm air of a gentle February that surrounded and cushioned me. The clouds were cotton-white and rolled about on the deep blue fabric of the sky. The sun, growing in strength with approaching Spring, lent illumination to the scene. Memories floated by, and I smiled and wept with my past. A beautiful daydream it was, enveloping my tired spirit and rejuvenating my conscious. Then, as swiftly and silently as it had begun, the veil of the dream world was lifted and I was returned to my desk, ready to continue life in the real world.
While the people below me pound out soulless rap music, I turn up the volume to the musical epiphany occurring around me. Ani DiFranco - “Sorry I Am” is a fantastic track. I hadn’t sat down and listened to DiFranco before, and now I realize what I was missing. It’s almost like Howie Day meet Dashboard meets Jewel meets Mystery Ingredient X. Then there’s Paul van Dyk. I’ve liked him ever since I heard “Angel.” I tend to be a sucker for melodic club anthems, and this is one of that genre’s best. Would that songs like these took over the Sandstorms of our horrendous U.S. club offerings. If I could be somewhere, it would be the unreal dance parties of Ibiza (specifically, club Cream at Amnesia in Ibiza). Anywho, van Dyk’s newest album is called Reflections, and originally I hadn’t thought it was anything special.
I seem to have missed one track.
Said tune is called “Nothing But You” and is absolutely addicting. I can not wait to get it spinning on the system coming up here tomorrow. Note to self: get a remix of this track. That reminds me, I will try to get a gallery up of my current equipment, so you can see exactly what I am foaming at the mouth about.
I don’t have much to add from my personal life. Things are going along, there really is nothing of interest to point out. Although, one of these days it would be nice to get out of the eat/sleep/study daily grind. I suppose going to Romeo and Juliet this weekend counts, doesn’t it? The Guthrie usually puts on a splendid production. I’ll check in sometime this weekend.
Have you ever been having a rough and tumble day and looked down at your clothing, noting the dark hues and muted tones? Ever thought they were connected? Probably not. I’ve noticed, however, there seems to be some connection between the colors one wears and the way one feels. Is it merely correlation or full-blown causation? I think it is most likely a little bit of both. Today I am feeling pretty good and as I am writing this, my shirt is a pretty bright orange. Did I put this on this morning because I had an unusally positive attitude or did the bright color make me feel better as the day went by? Maybe the people in the ’70s were happier because of the baby blue leisure suits and tie-dyed t-shirts. Which doesn’t explain the drugs and sex; maybe the bad cancelled out the good.
Speaking of working out, it is going well. The motto last year was “Pain free in 2003.” This year, it’s “Injuries no more in 2004.” So far, so good. I am shooting for a year without missing a workout, a goal which is three short months away. Surprisingly, I saw Marcus at LifeTime last time I was there. He said his mom was sick, so he came up for some days. I asked what was wrong, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. It’s surprising how quick the time goes: I have known Marcus for five years now. He’s the one who gave me the tip on who stole my calculator back in the day. If I hadn’t gotten that thing back, I might not have kept coding BASIC programs, which might have kept me out of HTML and design in the dark days of frames and poorly-tiled backgrounds. This, in turn, might have meant this site never would have blossomed to fruition. Suffice to say, it is a good thing that didn’t happen because I love talking to everyone on here; I’ve met all sorts of great unique people.
Today wraps up a chance at one of my dreams. Orchestra Hall is having a piano sale. To play a Steinway in the acoustic environment of that incredible concert hall would be an incredible experience!
Orchestra Hall is particularly renowned for its acoustics, designed by Cyril Harris, with each design feature carefully planned to enhance the warmth and richness of sound in the space.
Over 100 large cubes form a “falling rock” pattern on the auditorium ceiling to deflect sound throughout the Hall. The wood floor and stage allow for better sound vibration, and the angle of the balconies offers optimal reflection of sound.
Actually, Orchestra Hall consists of two buildings: a rectangular-shaped auditorium, and a glass and steel supporting structure (housing the lobby and administrative offices) that is separated from the auditorium by a one-inch gap to free the concert hall from any outside sound.
Unfortunately, this event was not meant to be a part of my schedule. In fact, it wraps up in 25 minutes. Only a miracle will get me there now. I will, however, continue to dream about it (with definite hopes that this is an annual event) and some day I will play at Orhcestra Hall (ideally, it would be empty). I’ll get there sometime, not a rush.
Saturday night entertainment consisted of some very intense DDR playing at Mike’s house. I got a chance to play both the Red Octane metal pad and the Cobalt Flux metal pad. I do now know which one I like better, however I think the Cobalt Flux may edge the Red Octane due to slightly greater responsiveness. For this responsiveness, however, one sacrifices the palpable feel of the buttons. However, once you find your center on the Cobalt Flux, you can fly. All in all, a very invigorating night. Depending on what happens with the camera, I may be able to get some pictures from John. In the meantime, you’ll just have to use your imagination.
The Starting Line - “Almost There, Going Nowhere” … [3^2 - (4^2-5)]
I lost my necklace. It was my favorite necklace. A double leather strap deal, that held a cross (more of a plus-sign, at Katy’s observation). Around the leather, I added a little silver ring, with the words “believe” imprinted in the metal. This ring is from the family of a good friend. But what has happened, “is” I say? Not, “was”? Yes, we retraced all of my steps (I sure walk around a lot in one hour) and eventually returned to my classroom. Katy had the key to the physics room. I knew there was a reason she had a physics internship two summers ago! A little leg work, a little agonizing, and silent thoughts yielded success. I won’t soon forget the image of the cross lying there on the classroom floor, the ring off the chain and sitting nearby. I’m getting that clasp fixed.
That necklace is like lucky underwear to me. You know? The thing you wear when you know it’s going to be a tough day. The little charm you pull out to ease your worrying. Come to think of it, I may have too many of those. At last count, it’s one lucky eraser (which has almost erased itself out), a lucky pencil, and the aforementioned. I’ve never thought of myself as overly superstitious. Do you have any lucky underwear?
I was pretty nervous for the first pre-dental observation. After all, I am only a Freshman here, and I felt like I didn’t know enough. However, they made me feel at ease and the near-three hours flew by. The people were great, and I learned about the inner workings of the private practice; you meet all sorts of great people. It was very very eduentermacating. Next one is next Tuesday.
Sleeping is going better, I have finally gotten into some sort of routine. This is a fantastic (and fortuitous) change from the previous daily random almagamation of events broadsiding my troubled sub-conscious. Somewhere, at some point, I got tired of it. I was finally able to say “enough.” That hasn’t made it any easier, but things flow more predictably now. Self-confidence comes from within. You aren’t listening. Didn’t that register? Gotta find it out for yourself.
“I’ve made myself.”
I keep thinking about that role of 35mm 200 at home; there must be something special waiting to be photographed on it. I’ll get it this weekend. Finally, I must leave so that I may perform my most frusterating and most satisfying responsibility to the best of my ability.
So this means that Victoria’s Secret, Express, Express Men, Bath and Body Works, The Limited, and The White Barn Candle Co. are all owned by the same company?
The frenzied traffic has died down which, suprisingly, has caused my writing style to relax back to its former state. Recent change: the sidebar now supplies you with summaries of what has been happening here. You got it, you can be gone for up to one month and simply click to see what has changed. Will PHP wonders never cease? It was a challenge because imagexhibition is made up of one mySQL database holding picture information, and another for each picture. Each picture has a key that references the gallery id of another table, this latter table holds the information about each gallery. This avoids redundancy in the tables (streamlining by avoiding duplication), however it certainly makes some of the PHP retrieval code a little convoluted. Better there than in the database. Anyways, in order to pull out the information about what galleries have been changed and when, I had to pass two arrays through three mySQL queries. It all stemmed from the fundamental problem that the gallery table stores the date of creation of the gallery and not the date of the last time a picture within it was updated; which is how I wanted it to be. Therefore, the way in which I originally orchestrated the tables to interact forced me to (1) work backwards from the age of the pictures, (2) get them to find the gallery (or galleries, as the case may be), and then (3) load the pictures back from that gallery. Three steps total. I’d show you some of the code, but I haven’t really tested and implemented the CSS and PHP regular expressions for properly displaying source code.
So now you know.
That first physics test I was talking about? Yes, it went well. I didn’t study much. Which was the right amount. Naturally, the work will increase, but physics is not a worry. Life has me much more concerned than school. I took two showers today. My hair developed a bit of a frizz after the second one; I tried to go easy on the shampoo because hair doesn’t play well with a lot of shampoo, but the cleanings were just too close together. Unfortunate, I know. Note to self: most people probably don’t get that joke. My first dental internship is this Thursday, I am a little nervous. I would have liked to get in at the pediatric dental in Minnetonka, but that simply didn’t work out. Either way, I can’t believe it’s really working, really coming together.
Searching all my days just to find you
I’m not sure who I’m looking for
I’ll know it
When I see you
Until then, I’ll hide in my bedroom
Staying up all night just to write
A love song for no one
That was John Mayer, now Kellie Coffey is singing. Why did I turn this on? When did I even get this song? I don’t remember anymore. I can guess why, but I can’t remember. Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe it’s better for me to just forget. Forgetting sure is more difficult than moving on. Maybe I’ll know when I am past. Maybe I’ll understand someday. Maybe I have enjoyed George Winston - Summer - Track 15 for all these years so it could get me through now. Maybe I should stop thinking and start sleeping. This is the earliest I will go to bed in … well let’s not get into that. The server clock is off and I haven’t fixed it, but you’ll notice that it’s about an hour fast (which accounts for how late this update looks). I’ll get around to correcting that.
Guitar is going well, I have a couple of songs under my belt (if you can call them songs) and my chording and calusses have gotten stronger and tougher. I am learning my scales by playing along to songs; it is very effective. Thus far, I have tuned the guitar completely by ear, but I think I tuned a half-step sharp. That too, needs correcting. I have been playing way more piano, and my right hand is getting fast again. The left hand’s dexterity has been increased by the guitar playing. My elbow has healed. Monday, Wednesday, Fridays are still long. My room is cozier, cleanier, and more homey than ever. It’s a sanctuary amongst madness. I am wearing my class ring more now. I don’t know why, I think it gives me something to do with my hands in class. There’s a roll of ISO 200 at home with my name on it; the Canon is calling to me. I found this one bible quote a while ago; I will add it here sometime in the near future. I have an incredible story about English that is as much a testament to luck and stupidity as it is to work to tell for those who would listen. On an unrelated note, the copy writing for my article in Writing in the Margins will be done by the beginning of March. Oh, and we are bringing up the full system one of these weekends and utterly and completely removing the people from the room below me. For those of you who think that I am running to hyperbole, you haven’t seen the picture of this thing. That’s the update of my current activities to the best of my ability: my life in a nutshell, a log file, neatly packaged and tied up with a CSS ribbon for your enjoyment, my future, and someone’s voyeuristic entertainment.
Our traffic has been up roughly 2000% in the last couple of days. (No, I’m serious). I would like to send my public thanks to the sagacious Mr. Dave Shea at mezzoblue for his generence reference.
In the meantime, I have been dabbling/putting together the print CSS file for the site, so I hope to have that done shortly. If you have not yet created a print style for your site, I highly recommend your doing so. For example, on the off-chance that someone prints something from this site, I would not want to be responsible for using all of their ink and soaking an 8.5x11 sheet of paper with a parchment-brown and blue background. I plan to keep everything in the print design pretty basic, but also to hide some things (such as most of the right side bar). Furthermore, I will design a logo for print that will play well with a plain white sheet of paper. Apart from that, things are rolling along pretty smoothly. The only big changes in the next couple of months are some house cleaning and streamling in the PHP files and mod_rewrite implementation.
Maybe I’ll have time to update, as well.
I’ll continue my recent habit of sharing technical information at the beginning of a post and continuing on to personal details. Friday the 13th, while not only being overanalyzed, overblogged, and over-rated, appears to be the anti-evil in many ways. So much so, that I had the best day I’ve had in a while. Nothing beats coming out of a long physics exam into a warm sunset. (Warm being relative, specifically about 25 degrees with a slight breeze). It never fails; the greater the potential to fail, the greater the risk; the greater the rewards.
Please skip to the fourth paragraph if you are not curious about the technical details of what has been going on here. You have been warned. Originally, I was just going to surprise you guys with this design and not mention any of the details. However, it has been such an interesting time, I figured I would share. As I said to Justin, I almost went insane doing this redesign. Here’s the sequences of events: I was bumming around in Paint Shop Pro (as I have been known to do) and brought up a scanned photo of Largent off of a Kodak Picture CD. I said to myself, “self, this could look good with a properly applied brush filter.” In a fateful sequence of menu choices and button clicks, I applied said filter and discovered it looked good - really good. Good enough to continue bumming, this time with a full draft space of 8.5 by 11 inches (‘round about 1224 by 1584 pixels when using a resolution of 144pixels/inch - but that’s for printing so don’t mind that). Then, things began to get out of hand. Recently, I had scanned the cover of my Shakespaeare book.
I realized I could use the textures. Thus, this text is set against is a high resolution crop and seamless filter of the paper on that cover. Furthermore, the red ragged edge behind the navigation was made by editing the woven cover of the book. Just to document (because I know I will forget), I first started a new layer over the red. Then, I drew randomly sized anti-aliased circles. After this, I used the cutout effect (offset by 1px in both directions, with a limited amount of blur) to give the holes some depth. Then, I shrunk the selection by 1px and dropped a shadow with similar settings to the cutout. Finally, all I had to do was use the smudge brush with hardness set to around 80 to roughen up the neat holes. As you can see, the process results in a nice ragged and frayed edge. I stumbled upon this technique completely by accident. The back background is my sweater, actually. The one I got for Christmas appeared on that same Photo CD, so I also brush effected that one and made it seamless. Voila, background. The heading bars are colorized versions of the scanned Shakespeare. Now the CSS began. The entire idea was to keep the underlying XHTML, but change the stylesheet only. Thus, I would have the possibility of using a stylesheet switcher. This ended up working out (after much ado, and adding about 4 tags to the design). Making it work was tough. As I explained to Justin, I am most proud of my image overlay. That top header is two images. The background is one, and the “tumbledry.org” text is another. The second image is a transparent GIF governed by a different tag. I soon realized my only option to get them to overlay was using the position: relative; feature. Unfortunately, the rules behind this position are thus:
The area’s position is determined as if it was normally stacked. Only during rendering is the area rendered offset relative to this position. The fact that one area is relatively positioned does not influence the position on any other area.
So, my #masthead (as I called the div of the top logo) could be moved around with the relative property, but everything else would flow/stack around it as if it had not been moved at all. This would translate to a 70px gap between my head/nav area and the rest of the document. Seventy pixels of vertical, wasted space is a like an abyss to a designer - simply not an option. After hours of pounding through this, I had an epiphany. I could move everything (meaning the border container, called #tupperware) up by 70px. Then, my #masthead could be moved down by 70px to make it align with the top of the page. At this point, I shifted the div containing the original transparent image up 70px and then things were be even. Thus, the 70px was shifted to to a place where you couldn’t see it; the bottom of the page. Take a look, go ahead don’t be shy, there are 70px hanging out at the bottom of the page. My mind is still a little fuzzy on why this works (if you understood all that on the first [or even ninth] time through, I fear you), but thank God it does. Inevitably, I encountered the usual CSS glitches when trying to get Mozilla and IE (with its retarded implementation of the box model) to reconcile their difference’s and work together for a common render. I was able to avoid the Tantek Celik hack but I did utilize Fahrner image replacement (which is elegantly great I might add, and I don’t care about it’s drawbacks) to display the text “tumbledry.org :: issn pending” in the original design and then to make that disappear in this new design. Yay. My final CSS problem was my image galleries. The tables are (for whatever insane reason I had in the past) designed to act like dynamic tables, adding columns as page width increases. I wanted to keep that - why I did that in a completely fixed width design is beyond me. Anyways, the float: left; property gave me all sorts of trouble. How to get it to stop floating? It didn’t stop floating until it reached the #footer’s clear:both; instruction. Not soon enough buster (the parchment background didn’t stretch and as a result my gallery was laid out over the sweater image … not pretty). So, I was able to find a page about containing those floats where you want and implemented that. Basically, it involved adding a hr tag directly after the image gallery. This tag was then set to not be visible and to end the float with a clear:both;. Problem solved. Everything else was moderately simple (apart from IE’s background problems). Yes, that’s right. Those vertical bars (see the headings) are images that are vertically tiled. IE doesn’t like vertically tiled background images and in fact displays them quite randomly in certain settings if you don’t set a width. Therefore, in order to get it to display consistently, I had to add percent widths. Why? I have no idea. But that’s what I did, and it works. Good. Final thing. The style switcher. I ended up using a backward comptatible style switcher to change styles. It refreshes the page, unlike my first choice. Matt and Shayla say the QuickMail isn’t changing styles. I am not sure why this is. I hope it is some obscure IE setting having to do with iframes or temp files that will be rectified when files get cleared out. I hope. So far, things have been tested in Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird, IE 6 for Win XP, and IE 6 for Win 2000. If you have access to IE 5.x, I am very curious if it works correctly there. I sure hope it does. I downloaded a version of IE 5.x, but haven’t gotten a chance to test it. That’s about all on that for now. Maybe a little more later.
John and I had an interesting chat. He is having … he is having times. Definitely collegiate times for John. I can’t be any more specific. Top secret. You know.
Me (3:07:53 PM): this weekend
Me (3:07:54 PM): i think so
John (3:08:04 PM): which girl?
John (3:08:27 PM): did she break your tri-cuspid valve???!!!
Me (3:08:47 PM): YES!!
Me (3:08:48 PM): it hurt
Me (3:08:49 PM): a lot.
We get to do some DDR with a metal pad this weekend. I can not wait. God bless metal pads. That’s the second God bless statement for this post, if you are counting.
Ah me, what else. Yes, I got into Dashboard’s latest album again. Go Go Lyrics!
I am feeling agile
I can bend and not break
But I can break and take it with a smile
And I am so resilient
I recover quickly
I’ll convince you soon that I am fine
I have said in the past just about everything there is to say about this album. However, it remains a layered album with real depth and feeling. Driving at the right times, pensive at the right times.
Online game time! Matt attempted to break into the four-hundreds as Nils said was possible, but those numbers seem elusive.
Is that a metaphor for life? Shayla said no. I think possibly otherwise. Don’t you? Then again, why look ahead when we can hang out on a snow bank and consider our surroundings? I like my surroundings. A lot. Primarily, I like the lack of a roomate and the tremendous square footage. But, that’s a different story. Whatever is happening with your roomate; you have to believe me, I understand and sympathize. Who said vicarious knowledge wasn’t worthwhile?
I am going to bed. I am sleeping. Tomorrow I am getting up and attacking the day. Try this; don’t look at the clock when you go to bed. That way, you don’t know how many hours of sleep you got. It’s better that way, believe me. Math could tell you that you got 3 hours of sleep; this doesn’t matter as long as you tell yourself it was 8 hours. So far, this theory only works for sleeping; it didn’t seem to quite work the same way on my bank account.
I’m so tired that my head is propped up on this bottle of Dasani so as to facilitate writing this entry. I just wanted to record an excellent and exhausting day (Monday) has passed. We got around 12 inches of beautiful snow. I enjoyed the beginnings of my classes and am definitely beginning to get a perspective on them. For the curious, Shakespeare, Physics, Multi-Variable, and QMCS (Intro to Java Design) all occur on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Thank goodness for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tomorrow I will rest and rest and rest some more. I need to recharge.
I used to want to try the blog without using the word “I.” Zeldman, the folks at Modulo26, etc. blog using “we” which I considered but ultimately rejected because of the remote overtones of royalty and self-importance that it conveys. As if “I” were not a big enogh word to contain one person. Well, it’s big enough for me.
I have calluses on my hands from guitar playing. It seems as if my elbow has healed mostly. I can confirm now that the injury was caused by playing guitar. It felt like carpal tunnel. Strange. Either way, I do hope my elbows are healed now. I will play piano tomorrow - the writing for the new album is going quite, quite well. I am really enjoying the rhythms that are coming out right now, I am looking for better left-hand counter melodies, however. Not being a natural at developing these, they will take some time to find their voice. I can wait.
//
I’m sleeping with my eyes open, gazing open-mouthed.
I’m saying all the right things, but you see that I have doubt.
The things I took with me are the things you threw away
to feel a knife slipped into your back
is to die another day.
The leaves may change to autumn, as summer turns to fall
But something warm twinges inside me
Good things past is all.
\
That completely popped out of nowhere. Can someone tell me what I was trying to say? I must away to dreams and visions, to a land where all is possible. I’m going off to sleep now, because I know it’s the right thing to do. Night means sleep and day means awake. Why can’t I get these things straight?
